World
In Texas, pro-Palestine university protesters clash with state leaders
Austin, Texas – “It didn’t feel real.” That’s how Alishba Javaid, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, describes the moment when she saw roughly 30 state troopers walk onto the campus lawn.
Javaid and hundreds of her classmates had gathered on the grass, in the shadow of the campus’s 94-metre limestone tower, as part of a walkout against Israel’s war in Gaza.
They were hoping that their school would divest from manufacturers supplying weapons to Israel. Instead, law enforcement started to appear in increasing numbers.
By Javaid’s count, the state troopers joined at least 50 fellow officers already in place, all dressed in riot gear. The protest had been peaceful, but nerves were at a high. The troopers continued their advance.
“That was the first moment I was genuinely scared,” said Javaid, 22.
Dozens of students were ultimately arrested on April 24, as the officers attempted to disperse the protesters. Footage of the clashes between police and demonstrators quickly spread online, echoing images from other campus protests across the United States.
Yet, Texans face a unique challenge, as they contend with a far-right state government that has sought to limit protests against Israel.
In 2017, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law that prohibits government entities from working with businesses that boycott Israel, and the state has since taken steps to tighten that law further.
Abbott has also cast the current protests as “hate-filled” and “anti-Semitic”, amplifying misconceptions about demonstrators and their goals.
In addition, a state law went into effect earlier this year that forced public universities to shutter their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices.
Multiple students and employees told Al Jazeera that campuses have become less safe for people of colour as a result of the law, which forced the departure of staff DEI advocates.
‘Using violence to subvert minorities’
The violence has continued at University of Texas campuses as students press forward with their protests.
On the final day of class, April 29, police used pepper spray and flash-bang devices to clear a crowd at the Austin campus, while dozens more were encircled by troopers and dragged away screaming.
Hiba Faruqi, a 21-year-old student, said her knee “just kept bleeding” after she was knocked over during a pushing-and-shoving match between students and police.
Yet she counts herself lucky for not sustaining worse injuries. It was surreal, she said, to think that her own university called in state troopers — and then had to deploy medical personnel to assist students who were hurt.
“There’s a racist element people don’t want to talk about here,” she said. “There’s a xenophobic element people don’t want to acknowledge. There are more brown protesters, which maybe emboldens the police to do things a certain way.”
As calls for divestment continue, students, lawyers and advocates told Al Jazeera they have been forced to navigate scepticism and outright hostility from the Texas government.
“Texas is known for using violence to subvert minorities,” Faruqi said. “The reason this is shaking people this time is because it’s not working.”
Scrutiny over university endowments
Many of the protests have zeroed in on the University of Texas’s endowment, a bank of funds designed to support its nine campuses over the long term.
The University of Texas system has the largest public education endowment in the country, worth more than $40bn.
Some of that money comes from investments in weapons and defence contractors, as well as aerospace, energy and defence technology companies with deep ties to Israel.
ExxonMobil, for example, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the system’s investments, and the company has supplied Israel with fuel for its fighter jets.
Those ties have fuelled the protests across the state’s public university campuses, including a May 1 demonstration at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Fatima — who only shared her first name with Al Jazeera, out of fear for her safety — was among the demonstrators. She wiped sweat from her brow as a young child led the crowd of about 100 in a series of chants: “Free, free, free Palestine!”
The divestment protests have largely been peaceful, Fatima explained, raising her voice to be heard above the noise.
“Over 30,000 people have been murdered,” she said, referring to the death toll in Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign is entering its eighth month.
“And our university is investing in weapons manufacturing companies that are providing Israel with these weapons. We’re going to stay here until our demands are met.”
Twenty-one students and staff members were arrested that day in Dallas. Members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine, of which Fatima is a member, spent the night outside the county jail, waiting for their friends to be released.
One protester wryly noted outside the jail that they had been arrested for trespassing on their own campus, a seemingly nonsensical offence.
In the background, a thunderstorm was beginning to rear its head, so the protesters huddled closer together under the awning.
Texas officials and university administrators have justified the police crackdowns, in part, by citing the presence of outsiders with no present affiliation with the campuses involved.
But 30-year-old activist Anissa Jaqaman is among those visiting the university protests, in an effort to lend supplies and support.
Everyone has a role to play, Jaqaman explained: Her role is sometimes that of the communicator, but more often that of the healer.
She has brought water to the student demonstrators at the University of Texas at Dallas and hopes to provide a space for people to “come over and talk about how we heal”.
