HIS rise has been swift and vertical. Donald Trump, among others, is struggling to figure out who exactly Zohran Kwame Mamdani is. They know that the newly elected Democratic mayoral candidate for New York in the Nov 4 elections stands for the liberation of Palestine.
They probably also know that he accuses Narendra Modi of mass murder in Gujarat, even if India’s supreme court has given him the proverbial clean chit for the 2002 carnage of Muslims.
In a pre-election interview, mayoral candidates were asked if they would help the Indian prime minister hold another rally in the city. All said no, but Mamdani went on to emphasise that he would never wish to meet Modi if elected mayor of New York.
Zohran should not perhaps worry about that possibility if reports are true about the possible resignation of Modi in September, when he attains the retirement age of 75 that he set for all BJP office bearers.
But Mamdani’s critics (and many supporters) don’t quite seem to know how or why he succeeded in toppling the Democratic Party’s applecart by upstaging its poster boy Andrew Cuomo in the race. Cuomo’s elitist supporters include Zionist Jews from Brooklyn, who reportedly helped mobilise a whopping $25 million to defeat Mamdani.
They are naturally worried by the turn of events. Mamdani’s reply to them was reassuring, even disarming. Hate crimes trouble him equally, including the current antisemitic uptick across the US. His pledge to them was his proposal for an 800 per cent increase in the city’s mayoral budget to arrest hate-crimes.
Trump, nevertheless, has called him a communist lunatic, and reports are coming in of assassination threats to the 33-year-old Ugandan migrant with a winsome smile.
To appreciate Zohran’s secular and progressive Hindu and Muslim lineage, it might help to look for a clue in his middle name, Kwame. The one Kwame his parents possibly named him after, and who best fits the sketchy political profile we have of the Mamdanis, is Kwame Nkrumah.
The radical left politician led Ghana to independence from Britain but was overthrown after a short tenure as president by a Western-backed military coup while he was visiting China in 1966. Nkrumah, together with Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere, was an idol for post-colonial masses in Africa and beyond. South Asians saw him as a genuine friend, and Jawaharlal Nehru courted him as a comrade. Some say he was the inspiration for Martin Luther King’s doctrine of peaceful resistance.
To appreciate Zohran’s secular and progressive Hindu and Muslim lineage, it might help to look for a clue in his middle name.
We also know that Zohran was born in Kampala, where his father of Gujarati Shia Muslim origins, began his journey as a scholar with a focus on colonialism, ethnic strife and migration. Mahmood Mamdani has written outstanding books on colonialism and society, a more widely lauded being Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. To get a handle on the phenomenon, his son is, we may benefit from discussing his father’s scholarly quest.
In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mamdani discusses the rise of political Islam, and answers questions that Americans have struggled with since Osama bin Laden, the former American protégé, staged a spectacular attack on the US. Mamdani dispels the easy description of ‘good’ Muslims being secular or Westernised and the ‘bad’ being slotted as pre-modern and fanatical. In his view, political Islam emerged from a modern encounter with the West. The terrorist movement at the centre of political Islam is an even more recent phenomenon, one “that followed America’s embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam”.
The book seems relevant to today’s perceptions of the Israel-Iran contest. Amid the megaphoned Western vilification of ‘mullahs’ ruling Iran, a 5,000-year-old civilisation is condemned by its parvenue rivals who were largely created from the British-French division of spoils following Turkey’s defeat in 1919. Look carefully, and all the post-Cold War Western targets were utterly secular states — from Iraq to Libya, from Algeria to Syria, and from Lebanon to Yemen. Damned if you are secular, damned if you are not.
Mamdani’s other acclaimed works include a signal point of departure in analysing the ethnic violence in Rwanda. Another work, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities posits that the modern state didn’t begin with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, but sprang into being in 1492: the year of the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain following the ‘Reconquista’, which coincided with the European colonisation of the Americas.
Zohran’s mother, Mira Nair, is a progressive filmmaker. Some of her acclaimed movies are seen in their approach as a facet of parallel cinema. Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala, The Namesake are more widely applauded, though her cinematic work on life in the slums of Uganda is a class apart.
