Jordan

King Abdullah of Jordan speaks with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas during a welcoming ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah November 21, 2011 (Mohamad Torokman/Courtesy Reuters). Jordan’s king Abdullah made an unusual foray today into the West Bank to meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Given that Jordan’s capital is a ten minute helicopter flight from Ramallah, it is remarkable that the monarch’s last visit there was over a decade ago. But Abbas also has a home in the Jordanian capital, largely obviating the need for—and making all the more unusual—Abdullah’s visit to Ramallah. Abdullah’s visit is even more surprising given Jordan’s current domestic context. Many East Bankers, who form the King’s political base, are worried by (and unusually critical of) the king’s recent efforts to improve ties with Jordan’s Palestinian majority. Some East Bankers, usually the dominant force in Jordanian society, are disproportionately reliant on the government’s patronage and have been hardest hit by the country’s economic woes. The country’s Palestinians, in contrast, tend more toward the private sector where greater opportunities currently exist. Thus, Abdullah’s trip to Ramallah today was all the bolder, given the discomfort it would engender amongst his East Bank base already suspicious of the king’s efforts toward the Palestinians. So why the unusual trip? Abdullah’s visit was no doubt precipitated by Abbas’s upcoming meeting later this week with Hamas’s Khaled Meshal. Many top Palestinians have concluded against the backdrop of developments in Tunisia and Egypt that Islamist parties are on the ascendancy. Closer to home, Israel’s recent prisoner trade of more than one thousand Hamas members for Gilad Shalit has “convinced” many top Palestinians that Israel and the West are now making amends with Islamist parties at Abbas’s expense. Amman’s own efforts to lure Jordan’s Islamic Action Front into the government will have only reinforced that misperception. But Abdullah had another basic objective in seeking out Abbas today: to convince the Palestinian leader to return to negotiations with Israel rather than seek unity with Hamas. Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judah, bluntly noted that the visit was an attempt "to support the resumption of direct negotiations, because the goal is to guarantee the creation of an independent Palestinian state." With Hamas’s leader slated to visit Jordan next week, Abdullah no doubt sought to signal everybody and reassure Abbas that Jordanian sympathies remain with the Fatah-backed Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. Abdullah surely does not want Abbas to go wobbly on Hamas when the two Palestinian faction heads meet later this week in Cairo. It is a reflection of both Abdullah’s increased boldness (he was the first Arab leader to call for Syria’s Assad to step down) and his growing alarm at the current peace process drift that he felt compelled to call upon Abbas to orient his efforts back toward Israel. He sees that diplomatic neglect is sometimes not benign. Moreover, the Jordanians see Abbas edging closer toward a path that will either go nowhere or produce a government with which neither the West nor Israel will want to engage. With so few willing to evidence bold leadership to arrest deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian ties, the king’s move should be commended as a necessary diplomatic intervention.

Awn Khasawneh (pictured on left) accompanies Jordan's late king Hussein in Amman in this photo taken in 1993 (Ali Jarekji/Courtesy Reuters). On Friday, I suggested that a key indicator of Jordan’s future tranquility, in light of recent countrywide demonstrations, will be how King Abdullah addresses the issue of corruption. Today we saw decisive action: Abdullah sacked his prime minister, Marouf Bakhit, and replaced him with Awn Khasawneh, a venerated legal jurist. General Bakhit was not the right man for the job when he was appointed in February of this year, and the chattering classes in Amman immediately recognized it. At the time, Jordanians were clamoring for a new government to tackle the country’s rising commodity prices, political stagnation, and corruption. The appointment of a military man with strong security credentials was not what was needed, and suggested that the King’s priorities were domestic stability, not change. In the subsequent eight months, Bakhit was a reluctant reformer, and his government never gained traction. That was made abundantly clear by the resumption of widespread demonstrations. Today the king got it right. He appointed a Jordanian recognized internationally as a man of the law and in Jordan as a man of reform. With corruption and economic reform topping the Jordanian people’s priorities, Abdullah appointed a new prime minister more suited to tackle these issues. Khasawneh has been a member of the International Court of Justice since 2000 where he is currently its deputy head. A Cambridge-educated expert in law, he previously served on Jordan’s Royal Commission on Legislative and Administrative Reform. Khasawneh has also had extensive government experience, having served as the chief of the Royal Hashemite Court and in numerous top diplomatic assignments. Lest one conclude that Bakhit was a sacrificial lamb offered up to send the protesters home, Abdullah today also sacked the head of the General Intelligence Directorate, Mohammad al Raqqad, and replaced him with a long time veteran, Feisal Shobaki, currently serving as Jordan’s envoy to Morocco. The king is quoted as having spoken this summer of a “tsunami” of change in top posts to enhance his reform efforts. My sources in Amman claim that further changes in the royal palace and elsewhere in the security establishment are under consideration but not yet a certainty. All this suggests an activist effort to appoint a new reform-minded government that can more effectively address the popular demands for better economic conditions and a cleaner government while ensuring that the country’s security establishment is well placed to address the multiple challenges facing the country outside and from within. It all sounds good in theory. Now the hard part: making it work.

