Global Pulse

分类： politics

  • From autonomy to ‘settler colonialism’: How India redrew Kashmir’s demographic and political landscape

    From autonomy to ‘settler colonialism’: How India redrew Kashmir’s demographic and political landscape

    It has now been seven years since India revoked the special constitutional autonomy long granted to Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The rollback of these historic constitutional protections, followed by sweeping changes to residency rules, land ownership laws and regional governance, has systematically remade the region’s social, political and economic landscape. Critics across academic, political and local circles frame these changes as a deliberate multi-pronged strategy to alter Kashmir’s unique demographic character and erode native political power. The debate around the changes remains deeply divided, with competing narratives of integration versus disenfranchisement defining the region’s uncertain future seven years on.

    On August 5, 2019, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing nationalist administration led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, took the unilateral step of scrapping two core constitutional provisions: Article 370 and Article 35A. For seven decades, these clauses had anchored Kashmir’s relationship to the Indian Union, granting the Muslim-majority region limited self-governance and legal safeguards to protect its native population and resources. Article 370 originated from the 1949 accession agreement following the partition of India, while Article 35A empowered Jammu and Kashmir’s regional assembly to define permanent residents and bar non-locals from permanent settlement in the region. Prior to 2019, existing land laws capped individual land holdings at 12 acres, prohibited construction on agricultural land and barred non-Kashmiris from property ownership, frameworks designed to protect the region’s fragile ecology, preserve local access to resources and guarantee native access to employment.

    Following the 2019 repeal, the Indian government unilaterally split the former state into two federally controlled Union Territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, placing the entire region directly under the administrative control of India’s central government in New Delhi. Modi’s administration framed the move as a long-overdue corrective to historical anomaly, arguing that integrating the region more tightly into India would attract new private investment, spur long-delayed development, and curb long-running separatist militancy.

    But within months of the repeal, New Delhi introduced sweeping regulatory changes that opened the region to outside settlement and investment. In March 2020, the government implemented new domicile rules that granted resident status to any person who had lived in the region for 15 years, studied within its borders for seven years, or served in select central government posts in the region. A subsequent notification in October 2020 eliminated even the requirement of domicile status for purchasing most non-agricultural land, effectively removing all historic barriers to outside property ownership.

    Official government data presented to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly reveals that within just two years of the new rules going into effect, more than 1.25 million domicile certificates had been issued across the region. Of these, more than 83,000 went to individuals who did not previously qualify as permanent residents. Regional authorities have claimed that domicile certificates are only required to apply for government jobs and do not automatically confer land or voting rights, but concurrent changes to land law mean a domicile status is not required to purchase most property in the region anyway.

    For native Kashmiris, these policy shifts have resulted in widespread systemic disenfranchisement, as outsiders gain open access to the region’s limited land and natural resources. Many residents describe growing economic inequality that has reshaped daily life over the past seven years. “I think what has changed in these seven years is the visible presence of inequality,” explained Jan, a 35-year-old resident who requested only her first name be published for safety. “I don’t recall Kashmir being so economically unequal before. When you see the much-hyped city centre of Lal Chowk, for example, you get a small glimpse of a colourful metropolis. But the moment you step into the next-door neighbourhood of Maisuma and walk into the lanes of the old city, you encounter real Kashmir: waterlogged roads, people driving rickshaws for a living, stray dogs outnumbering humans and more.”

    Jan pointed to the elimination of historic land regulations as a core driver of displacement. “Before, we had laws that prevented a single person from acquiring land that was more than 12 acres. That kept Kashmir anchored into a socialist character. No one was allowed to build so much as a small hut in agricultural land. Now, it is free for all. Indian construction firms can tear past our rice fields and apple orchards to construct railway lines and expressways that are completely defacing the Kashmir that we knew as children. This infrastructure is meant to serve its military more than it serves us. The poorer lot are especially more defenceless against the onslaught of ‘new Kashmir’ and the sweeping changes it represents. We are simply getting estranged from our own land.”

    The opening of land to outside investment has also triggered widespread evictions of long-term residents living near forested areas. Abu Bakr, a 42-year-old Srinagar business owner who closely follows regional politics, noted that new land policies reclassified many long-standing community land holdings as illegal encroachment. “To facilitate investment and improve the ease of doing business, the policy allowed investors greater access to land. Subsequently, the government introduced a series of policy changes affecting land, agriculture, and forest laws. In several cases, land occupied by such residents was classified as encroachment, leading to eviction drives. There are many examples of it.” Bakr added that government initiatives to distribute land to homeless families from outside the region have amplified long-standing native fears of deliberate demographic engineering, a concern that has been central to Kashmiri political discourse for decades.

    Beyond land and residency changes, the Indian government also redrew Jammu and Kashmir’s electoral boundaries for the first time since 1995. The federal Delimitation Commission expanded the total number of regional assembly seats from 83 to 90, allocating five of the six new seats to the Hindu-majority Jammu region and only one to the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. The commission also merged geographically disconnected areas separated by mountain ranges into single parliamentary constituencies, a restructuring widely criticized as a deliberate maneuver to shift political power toward parties aligned with New Delhi. While regional elections were eventually held and an elected local government formed, the administration remains stripped of full statehood, with core legislative and administrative powers retained by the central government in New Delhi, leaving local leaders severely constrained in their ability to enact policy.

    Seven years on, the promised economic boom and end to militancy that the BJP used to justify the 2019 changes have yet to materialize, and the region remains mired in volatility. In May 2025, suspected militants carried out a deadly attack on tourists in Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley, killing 26 people in one of the deadliest civilian assaults on the region in recent years. Just last month, a police officer on security duty was shot and killed in Anantnag’s Lal Chowk; the killing triggered a massive government crackdown that resulted in the detention of more than 3,500 people across the region.

