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Recent Titles in Global Security Watch

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GLOBAL SECURITY WATCH

JORDAN W. Andrew Terrill Foreword by Anthony H. Cordesman

Copyright 2010 by W. Andrew Terrill All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Terrill, W. Andrew. Global security watch—Jordan / W. Andrew Terrill ; foreword by Anthony H. Cordesman. p. cm. — (Global security watch) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–36619–2 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–36620–8 (ebook) 1. Jordan—Foreign relations. 2. Jordan—Strategic aspects. 3. Jordan—Military policy. 4. National security—Jordan. I. Title. DS154.13.T47 2010 2010006841 3550 .03305695—dc22 ISBN: 978–0–313–36619–2 EISBN: 978–0–313–36620–8 14 13 12 11 10

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my mother, Gloria S. Terrill, and the memory of my father, Wallace A. Terrill. I will always be grateful.

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Contents Foreword by Anthony H. Cordesman Preface Chapter 1: Jordan’s Turbulent History

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Chapter 2: Jordan’s Political, Economic, and Military System

23

Chapter 3: Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians

51

Chapter 4: Jordan and the United States

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Chapter 5: Jordan’s Relations with Other Arab States and Iran

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Chapter 6: Jordan and the Threat of Terrorism

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Chapter 7: Jordan Looks Toward the Future

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Appendix A: Biographies

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Appendix B: Chronology

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Appendix C: Documents

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Glossary

173

Bibliography

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Index

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Foreword The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has played a central role in many of the key issues, crises, and problems of the Middle East, despite Jordan’s status as a small country with limited resources. It has also been a key ally in Iraq, in the war on terrorism, and in the search for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement. It has been a force for progress and stability in a deeply troubled region, and its future stability and security are critical to the region’s future. All of these facts make 2010 a particularly good time to examine Jordan’s role in the region and its importance in regional security. It has now been more than 10 years since King Abdullah II became Jordan’s monarch, and Jordan faces changing security challenges both without and within. Jordan’s security is highly dependent on the future of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Jordan’s security is also affected by Iraq’s stability, and by Iran’s rising challenge and ties to Lebanon and Syria. While it now has good relations with Saudi Arabia, it faces a growing challenge from Islamist extremism and terrorism. Moreover, Jordan faces economic and social pressures from within that could threaten its internal security unless it gets help in developing its economy. This makes W. Andrew Terrill’s study of Jordan particularly timely and important. He has blended a straightforward and readable account of Jordan’s history and institutions with a useful consideration of the domestic and international security problems that Jordan must address. While one can find a great deal of useful information about the political system that King Hussein built from reading this work, it is also possible to see how the system and priorities have changed under a new king. As Dr. Terrill points out, some of these changes are stylistic while others are nuanced departures from the policies of King Hussein within an overall