A member of the Daaja Jordanian Bedouin tribe holds a poster of Jordanian king Abdullah as he performs during a rally to celebrate the king's birthday in Amman (Ali Jarekji/Courtesy Reuters). With thousands of Jordanians taking to the streets in many parts of the country over the past few Fridays, one must ask if the Hashemite Kingdom is next in line for a serious uprising. Indeed, the most recent protests have brought together a new partnership of Islamists, leftists, trade unions and independents that recall the coalitions formed in Tunisia late last year that led to the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime. Yet a new poll, just released by the International Republican Institute, paints a picture of discontent calling for greater reform, not revolution, in Jordan. Some of the poll’s findings are striking. For example, some 60 percent of Jordanians believe that their country is going in the right direction, while only a quarter believe that things are moving in the wrong one. The poll suggests that Jordanians have become more optimistic that the economy will improve over the next twelve months. This is rather remarkable, when surveying overall trends in Jordan’s neighbors, be it Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or the West Bank. The poll also indicates that popular movements in Jordan, though active, have not captured the imaginations of ordinary Jordanians in the way they have in neighboring Syria or had in the waning days of Mubarak’s Egypt. Only one in five Jordanians aware of the popular youth movements supported their taking to the streets. To be sure, the current government of Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit is widely unpopular in Jordan. Only one in ten respondents are satisfied with him or his government’s performance. Yet King Abdullah and his throne are firmly in place. Abdullah will likely accede to popular discontent and remove the prime minister sometime later this year, just as the Hashemite leader removed the previous head of government in February in the face of popular discontent. Abdullah is taking other steps to keep any discontent focused away from his rule. Two days ago, he promised to hold municipal elections on December 27. Opposition Islamists have threatened to boycott that vote unless the king agrees to the demand that cabinet officials be elected by parliamentary majority, rather than royal fiat. For the king to bend to this demand would dramatically alter the balance of power away from the monarchy within the kingdom. Look to Abdullah to finesse this one without bowing to such a dramatic call. An equally important indicator of Jordan’s future tranquility will be how King Abdullah addresses the issues of corruption and cronyism, which have been major rallying cries in recent demonstrations. The IRI poll indicates that political reform is a lesser priority to Jordanians than economic reform and fighting corruption. Indeed, only one in ten Jordanians see political reform as a priority, whereas half see bread and butter economic issues as dominant. Ultimately, Jordanian leaders, like their counterparts the world over, are going to have to meet the economic challenges facing their countries to maintain popular support. But in a region brimming with discontent, the degree to which Jordanians do not currently share these sentiments is rather striking.

Saudi Arabia has reacted to the Arab Spring by pledging $4 billion in aid to Egypt, and it is expected to help Tunisia as well. Has it become enamored of youthful protests for democracy? The fact that Saudi troops remain in Bahrain, helping crush the movement for greater democracy there, suggests something else is going on. And the invitation from the Gulf Cooperation Council or GCC to Morocco and Jordan to join the group points in the same direction. My theory is this: for the Saudis, it’s fine if citizens of a fake republic like Tunisia or Egypt demand a real republic with real elections and democracy. But they draw the line at monarchies: kings have to stay in charge. So they lecture the kings of Morocco and Jordan to be careful about too many reforms (if the rumors are correct), and invite them to join the Club of Kings that is the GCC. Presumably financial benefits will follow, so long as the kings don’t play around with any experiments that might give Saudi subjects ideas of their own. And in Bahrain, they put down a revolt that might have brought constitutional monarchy—though admittedly that situation appears far more complex in the eyes of  Saudi royals, as the Bahrainis who would be empowered are Shia whose success might give Saudi Shia unacceptable ideas about their own fate. Brezhnev explained himself in 1968 as follows in answering claims that after the “Prague Spring,” Czechoslovakia should be allowed to determine its own fate: “the implementation of such ‘self-­determination,’ in other words Czechoslovakia’s detachment from the socialist community, would have come into conflict with its own vital interests and would have been detrimental to the other socialist states.” The Saudi message may be similar: the implementation of excessive reforms by any king would conflict with his own vital interests and those of other monarchical states, so it will be resisted. Kings have to stick together. Foolish nations that long ago adopted republican forms can go right ahead with their experiments and their revolts.

A street vendor sells nuts during a demonstration against the government in Amman (Muhammad Hamed/Courtesy Reuters) Tabler on Syria Assad: Reformer no more? What is it about assassinations? MEI editor blog and Zeinobia on Sadat’s assassination What will get you arrested in Bahrain these days Mahmood’s Den What’s happening in Jordan Blogger Black Iris on reform One of the worst articles on the Middle East in recent history Vogue on Asma al-Assad Check here in the Wall Street Journal for a great response.