    Local residents also highlight ongoing systemic economic and social crises. Unemployment among Kashmiris currently sits at roughly 6.7 percent, double the national average for India, and youth joblessness has fueled a growing drug crisis in the region. “We are plagued by high rates of unemployment among youth; they are going towards drugs,” said Muhammad Amin, a 55-year-old local resident. Critics also point to widespread government censorship, including revisions to school textbooks to erase dissenting perspectives and suppress native Kashmiri identity.

    International and academic observers have echoed these criticisms, framing the 2019 changes and subsequent policy shifts as a deliberate project of political disempowerment. In 2021, a panel of United Nations special rapporteurs raised alarm that the revised residency rules were implemented without any consultation with the local Kashmiri population, warning that fast-tracking domicile status for outsiders risked severely deteriorating the human rights situation for native residents.

    Scholars who study the region frame the cumulative changes through the lens of settler colonialism, arguing that incremental policy shifts over time have worked together to restructure control over land, political power and native sovereignty. Ather Zia, a political anthropologist, explained: “In my work, I describe this as the iterative temporal dynamic of settler colonialism, where successive changes over a period of time reinforce one another, and cumulatively they are focused on restructuring control over land, political representation, and Indigenous sovereignty, as we see that is what has unfolded. Settler colonialism as an analytical framework helps explain how changes in legal restructuring, policies of land expropriation, demographic engineering, increasing militarisation, and massive overhaul in how the region is governed illustrate an evolving structure rather than disconnected policies.” Zia added that the cumulative effect of these changes has fundamentally transformed everyday life for native Kashmiris: “There is heightened uncertainty and deep fear over land; political representation has diminished; journalism, activism, and civil society activity are curbed.”

    Muhammad Junaid, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, told reporters that the entire post-2019 restructuring is designed to erase the historical political rights of the Kashmiri people. “The post-2019 changes were designed as a strategy aimed at the total political disempowerment of Kashmiris as a people. To bring Kashmir to a level where people of Kashmir would be compelled to demand (or not even demand at all) things that had already once existed rather than seek their historical political rights as a people. This disempowerment is part of the broader history of imperial control in Kashmir. The history of such a process in other places and times tells us that the situation in Kashmir resembles many aspects of settler colonialism. The impacts of the 2019 events are gradually unfolding… as people are being governed by imperial bureaucrats as imperial wards with no say in their own administration.”

    While the Indian government continues to maintain that the 2019 constitutional changes have improved governance, attracted new investment and integrated Kashmir more closely into the Indian Union, critics argue the policies have fundamentally and permanently altered the region’s political, legal and demographic character. Seven years after the repeal of Article 370, these deeply opposing narratives continue to shape the bitter debate over Kashmir’s future.

  • Hunter Biden tells BBC his pardon was ‘not good’ for America or his father’s legacy

    Hunter Biden tells BBC his pardon was ‘not good’ for America or his father’s legacy

    In a candid, wide-ranging exclusive interview with the BBC’s *Newsnight*, Hunter Biden has opened up about one of the most controversial acts of his father’s presidency, the spread of Joe Biden’s cancer, and his own decades-long battle with addiction, offering unflinching insight into the personal and political turmoil that shaped the end of the 46th U.S. president’s term.

    The interview, one of Hunter Biden’s most extensive public appearances since Joe Biden left office, addressed the full and unconditional presidential pardon Joe Biden granted him in December 2024 — a decision that broke the former president’s previous public pledge not to use executive power to interfere in his son’s federal legal cases.

    Acknowledging the widespread bipartisan criticism the pardon sparked, Hunter Biden admitted the move was not beneficial for the American public, the U.S. Constitution, or his father’s political legacy. “It’s something that is easily criticised and for good reason,” he told the BBC. “It’s not fair… All I know is that I’m grateful that he did it for me.” While he accepted the legitimacy of public pushback, he pushed back against claims that the pardon demonstrated blatant nepotism, arguing that Joe Biden’s choice stemmed from a genuine, personal fear: that Hunter would become a political target of incoming President Donald Trump’s administration. He also emphasized that the pair never discussed the possibility of a pardon before it was issued, noting that any pre-pardon conversation would almost certainly have been leaked to the public. “I was the only one in the world that could have gotten what I got from the only person in the world who could give it, my father,” he said. The blanket pardon covered all federal offenses Hunter Biden committed between 2014 and 2024, including his prior federal gun conviction and the tax charges to which he had pleaded guilty. In justifying the pardon when it was announced, Joe Biden had argued his son had been the victim of selective, politically motivated prosecution.

    The conversation turned deeply personal when Hunter Biden addressed his father’s ongoing battle with cancer, growing visibly emotional as he shared updates on the former president’s health. He confirmed that the cancer has metastasized, spreading to Joe Biden’s bones and other areas of the body, causing severe, constant pain and significant disability. “Cancer is really hard. It’s really sad to watch,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. Despite the grim diagnosis, Hunter Biden described his 82-year-old father as the unshakable center of their family, praising his stoicism through relentless pain: “My dad is, to this day, the centre of our family. He’s the best father, the best husband, the best grandfather. The only thing that I say about my dad, about his health right now, is I wish he would complain more.”

    Hunter Biden also reflected on the June 2024 presidential debate that ultimately forced Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign, saying that watching the performance from his California home left him immediately alarmed. “I was shocked. I knew something was wrong,” he recalled. He previously attributed the poor performance to extreme physical fatigue from a grueling campaign travel schedule, but now he says the undiagnosed cancer likely already impacted his father’s performance that night. He added that despite his illness, Joe Biden remains actively engaged in political discourse and committed to speaking out on public issues.

