DAMASCUS - Iraq may not be able to export
"democracy" to Jordan, but it already exports
jihadis to the US's strongest ally in the Middle
East.
More than 10,000 soldiers and 300
surveillance towers are positioned along the
Syrian-Iraqi border. Yet there's none of this on
the Jordanian-Iraqi border, and battle-hardened
veterans in the Iraqi theater are streaming back,
especially to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and
Kuwait, their home countries. Some estimates
suggest that there might be about 5,000 jihadis
from the Gulf in Iraq.
The Iraq-Jordan link was
vividly illustrated when three Katyusha rockets
were fired at a
US Navy ship in the Jordanian Red Sea
port of Aqaba on August 19.
All of them missed - one landed on a warehouse,
killing a Jordanian soldier, another near a public
hospital and the third in the resort of Eilat,
nine miles from Aqaba.
Created by the
Soviets in the 1930s, Katyusha rockets have no
history of precision, but
they were enough to inflict damage on Jordan's
reputation.
This
was the most serous attack on US targets in Jordan
since the killing of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in
Amman in 2002. Authorities announced that the
architects of the Aqaba attack
were linked to Jordanian Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who has been
accused and convicted in absentia for Foley's
murder in Jordan in 2002.
Jordanian
officials identified the culprits of the Aqaba
bombing as Mohammad Hamid Hassan, an Iraqi known
by the code name Abu Mukhtar, and Mohammad Hassan
Abdullah al-Sahli, a Syrian from the conservative
town of Hama in the Syrian heartland. He had
fought the Americans in Iraq, been wounded and
came to Jordan in December 2004. Sahli, who had
been part of a dormant al-Qaeda cell in Amman, was
arrested. He entered Jordan on a forged Iraqi
passport, under guidance of Zarqawi.
Although the al-Qaeda attack did not
result in serious damage, it did, however, inflict
a heavy blow to Jordan, which since September 11
has been effective in combating terrorism and
containing violence - which is why al-Qaeda would
want to target it as an ally of the US.
Despite its reputation of efficiency, the
terrorists found loopholes in Jordanian security
and were able to smuggle arms into the country,
and further attacks can be expected, which would
be a setback for the country, which has already
tightened security. Further trouble could
transform the kingdom into a semi-police state,
and ruin tourism.
The attack also confirms
that terrorism is on the rise in Jordan. A recent
poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew
Research Center shows that out of six surveyed
Muslim countries, Jordan was the one with the
highest degree of support for terrorism. Only 10%
of Jordanians saw terrorism as a threat to Jordan,
while a staggering 87% were not opposed to it.
In Pakistan, for example, support for
terrorism had dropped to 25% in 2005 from 41% in
2004. In Morocco, it was 40% in 2004, and now it
is only 13%. In Lebanon, it was 73% and has
dropped to 26%. In Turkey, it has remained at a
low 14%. Probably, there is a margin of error in
the results, but they show that if not combated
immediately, fundamentalism and militancy will
become dangerous for Jordan.
The Iraqi
nexus Until the end of 2003 there were
three major Salafi jihadi outfits in Iraq: Ansar
al-Islam in the north, Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna
(operating between Mosul and Baghdad) and
Zarqawi's network, Jamaa al-Tawhid wal-Jihad.
Zarqawi's crucial and deadly business expansion in
2003-2004 happened because more than 200 Jordanian
jihadis - mostly from Zarqa and al-Salt and some
of them members of traditional Jordanian clans -
joined him in the Sunni triangle and proclaimed
him their emir.
The key cleric
legitimizing their operations was also a Jordanian
- Omar Yussef Joumoua, also known as Abu Anas
al-Shami. This led to the now-notorious move of
Zarqawi pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda in October
2004, when Zarqawi's network adopted its current
denomination, al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two
Rivers (Tanzim al-Qaeda fi Bilad al-Rafidayn), and
Osama bin Laden recognized Zarqawi as the
jihadi-in-chief in Iraq in a December 2004
audiotape.
The strategy of al-Qaeda in the
Land of the Two Rivers is not Jordanian, though:
it is dictated by the Saudi branch of al-Qaeda.
The strategy is spelled out in a series of
documents supervised by Sheikh Yussef al-Ayeeri.