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framework of continuity. This is an important consideration since King Hussein’s 46 years as Jordan’s ruler should not overshadow recent history in a way that would cause the reader to be shortchanged on the developments and changes of the last 10 years. Such a danger is always present since King Abdullah often tends to maintain a lower profile that his father on the regional and international stage, and since he consistently stresses the continuity of his own rule with that of his father rather than pointing out the differences. He has sought to distill the successful lessons of his father’s rule while avoiding the pitfalls as he sees them. Dr. Terrill also does an excellent job of highlighting the leading foreign policy principles of the Jordanian monarchy under both King Hussein and King Abdullah II, and of showing how important Jordan’s role in the region has been over the last decade. The divisions that existed between Jordan and the Gulf states, the United States, and other members of the Coalition at the time of the first Gulf War are long over. Since the early 1990s, Jordan has skillfully managed to support policies which have benefited other moderate Arab states and the West, while advancing Jordan’s national interests. For example, Jordan has established ties with a postSaddam Baghdad that have helped Amman meet its need for imported oil. Jordanian security forces have also waged a shadow war against al-Qaeda that has been of great value to every moderate Muslim country as well as to the United States and the West. Dr. Terrill discusses a multiplicity of Jordanian actions in the struggle against al-Qaeda in ways that are particularly useful for readers interested in the struggle against this organization. Dr. Terrill also does a skillful job of outlining the main issues in Jordan’s relations with Israel and the major Palestinian organizations, Fatah and Hamas. Dr. Terrill’s work also provides a nuanced understanding of the issues of democracy and reform in Jordan that goes beyond scolding accounts involving election laws and parliamentary weakness. Rather, Dr. Terrill weighs issues of reform and democracy within the context of Jordanian security concerns as well as the need for political modernization. He further maintains a solid understanding of the dangers of demanding immediate changes. While Dr. Terrill clearly believes in democratic reform, he is more prepared than most to give Jordanians partial credit for their reforms and sees some value in a go-slow approach when compared to a complete opening up of the political system. While sympathy for any monarchial leader can be controversial, Dr. Terrill is also willing to consider how Jordan’s geopolitical, demographic, and economic problems may give it solid reasons to measure and evaluate each step it takes in the direction of popular empowerment. He also maintains that Jordanian political reform is more than a public relations exercise to mollify Western sensitivities. Jordanian elites recognize that the political culture of their country is changing and more democratic input is needed to address public expectations.

Foreword

Dr. Terrill addresses Jordan’s future in a broad economic and social context. His analysis reflects the fact that Jordan’s population continues to grow and its economy is limited. Jordan does have two natural resources: potash and phosphates for fertilizer. Tourism is an important source of revenue in good times, and the Jordanians have high levels of education and have long provided a flow of income from Jordanian workers in other Arab states. Yet, Dr. Terrill’s analysis shows that Jordan needs continuing outside aid. The kingdom imports the resources to meet 96 percent of its energy requirements and is among the world’s poorest nations for water resources. Jordan’s most promising potential resource, oil shale, has yet to be exploited. The United States and other friendly countries need to understand this reality. The region is too troubled, and Jordan faces too many pressures, to remain stable without such assistance. Finally, it is important to mention that Dr. Terrill’s study is both that of an academic specializing in Middle East studies and of a national security professional with considerable experience dealing with practical problems. His work is informed by the author’s frequent travel to Jordan as well as his participation in numerous international conferences dealing with Middle Eastern regional security. As a professor at the U.S. Army War College, he has also maintained contact with a steady stream of Jordanian colonels and brigadier generals who attend this institution as a key step in their military education. It goes almost without saying that the officers selected to join their American colleagues for this one-year course are often among the best soldiers in the Jordanian military, and Dr. Terrill’s interaction with them is invaluable. This diversity of background has enabled Dr. Terrill to write an informed, straightforward, and readable work that will be valuable to specialists and non-specialists alike. Anthony H. Cordesman Washington, D.C.

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Preface I would like to thank the U.S. Army War College for agreeing to my request for sabbatical leave in order to write this book. I am particularly grateful to Professor Douglas Lovelace and Dr. Steven Metz of the Strategic Studies Institute for encouraging me to undertake this study and supporting my request to be given the research time to do so. I would also like to thank Major General Robert M. Williams, the Commandant of the U.S. Army War College, and the U.S. Army War College Title 10 Board under the leadership of Dean Bill Johnson for supporting my request to move forward on this project. I must also express my appreciation to my editor at Praeger, Steve Catalano, for friendly and helpful advice on this project. Throughout this process, feedback on my ideas was always vital to whatever success I may have been able to achieve in producing this manuscript. I am correspondingly especially grateful to Mary J. Pelusi, Professor David S. Sorenson of the U.S. Air War College, Dr. Norman Cigar, and Sarah E. Womer, for useful and insightful comments on earlier versions of the chapters of this book. I owe Mary a particular debt for a number of useful suggestions and ideas throughout the life of this project. I also need to mention that during numerous trips to Jordan throughout my career, I have been treated with great kindness and openness by Jordanian friends and hosts and more recently by a number of members of the U.S. Army and Defense attache´ corps. I have further been fortunate enough to interact with a number of senior Jordanian and other Arab students at the U.S. Army War College who were always willing to share their special insight with me. I will always consider myself lucky that Jordanians are interested in political topics and always willing to speak to me about them. Despite the significance of this help, all mistakes in this work of fact, omission, interpretation, and speculation are of course entirely my own. I should further thank the U.S. Army War College for its policies of academic freedom and note