    Opening up about his own well-documented struggle with addiction, Hunter Biden described the darkest days of his substance abuse, recalling that at his worst, he drank nearly a full gallon of vodka daily and smoked crack cocaine every 15 minutes. “It was hell on earth. There’s nothing glamorous about it,” he said. Rejecting claims that his addiction stemmed from a sense of privileged invincibility as the son of a powerful politician, he explained he turned to drugs and alcohol to escape crippling feelings of anxiety and isolation. What began as a coping mechanism quickly became a fatal threat: “The drugs and alcohol initially felt like a solution before becoming ‘the thing that almost killed me,’” he said.

    When asked about persistent speculation that he would pursue a career in elected politics, even a potential presidential run, Hunter Biden flatly ruled out any bid for public office. “I have no interest in elected politics,” he said, pushing back firmly on the rumors. Instead, he plans to dedicate his time to advocacy for addiction recovery, a cause he argues can transcend America’s toxic partisan divides. “I believe that addiction and the hope of recovery are something that connect us all,” he said.

    When asked what trait of his father he is most proud of, Hunter Biden did not point to Joe Biden’s decades of public service, but to his relentless resilience in the face of repeated personal and political hardship. “I’m most proud of his resilience. He’s proven time and time again that when you get knocked down, you can get up. He’s the toughest man I know,” he said.

  • Trump ally Abelardo de la Espriella sworn in as Colombia president

    Trump ally Abelardo de la Espriella sworn in as Colombia president

    On Friday, Colombia swore in Abelardo de la Espriella as its new president, marking a sharp rightward turn for the Andean nation and ending four years of rule by the country’s first left-wing government. The 48-year-old former lawyer, who holds dual U.S.-Colombian citizenship, used his inauguration to lay out an aggressive security agenda centered on cracking down on drug-trafficking armed groups and forging close alignment with the United States, a stark departure from his predecessor’s tenure marked by repeated diplomatic tensions with Washington.

    Breaking with decades of inauguration tradition that centered the ceremony in the formal capital of Bogota, de la Espriella hosted the event in Cali – the tropical southwestern city known globally as Colombia’s salsa capital. To secure the event, which unfolded in a city that has faced repeated guerrilla pipe bomb attacks in recent years, authorities deployed 11,000 security personnel and an advanced anti-drone system.

    Immediately after taking their oaths of office, de la Espriella and Vice President Jose Manuel Restrepo embraced, cheered, and carried out the signature military salute that defined their campaign. In his policy pledges, the new president has promised a hardline approach: he says he will order airstrikes on jungle cocaine production labs, construct large-scale “mega-prisons” to hold detained offenders, and drastically downsize the size of Colombia’s federal government.

    A long list of high-profile international guests attended the inauguration, signaling the new government’s ideological alignment. Attendees included Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei, FIFA President Gianni Infantino (who has faced widespread criticism over his now-shelved plan to allow private investment in major FIFA competitions), and Todd Blanche, former acting U.S. Attorney General and a key legal ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who led the official U.S. delegation. De la Espriella’s leftist predecessor, Gustavo Petro, boycotted the ceremony, having already vacated the presidential palace in Bogota earlier Friday, leaving with the farewell message “farewell, freedom and life.”

    De la Espriella’s narrow election victory in June – he won by less than one percentage point against leftist candidate Ivan Cepeda – brings the latest win for right-wing movements across Latin America, where candidates running on tough-on-crime pledges have flipped control of governments from Chile to Costa Rica in recent years. The new president has dubbed his security strategy “Plan Colombia II,” a reference to the massive U.S.-funded anti-drug and counter-insurgency initiative of the 2000s. He has proposed a formal military alliance with the United States and Israel to advance his campaign against armed groups, and has already offered to allow joint military operations on Colombian soil and host U.S. military personnel – a major diplomatic shift after four years of public spats between Petro’s government and the Trump administration.

    Colombia has faced years of instability following the breakdown of peace negotiations with disparate armed groups, which originally formed as ideological insurgencies but now largely profit from cocaine trafficking and other illicit criminal activity. Petro’s government attempted to negotiate a permanent truce with these groups, but the effort collapsed, and analysts report the gangs used the ceasefire period to expand their control and operations. Supporters of the new president say his hardline approach is exactly what Colombia needs to reverse rising crime and instability. “We have to support him so there won’t be so much crime. We need a complete change,” 63-year-old contractor German Angulo told AFP in Cali following the inauguration.

    Not all observers are optimistic, however. De la Espriella enters office facing a divided Congress, where his coalition does not hold a legislative majority, limiting his ability to push through major policy changes. The original 2000s Plan Colombia, while successful in weakening major insurgent groups, also faced widespread international condemnation over documented serious human rights abuses. Petro, for his part, has not conceded defeat gracefully: he has called for mass anti-government protests across major Colombian cities on inauguration day, repeating unsubstantiated claims of widespread election fraud. For ordinary Colombians, the new government faces high expectations to deliver on its campaign promises, as many communities continue to grapple with persistent violence and organized crime. “This government has a lot to prove. A lot was said during the campaign,” 46-year-old Cali resident Marisol Peira told reporters.

  • What is birthright citizenship and how prevalent is birth tourism in the US?

    What is birthright citizenship and how prevalent is birth tourism in the US?

    Four months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his first attempt to narrow access to U.S.-born citizenship, former President Donald Trump has rolled out a new pair of executive orders targeting what his administration calls “birth tourism” and expanding carve-outs to the longstanding principle of birthright citizenship. Signed during a formal White House ceremony on Thursday, the orders mark the latest high-profile push by the Trump administration to reshape U.S. immigration and nationality policy without congressional approval.