“This is a healing movement,” she said time and again as she spoke to Al Jazeera. “We have to carry each other.”
Jaqaman is Texas through and through: She was raised in the Dallas suburbs and is a strong advocate for her state.
“I’m a proud Texan,” she said. “I actually think that Texans are some of the nicest people in the country.”
But back when she was in college, from 2012 to 2016, Jaqaman started to use her voice to bring awareness to the plight of Palestinians.
Rights groups have long warned that Israel has imposed a system of apartheid against the ethnic group, subjecting its members to discrimination and displacement.
In college, Jaqaman’s friends often laughed at her passion. She often smiles, exuding optimism, but her voice grows serious as she talks about Palestine, as well as other issues like the scourge of single-use plastics.
“They just thought I was a tree-hugger, but for human rights,” she explained, speaking in a soft yet confident voice.
But the current war has amplified her concerns. The United Nations has signalled famine is “imminent” in parts of Gaza, and rights experts have pointed to a “risk of genocide” in the Palestinian enclave.
Jaqaman has sported her keffiyeh scarf ever since the war began on October 7, despite feeling anxious that it could attract violence against her.
“I wear it because I feel like it protects my heart, honestly,” she said. “I feel like I’m doing the Palestinian people injustice by not wearing it.”
But she has struggled to get public officials to engage with her concerns about the war and divestment from industries tied to Israel’s military. For months, she attempted to persuade her local city council that “this is a human issue, an everyone issue”, to little avail.
“Everything that we’re seeing right now is about shutting down the discussion,” she said. “If you say anything about Palestine, you’re labelled anti-Semitic. That’s a conversation-ender.”
Youth protesters look to the future
Students like Javaid, a journalism major in her final semester, told Al Jazeera that they are still trying to figure out what healing looks like — and what their futures might hold. In many ways, she and her friends feel stuck.
They recognise they need to take a break from scouring social media for information about the war, and yet it is all they can think about.
The usual college rites of passage — final exams, graduation and job hunting — just don’t seem as important any more.
“How are we supposed to go back to work now?” Javaid asked after the protests.
While she has treasured her time at the university, she is also highly critical of its actions to stamp out the protests. Part of the blame, she added, lies with the government, though.
“The root issue in Texas is that the state government doesn’t care,” she said.
Born and raised in the Dallas area, Javaid plans to stay in Texas for at least a little while after she graduates this month. She has mixed feelings about staying long term, though.
She would like to work in social justice, particularly in higher education, but she worries such a job would be tenuous in her home state.
Still, she feels a sense of responsibility tying her to the state. The political climate in Texas may be challenging, she said, but she has a duty — to her fellow protesters and to Palestine — to keep playing a role.
“I don’t want to jump ship and just say, ‘Texas is crazy’,” Javaid said. “I want to be a part of the people trying to make it better. Because if not us, who?”
World
Iraq's Kurdish Regional Security Council announces arrest of top aide of former Islamic State leader
The Kurdish Regional Security Council announced in a statement on Friday that it captured a senior Islamic State figure, Socrates Khalil.
Khalil was known to be a confidant of the late Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“After spending five years in Turkey, Khalil returned to Kurdistan with a forged passport and was swiftly apprehended,” the statement said.
Khalil made bombs for the Islamic State and was entrusted by al-Baghdadi with various major operations, the statement added, saying that he was instrumental in the 2014 Islamic State takeover of Mosul, and participated in many battles against Iraqi forces and the Peshmerga forces.
World
UN experts say South Sudan is close to securing a $13 billion oil-backed loan from a UAE company
U.N. experts say South Sudan is close to securing a $13 billion loan from a company in the United Arab Emirates, despite the oil-rich country’s difficulties in managing debts backed by its oil reserves.
The panel of experts said in a report to the U.N. Security Council that loan documents it has seen indicate the deal with the company, Hamad Bin Khalifa Department of Projects, would be South Sudan’s largest-ever oil-backed loan.
SOUTH SUDAN MEDIATION TALKS LAUNCHED IN KENYA WITH A HOPE OF ENDING CONFLICT
The experts, who monitor an arms embargo against South Sudan, said in the oil section of the report obtained by The Associated Press this week that “servicing this loan would likely tie up most of South Sudan’s revenue (for) many years, depending on oil prices.”