People carry the body of a protester killed on Monday, February 14, 2011 in Bahrain. (Hamad I Mohammed/Courtesy Reuters) The Middle East has for decades seemed to be in permanent stasis, with little political change despite the statistics showing very young and frustrated populations. It was a commonplace that no regime had been overthrown in decades except by force of American arms and aging rulers could expect to die safely in bed. Those years are over. Some thoughts about aspects of the current situation follow. The regimes that have fallen (in Egypt and Tunisia) were fake republics, ruled via stolen elections and phony parliaments. No monarchy has yet succumbed, though Bahrain may be the first. The monarchs appear to have a genuine legitimacy, and in many cases the demands of protesters are for constitutional monarchy rather than for expelling the king and changing to a republican government. The legitimacy of the al Khalifa in Bahrain is perhaps least among the royal families, as it is Sunni and rules over a majority Shia population. But if one compares for example Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Bahrain to Syria, Libya, Algeria, Mubarak’s Egypt, and Saddam’s Iraq, one can see why there is no assumption that republics are more free or more democratic than monarchies. In the recent Arab experience, decent governance and even moves toward public participation in government have been more common in monarchies. (The UAE and Qatar are exceptions, in part because they are so rich they can buy off public discontent and eliminate most poverty, and in part because they have very few citizens compared to the number of foreign guest workers who do not expect to have political rights.) It’s not hard to see why the monarchies are sometimes more liberal: the king or sultan or amir can stand back from politics a bit, allowing governments and ministers to fall when they perform badly or public frustration mounts. The hereditary ruler can also allow criticism of the government, for it is not necessarily criticism of him. A president-for-life cannot; all political activity threatens his grip on power. The parliaments in Bahrain and Kuwait have limited powers, to be sure, but they are not the jokes that the parliaments in fake republics visibly are. Starting with Iraq, democracy has now arrived in the Arab Middle East and it may soon show up in Tunisia and Egypt. If it does, if the outcome of the current struggles is reasonably free and stable, the monarchies will be under pressure for more reform and the fake republics will be under far more. This includes Iran, which is supposed to be an Islamic Republic but has of course become a very repressive dictatorship backed by the Revolutionary Guards’ use of force to stay in power. As the Arab Middle East becomes more democratic, Iran’s bizarre system of velayat-i-faqih (which whatever its religious provenance has come to mean that a few politicized ayatollahs rule and everyone else shuts up or is shut up by the state) will become increasingly intolerable to the Iranian people. It is difficult to see how the frozen politics of Algeria can forever be defended by the army, which rules through President Bouteflika and fraudulent elections, and one can predict trouble there. It is true that Algerians have tasted the costs of terrorism and know that disorder and violence are a terrible thing, but if they come to see a much poorer country like Egypt transition to democracy they will increasingly demand similar political rights. The closest thing to Bahrain’s division between a Sunni ruler and a Shia-majority population is Syria, where the Alawites rule through the Assad family in a Sunni-majority country. The pervasiveness and viciousness of the security organs there may mean, and thus far has meant, that demonstrations are not permitted and critics of the regime are instantly jailed. I wish I thought revolution was near in Syria, and hope I am wrong in thinking this regime will be one of the last to go. The degree of liberalization and political participation varies among the monarchies; in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar there is no real political life beyond the royal court. The Saudis are no doubt nervous about Bahrain, for their prejudices against Shia Muslims and their concerns about Iranian influence mean they will not want a Shia republic just across the causeway. Moreover, they will worry that the Shia who are a majority in their own oil-rich Eastern Province will get ideas about democracy and self-rule. This should lead the Saudi royals to treat those Shia better so as to secure their loyalty, but that argument has been tried and has failed for years in the Kingdom. One hears the occasional speech about ending discrimination against the Shia, but there has been no progress. Enlightened self-interest has not been a hot seller in Riyadh. In Jordan and Morocco there is politics, but the rulers have not been willing to relax their grips enough—meaning they have not yet really come to believe that they are safest if democracy expands. Participation rates in Moroccan elections are low because so many potential voters think all the strings are pulled from the palace anyway; and while the king appears to be widely popular there is growing criticism of the financial and commercial activities of the royals. Political reform in Jordan is always on the agenda, government after government, but never gets very far because it would increase the influence of Palestinians in Jordan at the expense of the East Bankers who form the Hashemite monarchy’s true support base. (Yes, they are all Jordanian citizens, but any conversation with East Bankers finds them referring to “Jordanians” and “Palestinians” quite separately.) Finally, a word about Egypt. What’s going on where the media are not present remains unclear to me; I have been told that the police are not actually maintaining law and order in many places and there is a good deal of disorder outside the major cities. In Cairo the transition has begun, with a constitutional committee now drafting amendments to the most egregious provisions. I am not fearful that the military will seek to retain power and will refuse to go “back to the barracks.” For one thing, Egypt’s economic problems are intractable and the army has no answer to the demands for jobs and bread. It will soon conclude that throwing those problems at civilian, elected officials is a smart move. Moreover, the army need not “govern” Egypt to protect its interests. It needs only to blunt moves to investigate its own economic and financial activities and to reduce its budget. The image of an army that saved the people from dictatorship and then returned to the barracks is the stuff of legend and will help protect the institution against vigorous investigations. What should the U.S. do now? Just two thoughts for the moment. We should offer Egypt a free trade agreement, for the offer can be presented as a generous response to the advent of democracy and can also serve to push Egypt toward a freer market economy. Under the Mubarak regime this was discussed but the Bush Administration pulled back partly in protest against human rights abuses and partly because we believed Mubarak wasn’t serious about it. We thought he wanted a ceremony but would not sign up to a free market. It’s worth a try now. Second, we should be having serious conversations with rulers in friendly countries -–whether fake republics or monarchies-- about how they see the next few months and years and what reform plans they have. If we find that they have none, we should advise them to wise up fast. It will be hard for us to help them if they won’t help themselves. They might ask Hosni Mubarak or Zine el Abidine ben Ali about that.