    The first of the two orders expands the legal definition of non-citizen parents whose children born on U.S. soil are excluded from automatic birthright citizenship. Under the new framework, babies born in the U.S. to two non-citizen parents will be denied automatic citizenship if one parent falls into any of several specified categories: members of a designated foreign terrorist organization, foreign government officials, individuals who have previously sought U.S. immigration status through fraud, or residents of unincorporated U.S. territories where federal law does not grant birthright citizenship. While some of these categories were already excluded under longstanding rules, the new provision related to terrorist group membership has already sparked legal and policy ambiguity, according to Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Putzel-Kavanaugh notes that the order fails to clarify critical procedural details: how terrorist affiliation will be verified, which government body will bear the responsibility of determination, and whether the burden of proof will rest with the government to confirm membership or the individual to disprove it.

    The second executive order directly targets the practice of birth tourism — the process through which foreign nationals travel to the U.S. specifically to give birth, so their child can obtain U.S. citizenship by birth. The order directs the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to tighten existing regulations and ramp up enforcement efforts against the birth tourism industry, which the order argues relies on deceptive marketing to attract expecting parents. The order claims that industry operators frequently advertise guaranteed U.S. citizenship, access to public benefits, and specialized maternity accommodation, but often fail to deliver on these promised services. Notably, traveling to the U.S. for the explicit purpose of giving birth is already classified as a violation of immigration law.

    Birthright citizenship, formally known as *jus soli* (the right of the soil), is codified in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in the aftermath of the American Civil War to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people born in the U.S. Under current longstanding interpretation, almost all individuals born on U.S. soil receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ own citizenship or immigration status, with only a handful of narrow exceptions. These existing exceptions include children born to foreign diplomats on official assignment, children born to enemy occupying forces, and children born in unincorporated U.S. territories where Congress has not extended birthright citizenship. For example, people born in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands receive automatic U.S. citizenship, while those born in American Samoa are classified as “non-citizen nationals” rather than full citizens.

    In announcing the new orders, Trump claimed that “hundreds of thousands” of babies are born in the U.S. each year via birth tourism, offering no evidence to support the figure and no clarification on whether the number reflects an annual total or cumulative count. Official data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that just over 9,500 babies were born in 2024 to women listing foreign residential addresses, accounting for roughly 0.25% of the 3.7 million total births recorded in the U.S. that year. However, MPI analysts argue that official CDC figures are almost certainly an undercount, as birth tourism participants often use a temporary U.S. address to register the birth rather than their permanent foreign address. After a broader analysis of U.S. Census data, MPI estimates that between 20,000 and 26,000 babies are born annually in the U.S. as a result of birth tourism, equal to between 0.5% and 0.7% of total annual U.S. births. Putzel-Kavanaugh emphasized that exact counts are inherently difficult to capture, because birth tourism is defined by the traveler’s private intent to give birth in the U.S. — a detail that is rarely recorded in official administrative data. Some unplanned births also occur when traveling pregnant people experience unexpected medical emergencies that require delivery in the U.S. even if they originally planned to give birth in their home country, she added.

    The Trump administration’s legal challenge to broad birthright citizenship reached the Supreme Court earlier this year, with oral arguments held in April. The administration’s case centered heavily on the argument that unconstrained birthright citizenship has allowed the birth tourism industry to grow, creating a cohort of U.S. citizens with no meaningful connection to the country. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued during arguments that the 14th Amendment’s framers never intended for the provision to enable mass birth tourism, arguing that modern air travel has created a situation where “eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.” When Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether Sauer agreed that birth tourism’s existence has no bearing on the legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Sauer countered that the practice proves the amendment carries unforeseen consequences that its authors would never have endorsed. The Supreme Court’s majority rejected the administration’s interpretation in June, with the majority’s reasoning summed up by Roberts’ remark: “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

    Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is nearly unique among major nations in granting unrestricted birthright citizenship. In reality, more than 30 countries around the world practice automatic unrestricted *jus soli*, including most nations in Central and South America such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. The U.S. and Canada are the only two IMF-classified developed economies that grant nearly unrestricted birthright citizenship; other major countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia use a modified system that only grants automatic birthright citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.

  • Hunter Biden opens up to the BBC about father’s cancer battle, pardon and politics

    Hunter Biden opens up to the BBC about father’s cancer battle, pardon and politics

    In a rare, wide-ranging interview with BBC’s flagship current affairs program Newsnight, Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. President Joe Biden, has opened up on a series of deeply personal and politically charged topics that have dominated headlines in recent months.

    During the conversation, Hunter Biden pulled back the curtain on his father Joe Biden’s ongoing battle with cancer, offering unpublicized insights into how the former president has navigated his health struggle while remaining engaged in public life. He addressed widespread speculation about the former president’s well-being, speaking candidly about the challenges the Biden family has faced behind the scenes as Joe Biden undergoes treatment.

    A central focus of the interview was the controversial pardon that Joe Biden granted to his son before leaving office in January 2025. Hunter Biden discussed his feelings about the decision, responding to critics who have labeled the pardon an abuse of presidential power, and explained how the action resolved years of legal investigations that hung over his personal and professional life.

    Beyond personal matters, Hunter Biden also shared his thoughts on his own potential future in U.S. politics. When asked about whether he would seek elected office in the coming years, he offered clarity on his political ambitions, addressing ongoing rumors that have circulated in Washington political circles about his next career steps.

    The interview marks one of the most extensive public comments Hunter Biden has made since his father left the presidency, giving voters and political observers a rare unfiltered look at the private dynamics of one of America’s most high-profile political families at a pivotal moment in U.S. politics.

  • War on Iran: Saudi Arabia warns of imminent attacks by Iraqi groups and Yemen’s Houthis

    War on Iran: Saudi Arabia warns of imminent attacks by Iraqi groups and Yemen’s Houthis

    As tensions across the Middle East surge to new heights, Saudi Arabia has issued a stark intelligence-backed warning that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is orchestrating coordinated cross-border attacks against the kingdom, carried out jointly by Iraqi armed factions and Yemen’s Houthi movement.

