Category World News

Experts warned that US President Donald Trump has made contradictory remarks about the escalating tensions with the Hashemite Kingdom, shifting Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt, and potentially making King Abdullah II “vulnerable to geopolitical blackmail”.

Trump made the suggestion on January 25 that Jordan and Egypt should evict Gaza’s roughly two million Palestinians, sprinkling rumors that the United States is plotting ethnic cleansing there.

Jordan and Egypt’s leaders both rejected the proposal. Trump, however, reiterated his suggestion on Thursday during a photo op in the Oval Office, giving a hint about how much influence he feels.

“They will do it. They will do it… We do a lot for them, and they’re gonna do it”, Trump told a journalist.

A Trump power play

“This … does set up a major confrontation”, said Sean Yom, an associate professor of political science at Temple University.

Jordan is directly reliant on US assistance and security assistance, according to Yom, who has written extensively on the Middle East and North Africa, but King Abdullah II has stated on numerous occasions that the situation and further Palestinian displacement represent a red line.

Using this reliance on US aid, Trump may try to coerce Jordan into accepting Palestinians.

The signing of the Wadi Araba Treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994 opened up diplomatic, trade, and diplomatic relations, and it opened the door for Jordan to receive billions of dollars in US debt relief.

Jordan is currently receiving $ 1.45 billion in bilateral foreign aid, making it the second-highest recipient of foreign aid after Israel and Egypt.

On January 20, Trump signed an executive order mandating a 90-day suspension of almost all foreign aid, with the remainder being reviewed after being reviewed.

A week later, a waiver was approved by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to continue “life-saving humanitarian assistance” during the 90-day review period.

The situation was further exacerbated by the administration’s lack of consistency in deciding whether or not the order would come into effect and how.

A suspension of aid, according to Dima Toukan, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, would “affect various types of foreign assistance to the country, including budget support, sector budget support, development projects, and humanitarian assistance in addition to military aid.”

For Yom, the freeze could be seen “as a power play by the new administration”.

Trump’s statement indicates that “any post-Gaza regional order must abide by American rules” and that “old allies like Jordan don’t have much influence.”

According to analysts, Jordan might have to rethink its alliances and turn to Arab Gulf nations, Russia, China, or the European Union to fill funding gaps if Trump uses aid.

It could also “]force] them to … implement deeply unpopular austerity measures that predictably lead to protests”, said Geoffrey Hughes, author of the book Kinship, Islam and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan: Affection and Mercy.

“It will also directly hit the security apparatus,” Hughes continued, adding that “it will be even more difficult to do so now that so much aid is now being routed through the military and police.”

Galvanised protests and discontent

The action may also cause Jordan’s internal strife. More than a year of protests from citizens angered by Israel’s war on Gaza, which killed nearly 62, 000 Palestinians, has put a spotlight on Jordan’s reliance on the US and Israel.

Much of Jordan’s population, which includes many Palestinians with Jordanian nationality and more than two million Palestinian refugees, was frustrated with the government’s unwillingness to cut ties.

In 2023, significant protests broke out in Gaza and the West Bank, and they lasted for a long period of time until 2024.

The government of Jordan intervened by cracking down on and arresting political opponents and protesters.

Jordan’s police claimed they were detaining rioters and vandals while allowing people to express themselves in April 2024, when the demonstrations were at their height.

The Jordanian government was left with little room to maneuver either domestically or internationally because of this.

In last September’s parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Action Front (IAF) made significant gains, going from seven to 31 parliament seats out of a total of 138. Some analysts saw the gains of the IAF as a sign of monarchy dissatisfaction.

Jordan’s importance to US regional interests should result in a quicker return of foreign aid, according to interviewees, according to Al Jazeera.

The old-school, bipartisan consensus wing in Washington, which sees the Hashemites as essential to US foreign policy in the region, recalls Jordan’s decades of support for various US wars and interventions, and views this “oasis of moderation” as unwise in the long run, Yom said.