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that the views expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. It may also be useful to mention something about my own hopes for this book. Jordan has consistently struck me as one of the most interesting nations that I have ever encountered, combining traditional and modern values in a unique way that allows Westerners to feel comfortable, charmed, and challenged when seeking to learn about this country. I have found Jordan fascinating since well before I completed my doctoral dissertation on that nation in 1983. Likewise, I have almost always found Jordanians of all economic backgrounds to be friendly and open to Westerners even at times when they are deeply unhappy with the policies of the U.S. government. Yet, Jordanian involvement in addressing a number of the greatest challenges facing the Middle East has sometimes been surprisingly overlooked. This book has therefore been designed to be accessible to non-specialist readers as well as whatever Middle East studies scholars may find it useful in explaining the Jordanian role in Middle East politics and regional security. I also believe that examining Jordan’s involvement in many of the great conflicts in the contemporary Middle East not only clarifies Jordanian policies but also allows one to understand many of the regional problems that Jordan often finds itself forced to address. These problems range from the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the struggle to crush terrorist efforts to redefine one of the world’s great religions. I further hope that this book provides useful context that will help to prevent oversimplified analysis of important topics involving Jordan, including extremely sensitive issues such as democratization, political reform, and modernization of traditional political structures. W. Andrew Terrill, Ph.D. Carlisle, Pennsylvania January 15, 2010


CHAPTER

1

Jordan’s Turbulent History

THE EMERGENCE OF TRANSJORDAN

The geographic area that is now the country of Jordan was for centuries a sparsely populated and highly tribalized desert region within the Turkish-controlled Ottoman Empire. The population is overwhelmingly Arab and Sunni Muslim, although Christian Arabs, Circassians, and other minorities have lived in this area for centuries. The Ottoman sultan in Istanbul was the ultimate source of power for this political system, but he remained a distant figure who usually did little to help develop this highly impoverished portion of the Empire. The Ottoman authorities were feared more than admired by the desert villagers and townspeople of this region for their policy of conscripting local men into the Ottoman army for long periods of service. Such losses were an added hardship for Arab tribes and families attempting to make a meager living in a harsh desert environment. The loss of young men to the Ottoman military reduced the number of individuals available to help provide for the subsistence of these areas and, more importantly, reduced the ability of local defenders to fend off attacks by tribal raiders or brigands. Ottoman control of vast tracts of Arab territory ended as a result of the Empire’s defeat in World War I and the subsequent dismemberment of former Ottoman territory by the victorious Allied powers. As part of this transition, the country now known as Jordan began its separate political existence as Transjordan, a British League of Nations mandate established in 1921. Transjordan began its unpromising existence with arbitrary borders established without significant regard for the population and with few natural frontiers except the

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Global Security Watch—Jordan