    A senior anonymous Saudi official shared details of the intelligence assessment with Reuters Thursday evening, noting that the collaborative threat assessment was compiled by Saudi authorities, U.S. intelligence agencies, and regional partner nations. According to the official, the planned attacks are set to target high-value civilian and economic infrastructure across the kingdom, with critical energy facilities, commercial ports, and major airports listed as the primary potential targets.

    Saudi security forces have already detected unusual movements of drone and missile systems consistent with pre-attack preparations, the official confirmed, adding that hostile forces are positioning to launch strikes from two directions: Iraq along the kingdom’s northern border and Yemen to the south. In a firm statement of intent, the official added that Riyadh has completed defensive preparations and is prepared to deploy all necessary measures to repel and respond to any act of aggression against its territory.

    This latest warning comes against a backdrop of rapidly escalating regional confrontation tied to the expanding Israeli-U.S. campaign against Iran-aligned groups that launched in late February. Tensions spiked further late last month, on July 29, when joint Saudi-U.S. airstrikes hit positions held by Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq. The strikes targeted command headquarters operated by the Popular Mobilisation Forces, leaving more than 20 fighters dead and at least 30 others injured.

    In the wake of the airstrikes, Iraqi aligned factions publicly vowed to carry out retaliatory attacks against Saudi and U.S. targets. However, Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the prominent Iraqi Badr Organisation, has called for a delay in any retaliatory action. In a televised address carried by Iraqi media outlets, Amiri urged fighters to hold off on responses to what he labeled “American-Saudi aggression” and set aside immediate grievances for the sake of Iraq’s national strategic interests.

    Beyond the northern threat from Iraqi factions, Saudi Arabia has also faced a sharp uptick in cross-border attacks from Houthi forces based in Yemen. The Houthi movement confirmed it launched an assault on Saudi Arabia’s Najran airport earlier this week on Tuesday, part of its ongoing wider campaign targeting Saudi military positions, civilian infrastructure, and commercial shipping connected to the kingdom.

    On Thursday alone, Houthi assaults on Saudi-backed Yemeni government deployments in Yemen’s Marib and Hadramout provinces left at least 17 government soldiers dead, according to Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Multiple independent regional sources have put the confirmed death toll as high as 58. The Houthi movement has also compounded pressure on Saudi Arabia by disrupting the kingdom’s crude oil exports through a de facto blockade of Red Sea shipping lanes, pulling Riyadh deeper into the broad regional confrontation with Iran-aligned groups.

    In response to the growing array of threats, regional diplomatic sources familiar with defense planning confirm that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey are set to sign a new trilateral joint defense agreement during a meeting scheduled Friday in Mecca. As of Friday morning, neither the Houthi movement nor the Iranian government has issued an immediate public response to Saudi Arabia’s warning of planned coordinated attacks.

  • Senate confirms Hamilton to lead FEMA and clears more than 70 other Trump nominees

    Senate confirms Hamilton to lead FEMA and clears more than 70 other Trump nominees

    In a Friday vote that capped months of uncertainty for one of the federal government’s most critical public safety agencies, the U.S. Senate has approved Cameron Hamilton’s nomination to serve as the permanent administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The confirmation marks an extraordinary political comeback for the former Navy SEAL, who was fired from the same top post in an acting capacity 16 months prior after publicly opposing the Trump administration’s push to eliminate the agency entirely.

    Hamilton’s confirmation was part of a batch of 74 presidential nominations advanced by the Senate in a single voting session. Other high-profile picks approved Friday included David Cummins, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and Daniel Perez, the administration’s controversial choice for U.S. ambassador to Brazil.

    When Hamilton is sworn in, he will inherit an agency that has faced years of existential uncertainty, organizational upheaval, and lingering accusations of political bias. Just days into Trump’s second term, the president openly threatened to dissolve FEMA entirely, a proposal that led to Hamilton’s firing last year when he pushed back against the plan in congressional testimony. While Hamilton’s nomination signals the administration has backed away from scrapping the agency entirely, the White House and top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaders have made clear that sweeping overhauls to federal disaster response are still on the agenda.

    The agency Hamilton takes over is still recovering from the chaotic tenure of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, whose leadership triggered mass staff exodus, widespread disruptions to FEMA’s federal grant programs, and crippling delays to life-saving disaster aid. A 2025 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that more than 4,300 FEMA employees left the agency in the 2025 budget year alone, with over 1,500 taking voluntary buyouts. The exodus resulted in a substantial loss of institutional knowledge and experienced disaster response personnel that the agency is still working to replenish. Current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who took over from Noem in March, has already moved to reverse some of the most damaging changes: he has re-filled hundreds of eliminated positions and rescinded a burdensome rule that required all FEMA expenditures over $100,000 to gain direct approval from the secretary’s office, a policy that created a backlog worth billions of dollars in delayed disaster aid.

    Even with these fixes, new controversies continue to roil the agency. Last month, 25 U.S. states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over new election security mandates attached to FEMA counterterrorism grants, a policy that critics call an overreach of executive power. Congressional Democrats have also raised alarms over what they call widespread politicization of disaster relief under the Trump administration. A July analysis from The Associated Press found that the White House has approved roughly 80% of disaster declaration requests from Republican-led states, but only 60% of requests from Democratic-led states, a gap that critics argue leaves vulnerable communities in political opposition shortchanged.

    Hamilton’s path to permanent leadership is a rare story of a fired acting official returning to lead the agency he once defended. Before being tapped as FEMA’s acting head in January 2025, Hamilton had limited formal emergency management experience and was initially an open critic of the agency. But during his short tenure, he said he grew to appreciate FEMA’s core mission, and broke sharply with Noem and the White House over the plan to eliminate the agency. In May 2025, he told a House panel that eliminating FEMA would be against the best interests of the American people, and was fired the very next day.