Wreckage is seen after rioters damaged shops in Maan. (Petra Petra/Courtesy Reuters) APN News: "Rioters in the southern Jordanian city of Maan set fire to government buildings, police cars and businesses on Tuesday to protest the murder of two men earlier this week prompting the government to send security forces to restore order. Witnesses say more than 500 rioters were protesting the lack of arrests after Monday’s killings. Demonstrations filled streets in the desert town about 250 kilometers south of the capital, Amman. Security officials said on Tuesday that they used tear gas to disperse protesters who had attacked government property and damaged private shops. ... Residents say the unrest followed the funeral of two workers from prominent Maan tribes who had been killed in a labor dispute by Bedouins from the powerful Hwaitat tribe. They said Hwaitat members were angered that rival tribes from Maan were employed in their hometown to build a multi-million dollar water project." Jerusalem Post: "Jordanian King Abdullah on Wednesday warned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that "the deadlocked peace process threatens the entire region," AFP reported. Abdullah’s comments to Netanyahu came in a telephone conversation between the two described in a statement released by Jordan. "Efforts for having serious and effective peace talks should continue, based on a two-state solution, which is the only way to achieve regional stability and security," Abdullah reportedly told the prime minister." Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Chapter Four: "The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty. ... “You find me, my dears,” said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great office candles in tin candlesticks which made the room taste strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), “you find me, my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in correspondence with public bodies, and with private individuals anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.” As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very gratifying. “It is gratifying,” said Mrs Jellyby. “It involves the devotion of all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it succeeds."

This publication is now archived. Jordan’s Worst Terrorist Attacks in HistoryThe recent hotel bombings in Jordan will once again shine the spotlight on U.S.-Jordanian relations. On the surface, relations between Amman and Washington seem strong: Jordan is the United States’ fourth-largest recipient of aid; President George Bush last year called Jordan "a force for reform and positive change in the region"; Amman has contributed to the U.S.-led war on terror by backing the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, arresting terror suspects, providing intelligence, and securing its border with Iraq. But anti-U.S. tensions lurk beneath the surface. Experts say the two biggest thorns in the U.S.-Jordanian relationship are the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jordanians came out in droves to protest the 2003 Iraq war. Similarly, a July poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 38 percent of Jordanians surveyed said the main cause of Islamic extremism is U.S. policies in the Middle East—namely its support for Israel. More than half of Jordan’s citizens are of Palestinian descent—270,000 of whom reside in refugee camps. Meanwhile, according to the same poll, support for al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Jordan has jumped from 55 percent in 2003 to 60 percent in 2005 the only Muslim country where al-Qaeda’s leader has not lost popularity besides Pakistan. A number of the most notorious terrorist leaders in recent years have hailed from Jordan, including Abu al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the now-deceased rebel Khattab in Chechnya. "Jordan is a very important base for the development of local jihad," says Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on Islamic terrorism. Experts say another disturbing trend in Jordan, highlighted in the July Pew poll, is that Jordan is the only Muslim country where support for suicide bombs against innocent civilians in defense of Islam has risen, not dropped; a majority of Jordanians—some 57 percent—now say they support suicide bombing, as opposed to 42 percent in 2002. It’s unclear what effect, if any, the recent trio of suicide attacks, which left at least fifty-seven dead and hundreds wounded, will have on public views of these kinds of bombings. "I think it will empower the existing relationship [between the United States and Jordan]," says Samer Abu Libdeh, a Jordanian scholar and visiting research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But it must also quicken the reform and democratization process in order for the king to gain more support among the mass majority and avoid more young radicals and their sympathizers to rise up." A Brief History of U.S.-Jordanian RelationsHistorically, the Sunni Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has been a small, resource-poor country that in recent years has relied increasingly on the support—both monetary and political—of the United States. From 1953 until 1999, Jordan was ruled by King Hussein, a moderate by Middle Eastern standards but still an authoritarian. Besides the so-called Black September crackdown against Jordan-based Palestinian rebels in 1970 that left thousands dead, Jordan has remained relatively stable despite the escalating violence that encircled its borders. Throughout the 1980s,Amman backed Iraq during its war with Iran. In 1990-91, Jordan remained neutral during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Then in 1994, thanks to nudging from the United States, King Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel—a move widely criticized by most Jordanians. In the following years, money from the United States poured into the country, making Jordan, behind Egypt and Israel, the region’s third largest recipient of U.S. aid. Since succeeding his father in 1999, King Abdullah, King Hussein’s eldest son, has pursued what the Economist calls a policy of "studied neutrality." Despite the war’s unpopularity, Jordan officially backed theIraqwar in 2003, although it only provided logistical support and allowed no U.S.military presence on its soil (more recently Jordan has served as a training ground for Iraqi security forces). The war was not only unpopular among Jordanians for political reasons but also for economic ones: Jordan had received subsidized oil from Saddam Hussein’s regime, not to mention a large sector of Jordanian businessmen lost jobs in Iraq because of the war. Much of the U.S.