标签： Asia

In a stunning political upset that has sent ripples across American conservative circles, two-term Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles — a hard-right lawmaker infamous for his repeated anti-Muslim rhetoric — was defeated in a Republican primary election Thursday, even with a formal endorsement from former U.S. President Donald Trump. For most GOP candidates, Trump’s public backing is widely viewed as an almost unbeatable advantage in intraparty contests, but Ogles fell to Charlie Hatcher, a dairy farmer and sitting state agriculture official who also ran on an explicitly pro-Trump platform.

Hatcher built his campaign around the slogan “hire a farmer”, framing himself as a pragmatic conservative aligned with core Trump-era Republican priorities. His campaign website lists him as staunchly “pro-gun, pro-life, pro-Trump”, and he out-fundraised and outspent Ogles thanks to a major influx of financial support from outside interest groups that backed his policy focus on expanding domestic renewable energy production.

Political analysts point to multiple factors that led to Ogles’ defeat. First, the congressional district Ogles was running in underwent significant boundary redrawing, a process that opened the door to shifts in the electorate after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakened key protections of the Voting Rights Act. But beyond structural changes to the district, Ogles’ long history of inflammatory targeting of marginalized groups also played a major role in his loss.

Ogles, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus and a vocal supporter of Israel, has spent months pushing extreme policy proposals targeting Muslim Americans. Just this year, he announced plans to introduce legislation that would ban immigration from multiple Muslim-majority countries. He went further in public posts on social media platform X, writing that “diversity is our weakness” and openly calling for the denaturalization and deportation of naturalized Muslim American citizens, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In a June post that drew national outrage, Ogles wrote, “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York. He needs to be DEPORTED. Which is why I am calling for him to be subject to denaturalization proceedings.”

His most controversial remarks came earlier this year, when he wrote on X that “Pluralism is a lie” and “Muslims have no place in American society” — claims that sparked widespread national condemnation from civil rights groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum. The comments came amid a documented nationwide surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric online, which tracked closely with rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S., Israel and Iran. A report from the Washington D.C.-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate found that between January 1 and March 5, as Trump repeatedly threatened military action against Iran, the volume of social media posts that explicitly dehumanized, excluded, or incited violence against Muslims skyrocketed. On the day the U.S.-Israel joint military campaign against Iran launched February 28, daily anti-Muslim posts jumped from fewer than 2,000 to more than 6,000, the report found.

The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, labeled Ogles “an anti-Muslim extremist” in a formal statement following his comments. The organization noted that Ogles is a member of the so-called “Sharia-Free America Caucus”, a congressional coalition that backs legislation that would effectively outlaw the practice of Islam in the U.S. “Islam is an American faith that has been present since the colonial-era when large numbers of Muslims were imported as slave labor, without any individual liberty or freedom of religion,” CAIR said.

Democratic lawmakers across the chamber united to condemn Ogles’ rhetoric, calling it openly Islamophobic. Representative Judy Chu described his comments as “abhorrent”, while Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester called on Republican House leadership to publicly disavow the Tennessee lawmaker. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark wrote on X, “This disgusting shit doesn’t belong in American society. And Republicans who support it don’t belong in Congress.”

Notably, Ogles faced no formal disciplinary consequences from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, even after his most inflammatory remarks. This absence of action drew sharp criticism, particularly when contrasted with the 2023 censure of Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib over her comments supporting Palestinian statehood.

Ogles’ current term in office is set to expire in January 2027, and he will leave office at that time following his primary defeat, ending the political career of one of the most openly anti-Muslim members of Congress in recent decades.

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.

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.

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.”