Last week, hundreds of internal contractors working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were put on unpaid leave, and some were terminated after President Donald Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on US foreign aid worldwide.

But for billionaire Elon Musk, temporarily freezing USAID funding isn’t enough.

“Time for it to die,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X on Monday as he branded USAID a “criminal organisation”.

“It’s beyond repair,” Musk said in a separate post, adding that Trump agrees it should be shut down.

The comments by Musk, who Trump appointed to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have sparked a growing debate over the future of the aid agency.

Here’s a look at what the agency is and its role globally:

What is happening?

USAID, whose website vanished on Saturday without explanation, has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the Trump administration in an escalating crackdown on the federal bureaucracy and many of its programmes.

“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out,” Trump said to reporters about USAID on Sunday night.

Musk’s call to shutter USAID came after security officials reportedly denied members of his cost-cutting task force access to restricted areas of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

Quoting unnamed officials, multiple US media outlets reported that USAID’s director of security, John Voorhees, and his deputy, Brian McGill, were placed on leave after denying DOGE personnel entry to secure areas over their lack of security clearances.

The representatives of DOGE, which was created in an executive order by Trump but is not a government department, were ultimately able to access areas with classified information after the confrontation, which was first reported by CNN.

The White House denied that DOGE personnel tried to access restricted areas, but Katie Miller, who serves in DOGE, appeared to acknowledge the task force’s attempted entry, writing on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances”.

Abolish USAID and all foreign aid. https://t.co/Vx239NYLeS

What was the reaction to Musk’s call to close USAID?

After Musk’s criticism, members of Congress took to social media to debate whether USAID could and should be permanently shuttered.

“Trump’s been purging and intimidating USAID employees. Now there’s a rumour he’ll dissolve USAID as an independent agency,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Party’s leader in the Republican-controlled Senate, said on X. “This’d be illegal and against our national interests.”

Republican Senator Rand Paul responded to Schumer, saying: “Abolish USAID and all foreign aid.”

Democratic Senator Chris Coons also weighed in on X, saying eliminating the agency would make the US “less safe”.

“President Trump spent two weeks harassing and laying off USAID employees, and now his team is trying to gut the agency altogether,” he said on Sunday. “These are patriotic Americans who promote our leadership around the world.”

President Trump spent two weeks harassing and laying off USAID employees, and now his team is trying to gut the agency altogether. These are patriotic Americans who promote our leadership around the world.
They make us safer. Trump makes us less safe. https://t.co/QfQGlJBj2U

What is USAID, and when did it begin?

In an effort led by then-President John F Kennedy, USAID was established as part of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. It brought major changes to US overseas programmes by combining several existing organisations and programmes into one, according to an archived version of USAID’s website.

“Until then, there had never been a single agency charged with foreign economic development,” according to the website.

According to the US government’s official website, USAID is the “principal US agency to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms”.

Andrew Natsios, a former USAID administrator, wrote in 2020 that the agency contributed to the US success during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

“I would argue the greatest USAID success stories during the Cold War were those directly connected to US national interests,” he said. “These successes certainly benefited the United States, but they also benefited developing countries as they transitioned to become advanced developed countries.”

“While there certainly have been political aid failures, there have been far more successes.”

Before the freeze, the agency was the world’s largest single donor. In fiscal year 2023, the US disbursed $72bn of assistance worldwide on everything from women’s health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anticorruption work.

USAID provided 42 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024 and has a staff of more than 10,000 people.

Which countries have received the most aid?

In 2023, Ukraine received the most — $14.4bn from USAID.

The second-highest recipient, Jordan, received $770m in economic aid through USAID. Yemen and Afghanistan received $359.9m and $332m, respectively.

USAID isn’t the only US agency that disburses foreign aid, but it is the biggest with a kitty of $42.45bn, followed by the State Department ($19bn).

What criticism has USAID received over the years?

Criticism of the agency has ranged from its foreign policy agenda to its inefficiency.