Nair’s films are known for their vibrant storytelling, rich cultural textures and exploration of identity, displacement and human connections. The parents’ imprint is palpable in the son’s politics.
What makes his win even more remarkable is that Zohran “has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel,” said The Guardian.
There are other compelling factors driving Mamdani’s success. His approach to New York differs from Frank Sinatra’s individualistic quest to arrive at “the top of the heap”. Zohran takes a leaf, instead, from Sahir Ludhianvi’s angst for Bombay. “Cheen o Arab hamara, Hindosta’n hamara/ Rehne ko ghar nahi hai, saara jahaa’n hamara.” (The far corners of the world belong to me, and I am its homeless citizen.)
Like Sahir, Mamdani identifies with “those who toil in the nights, so they can enjoy the fruits of their labour in the day. Where eight hours on the factory floor or behind the wheels of a cab is enough to pay the mortgage, enough to keep the lights on, enough to send your kids to school”.
SEVILLE: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged the world to “rev up the engine of development” at an aid conference in Spain on Monday at a time when US-led cuts are jeopardising the fight against poverty and climate change.
Dozens of world leaders and more than 4,000 representatives from businesses, civil society and financial institutions are gathering in the city of Seville for the June 30-July 3 conference to seek fresh impetus for the crisis-hit aid sector. But the United States is snubbing the biggest such talks in a decade, underlining the erosion of international cooperation on combating hunger, disease and climate change.
Guterres told delegates at the opening of the conference that two-thirds of United Nations sustainable development goals set for 2030 were “lagging” and more than $4.0 trillion of annual investment would be needed to achieve them.
US President Donald Trump’s gutting of his country’s development agency, USAID, is the standout example. But Germany, Britain and France are also making cuts while they boost spending in areas such as defence.
Guterres says the world body needs $4tr investment to achieve SDGs
International charity Oxfam says the cuts to development aid are the largest since 1960. More than 800 million people live on less than $3.0 a day, according to the World Bank, with rising extreme poverty affecting sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
Disruption to global trade from Trump’s tariffs and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have dealt further blows to the diplomatic cohesion necessary for concentrating efforts on helping countries escape poverty. The crisis meant children going unvaccinated, girls dropping out of school and families suffering hunger, said Guterres.
He urged the international community to “change course” and “repair and rev up the engine of development to accelerate investment” in “a world shaken by inequalities, climate chaos and raging conflicts”.
A blistering heatwave that is scorching southern Europe welcomed the delegates to the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, an example of the extreme weather that scientists say human-driven climate change is fuelling.
‘Colonial debt’
Kenya’s William Ruto, Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, Angolan leader Joao Lourenco and Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan were among prominent Global South leaders in Seville. Among the key topics up for discussion is reforming international finance to help poorer countries shrug off a growing debt burden that inhibits their capacity to achieve progress in health and education.
The total external debt of the group of least developed countries has more than tripled in 15 years, according to UN data. Critics have singled out US-based bulwarks of the post-World War II international financial system, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for reform to improve their representation of the Global South.
Painstaking talks in New York in June produced a common declaration to be adopted in Seville that only went ahead after the United States walked out. The document reaffirms commitment to the UN development goals such as eliminating poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality, reforming tax systems and international financial institutions.
U.S. President Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The United States on Monday (June 30, 2025) announced the approval of a $510 million sale to Israel of bomb guidance kits and related support, after Israel expended significant munitions in its recent conflict with Iran.
“The proposed sale will enhance Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats by improving its ability to defend Israel’s borders, vital infrastructure, and population centres,” the U.S. Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a statement.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” it added.
The State Department approved the possible sale and the DSCA has provided the required notification to the US Congress, which still needs to sign off on the transaction.
Israel launched an unprecedented air campaign on June 13 targeting Iranian nuclear sites, scientists and top military brass in a bid to end the country’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for civilian purposes but Washington and other powers insist is aimed at acquiring atomic weapons.
Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path to replace the nuclear deal with Tehran that he tore up in 2018 during his first term, but he ultimately decided to take military action, ordering US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
A ceasefire brought the war to a halt last week, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to prevent Tehran from ever rebuilding its nuclear facilities, raising the prospect of a future conflict.
OTTAWA, June 30 (Xinhua) — The Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers on Monday called for the resumption of negotiations to reach a comprehensive, verifiable and durable agreement that addresses Iran’s nuclear program.
In a joint statement on Iran and the Middle East issued by Global Affairs Canada, the foreign ministers called on Iran to urgently resume full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as required by its safeguards obligations and to provide the IAEA with verifiable information about all nuclear material in Iran, including by providing access to IAEA inspectors.
“We underscore the centrality of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. It is essential that Iran remains party to and fully implements its obligations under the Treaty,” read the statement.
G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the high representative of the European Union, met in The Hague on June 25 and discussed recent events in the Middle East. ■
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to end US sanctions against Syria, which the White House said was a move to support the country’s “path to stability and peace”.
The sanctions, which blocked any foreign financing, were imposed on the government of Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by rebels in December.
The White House said it would monitor the new Syrian government’s actions including “taking concrete steps toward normalising ties with Israel” as well as “addressing foreign terrorists” and “banning Palestinian terrorist groups”.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani said the move would “lift the obstacle” to economic recovery and open the country to the international community.
However the US has maintained sanctions on Assad and his associates as well as the Islamic State group and Iranian proxies.
Trump said he would lift sanctions on Syria in May, before he met the country’s new president, former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh. The announcement sparked celebrations in the streets of Damascus.
Sharaa’s Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which led the overthrow of Assad – was al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria until he severed ties in 2016. HTS is still designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US and UK.
Monday’s executive order directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio “to review” HTS’s designation. It also says that the US wants the new Syrian government to take over responsibility for detention camps in north-eastern Syria where Islamic State prisoners are being held.
Earlier this year, Rubio called for Syria’s transitional authorities to be supported, warning that a failure to achieve economic progress could lead to a “full-scale civil war of epic proportions”.
Ninety percent of Syria’s population were left under the poverty line when the Assad regime was ousted at the end of 13 years of devastating civil war.
Syria’s new leader has promised to protect the country’s ethnic minorities. However, the mass killings of hundreds of civilians from Assad’s minority Alawite sect in the western coastal region in March, during clashes between the new security forces and Assad loyalists, has hardened fears among minority communities.
There have also been deadly clashes between Islamist armed factions, security forces and fighters from the Druze religious minority. And in June at least 25 people were killed in a suicide attack on a church in Damascus.
Ahead of Monday’s signing, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters it Trump was making good on his commitment to support Syria’s stability and peace.
“This is another promise made and promise kept by this president to promote peace and stability in the region,” she added.
The US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack told reporters that cancelling the sanctions regime had been the “culmination of a very tedious, detailed, excruciating process of, how do you unwrap these sanctions.”
“Syria needs to be given a chance, and that’s what’s happened,” he added.
More than 600,000 people were killed and 12 million others forced from their homes during former president Assad’s rule.
The United States on Monday announced the approval of a $510 million sale to Israel of bomb guidance kits and related support, after Israel expended significant munitions in its recent conflict with Iran.
“The proposed sale will enhance Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats by improving its ability to defend Israel’s borders, vital infrastructure, and population centers,” the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a statement.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” it added.
The State Department approved the possible sale and the DSCA has provided the required notification to the US Congress, which still needs to sign off on the transaction.
Israel launched an unprecedented air campaign on June 13 targeting Iranian nuclear sites, scientists and top military brass in a bid to end the country’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for civilian purposes but Washington and other powers insist is aimed at acquiring atomic weapons.
Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path to replace the nuclear deal with Tehran that he tore up in 2018 during his first term, but he ultimately decided to take military action, ordering US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
A ceasefire brought the war to a halt last week, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to prevent Tehran from ever rebuilding its nuclear facilities, raising the prospect of a future conflict.