Jordan River, which was used as the boundary with the western portion of the Palestinian mandate, also established after World War I. 1 Transjordan was created as a separate political entity from Palestine on the initiative of key British leaders, including then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill.2 As such, it was not subject to Jewish immigration, which was allowed in Palestine in accordance with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The country was established with British aid with the expectation that it would help support the interests of the United Kingdom within the Middle East as a friendly client state garrisoned by Britishtrained and led local forces rather than significant numbers of British troops. The United Kingdom agreed to place Transjordan under the administration of Abdullah bin Hussein, who was given the title of emir (usually translated as prince). Emir (later King) Abdullah had been a key British ally during the Arab Revolt against Turkey in World War I and was viewed by London as a potentially useful partner to help maintain its influence in the region after the war. 3 The offer for Abdullah to rule Transjordan was also made to co-opt him and prevent the Arab leader from disturbing British interests in the Middle East. Such a disruption appeared possible in 1921, as Abdullah had been traveling north from Mecca with a Bedouin fighting force while indicating an interest in harassing French colonial forces in Syria. He also had a significant grievance which led him to favor such a strategy. The French had deposed Abdullah’s younger brother, Faisal, from the throne of Syria because he was viewed as insufficiently cooperative with them. Abdullah was interested in either helping to restore Faisal to Syrian leadership or, more probably, replacing him in that role. At this time, the British leadership was working with France and wanted to prevent Abdullah’s attack against their ally’s forces in Syria. More subtly, London did not want to provide the French with an excuse to expand their power southward in response to any provocations that might be made by Abdullah or any other local leaders. As a result of this confluence of these interests, Transjordan’s first government was established with British assistance in April 1921. The chief task that faced this government was to build a functioning state where none had previously existed. Ideally, this would involve the creation of a government with a supporting bureaucracy, the establishment of a police and military force to keep order, and securing at least some minimal level of loyalty to the government by the local population. As a leader without any substantial ties to the land or population of the newly created state, Abdullah faced potentially serious problems in establishing his authority there, although he also had some advantages in doing so. In addition to his friendship with the United Kingdom, Abdullah was viewed as a natural choice for high office because he was a member of the Hashemite family and therefore credibly considered to be directly descended from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. In Arabia at the time of Abdullah’s birth, a number of individuals attempted to claim lineage to the Prophet on the basis of false or manufactured


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evidence, but this type of fraud was almost impossible in Abdullah’s home city of Mecca, where the genealogical tradition was deeply ingrained and had survived in what one scholar refers to as its “greatest purity.”4 Indeed, Abdullah’s family had enjoyed considerable honor and position in Mecca as a result of his distinguished background, and his father Hussein bin Ali would eventually hold the post of sharif of Mecca, a prestigious administrative position with a variety of responsibilities related to protecting pilgrims making the Muslim pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. (The word sharif means noble in Arabic.) Sharif Hussein was appointed to his position in Mecca by the Turkish sultan in a decision that the Turkish leader would come to regret when the Hashemite patriarch sided with the British in World War I. Sharif Hussein declared the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks in 1916 and pronounced himself king of the Hejaz (in what is now Saudi Arabia) one year later. Abdullah, as one of the foremost field commanders of this revolt, was strongly identified with the emerging concept of Arab nationalism. This military and nationalistic background was another advantage for the newly established Transjordanian autocrat, although his father, King Hussein of the Hejaz, would later fade from historical relevance when he lost his kingdom to a desert tribal leader, Abdul Azziz Ibn Saud, in 1924. Abdullah’s decision to accept the United Kingdom’s offer to become the leader of Transjordan prevented the conflict with France. Abdullah’s brother Faisal, for his part, never recovered the Syrian throne but became the emir and later king of the newly created country of Iraq. Iraq was a much more restive prize, but unlike Transjordan, was economically promising, with significant natural resources including water and oil. Abdullah, while accepting his role as the emir of Transjordan, tended to view this position as a starting point from which he could expand the area under his control and eventually perhaps include Syria or Palestine (or both) under his jurisdiction. At this stage of its history, Transjordan had little to justify an independent existence, other than a British interest in maintaining a friendly state in the region. The territory that was allocated to Transjordan was distinctly undeveloped with a population of only around 230,000. People living in this area had no concept of a Transjordanian national identity and generally defined themselves as Arabs, Muslims, or members of various tribes. Additionally, the land had few natural resources and was to later prove devoid of oil (except unexploitable oil shale). The territory possessed one railroad line and almost no roads. At this time, Amman was more of a village than a city, with its only real importance as what historian Mary Wilson describes as a “desert thoroughfare.”5 Consequently, Transjordan started out with a variety of serious problems that suggested its future existence as a sovereign state was uncertain. One author went so far as to suggest that Abdullah was given the “booby prize” in the postwar division of spoils due to the Hashemite defeat at Maysalun by French colonial forces on July 24, 1920 and their subsequent loss of diplomatic leverage.6 However unkind such a