In 2014, USAID was accused of secretly creating a “Cuban Twitter” called ZunZuneo to stir unrest and undermine the Cuban government. It was also criticised for its clandestine nature. USAID denied that the project was designed to create dissent.

In 2023, Mexico’s president asked his US counterpart, Joe Biden, to stop USAID from funding groups hostile to his government, according to a letter presented to journalists, echoing previous Mexican criticism of US interventionism.

Then-President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did not specify which Mexican groups the US should stop funding, but he has in the past accused several media organisations of being part of a conservative movement against his government.

“The US government, specifically through USAID, has for some time been financing organisations openly against the legal and legitimate government I represent,” he said in the letter. “This is clearly an interventionist act, contrary to international law and the relations which should prevail between free and sovereign states.”

While the US has long touted its foreign aid programmes as aimed at, in part, strengthening young democracies, it used USAID to support friendly authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, including Taiwan and South Korea when they were under military rule and the Democratic Republic of the Congo under Mobutu Sese Seko.

More recently, a performance audit commissioned by USAID’s Office of Inspector General and conducted by the independent certified public accounting firm of Williams, Adley & Company highlighted inefficiency and bureaucratic challenges the agency faced regarding indirect cost rates. Those rates refer to overhead or administrative costs that an organisation can charge to a federal grant or contract.

“Indirect costs are a legitimate cost of doing business only to the extent that they are reasonable, allowable, and allocable,” according to 2024 findings on the USAID website.

The audit found that USAID’s systems needed improvement and noted that it does not have proper monitoring processes connected to indirect costs.

“USAID does not have proper documentation to support indirect costs charged,” it said.

What happens next?

For now, Trump has made no official announcement that USAID will be closed.

However, many fear the cessation of US funds could hurt Washington’s allies — and create a vacuum that its foes could gladly seek to fill.

Eastern Europe, for instance, has been a longtime geopolitical battleground where Western foreign policy interests often collide with those of Moscow or Beijing.

China’s influence in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa has been growing, and it has become an increasingly important trade partner and investor in recent years while the US cuts back on aid.

In October, the China Development Bank (CDB) announced that it had provided about $160bn to help finance hundreds of projects throughout Latin America. Sub-Saharan Africa received the most aid from the US in 2023, but China is increasing its presence there by providing competitive assistance.

Senator Coons said the possible closing of USAID creates even more room for China to expand its power.

“It debilitates American leadership and leaves the world more open to Chinese influence. It would be a massive mistake,” Coons said on Saturday on X.

At least 18 women and one man, the majority of them agricultural workers, were killed by a car bomb in Manbij, northern Syria. The Syrian National Army and the Syrian Democratic Forces, both of which are supported by the US, are at odds with one another.

According to analysts, local observers, and RSF sources, Sudan’s army could lose the last significant city in the western region of Darfur in days to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Observers worry that this could lead to the RSF’s crimes against humanity and a humanitarian disaster in El-Fasher, the state capital, in the state of North Darfur.

Ali Musabel, an RSF adviser, told Al Jazeera: “The RSF will free el-Fasher … in about 10 days”.

Since January 21, the RSF has fired drones, fired artillery, and surrounded El-Fasher from the east and west, according to Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which relies on satellite imagery analysis.

Four North Darfur-based sources backed up those findings, according to Al Jazeera’s interview with them.

According to Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab, “the RSF always attacks from the east to distract the enemy,” before being cut off from the west.

Major push

A power conflict between the RSF and the army broke out in April 2023, leading to civil war.

By November 2023, credible reports claim that the RSF had committed mass murder and gang rape in order to elude South, East, Central, and West Darfur.

Rights groups accuse both sides of committing atrocities.

After several previous anti-government armed groups known as the Joint Forces joined the army in April to defend the city from a potential RSF attack, the RSF besieged El-Fasher.

The RSF was unable to take El-Fasher because the rainy season extended into October and flooded roads, which prevented RSF vehicles from traveling there, according to Raymond. Despite its military advantages over the Joint Forces, the RSF was unable to do so, according to Raymond.