-Jordanian partnership hinges on Amman’s growing unease with Iraq’s Shiite leadership. Jordanians "fear the new Iraqi government has been taken over by Iranian sympathizers," says Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director at the International Crisis Group, and that "radical Shiites of the [Ayatollah] Khomeini brand are going to take over the Gulf and its oil." Earlier this year, King Abdullah famously warned Iraq’s leadership of creating a "Shiite crescent," stretching from Tehran to Beirut. The United States has also put more pressure on Amman to crack down on insurgents who they believe are entering Iraq from Jordan. An estimated 400,000 Iraqis are believed to reside in Jordan, according to the Economist. Many of them are nouveau-riche businessmen who are well-off financially, Hiltermann says, while others have ties to Iraq’s Baath Party and may be abetting the Sunni-led insurgency. In July, Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary of financial crimes at the U.S. Treasury, urged the Jordanian government to enact tougher laws against money laundering used to finance would-be terrorists. Others in Washington have called on Jordanian authorities to restrict the activities of former Baath Party officials, including members of Saddam’s family, who operate out of Jordan. In response, King Abdullah has called for more financial support from the United States, pointing to progress Jordan has made securing its border with Iraq and clamping down on groups like the al-Haramein Brigades, a Saudi Arabia-based terrorist organization, and al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group allegedly behind both the November 9 hotel bombings and the August 19 Katyusha rocket attack that nearly hit a U.S. warship in the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Amman: No Longer Open for Business?Because of its relative safety, doing business in the Middle East often requires a trip to Amman, says Jane Arraf, Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former senior Baghdad correspondent for CNN. The lobbies of the capital’s high-rise hotels are teeming with Western businessmen, U.S. diplomats, foreign aid workers, and expatriate Iraqis. The recent hotel attacks, which experts say were targeted at Westerners, may deal a blow to Amman’s position as an economic hub and preferred place to do business in the region and could put Jordan’s economy "in more of a tailspin," Arraf says. The country, which is devoid of natural resources, relies heavily on foreign aid and tourism and the attacks come as Jordan was seeing real economic and political progress. Growth is just under 8 percent. Jordanian exports to the United States increased from $7 million in 1998 to more than $600 million in 2003, helped along by the 1996 Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) agreement to establish duty-free zones in Israel and Jordan, as well as the U.S.-Jordanian free-trade agreement signed in 2000. To attract more foreign investment, King Abdullah was expected to introduce in the coming weeks a number of reforms aimed at reducing the country’s debt—which may reach $1 billion by the year’s end—lowering unemployment, and boosting stability. Because of the bombings, this new package of needed economic reforms may now be delayed to focus more on security and intelligence, experts say. "No matter what reforms Jordan makes, the perceived risks associated with regional instability will continue to act as a deterrent to potential investors," said Bassem Awadallah, Jordan’s minister of finance, addressing the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s May 5 Special Policy Forum. Still, if confidence is restored, Abu Libdeh says, "[Jordan] remains a much safer place to stay and do business than neighboring countries."

Jane Arraf, the Council’s Edward R. Murrow press fellow, who recently was CNN’s bureau chief in Baghdad, and earlier, the Reuters bureau chief in Amman, says what is striking about the continued terrorist attacks, such as occurred on Wednesday in Amman and Thursday in Baghdad, is the "complete uncertainty" this causes in people’s minds."I think one of the biggest effects of terrorist attacks, like the ones that occurred at the three hotels in Jordan and the ones that you see every day in Baghdad, is how impossible it is now to envision a future that’s secure; it’s impossible to invest money, it’s impossible to make plans, and it has a continuing ripple effect," she says."Jordan has been, as you know, one of the most stable, calmest places in the Middle East—a little oasis, really, between Syria and Iraq and all of that uncertainty and turbulence. And now it’s clearly not."Arraf was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on November 10, 2005.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads for the Middle East today on a rather short visit to Bahrain, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Saudi Arabia, on her way to East Asia. But the news, of course, from the Middle East today is the terrorist attacks in Amman, Jordan, and in the Baghdad restaurant, which are claimed by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. What do you think the overriding atmosphere is in the Middle East these days? Very gloomy, I suppose.Not just gloomy, complete uncertainty. If you start off with Iraq, I think one of the biggest effects of terrorist attacks, like the ones that occurred at the three hotels in Jordan and the ones that you see every day in Baghdad, is how impossible it is now to envision a future that’s secure; it’s impossible to invest money, it’s impossible to make plans, and it has a continuing ripple effect. I think what has happened in Jordan will have a similar sort of effect. Jordan has been, as you know, one of the most stable, calmest places, in the Middle East—a little oasis, really, between Syria and Iraq and all of that uncertainty and turbulence. Now, it’s clearly not.Talk a bit about Jordan, because you were bureau chief there for Reuters and later you were there often as CNN’s bureau chief in Baghdad.If you look at where Jordan was in 1991 during the first Persian Gulf War, when I was based in Jordan, you remember Jordan hung in the