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phrase might be, Abdullah had clearly been given a hardscrabble kingdom, and he knew it. As the first leader of Transjordan, Abdullah received a British subsidy for administration and seeking the loyalties of local tribes by providing for at least some of their needs. Transjordan would not have survived without this assistance. The emir often annoyed more frugal British bureaucrats who considered him to be a spendthrift, but he had considerable success reaching out to local tribal leaders and establishing his authority over them through persuasion and gifts. He shrewdly made use of his distinguished lineage as a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed to help establish authority over the emerging kingdom. This heritage was extremely impressive to the devout Bedouins and townspeople in the newly created political entity.7 Another indispensible asset for building the new state was the establishment of military or paramilitary security forces to provide internal and external security. In meeting this objective, Abdullah again sought help from the United Kingdom, and a limited number of British army officers were correspondingly sent to Transjordan to provide the nucleus of a more modern and disciplined military to be created from the tribal forces loyal to the new emir.8 The most important of Transjordan’s original security forces was the “Arab Legion,” which much later would become the Jordanian army. This force was primarily a police organization in its early years, but also had some responsibilities to help defend the country against marauding tribal forces originating from what is now Saudi Arabia. General Sir John Bagot Glubb was the most important commander of this emerging force and took command in 1939. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, Transjordan supported the United Kingdom and provided Arab Legion units to participate in World War II, albeit in very limited ways due to the force’s small size and limited mobility. Arab Legion troops were initially given the responsibility to protect a number of British military facilities throughout the Middle East, including Palestine. Later, Transjordanian forces participated in campaigns in Iraq and Syria where they excelled as reconnaissance troops moving through hostile terrain. Reaping some advantages from his wartime support, Abdullah negotiated a new treaty with the United Kingdom in May 1946. Under the terms of this treaty, Transjordan became formally independent in 1948, and Abdullah became king. The British subsidy was to be continued, and limited numbers of British officers were to remain seconded to the Arab Legion. Transjordan therefore remained dependent on the United Kingdom for the funds and military backing it needed to survive, limiting the practical implications of independence. At the same time that Transjordan was negotiating its new status, problems with neighboring Palestine were becoming increasingly serious. This territory had been administered by the British since the end of World War I under the League of Nations mandate system, and the United Kingdom was required to


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prepare the area for independence. There was, however, some question as to what kind of independence would ultimately be granted. The Jewish community in Palestine (led by the Jewish Agency) favored an independent Jewish state which would accept any Jew seeking sanctuary there. They viewed this requirement as indispensible and nonnegotiable following the European Holocaust. The Palestinian Arab community largely believed that a Jewish state could only be established at the expense of their national rights. Most Arab countries supported the position that Palestine should be an undivided Arab state and should not be required to except the large numbers of refugees leaving Europe. In contrast to mainstream Arab opinion, King Abdullah opposed the creation of a Palestinian state and wanted Transjordan to take possession of any Palestinian territory that he could obtain through either negotiations or war. The Transjordanian monarch correspondingly became involved in negotiations with leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine prior to the formation of the Israeli state. Ever pragmatic, King Abdullah entered into discussions with the future Israeli leadership regarding the possible disposition of the Palestinian territory evacuated by the United Kingdom under a forthcoming UN resolution. King Abdullah at one point seemed willing to divide the disputed territory between Transjordan and the new Jewish state without war, and a conditional agreement was reached with Jewish Agency envoy Golda Meyerson (later Golda Meir) on this approach. In making this agreement, the king seemed primarily concerned with the potential to expand his kingdom beyond its impoverished beginnings and transform Transjordan into a larger and more viable state. In response to increased intercommunal fighting in Palestine and pressure from other Arab states, Abdullah later revised his negotiating position to favor Transjordan assuming control of all former Palestinian territory with autonomy and strong civil protections for the Jews living there. This offer was unacceptable to the Jewish community, which sought a fully independent state. Following the breakdown in Jewish Agency-Transjordanian negotiations, pressures for war increased as Palestine’s Jewish and Arab communities became locked in increasingly violent conflict. A variety of Arab states prepared to invade the disputed territory as soon as the British departed in order to prevent the establishment of the Israeli state. While many Arab leaders expected a rapid victory against Palestine’s Jews, Abdullah was more realistic. He entered into the 1948–49 war only with reluctance and caution after the breakdown of negotiations with Jewish leaders in the full understanding that military cooperation among Arab countries was extremely poor. Abdullah was named as the Arab League’s overall military commander in the war, but this appointment was largely a symbolic gesture since none of the other Arab militaries were willing to be directed by Transjordanian leaders. The international phase of the first Arab-Israeli war took place after a UN General Assembly resolution recommending the partition of Palestine into

