Ali was an award-winning pioneer of animated political caricatures and Pakistan’s first court artist.
Published On 9 Nov 20269 Nov 2026
Shujaat Ali, cartoonist and founding member of Al Jazeera’s online teams, has died at the age of 54.
A pioneer of digital cartoons, Ali was credited with creating the first animated caricatures online. He also worked at a number of media outlets in his native Pakistan and abroad, receiving several awards for his work.
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He died last week after suffering a heart attack as he returned home from work. He was buried in Qasimabad in Rawalpindi, where his parents are also buried.
Ali was Pakistan’s first court artist, documenting the course of a number of well-known cases using his pencil and skills.
He had recently been working with the Pakistan Air Force, his son-in-law, Waqar Saeed, told the Dawn newspaper.
Before returning to his homeland, he had worked at Al Jazeera for many years. He contributed as part of the founding team of Al Jazeera Arabic’s online services, developing cartooning to utilise the potential of the digital platform.
Ahmed El Amraoui, an editor at Aljazeera.com, said, “I had the privilege of working with Shujaat during the early days of Aljazeera.com. He was a very talented artist, but what made him stand out was how far ahead of his time he was.”
Shujaat Ali received a number of national and international awards for his work as a cartoonist [File: Al Jazeera]
Awad Joumaa, manager of Digital Programs at Al Jazeera English, described Ali’s cartoons as “unlike anything we were used to seeing in a news organisation… He drew everyone from Arafat to George Bush to Osama bin Laden.
“I remember the pride in his voice when he told me that presidents, prime ministers and rebel fighters passing through the newsroom would always stop to look at the wall where his cartoons hung,” Joumaa said.
“We forget there is a whole tradition in journalism where a cartoon could make governments and world leaders shake. Naji al-Ali, the Palestinian cartoonist, was killed for his cartoons. That is how powerful they were. And Shujaat was an incredible voice in that genre.”
Al Jazeera has marked 30 years since its first broadcast in 1996, with a ceremony in Doha attended by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Director General Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani called for renewal, to protect the network’s independence and values.
UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch says the party does not condone former member, and candidate, Jack Ross’s conduct, which was revealed in an Al Jazeera investigation. It showed Ross discussing contract killers and offering to broker the services of a far-right activist.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is to visit India in the coming week, but he will not set foot in the capital, New Delhi.
Instead, on Monday, Rubio will hold talks with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, and then visit an oil refinery in Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, according to a statement from the US Department of State.
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His itinerary sparked a political storm after the US ambassador to India said Washington expected Jaishankar to travel to meet Rubio, prompting opposition leaders to accuse the government of allowing India’s top diplomat to be “summoned” on home soil.
The spat comes as relations between the two countries are strained over trade, tariffs and India’s purchases of Russian oil.
So why is Rubio avoiding New Delhi, and why has it caused such upset? Here’s what you need to know:
What is Rubio doing in India?
He plans to discuss trade, energy and investment.
Rubio is arriving on Sunday from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he has been meeting with five Central Asian states at the C5+1 summit.
In India, he is due to meet senior officials to discuss the US-India strategic partnership and energy cooperation and hold talks with business leaders, the State Department said.
Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal appeared to confirm the agenda, stating on Friday that the Mumbai talks would cover energy, trade and investment, defence, and critical and emerging technologies.
In Jamnagar, Rubio is to visit the world’s largest single-site refinery, operated by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, and attend a reception hosted by the Ambani family, according to The Hindu newspaper.
Rubio and his wife, Jeanette Rubio, appear with Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, also the US special envoy for South and Central Asia, at the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, on May 25, 2026 [Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Pool via Reuters]
Why isn’t Rubio going to New Delhi?
No official reason has been given.
Rubio was in the Indian capital in May for a meeting of foreign ministers of countries in the Quad, a group consisting of the US, India, Japan and Australia.
The State Department has framed his upcoming trip around energy and investment, and the second stop on Rubio’s India visit, Jamnagar, is one of the world’s most important energy hubs.
The visit also comes as fuel prices bite in the US before next month’s midterm elections.
Business Standard, an Indian financial daily, said the Jamnagar stop was significant because Reliance is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude oil besides the US at a time when Washington has been urging India to buy more.
Since US forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and took essential control of the country’s oil industry, the US government has marketed Venezuelan oil to buyers abroad.
Reliance is also investing in a new refinery in Texas, the first to be built in the US in 50 years, which Trump hailed as a $300bn deal when he announced it in March, Business Standard reported.
Villagers sit outside the Jamnagar refinery, run by the Indian business conglomerate Reliance Industries, in Jamnagar, India [File: Manish Swarup/AP]
What did the US ambassador say, and why has it caused upset?
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Thursday, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said Rubio would meet Indian government officials in Mumbai, and Washington “expected” Jaishankar and others from New Delhi to travel there to see him.
Earlier in the week, however, Jaiswal had not confirmed the trip or explained why Rubio was skipping New Delhi, telling reporters the Indian government would announce it “at the appropriate time”, The Hindu newspaper reported.
Jairam Ramesh, a general secretary of the opposition Indian National Congress party, wrote on X that the ambassador’s statement was “quite extraordinary”.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in parliament’s lower house, also took to X to comment, writing on Friday that Rubio had “summoned his employee to Mumbai”.
Congress MP Pawan Khera went further.
“A foreign government summoning India’s External Affairs Minister on Indian soil is a new low, even by the Modi Government’s standards,” he wrote on X, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Why are US-India relations strained?
Mainly because of Trump’s tariffs and Russian oil.
In August last year after a round of trade talks broke down, the US hit most Indian goods with a 50 percent tariff. Under a framework the two sides agreed in February, that rate fell to 18 percent, however.
Since then, negotiations have stalled.
This month, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the talks had “plateaued”, according to The Hindu.
On Thursday, Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said the “first tranche” of a deal was in its final stages but India would not sign until its exporters had an edge over rivals such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia, according to the Reuters news agency.
Other points of friction have emerged.
Last week, US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that his department was suspending eight companies – including the Indian IT giants Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL – from a labour certification scheme that is a key step for employers seeking green cards for their foreign staff.
Sameer Lalwani, a senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote this week that Indian public opinion of the US has hit a record low, citing US engagement with Pakistan and the US-Israel war on Iran, which he said had pushed India back towards Russian oil.
Despite that, he argued, defence and technology cooperation has quietly deepened, and bilateral trade grew by almost 12 percent in 2025 to nearly $240bn.
In his view, “perceptions of the political relationship have deteriorated faster than its strategic foundations.”
A sanctions law had threatened to make matters worse.
Last month, Trump signed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which could impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the five largest importers of Russian oil or gas.
India, one of the world’s biggest buyers of Russian oil, had warned Washington that new tariffs could hurt bilateral ties. Trump signed an executive order seeking to waive the sanctions on Friday as he tries to ease high oil prices before the November 3 US elections.