    His public stand against scrapping the agency won him broad support from many emergency management professionals. Pete Gaynor, who served as FEMA administrator during Trump’s first term, released a statement supporting Hamilton’s confirmation, saying, “It tells you exactly who he is and how he will lead when the pressure is highest and the easy answer is the wrong one.” The National Emergency Management Association also issued a statement welcoming his confirmation. Still, some current FEMA employees remain wary of Hamilton, pointing to his role in the controversial 2025 cancellation of a multibillion-dollar national climate resilience grant program.

    Hamilton takes office at the height of an active 2026 North American summer disaster season, which has already brought destructive wildfires across the West and dangerous flash flooding across the Midwest and South, leaving FEMA managing more than 1,000 open active disaster declarations. He will be the first permanent FEMA administrator to take office in Trump’s second term, a role that comes with the dual mandate of implementing the Trump administration’s planned overhaul and bringing long-term stability to a workforce that has faced years of turnover and uncertainty.

    Top administration officials have laid out clear priorities for the overhaul: shifting more disaster response responsibility back to state and local governments, and restricting FEMA’s role to only the most catastrophic events, rather than responding to every localized weather event. In a recent meeting of U.S. governors, Mullin described FEMA as “bloated” and reiterated that shift in responsibility, saying, “The biggest reform you’re going to see is more responsibility is going to go back to your states, FEMA there for worst of the worst, not every storm.” A Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council issued a set of recommendations in May that would speed up federal assistance delivery but could also reduce the scope and frequency of federal support, with many changes requiring congressional approval to take effect.

    During his June confirmation hearing before the Senate, Hamilton laid out his own priorities, pledging to advocate for FEMA and its workforce while committing to running the agency free of political bias. “I will ensure FEMA is objective, is fair and reasonable, follows the law, and is consistent in the approach to how we adjudicate and process claims and requests for disasters,” he told lawmakers. He also acknowledged longstanding concerns about bureaucratic bloat within the agency, arguing that FEMA cannot be expected to respond to every disaster, and that policymakers must strike a new balance that encourages cost reasonableness and cost savings. Gaynor, the former FEMA head, said he expects Hamilton will prioritize cutting red tape to make the disaster recovery process simpler for survivors and state and local officials.

    Alongside Hamilton’s confirmation, the Senate advanced two other controversial nominees. David Cummins, a former senior vice president at government contractor Serco, which operates air traffic control towers at 60 U.S. airports, was confirmed to lead TSA. The agency is still recovering from massive staffing disruptions following this year’s record-long partial government shutdown, which left thousands of TSA officers working weeks without pay, prompting thousands of call-outs and roughly 1,100 resignations. Cummins takes over as the Trump administration pushes to expand private airport screening and cut thousands of existing TSA positions.

    The Senate also confirmed Daniel Perez, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and a close ally of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to serve as U.S. ambassador to Brazil. Perez’s nomination has already sparked a major diplomatic rift between the Trump administration and the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which has refused to approve his appointment. Earlier this week, the State Department announced it had revoked the visa of Brazil’s sitting ambassador to the U.S. in response, a move that escalated tensions between the two countries. Under international diplomatic protocol, host nations have the right to approve or reject foreign ambassador nominees before they take office.

  • Senate passes sweeping Russia sanctions bill negotiated by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham

    Senate passes sweeping Russia sanctions bill negotiated by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham

    On a historic Friday vote in Washington, the U.S. Senate delivered an overwhelming bipartisan endorsement of a sweeping new sanctions package targeting Russia, capping a year-long advocacy campaign led by the late South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham to tighten U.S. backing for Ukraine amid its drawn-out defensive war against Russian invasion.

    Passing by a lopsided margin of 86-11, the legislation is crafted to cut off critical war funding for Russian President Vladimir Putin by penalizing nations that continue to purchase Russian oil, natural gas and other key exports. The vote carries deep personal and political resonance: just one week prior, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sat in the Senate gallery to watch initial procedural votes on the bill, just hours after attending Graham’s funeral in Washington and holding bipartisan talks with U.S. senators. Graham, who had only just returned from a visit to Ukraine when he secured a final agreement on the legislation with the White House on July 10, died suddenly the next day from an aortic tear.

    Standing on the Senate floor ahead of the final vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — who co-led negotiations on the package with Graham — reflected on the moment. “Today, President Zelenskyy is watching from Ukraine — and Putin is watching from Moscow,” Blumenthal said. “I would like to think Lindsey Graham is watching, too. Today we say to the people of Ukraine: You are not alone. And today we say to Vladimir Putin: You will not conquer Ukraine.”

    This broad show of Senate unity marks the most consequential shift in U.S. policy toward the three-year-plus war during President Donald Trump’s second term, a conflict that has now lasted longer than the entirety of World War I. For months, Congress had grappled with gridlock over sustaining U.S. funding and military supplies for Ukraine, but Trump has publicly backed the sanctions package, building pressure for the House of Representatives to bring the bill to a vote and send it to the White House for signing.

    Named in Graham’s honor, the bipartisan measure grants the president authority to impose tariffs on the world’s five largest buyers of Russian oil and natural gas — a list that includes major emerging economies China and India. Exceptions are carved out for nations that import less than 15% of their natural gas from Russia and are actively working to cut their reliance on Russian energy exports. Beyond secondary penalties for third-party buyers, the package expands direct sanctions to target Putin, his top political and military allies, major Russian financial institutions, and key Russian energy infrastructure projects. It also closes a longstanding loophole in existing sanctions by cracking down on the aging, reflagged oil tankers Russia has used to evade export restrictions and keep its energy revenues flowing.