U.N. experts say South Sudan is close to securing a $13 billion loan from a company in the United Arab Emirates, despite the oil-rich country’s difficulties in managing debts backed by its oil reserves. (Photo by TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images)
Hamad Bin Khalifa Department of Projects, registered in Dubai, has no listed phone number and its website isn’t working. An email address associated with the company bounced back. The UAE Mission to the United Nations declined to comment, saying Hamad is a private company.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 following decades of civil war that cost million of lives, and oil is the backbone of the young nation’s economy.
Soon after independence, South Sudan fought its own civil war from 2013 to 2018, when rivals President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar signed a power-sharing agreement and formed a coalition government. South Sudan is under pressure from the United States and other nations to more quickly implement the 2018 peace deal that ended the civil war and prepare for elections.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest update, South Sudan produced an average of about 149,000 barrels of liquid fuels per day in 2023. The landlocked country uses Sudan’s pipelines to transfer its oil to Port Sudan for shipment to global markets in an agreement with the Sudanese government, which pockets $23 per barrel as transit fees for the oil exports.
South Sudanese Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters in February that outside factors, including the civil war still raging in Sudan, have hurt South Sudan’s oil exports. He also said oil wells, which were water-logged by heavy floods during the past rainy season, weren’t yet fully operational.
The section on oil in the experts report said documents for the loan from the UAE company, signed between December and February by South Sudan’s minister of finance, indicate the loan is split into tranches.
According to the documents, around 70% of the loan is to be allocated to infrastructure projects, with the first payment in excess of $5 billion, the panel said. Following a three-year grace period, “the loan will be secured against the delivery of crude oil for a period of up to 17 years.”
The panel of experts raised serious questions about South Sudan’s oil-based debts.
South Sudan lost a case in the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes stemming from a $700 million loan it received from Qatar National Bank in 2012.
When the panel wrote its report, the tribunal had not reached a decision on how much the government would have to pay, but The Sudan Tribune reported Sunday that South Sudan has been ordered to pay more than $1 billion.
The panel of experts said it has also confirmed that the government owes $151.97 million to the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank stemming from a previous oil-related deal.
South Sudan was supposed to hold elections before February 2023, but that timetable was pushed back last August to December 2024.
In early April, South Sudan’s president warned lawmakers “not to cling to power just weeks after his former rival turned deputy proposed a further postponement of elections.
The panel of experts said would be “a significant milestone” and warned that the country’s leaders are running short of time “to ensure divergent expectations do not fuel further tensions and strife.”
The experts also noted South Sudan’s humanitarian crisis. in which an estimated 9 million of the country’s 12.5 million people need protection and humanitarian assistance, according to the U.N. The country has also seen an increase in the number of refugees fleeing the war in neighboring Sudan, further complicating humanitarian assistance to those affected by South Sudan’s internal conflict.
Amethi/Rae Bareli, India – Irfan*, a tea stall owner, is convinced that change is afoot.
“There has not been much traffic on this road from Rae Bareli to Amethi ever since the Congress lost power in 2014,” he says, referring to two towns and a party that for decades have been synonymous with one family – the Nehru-Gandhis, or as they are more commonly known, the Gandhis.
The first family of Indian politics has ruled the country for almost half of its journey since independence in 1947, with three generations of prime ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi, and grandson Rajiv Gandhi. And through ups and downs, when the Congress has been in power and out of it, Amethi and Rae Bareli, separated by 62km (38 miles), have for the most part stood by the family. They’ve served as safe constituencies for India’s grand old party in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which is India’s largest electoral prize: with 80 seats out of the nation’s total of 543 in the lower house of parliament.
In 2019, that tradition received a dramatic jolt when the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi – son of Rajiv – lost Amethi by 55,000 votes to Smriti Irani, a feisty minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which has been in power nationally since 2014. Rahul’s mother and former Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi, retained Rae Bareli for the party, the only seat it won in Uttar Pradesh as the BJP swept the nation, winning 303 seats overall.
Now, five years later, the towns are a tense microcosm of the national battle between the BJP and opposition Congress; between Modi and the Gandhis. Rahul is replacing his 77-year-old mother from Rae Bareli this time. BJP’s Irani is seeking reelection from Amethi. Each of them is expected to face tough competition from the other’s party. Amethi and Rae Bareli vote on May 20 in India’s giant election.
At stake are more than two seats: If the BJP wins Rae Bareli and retains Amethi, it will effectively have wiped out the Gandhi family and the Congress from Uttar Pradesh. Conversely, say opposition leaders, a Congress win in both seats could seed anti-BJP momentum in a state that often decides who rules nationally.
