Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan has been a nation living in an uneasy
relationship with the Sunni Islamist movement. With a population more than 50%
Palestinian, Jordan became an ever-more useful place for Palestinian radicals
to hang their hats while preparing plans to destroy Israel.
Under King Hussein bin Talal (1952 to 1999), the radicals were allowed to be in
Jordan, but the country's pervasive and effective security services moderated
the domestic problems they caused, save for flashes of admittedly intense
violence. Over time - and
after another war - King Hussein also became a central player in the
Arab-Israeli peace process, earning the animosity of some of Jordan's
Palestinian guests, as well as those of Jordan's domestic Islamist leaders, the
Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and other Islamist organizations - most of whom
enjoyed external funding from the Gulf.
To say that Jordan was always one step ahead of Islamist trouble probably is
fair, but King Hussein proved to be a deft political operator and managed both
to keep the security lid on and maintain popularity among the people.
Then Hussein died, his son Abdullah took the throne, and the United States-led
coalition invaded Iraq, all of which yielded a significantly more dangerous
internal security environment for Jordan. The new king, Abdullah, was not made
of the same stern stuff and craftiness as his father and he seemed to exude a
Westernized persona that did not sit well with the country's Islamists.
While this weakness might have been overcome in time, Abdullah soon encountered
a situation in which he first aligned Jordan with Washington's post-9/11 "war
on terror"; then with its invasion of Iraq - for which it was rewarded by a
doubling of US aid in 2004 and continuing increases since; and finally with the
West's aid-boycott of the Hamas-led government in Gaza.
The Amman regime began running hospitals in Fallujah in Iraq and Mazar-i-Sharif
- the latter in North Atlantic Treaty Organization-occupied Afghanistan - and
soon after paid the price for supporting US policy in Iraq with attacks on its
interests and personnel within Iraq. Most importantly, Jordan now faced a world
in which the durable shield of Saddam Hussein's Iraq - which had prevented the
entry of large numbers of Sunni jihadis from the Gulf and South Asia - was
shattered.
Of the Levant's Arab states, Jordan suffered quickly and most severely from the
US-led coalition's destruction of the anti-jihadi bulwark Saddam's Iraq
reliably provided on Jordan's eastern border. The end of Saddam's reign vastly
increased Jordan's domestic security problems:
Jordan's domestic Islamists and their organizations not only resented King
Abdullah's decision to support both of Washington's wars, but they quickly
moved to incite young Jordanian Muslims to go to Iraq and fight the foreign
occupiers.
These groups also assisted non-Jordanian Muslims from across the Islamic
community to securely transit the country and enter Iraq to join the
mujahideen. That the Islamists' anti-US and anti-regime attitudes found
increased popular support after the invasion of Iraq is evident in the success
of the Islamic Action Front (the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm) in winning
17 seats in Jordan's parliament in the 2003 election, the largest single group
in that 110-seat body. This total dropped to six in the 2007 election when the
Front ran candidates in only 30 seats because of the regime's failure to follow
through with promised electoral reforms.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq also gave unexpected scope to the lethal
talents of a Jordanian named Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, who quickly rose from being
the leader of his own small group to being named the commander of al-Qaeda in
Iraq. Zarqawi's organization continued expanding inside Jordan while he was in
Iraq - including with some success in the country's military - and his heroic
style and successful military operations inspired a large number of young
Jordanian men. Since al-Zarqawi's death, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups
cite what they describe as his "knightly example" as an element of their
propaganda products.
The willingness of the US-led coalition to condone a quiet campaign of ethnic
cleansing by Iraqi Shi'ites drove enormous numbers of Iraq's Sunnis abroad. For
Jordan this meant hosting 500,000 to 800,000 Iraqi refugees - some estimates
range up to a million. Most of these refugees entered the country illegally and
so are only slowly becoming known to the security services. In addition, the
refugee population contains a proportion of Iraqi Shi'ites, and their presence
in the country is sharpening sectarian differences in overwhelmingly Sunni
Jordanian society. The large refugee presence, moreover, probably ensures that
Jordan would be the scene of fighting between its Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite
guests if Iraq slips into civil war.
Most recently, the apparently temporary success of the US military "surge" in
Iraq resulted in a large number of al-Qaeda and Sunni fighters deciding to
leave western Iraq for safe havens abroad, a majority of them heading for
Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. As a result, Jordanian security services are now
confronting the potential for trouble posed not only by would-be mujahideen who
have been unable to get through Jordan to Iraq, but also by veteran fighters
angry that they had to leave Iraq.
In response to these realities, the Amman government clamped down on Islamist
activities within the country, especially after Zarqawi's forces launched
missiles against Israel from Jordanian territory and bombed the Radisson Hotel
in the capital. Jordanian authorities harassed Islamist parliamentary deputies
who expressed condolences for Zarqawi; imprisoned a poet writing verse praising
Bin Laden; acted to put the authority for issuing fatwas under a
state-appointed council; and made state approval necessary before mosque
clerics could begin preaching.
After Islamist violence increased in Jordan, Abd-al-Bari Atwan, the editor of
London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, wrote, "The most dangerous thing that could
result from these bombings is the Jordanian government's exploitation of them
to impose more restrictive security measures on the pretext of confronting
terrorism."
Atwan's worst-case scenario appears to have come to pass, although it is not
clear Amman had any other choice. The government has passed more stringent
anti-terrorism laws, and the security services have used them in ways that
increased the alienation of much of the Islamist community, especially in the
Islamist-heavy towns of Zarqa, Ma'an, Salt and the Palestinian refugee camp
near the city of Irbid. The government's heavy hand in checking the Islamists
has undermined King Abdallah's efforts to increase his popularity and
reinforced the Islamists' negative assessment of Abdallah and his regime as
"the West's favorite ally".
Jordan is not, of course, in immediate danger of being swept by an Islamist
tide; the domestic Islamist movement is not powerful enough to take power by
force, the country's security services are formidable, and the government will
not permit a fair general election.
Still, Jordan's long-term stability is precarious because of the Iraq war's
negative impact on a society constantly threatened by destabilization because
of its Palestinian population and support for the Western-advocated
Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
As in the case of Lebanon and Syria, the end of the Saddam-maintained barrier
preventing the entry of most Sunni militants into the Levant through Iraq has
left Jordan to face not only its own growing Islamist community - the growth of
which is in part due to Amman's support for the Iraq war - but also an inflow
of foreign Islamists, some of whom are veteran mujahideen and many of whom
appear to be Saudi-style Salafists.
From al-Qaeda's perspective the situation in Jordan is progressing in a
favorable manner. Bin Laden has long targeted the Hashemite monarchy because of
its refusal to allow the mujahideen to launch raids from Jordan into Israel.
Al-Qaeda itself has had a shadowy presence in Jordan, first led by Bin Laden's
late brother-in-law Muhammad Jamal Khalifah, almost since its inception in
1988. Bin Laden and his lieutenants surely see Jordan as a target for
destabilization, as well as a place from which al-Qaeda can establish a
presence capable of attacking Israel.
NEXT: Palestine and Israel
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004.
He served as the chief of the Bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center
from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris:
Why the West is Losing the War on Terror; his most recent book is Marching
Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq. Dr Scheuer is a Senior Fellow with
The Jamestown Foundation.
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