According to analysts and local observers, the RSF is focusing on regaining control of Darfur and regaining control of the country as it struggled to recover lost territory in central and eastern Sudan.

On January 25, the group killed at least 80 people in an attack on Borush village, about 170km (105 miles) east of el-Fasher, according to Darfur24, a local news source monitoring developments on the ground.

A video that RSF fighters uploaded and where they can be seen counting the number of people killed in Borush was verified by Al Jazeera’s authentication company, Sanad.

Everybody appeared to be dressed as civilians and lay in a pool of blood in a trench.

“The civilians seized weapons to try to defend their land,” they said. The majority of North Darfur’s civilians have picked up weapons to defend themselves from the RSF, according to Zakaria Mohamed, a local journalist.

Musabel claimed that those who were killed had legitimate weapons.

He said in a voice note that “they mobilized with weapons to attack and threaten the RSF.”

We then killed the armed men after they stole two of our cars.

Al Jazeera’s reporting, human rights groups, and United Nations experts have documented countless RSF attacks against defenceless civilians. They frequently carried out summary executions and expelled entire regions.

Communities across Sudan have picked up weapons to defend themselves from the RSF in an effort to stop other atrocities feared by similar atrocities.

Finishing the genocide?

According to rights groups and analysts, if el-Fasher falls, the camp’s civil servants are particularly vulnerable there.

The camp is about 15km (9.3 miles) south of the city’s centre and had a pre-war population of about 300, 000 people.

More than half a million people live in “non-Arab” sedentary farming tribes, many of whom are being displaced by the current war.

They fled what many experts describe as genocidal violence by state-backed “Arab” nomadic tribal militias, which started in 2003.

The central government at the time engaged in a brutal campaign to oust these Arab militias, which were primarily non-Arab organizations that rebelled against their people’s political and economic marginalization.

Omar al-Bashir, the president at the time, renamed those Arab tribal militias the RSF, and they have since grown far beyond the “non-Arab” armed groups defending El-Fasher.

They have already shelled&nbsp, Zamzam camp multiple times.

Noon al-Barmaki, a local journalist who lives nearby Zamzam to avoid RSF shelling and drone strikes in El-Fasher, claimed everyone in the camp believes they will perish if El-Fasher falls to the RSF.

“The war … has]mostly] taken the shape of ‘ Arab ‘ tribes vs ‘ non-Arab ‘ tribes”, al-Barmaki said.

“If the RSF captures and controls el-Fasher, then the largest]ethnic] mass killing in]our] history will unfold”, she warned.

External backing

Thanks to uninterrupted supply lines from Chad, Libya, and South Sudan, the RSF has been able to accumulate sophisticated weapons like drones, antiaircraft missiles, and artillery throughout the conflict.

In comparison, the army-backed Joint Forces receive occasional airdrops of basic ammunition from the army.

UN experts, rights groups and even US lawmakers accuse the United Arab Emirates of supplying the RSF with cutting-edge munitions, including Norinco AH4 gun howitzers, a Chinese-made artillery weapon.

The UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied supporting any conflict-torn party in an email to Al Jazeera.

The UAE’s main task in Sudan is still to resolve the terrible humanitarian crisis. We continue to call for a quick end to this human-made conflict. The UAE has already made it clear in the statement that it is not providing any assistance or supplies to either of Sudan’s two belligerent parties, according to the statement.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen made known a letter from Brett McGurk, the then-council’s representative for the Middle East and North Africa, that stated the US government had been assured that the UAE was “not now transferring weapons to the RSF and will not do so going forward.”

Van Hollen and US Representative Sarah Jacobs claimed on January 24 that they still accuse the UAE of providing weapons to the RSF despite McGurk’s assurances.

According to Raymond, the UAE is crucially helping the RSF capture El-Fasher in light of recent allegations that it flies weapons into South Darfur.

He thinks the world community needs to protect civilians and put an end to the conflict.

“The international community is missing in action”, Raymond said.