balance. King Hussein was thought to be siding with Saddam Hussein. Would the United States continue to support Jordan? Jordan, we have to remember, doesn’t have money, it doesn’t have resources, it has to rely on other countries. It has a splintered population. So, we went from that, where really the economy of Jordan was in trouble and the future was uncertain to a country that gets a tremendous amount of foreign aid from almost everyone, that’s seen as a buffer state in the midst of all the violence. If you go to Amman these days, it’s full of Starbucks, luxury hotels. It’s always thought of as the Switzerland of the Middle East. You might think if you were only in Amman, "Gosh what a prosperous, calm country." That’s slightly misleading because there have been tensions under the surface. There are an awful lot of young, unemployed people. There is poverty in many parts of the country. You don’t have to go very far outside of the main city center to see that poverty. There are a lot of rifts there. Lately it’s done very well economically because it has relied on foreign aid and tourism, which have worked for them. Politically, it has done tremendously well in keeping that middle ground, in being seen as the hope of "moderate Islam." Of course, Jordan has signed a peace treaty with Israel. When was that? 1994?Yes.That’s helped it out with the United States immensely, obviously. They participate, as does Egypt, in this special trade agreement by which if some goods have components made in Israel, they get some tariff-free treatment entering the United States.Yes, but that by itself hasn’t proved to have tremendous impact, just because Jordan so far has not been able to get those industries and get real value-added products going to the United States in a way that would really make a difference to the economy. What it has done was to try to remake itself as a banking center. As you mentioned, there is a lot of money that’s flown into Jordan. It started in 1991 when the Palestinians and Jordanians were expelled from Kuwait. They brought all their money to Jordan—that’s really when the economic revitalization started. Now, with the latest war in 2003, it became a haven for rich Iraqis. Not every Iraqi could come to Jordan, but certainly the ones with money were encouraged and allowed to come and that’s changed the dynamic somewhat. It has created a flow of money into the country, but that has raised prices and created some resentment among Jordanians. Overall, it has made Jordan an economically vital place.What is security like in Jordan? In other words, were these hotel explosions completely unexpected?No, you’ll recall that there have been attempts like this before. There have been other attempts planned, but they were foiled. Security is very deceptive. Jordan, of course, has been trying to encourage tourists to come and has been relatively successful. So, if you land in Amman, the airport personnel, unless they have reason to be suspicious of you, will be extremely friendly. You can get into a taxi without fear, you can drive to the capital, and you can check into a hotel without being searched, without going through a metal detector. Unless you’re playing quite close attention, you would never really see the security in most hotels. That doesn’t mean that there is no security; it is one of those countries that is under quite tight control, there are a lot of secret police, there are a lot of plain clothes security. They will be in the hotels. You won’t necessarily see them if you’re not looking. I see. If you’re a Westerner, in particular, they’ll probably let you go more easily, too.Yes. Absolutely. There is nothing that Arabs are more afraid of than other Arabs. These hotels—the Radisson, the Hyatt, and the Days Inn that were hit—the Days Inn obviously is not a luxury hotel.It’s not. The Days Inn was basically a budget hotel, but it was a hotel that Gulf visitors would stay at as well as United Nations types and people who didn’t have huge expense accounts; tourists from the region would stay there. It’s a small hotel.I wonder why they picked that one.I would say that it’s a target of opportunity. If they really wanted to hit at a hotel that was a symbol of rich tourists or American officials, it would not have been any of those three. The hotels where those people stay are much more heavily guarded. Which ones are those? Four Seasons?There are other hotels that are much more high profile. The Hyatt is a five-star hotel where you would get a lot of foreigners and you’d get a lot of conferences. One of the things that Jordan has been able to do is basically become a back door to Iraq. It’s been very hard to get a hotel room in Jordan in the last year because it’s always full of conferences particularly dealing with Iraq. Instead of going to Baghdad, which is too dangerous, people will come to Amman to talk about doing business in Iraq, for instance.Unfortunately, in the Radisson, there was a wedding going on. Are weddings fairly common in these hotels?Yes, it’s hard to walk into a hotel without stumbling over a wedding. It was a Jordanian wedding in a middle-class hotel. Once again, it’s a place where some foreigners would stay but a lot of Jordanians and a lot of regional tourists would have stayed there as well. As former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN, do you have any thoughts about Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi being in this country, meeting with Secretary Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney? It’s unclear to me what the impression is of Chalabi in Iraq.It’s a fascinating story. When he first came back, you would actually see graffiti on the walls saying, "Ahmed the thief," because he had been convicted in Jordan of defrauding a bank there. He carried this baggage with him and people generally did not trust him. He consolidated his power. He is a master politician to the extent that he reinvented himself as a Shiite. He is Shiite, but he never before professed the desire to be a Shiite leader, but all of the sudden he was meeting with [Shiite leader Grand] Ayatollah [Ali] al-Sistani, who is absolutely revered. Now, he seems to have reinvented himself again to become more secular. People don’t necessarily like him, they don’t necessarily trust him, but they know they have to deal with him. I’ve asked other politicians in Baghdad what it is with Amed Chalabi, why it is that he succeeds so well, and I’ve been told that