    The legislation includes built-in flexibility: it grants the president waiver authority to lift specific sanctions or restrictions if he formally certifies to Congress that such a move serves U.S. national interests. Still, the grant of new tariff authority to Trump sparked opposition from across the ideological spectrum, with progressive Democrats forming the core of the 11 “no” votes. Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised concerns that broad tariff power could drive up import prices, worsen ongoing inflation, and raise cost-of-living burdens for American households.

    Appointed by South Carolina’s governor to fill her late brother’s Senate seat, Republican Sen. Darline Graham reaffirmed her commitment to advancing his final policy priority. “This legislation hits Putin where it hurts,” she said in remarks on the floor.

    For Ukraine, the package carries both strategic and symbolic weight, Zelenskyy has said. During his closed-door meeting with senators last week, the Ukrainian leader noted that Kyiv’s forces have made incremental battlefield gains but continue to depend on sustained U.S. support. Publicly, he thanked the Senate for the vote, saying the package sends a “big signal” of American solidarity to Ukraine and its global allies.

    Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who attended the meeting with Zelenskyy, echoed that framing, calling the legislation “important as a moral signal to a country that is weary and tired, though holding its own.”

    Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted the timing of the vote, ahead of Russia’s scheduled national elections. Advancing the package now, she argued, will increase pressure on Putin to enter serious negotiations toward a negotiated peace deal. She warned that every time the U.S. hesitates to take strong action against Russia, Moscow responds by ramping up its offensive attacks. “If we can’t shut down the funding for the war machine that Russia is using against Ukraine, then they’re going to keep at it,” Shaheen said.

    Criticism of the bill centered on the expanded tariff authority, with lawmakers from both parties arguing it grants too much unchecked power to the executive branch. The Senate defeated an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon that would have stripped the new tariff authority from the bill. Paul argued the measure would impose unnecessary costs on U.S. taxpayers, while Wyden noted that many American households are already struggling with persistent economic strain. “We’ve got folks who are walking an economic tightrope here in America,” Wyden said.

    Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who had delayed consideration of the package over his concerns about tariff authority, secured a written guarantee from the Trump administration via U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer that establishes clear guardrails for the use of tariffs. Under the commitment, tariffs will be lifted once a country is no longer listed as a major purchaser of Russian energy or a facilitator of sanctions evasion. “We should not have to choose between putting a check on Putin’s aggression and putting a check on this president’s tariffs regime,” Warnock said, adding that if Trump “oversteps his power, we will see him in court.”

    Many other Democrats who hold reservations about granting Trump new executive powers ultimately supported the bill, saying they would not risk undermining critical support for Ukraine. “Weighing that against the boost for Ukraine, I think it’s important to support Ukraine right now,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

    The sanctions package will now head to the House of Representatives, where Senate momentum is expected to push for a swift vote when lawmakers return from recess at the end of the month. The House already passed a separate Ukraine aid and Russian sanctions package in June, which included security assistance and reconstruction funding for Kyiv alongside penalties for key sectors of the Russian economy. That earlier measure drew bipartisan support despite objections from Republican leaders, who argued it undercut negotiations to produce a stronger, more unified piece of legislation.

  • Exclusive: ICC judges order Taliban case split from Afghanistan probe that covers US troops

    Exclusive: ICC judges order Taliban case split from Afghanistan probe that covers US troops

    Exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye (MEE) has uncovered a landmark decision by International Criminal Court (ICC) pre-trial judges, who have ordered prosecutors to launch a fully standalone investigation into accusations of systematic gender persecution at the hands of the Taliban. The order splits this inquiry from the court’s decades-old overarching Afghanistan war crimes probe, which previously included allegations against United States nationals.

    Court documents acquired by MEE via independent channels confirm that a three-judge panel from Pre-Trial Chamber II issued the formal directive to the ICC Office of the Prosecutor in mid-July 2025. If prosecutors move forward with the order, the investigation into Taliban conduct will be formally separated from the broader Afghanistan inquiry, which has examined alleged war crimes dating back to 2003 involving multiple parties: the former Afghan National Security Forces, U.S. military and CIA personnel, the Taliban, and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K).

    Legal observers note the move is almost certain to fuel speculation that the court is seeking to de-escalate tensions with Washington, signaling a potential end to active pursuit of allegations against U.S. forces and their Afghan former allies. The judicial directive comes just days after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly threatened to “dismantle the ICC, brick by brick” in remarks criticizing the court’s 2020 decision to greenlight the full Afghanistan investigation.

    Since February 2025, the U.S. has enforced retaliatory financial and visa sanctions against multiple ICC officials linked to the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations, justifying the measures as a response to efforts to prosecute U.S. nationals or U.S. allies. The first high-profile target was Karim Khan, the ICC’s former chief prosecutor, who was controversially removed from office by ICC member states last month following an 18-month misconduct investigation. Eight additional ICC judges have also been sanctioned, including three members of the 2020 Appeals Chamber that authorized the full Afghanistan investigation: Kimberly Prost, Solomy Bossa, and Luz Ibanez.

    These U.S. sanctions were imposed even after Karim Khan’s 2021 decision to deprioritize the segment of the Afghanistan probe focused on U.S. military and CIA personnel, as well as forces of the former Afghan government, in order to refocus investigative resources on the Taliban and IS-K. A year ago, the ICC issued high-profile arrest warrants for Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and the group’s Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging both with the crime against humanity of gender persecution against Afghan women and girls. Those warrant applications were drafted by a legal team led by Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan, who oversees the overall Afghanistan investigation, and Professor Lisa Davis, the court’s Special Adviser on Gender Crimes and the author of the prosecutor’s office policy on gender-based violence. Both officials have faced U.S. pressure: Nazhat Shameem Khan is among the sanctioned ICC leaders, while Davis successfully won a court case in New York to block potential punitive action from the U.S. administration.