Irfan, from his vantage point of Tiloi town near Amethi and Rae Bareli, believes the political winds are blowing in the direction of the Congress. “Storm is building in both the cities, which will impact the entire state,” he says.
Yet, storms can be unpredictable – and Amethi and Rae Bareli know that.
Boost for the opposition?
In a video posted by the Congress party on social platforms, Rahul and his mother Sonia are seen leafing through old photos of the family visiting and contesting from Amethi and Rae Bareli, as they reflect on their family’s old association with the towns.
It is a decades-old bond. Feroze Gandhi, Indira’s husband and Rahul’s grandfather, won Rae Bareli in 1952 – independent India’s first election. Indira and Sonia won this seat subsequently, their stints interspersed by terms when their loyalists were nominated to contest from the town instead.
Only thrice has the Congress lost Rae Bareli. In 1977, a national opposition coalition toppled Indira’s government to come to power amid a wave of anger against the Congress over its imposition of a state of national emergency in 1975, when civil liberties were suspended and thousands of its political opponents were arrested. In 1996 and 1998, when the BJP was rising nationally and first came to power, it defeated the Congress here – though the Gandhi family was not in the contest on those occasions.
In Amethi, Indira’s elder son Feroze Gandhi lost the 1977 election but won in 1980. The Congress lost only once since then, in 1998, before Irani’s upset in 2019. Sonia and Rahul have both won from Amethi.
After his loss in 2019, many pundits had wondered whether Rahul would ever contest from the family pocket boroughs – or even from Uttar Pradesh – again. He had won from Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala in 2019 and contested from there again this time.
The Congress party insiders say he was unconvinced about contesting from a second seat this time, but was eventually swayed by pressure from Sonia, who was opposed to giving up the family’s bastions without a fight. Rahul’s sister Priyanka, who is now also a leader of Congress, decided against contesting.
With Rahul contesting from Rae Bareli, a longtime family friend Kishori Lal Sharma is competing against Irani from Amethi. It’s a scenario that could work for the opposition, say some of its leaders. In the days before the Congress decided on its candidates for these seats, Ameeque Jamei, a national spokesperson for the Samajwadi Party – the Congress’s biggest ally in Uttar Pradesh – had told Al Jazeera that if Rahul or Priyanka contested, the “opposition fight against the BJP will gain greater meaning”. He predicted that the Congress-led INDIA alliance that is challenging the BJP nationally could win up to 20 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats.
That is easier said than done. Rahul faces a formidable challenger in the BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh, who gave Sonia a tough fight in 2019, cutting her winning margin substantially. Singh has been unsparing in his criticism of how the Gandhis treat their bloodline. The party and family rarely even mention Feroze Gandhi, Rahul’s grandfather, whose grave is 100km (60 miles) from Rae Bareli.
“A person who cannot be that of his grandfather, how can he be yours,” says Singh.
Barbershop politics
On the ground, Rahul and Priyanka are barnstorming the otherwise sleepy cities of Rae Bareli and Amethi, in their own ways.
Recently, Rahul slipped into a local barbershop to get his beard trimmed. His videos of sitting in the barbershop went viral. Priyanka divides time between the two towns, holding road shows and corner meetings.
The Congress has also brought in other heavyweight leaders to strengthen its campaigns here with their experience and political guile. At Rae Bareli’s Shalimar Guest House, Bhupesh Baghel, the former chief minister of the central state of Chhattisgarh, is marshalling supporters. “Rahul has a lot of support in Rae Bareli. So, I don’t have to do very much,” he says.
Ashok Gehlot, the former chief minister of Rajasthan, is handling the Congress campaign in Amethi against Smriti Irani, who has doubled down on her accusations that the Gandhi family neglected the town and Rae Bareli for decades despite winning from there.
The Congress is counting on the support of two key voting blocs. Muslims constitute 22 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s population. A Muslim leader from Amethi, Muhammad Alam, said many from his community could have considered voting for the BJP, but Modi’s recent attacks – including suggestions that the Congress would take Hindu wealth and give it to Muslims – had changed their minds.
Gautam Rane, a Dalit activist in Uttar Pradesh’s capital, Lucknow, says sections of the community, which sits at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy, are also shifting towards the Congress. The community has traditionally backed the regional Bahujan Samaj Party in the state. The Congress has used stray comments by some BJP leaders to suggest that the party wants to change the constitution and take away caste-based affirmative action benefits from the Dalits – a charge that the BJP has denied.
“This is Rahul Gandhi’s elections,” Rane says. “No one [else] matters.”
* Name changed to protect identity
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