the man is simply unstoppable. He’s a master politician, he knows how to compromise, he knows when to compromise, he knows how to play hardball. If you look at where he came from—being accused of being one of the main reasons that the United States was misled on weapons of mass destruction and still under investigation for possible involvement in sending intelligence to Iran—it is absolutely remarkable that he is where he is now. Before he came to the United States on this current trip, he was in Iran seeking the backing of the Iranians. I thought that was really bizarre.In the absence of really experienced politicians or anyone who commands any real diverse following in Baghdad, he is seen as someone, whatever you think of him, who can command enough followers, get enough votes, reach out to enough political players. So he is seen as the least of the evils now. Is he a possible prime minister?A lot of people are saying he’s a possible prime minister, and when you ask Iraqis, I really think that many Iraqis would elect Saddam himself if they thought Saddam would restore stability. Chalabi is someone who is seen as a strong guy, whatever else people think of him, and they think that he can muster, not just the political will but the military will as well.He doesn’t have any militias of his own, does he?That’s a really touchy subject. A lot of people would call his security apparatus a militia. He obviously does not.I see. He had an alliance for a while with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, right? I guess he doesn’t have that anymore.He’s had alliances with almost everyone. One of the interesting recent developments in Iraqi politics is that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, through one of his spokesman, says he’s not going to back any particular party in these next elections [December 15 for a new National Assembly], which should make it much more diverse, because covering the elections there last January, what I found, was people didn’t really obviously sit down and think, "Well, who’s the best candidate? What will he do for me?" If they thought about it at all, they automatically went to what Sistani believed would be good for them if they were Shiite.What do you hear on the military and the security situation in Iraq? The headlines all suggest that it gets worse rather than better. The United States has been fighting battles up north at the Syrian border but it looks like the cities are open to terrorist attacks.Well, near the Syrian border is part of that huge expanse of western al-Anbar province, which is fully one-third of the country and the coalition has never had enough troops there. Sometimes, they’ve only had several hundred American troops. What happens there is that, because they haven’t had enough troops and because they’ve had to basically put out fires in places like Fallujah, they’ve pulled the troops to the places they’ve been needed more. So, that’s left a vacuum in cities throughout that area, in Haditha all the way up to the Syrian border. When the U.S. troops withdraw, there are no Iraqi troops, there are no Iraqi police in most of these places, there are no functioning governments. The insurgents come in and they stay, so what they’re having to do is go back into the same cities that they launched raids and attacks in months previously, because the insurgents have come back when the United States forces have left. They simply do not have enough Iraqi forces to go into a city and leave the Iraqi forces there across the area. The Syrian border is very interesting. It still remains a huge problem according to the military. Foreign fighters come across from Syria and it’s in places like Husaybah near the Syrian border, where there has recently been fighting.President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said today in a speech that Syria is not responsible for the border. That’s a huge border. The feeling among the military and intelligence analysts is not so much that Syria is actively sending these people across the border but that they could and should be doing more to stop them. One of the things that I’ve seen when I’ve been in towns near the Syrian border where they found passports of foreign fighters, is if you look at the routes they’ve traveled, they’ve all come through Damascus. Some of them come from Saudi Arabia, for instance, but Saudi Arabia will not let young men they think might be a threat go directly from Saudi Arabia to Damascus. So you see them flying to the Gulf then flying to Damascus and then coming across.One last question: Let’s talk about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who heads the terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq. What is he thought of in Jordan? Is he a popular figure?No. We have to remember that Jordan, because it’s a small, vulnerable country, has always struggled with being caught between Iraq and Israel. People there really yearn to have a stable life and jobs and it’s essentially a moderate population. Having said that, Zarqawi is a product of that country and many people would say the fact that there is a huge economic gap between the rich and the poor there, as there is in most Arab countries, he will have some support for his ideas, if those ideas exist in the sense that there still is a lot of resentment there, as there is in other countries, toward Israel certainly, and toward the United States for propping up Israel. But that does not extend to supporting bombs that kill Jordanians at wedding parties.