The most strategic of these documents is called
"Iraq al-jihad, awal wa akhtar" (The jihad in
Iraq, hopes and dangers). It's all there:
centralized resistance in Sunni Arab cities and
villages; close collaboration with Saddam
Hussein's former Mukhabarat (intelligence)
officers; attacks against other members of the
coalition to isolate the Americans and the new
Iraqi defense forces; keeping an atmosphere of
chaos at all costs; and, crucially, disrupting by
all means the flow of oil. Another point of the
document is now becoming clear: the setting up of
jihadi networks in the Shi'ite south capable of
protecting Sunni minorities in case of civil war -
a de facto situation considering the escalation of
sectarian killings.
Political Islam in
Jordan The roots of political Islam in
Jordan date to the establishment of the Jordanian
Muslim Brotherhood, which was created on November
19, 1945 by Abdulatif Abu Qura, as a branch of the
mother organization created in Egypt by the
spiritual leader Hasan al-Banna in 1928.
Apart from believing in political Islam,
however, the similarity between the Jordanian
Brotherhood and al-Qaeda ends there. The
organization's founding document read: "Jordan is
an inseparable part of the Muslim World.
Government in accordance with the Sharia of Allah
is the objective and aspiration of the Brotherhood
in this life."
The Jordanian Brotherhood
was a political party, with no military agenda -
very different from al-Qaeda and Zarqawi. Over the
years, however, Jordanians enchanted by political
Islam began to lose faith in the Brotherhood's
peaceful agenda, and turn to more radical
organizations for salvation. These radicals
remained minimal, unlike other neighboring Islamic
countries, because the Jordanian government
courted, talked with and appeased them at various
stages over the past 50 years, always defusing
their anger and preventing it from becoming
aggressive and violent.
The Brotherhood
engaged peacefully in political life, but becoming
more radical in their demands and aspirations
after Jordan's defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of
1967. Arab nationalism, they claimed, as well as
existing Arab regimes, were unable to save the
Arab and Muslim world from defeat and occupation.
The time was ripe for an overthrow of the existing
order and its replacement with Muslim leaders who
respected Islam and would follow a holy war
(jihad) for the emancipation of Palestine.
The victory of the Islamic revolution of
Iran in 1979, the murder of president Anwar Sadat
of Egypt in 1981 by fanatical Muslims after
signing a peace treaty with Israel and the jihad
in Afghanistan against the invading Soviet Army in
1979 all raised the moral of Islamic parties in
the Arab world.
Even then, however,
Jordanian Islamists knew that revolution in Amman
was unlikely and the most they could aspire to was
parliamentary seats from which they could market
their political program. After the war of 1967,
Jordan's late King Hussein suspended parliament,
ruling Jordan on his own until re-convening it,
after matters had settled, in 1984.
In the
1980s, the Islamists tested their popularity on a
municipal level, scoring a huge victory in such
elections in the town of Madaba, (35 kilometers
from Amman). This alarmed Jordanian authorities,
who began a purge of Islamic elements from the
government and the private sector. Influential
people who were members in Islamic societies, or
affiliated with them, were dismissed from office.
Most of those to suffer from the witchhunt were
university professors, school teachers and
engineers.
Rising tension led to the
outbreak of widespread disturbances in April 1989,
fueled by the Brotherhood. By the summer of 1989,
the king decided to control matters through the
ballots. Giving the Islamists their private dose
of democracy and making them partners in
government, would defuse their aggression, as in
the case of Egypt and Syria, where the Brotherhood
had turned violent - very violent - against the
government.
King Hussein's plan worked.
The Brotherhood won 22 out of the 27 seats for
which they were competing. They had expected to
win 10, while the authorities estimated that they
would get no more than six. They joined the
cabinet of prime minister Mudar Badran, and once
in power, began to quarrel among themselves and
with the authorities, especially during the Gulf
War of 1991 and when Jordan signed a peace
agreement with Israel in 1994.
Also,
democratic as they had been, the Islamists were
unable to advance their promised agenda once in
government and parliament, and as a result their
seats in the chamber dropped from 22 to 16 in
1993. In 1989, they had won with 70% of
parliament. In 1993, it became no more than 35%.
By 1997, the Brotherhood had been voted out of
parliament.
By courting them and making
them partners in government, King Hussein was
giving them a sense of responsibility, and making
them shoulder failure with the government. Since
then, the Brotherhood has remained active in the
political life of Jordan, competing and at times
harmonizing with authorities. On the whole,
however, they have been outflanked by more
attractive, younger, radical Islamic movements
since their voting out of office in the 1990s.
Their popularity has been reduced greatly and
instead Islamic allegiance has gone to new,
unofficial parties led by a younger generation of
Muslim leaders, from Jordan and the Arab world. It
is this generation that carried out the Aqaba
attack on August 19.
