AMMAN — It was no coincidence that on the day that Jordanian intelligence services were involved in the successful effort to kill Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II was holding official talks in Amman with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. These parallel efforts symbolize key aspects of the security challenges that face many Arab countries.
The underlying forces that foment these challenges are becoming more diverse and intertwined. Zarqawi was a phenomenon that encapsulates the complex mesh of forces fueling contemporary terror movements and threatening state stability in the Arab region. These include political, territorial, socio-economic, national, personal identity, and traditional police/security issues, including foreign military occupations in Iraq and Palestine.
To find out more about how such security threats are perceived and fought, I came here to Amman, Jordan, a few days ago and spent the better part of an evening chatting with authoritative senior Jordanian intelligence officers, who increasingly focus on how angry young men respond to indigenous socio-economic and political tensions by joining organized terror networks.
Jordan has always been a close friend and ally of the United States, and has had good working relations with Israel since the 1994 peace treaty. It is no surprise that Amman sees the global, Al-Qaeda-like takfiri and salafi terror movements as their main immediate concern. It is more noteworthy that Jordanian officials also highlight two other worries: Iranian attempts to expand their regional influence through allies and surrogates (they specifically mention Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad), and concerns that aspects of Israeli and American policies also indirectly create conditions of radicalism and national fragmentation.
Jordan’s recent feud with Hamas reflects Amman’s wider concern about Iran’s aim to become the dominant power in West Asia, balancing the influence of Israel. Some influential Jordanians view Hamas as an external arm of Iran, but also as deeply divided internally. One official said privately that “we can identify at least five strands of Hamas: the external wing in Damascus that gets its instructions from Iran, the Hamas leaders in prison, those in the Haniyeh government, others in Gaza, and members in the West Bank. We can only deal with the Hamas members in the Palestinian government.”
Amman reacted harshly to the discovery last month of what it identified as Hamas weapons caches in Jordan (including TNT, missiles, machine guns and handguns with silencers), along with detailed plans to attack security facilities and officers. Why Hamas would do this remains unclear. One theory, detained Hamas members allegedly said, was “to settle old scores.” Another is that the weapons were stockpiled to use against Jordanian, Israeli or foreign targets should Iran need to retaliate after an attack against its nuclear facilities.
Amman analyzes such threats in the context of wider regional trends that could fragment existing states into smaller, weaker entities, including potential domestic instability threats in Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon. The nightmare scenario sees Arab failures and American-Israeli policies causing problems to Jordan’s immediate east and west.
Some officials here fear that Olmert’s unilateral disengagement plan in Palestine would lead to a series of continuous intifadas in the long run, possibly spurring civil war and opening the door to Al-Qaeda-related groups or Iran. To the east, a fast American exit strategy from Iraq could leave behind a Kurdish state in the north, a Shiite federated region in the south, and a disgruntled, weak Sunni statelet centered on Anbar Province, along the Jordanian border. And Amman is again concerned that the Palestine issue may be resolved at its expense and on its land, through the dual agency of Israeli unilateralism and American acquiescence.
Not surprisingly, Jordanians these days simultaneously hunt down terrorist leaders in Iraq while engaging Israeli and American leaders on a negotiated diplomatic solution in Palestine-Israel. Time will tell if their analysis of Iranian ambitions and Tehran’s links with Hamas and Hizbullah is correct or exaggerated. For now, they understand more clearly the organic links among grassroots Arab political discontent, socio-economic stress, the impact of Israeli and American foreign policies in Iraq and Palestine, and the continued growth of Middle Eastern and global terror movements.
More significantly, in my view, is their growing appreciation, as one senior security source told me, “that we must fight Al-Qaeda with all our strength and resources, but police actions alone will not solve the problems and threats the region faces. We also need information strategies, economic and social solutions, effective anti-corruption campaigns and serious reform efforts.”
Jordan and its policies played a major role in the birth and death of the Zarqawi phenomenon, though the region remains plagued with vulnerable Arab states and growing terror movements. Ending this hard phase of modern Arab history requires implementing an appropriate mix of political, economic, social and police methods, to achieve the elusive Arab goal of sustainable security, stable statehood, and satisfying citizenship. Jordan’s current approach is worth watching, for it suggests that we should find out in this decade if this quest is seriously underway, and in this generation if it does succeed.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 10 June 2006
Word Count: 840
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