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separate Arab and Jewish states and Israel’s subsequent declaration of its status as an independent state on May 14, 1948. Transjordanian forces were small but well-trained and professional. Abdullah initially assigned them the mission of taking control of all territory that had been allocated for the Arab state in the partition of Palestine. The British were informed of this plan by General Glubb with British Foreign Secretary Bevin responding, “It seems the obvious thing to do . . . but do not go and invade the area allocated to the Jews.”9 Later, the Jordanians departed from this plan and became involved in heavy fighting in Jerusalem, which was projected to have been an international city under the UN resolution. This change in plan led to an increased use of the Arab Legion in exactly the sort of fighting that Glubb had hoped to avoid. The Arab Legion commander considered the Jewish militia (Hagana) and strike force (Palmach) to be adept at urban combat in ways that his Bedouin troops were not. Unsurprisingly, both Israeli and Transjordanian casualties were heavy in the subsequent fighting within the city. King Abdullah claims to have refocused his efforts on Jerusalem in response to urgent appeals for rescue from Arabs living there, and thus directed his military away from a variety of more feasible missions. These statements probably do not reflect the full story. Abdullah is also known to have felt a special emotional tie to Jerusalem and may have believed he had a family responsibility to defend the Muslim holy sites from Israeli capture. As the fighting went forward, it quickly became apparent that Jerusalem would not be internationalized at the end of the war, and one side or the other would establish control over the area through military action. After Transjordan, the Arab country most involved in the first Arab-Israeli war was Egypt. Unfortunately for the Arab effort, Egyptian troops were often poorly led and badly supplied, reducing the effectiveness of their contribution. A variety of other Arab states also participated but tended to limit their involvement in actual combat. The Iraqis, who had generated some of the toughest rhetoric on the war, did little in the way of fighting, with their primary contribution being the occupation of defensive positions on the West Bank. Baghdad was also exceptionally unsupportive of King Abdullah in this instance, despite being ruled by a friendly Hashemite dynasty. While Iraq had a strong grudge against Palestinian leader Haj Amin Husseini for supporting a 1941 coup attempt to oust the Iraqi monarchy, Iraqi leaders also recognized that their own population was deeply pro-Palestinian and recoiled at suspected Transjordanian plans to annex any portion of the country that was kept out of Jewish hands.10 Military coordination between Iraq and Transjordan suffered as a result of this situation. On the northern front, Syrian forces participated in fighting south of the Sea of Galilee, but tended to avoided major conflict during the latter part of the war. There were a variety of reasons for this approach, one of the most important of which was the miserable relations between Amman and Damascus. The Syrian leadership feared that an Arab victory in Palestine would lead to the expansion of