Terror taking
roots One of the organizations to outflank
not only the Jordanian Brotherhood but also all
other traditional Islamic parties in the Middle
East is Jund al-Sham, a terrorist organization
originally founded by Zarqawi in Afghanistan in
late 1999, reportedly, with US$200,000 as a
start-up cost from bin Laden.
Its
objective was to penetrate the borders of the
Middle East and target not only Jordan (Zarqawi's
home country, which he hated and wanted to
destroy), or bin Laden's Saudi Arabia, (which he
also hated and wanted to destroy).
Rather,
the targets were located in Syria, Lebanon, Qatar,
Egypt and Palestine. Zarqawi recruited many
Jordanians into his organization, as well as
Syrians who had been members in the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood.
They were trained in
explosives and chemical weapons in a camp in the
western Afghan city of Heart, near the border with
Iran. Due to the crackdown on Islamic
fundamentalism after the September 11 attacks,
Jund al-Sham was disbanded, in what seemed to be a
permanent move, not making its comeback until
March 2004 with an attack in Doha, Qatar.
In May 2004, American Nick Berg was killed
in Iraq. In the footage of his beheading, a masked
Zarqawi appears on screen, identifies himself (his
voice was confirmed by US Central Intelligence
Agency - CIA - specialists) and murders Berg. In
September 2004, Zarqawi's team kidnapped and
beheaded US engineer Eugene Armstrong in Baghdad.
Zarqawi returned to Jordan from
Afghanistan and was arrested in 1992, spending
seven years in jail, accused of wanting to topple
the monarchy and establish an Islamic state. When
released in 1999, he was involved in trying to
blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman. He is
also a prime suspect in the Madrid bombings of
March 2004, which killed 191 people, and the
assassination of Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah
al-Hakim, in the Holy City of Najaf in Iraq.
In all, Zarqawi is accused of 700 killings
in Iraq. His most infamous feat is the bombing of
the Canal Hotel, which served as UN headquarters
in Iraq, in August 2003, killing 22 people and UN
envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Currently, there is
a US$25 million reward on Zarqawi's head - the
same amount offered by the US for bin Laden's
head.
The question that arises today is:
how is it that this man, remembered by those who
knew him as a petty criminal, a simple and barely
literate high-school drop-out, has managed to send
shockwaves throughout the civilized world and
cause so much horror and havoc since 2003?
It is believed that he now holds more
power in al-Qaeda than bin Laden himself because
of his reputation and credit as having led the
insurgency in Iraq since 2003, while bin Laden's
latest memorable achievement is September 11.
Zarqawi announced his allegiance to
al-Qaeda in October 2004, and on December 27, 2004
bin Laden sent a tape to Doha-based al-Jazeera TV,
describing Zarqawi as "the prince of al-Qaeda in
Iraq". He called on his followers to listen to
Zarqawi and obey his command.
Some claim
that Zarqawi is dead, because no signs of him
being alive have appeared since early 2004. Other
speculation describes Zarqawi as "a myth". This is
supported by those who argue that this myth was
created from faulty US intelligence reports.
Although false, these reports well suited the
political agenda of President George W Bush. He
needed a new enemy in Iraq to justify his army
being there, and with Saddam behind bars since
2003 and bin Laden on the loose since 2001, there
was no better enemy than Zarqawi.
It is
unlikely that Zarqawi does not exist. It is also
strange to believe that he could have been dead
for more than a year, since all CIA reports
claimed that his death would be a severe blow to
the insurgency. Nothing in Iraq shows that the
insurgency has suffered a blow over the past 12
months. In fact, it is getting stronger.
If anything, however, the Zarqawi case and
the Aqaba bombings show that the terrorist threat
is not only based in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as has
been the case since 2003, but in traditionally
peaceful and secure countries like Jordan.
This was also made clear earlier this
summer when Syria, another country famed for its
tight security and effective measures in combating
Islamic fundamentalism, suffered several terrorist
attacks in the capital Damascus and its vicinity.
Political Islam is on the rise. Whether
the seculars and moderates like it or not, in
Jordan, Syria or elsewhere, the Islamic movement
is still around, and in pure democracies would
gain a strong hand in many Arab countries.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
(Additional
reporting by Pepe Escobar in Amman,
Jordan.)
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were linked to Jordanian Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who has been
accused and convicted in absentia for Foley's
murder in Jordan in 2002. 