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionRelations between Iraq and its Arab neighbors have worsened in recent weeks, highlighted by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s September 5 criticism of Arab leaders for failing to express sympathy or offer aid in the wake of the August 31 stampede that left nearly 1,000 Iraqi Shiites dead. “We stood with our Arab brothers in their hard times,” Talabani told reporters, referring to recent terrorist attacks in Egypt; he called their silence “gross negligence.” The stampede marked the largest one-day death toll since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.Talabani was also responding to criticism from Arab leaders about Iraq’s newly drafted constitution, experts say. Amre Moussa, secretary of the Arab League, of which Iraq is one of the founding members, admonished Iraqi leaders for failing to meet Sunni demands to include a provision in the constitution calling Iraq an Arab state as well as an Islamic country. Talabani, a Kurd, says such a provision is unnecessary and unfair to Iraq’s religious and ethnic minorities. “The other [Arab constitutions] do not have this text…Why do they not make such a demand from Sudan? Why this insistence on demanding it from Iraq? They know Iraq is a multinational country,” Talabani said. Iraqi leaders have also criticized their Arab neighbors for not establishing diplomatic missions in Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi leaders say restoring their presence would help bolster the new government’s legitimacy. But Arab leaders say deploying diplomats to Iraq is still too dangerous, particularly after an Egyptian and two Algerian diplomats were slain by foreign insurgents in July. Arab foreign ministers are slated to hold a meeting in Cairo October 1 to address, among other issues, restoring full-fledged diplomatic relations with Iraq . Foreign financing of the Iraqi insurgencyIraqi leaders have recently accused neighboring Arab states, especially Jordan and Syria , of abetting the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq by allowing Baathist sympathizers to finance insurgent activity from abroad. In Jordan, for instance, many of these finances flow from relatives of Saddam Hussein, who “have huge sums of money.” They “are supporting political and media activities and other efforts to revive the Baath Party,” Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Iraq ’s prime minister, told the New York Times August 22. Jordan’s King Abdullah, one of the United States’ staunchest allies in the region, has not commented publicly about the accusations but claims his country has been tough on terrorism by securing its long border with Iraq and clamping down on extremist organizations based in Jordan. Jordanian officials have arrested several members of the al-Haramein Brigades and al-Qaeda in Iraq , the terrorist group led by Jordanian-born Abu al-Zarqawi that was allegedly behind the August 19 Katyusha rocket attack that nearly struck a U.S. warship in a Jordanian port. The financing comes largely from private, not public, sources, experts say. “I suppose if Saddam had lots of money outside of Iraq, it’s just a guess, maybe some of this money is used to finance the Baathists,” says Reuven Paz, an Israeli terrorism expert. “As to Iraq’s Islamic [insurgency], I suspect it comes from private Saudi sources.” Still, some Iraqi leaders suspect the authorities in these Arab states are turning a blind eye to the flow of funds. “There’s no reason for these states to support [this financing] except for their general sympathy for their fellow Sunnis,” says Jeffrey White, Berrie Defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Some experts say Iraq’s charges against Jordan are overblown. The country has begun to curb the activities of its large Iraqi community of Baathist sympathizers. “The Jordanian government is looking much more closely at [Saddam’s] family and restricting them and their activities,” says Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director at the International Crisis Group. But more could be done, says Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary of terrorist financing and financial crimes at the U.S. Treasury, who urged Jordan in July to enact tougher laws against money laundering and develop better financial intelligence. Arab views on Iraqi federalismMany of Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors are uneasy about Iraqi federalism—the division of power and wealth between its regions and Baghdad. Moussa, who heads the Arab League, called the constitution’s clauses on federalism “dangerous” and “a recipe for chaos.” Some Arab leaders fear the splintering of Iraq into oil-rich regions run by Kurds in the north and Shiite clerics in the south. “The mainline view [in the Arab world] is Iraq should stay together and stay an effective political unit,” White says. “Their concern is that Kurdish autonomy and potentially Shiite autonomy will leave some kind of rump of a state left over [for Sunnis].” Other Arab leaders are worried by what they perceive as Iran’s growing influence over Iraq’s Shiite leadership, experts say. Earlier this year, King Abdullah of Jordan warned Iraq ’s leadership against creating a “Shiite crescent,” stretching from Iran to Lebanon. “The Jordanians fear the new Iraqi government has been taken over by Iranian sympathizers and is basically a proxy for Iran,” Hiltermann says. “They fear radical Shiites of the [Ayatollah] Khomeini brand are going to take over the Gulf and its oil. Keep in mind Jordan has no oil.” Arab views on Iraqi insurgencyA small but visible number of the insurgents in Iraq hail from Arab states in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. Some Iraqi leaders have accused these states, particularly Syria, of not doing enough to shut down the insurgency’s “underground railroad” over Iraq’s borders, White says. “No question Syria has a good idea of what’s going on. It’s a question of using the powers of a police state to chase down and extradite those involved in the insurgency.” Jordan, for example, is doing much more to stem the flow of insurgents—and financing—into Iraq than Syria, despite the fact that “the Jordanian state is weaker than the Syrian state,” says Daniel Byman, senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “The Jordanian security forces are very organized and they do their best to protect the border from any attack from Jordanian soil either toward Israel or toward Iraq,” Paz says. Hence, most smuggling of insurgents into Iraq—and U.S. combat missions designed to stop it—is occurring along the Iraq-Syria border. There appears to be widespread sympathy among the Arab people for Iraq’s Sunni insurgency, experts say, particularly in Jordan, with its sizable population of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees largely hostile to U.S. foreign policy in the region. “Jordan is a very important base for the development of local jihad,” Paz says, but argues that average Jordanians do not support the Sunni or foreign jihadi insurgents in Iraq. A July poll by the Pew Research Center, however, found that Jordan was the only Middle East country where support for suicide bombings against civilians, in Iraq or elsewhere, has risen. Another Pew poll released in June found just 21 percent of Jordanians had a favorable impression of the United States.