    MEE previously reported in December 2024 that diplomats attending the ICC’s annual Assembly of States Parties meeting in The Hague revealed the Trump administration had pressured the court to abandon both the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations as a precondition for lifting U.S. sanctions. The U.S. also demanded ICC member states amend the court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, to block prosecution of nationals from non-member states including the U.S. and Israel. In a rebuke of these demands, the assembly issued a public declaration rejecting calls to amend the Rome Statute, resisting U.S. pressure without explicitly naming the country in the final text.

    The ICC’s involvement in the Afghanistan situation traces back to November 2017, when then-Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda first requested authorization to investigate alleged crimes committed after 2003 across all involved parties. The request was initially rejected by a differently composed pre-trial chamber in 2019, but the Appeals Chamber overturned that ruling in March 2020 and authorized the full investigation to move forward. Just months later, Bensouda was sanctioned by the U.S. government for her efforts to bring Americans under the court’s jurisdiction.

    The probe was suspended later in 2020 following a deferral request from the then-sitting Afghan government, and only resumed in late 2022, with that decision upheld on appeal in April 2023. In November 2024, six ICC member states—Chile, Costa Rica, Spain, France, Luxembourg, and Mexico—submitted a joint referral detailing allegations of widespread crimes against women and girls committed after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021, asking prosecutors to incorporate these claims into the existing Afghanistan investigation. Weeks later, in January 2025, then-Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for arrest warrants, arguing the gender persecution allegations already fell within the scope of the 2020 investigative authorization. The warrants for Akhundzada and Haqqani were issued shortly after.

    In the latest judgment obtained by MEE, Pre-Trial Chamber II found that the Taliban’s post-2021 conduct is “materially different” from the armed conflict-related violence that formed the core of the original 2020 conflict-linked investigation. The panel, led by presiding judge Rosario Salvatore Aitala alongside members Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez and Haykel Ben Mahfoudh, directed prosecutors that if they determine the legal threshold for an investigation is still met, they must open a fully separate probe rooted in the 2024 state referral, and formally notify the ICC Presidency of the referral—a step that had not yet been taken as of the court’s order.

    “The Referral concerns allegations of gender and political persecution through the adoption, implementation and enforcement of discriminatory decrees, policies and restrictions made possible by the Taliban’s exercise of de facto governmental authority, rather than conduct allegedly committed by the Taliban as an insurgent armed group during the armed conflict,” the judges wrote in their ruling. They echoed a prior recognition from the prosecution that after seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban’s actions did not center on armed attacks against civilian populations, but instead on imposing “discriminatory rules and prohibitions on the population directly” and punishing people who “did not conform” to the group’s policies.

    “The allegations in the Referral therefore arise in a materially different factual and institutional context, involve distinct alleged modes of commission, do not appear to be related to any armed conflict, and concern conduct occurring after the Taliban’s assumption of governmental de facto authority,” the ruling continued. “In light of the above, the Chamber considers that the conduct identified in the Referral constitutes a sufficiently distinct subset of alleged events that, in the interests of the proper administration of justice and the orderly management of the Court’s proceedings, warrants a separate investigation.”

    The judges also drew attention to the fact that the original overarching Afghanistan investigation, which nominally covers alleged crimes by all parties, has remained dormant for years. They directed prosecutors to a newly implemented court procedure that allows for formal closure of inactive situation records. In a footnote, the chamber noted: “Considering that more than three years have elapsed since the Chamber authorised the resumption of the investigation into the Situation in Afghanistan and that no proceedings are presently pending in relation to the conduct covered by that authorisation, the Chamber draws the Prosecution’s attention to the recently implemented regulation 66 ter of the Regulations of the Court, which allows the Prosecution to request the closure of a situation record when it does not anticipate any further investigatory or prosecutorial activities in relation thereto.”

    As of the publication of MEE’s reporting, the Office of the Prosecutor has not yet announced a decision on either closing the original Afghanistan investigation or opening the new standalone probe into Taliban gender persecution. When contacted by MEE for comment, a court spokesperson stated the office “does not comment on investigations.”

  • FIFA chief Infantino travels to Colombia for presidential inauguration

    FIFA chief Infantino travels to Colombia for presidential inauguration

    Embattled FIFA president Gianni Infantino touched down in the Colombian city of Cali on Friday, marking his arrival to attend the inauguration of new hard-right Colombian president Abelardo de la Espriella — all while a growing crisis roils the top leadership of global football’s governing body.

    Infantino finds himself at the center of a growing controversy that has engulfed FIFA in recent weeks. The firestorm was sparked by a heavily criticized plan to open the World Cup up to private investment, a proposal that was ultimately walked back in the face of widespread backlash from major football bodies across the globe. Despite the withdrawal of the investment plan, tensions remain high, with Europe’s governing football body UEFA reaffirming its threat to boycott future World Cup tournaments just one day before Infantino’s arrival in Colombia. The FIFA chief is currently gearing up to run for a fourth and final term as president, with the election set to take place in Rabat, Morocco, next March.

    During a public event with dozens of children dressed in full football kit in the southwestern Colombian city, Infantino leaned into his usual messaging around the sport, framing football as a unifying, joyful force. “It is a joy to be here today,” he told the gathered crowd. “Football is joy, football is happiness, football is unity. So many champions were born in this part of the world, in this part of Colombia.”

    When approached by an Agence France-Presse reporter on the ground in Cali, Infantino declined to respond to questions about whether he believed FIFA’s recent string of controversies had been fully resolved.

    Infantino has long-standing ties to prominent right-wing political figures, including former United States president Donald Trump, making his attendance at the inauguration of Colombia’s new hard-right leader unsurprising. In a break with longstanding Colombian political tradition, de la Espriella has chosen to host his inauguration ceremony in Cali — widely known as the global capital of salsa music — rather than holding the traditional swearing-in before the national Congress in the capital city of Bogota.