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Transjordan authority into whatever Palestinian territory was kept out of Israeli hands, dramatically increasing the power of their rival in Amman. In a similar manner, Lebanon assembled a small expeditionary force which gained some territory at the beginning of the war but was then rapidly pushed back into defensive positions by the Israelis. As a result of Arab disunity and mistrust, the Israelis successfully defended their new state and expanded its borders beyond those in the UN partition plan. No Palestinian state emerged from this conflict, although some Palestinian territory remained in Arab hands. A Transjordanian-Israeli armistice signed in April 1949 left King Abdullah in control of the eastern half of the city of Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan River. Jerusalem was divided by cease-fire lines established after the Transjordanian-Israeli armistice. While the Arab Legion paid a high cost to retain the eastern half of the city, it also distinguished itself to a greater extent than the militaries of the other Arab states by winning the most significant Arab victories of the war. Egypt controlled a small area which remained under the control of its army at the time of the cease-fire and is now known as the Gaza Strip. Transjordan’s military did far better in the fighting than the other Arab forces committed to the conflict. Always anxious to expand his kingdom, Abdullah now had an important opportunity to do so in a way that would plunge Jordan squarely into the controversies swirling around the creation of the new state of Israel. TRANSJORDAN BECOMES JORDAN, THE ASSASSINATION OF KING ABDULLAH, AND THE ERA OF KING HUSSEIN

King Abdullah announced the planned annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem into his kingdom on October 20, 1949. He also changed the country’s name from Transjordan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In December, King Abdullah assumed all powers of the former mandate authority over the West Bank, and a new parliament was created which was to include an equal number of representatives from the West Bank and former Transjordan (the East Bank). In April 1950 the newly elected Parliament unanimously passed legislation (later ratified by the Palace) unifying the West Bank with Jordan. The legislation also granted citizenship to Palestinians living in Jordan, including those in the West Bank. No other Arab state recognized this Jordanian annexation as legal, and there were serious but unsuccessful efforts to expel Jordan from the Arab League for seizing what the other Arab states widely viewed as Palestinian territory.11 King Abdullah responded to these criticisms by asserting that the area was in danger of being seized by the Israelis unless it was protected through unification with Jordan (thereby extending Jordanian security ties with the United Kingdom to include the West Bank). Jordan was now more closely and controversially involved with the Palestinian problem than any other Arab state.

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King Abdullah paid with his life for his policies on Israeli-Palestinian issues when he was assassinated by a Palestinian gunman at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on July 20, 1951.12 The gunman’s principle motivation for the attack was anger over the king’s supposedly secret but very well-known meetings with Israeli leaders with the goal of negotiating an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. King Abdullah’s 15-year-old grandson Prince (later King) Hussein was present during the attack, and the assassin attempted to murder him as well. After fatally shooting the 69-year-old king at close range, the assassin was then able to fire his pistol once at the grandson. Fortunately for the young man, the bullet was deflected when it struck a medal on the prince’s chest at an oblique angle. This unlikely shot occurred just as Prince Hussein lunged at the assailant, further obscuring his accuracy. The situation in the mosque had by then collapsed into chaos. The assassin and a number of bystanders were quickly killed by Arab Legion troops in the pandemonium. Later, the future King Hussein would have the opportunity to reflect that his grandfather had insisted that the boy wear his military uniform on that day, including the prized medal for winning a fencing competition. It was this medal which had saved him from death or injury by the assassin’s bullet. Following King Abdullah’s 1951 assassination, his son Prince Talal became king from September 1951 until August 1952. King Talal had never been considered an ideal choice for leading the country because of what was then viewed as an erratic and unstable personality, but many Jordanians hoped he would be able to rise to the challenge, especially since he was supported by his strong and intelligent wife, Queen Zain. The central accomplishment of his brief time in office was the adoption of a liberalized constitution in 1952 which remains in force today. Unfortunately, over time, King Talal proved increasingly unable to continue governing Jordan due to an illness that was then diagnosed as deepening schizophrenia. In August 1952 King Talal’s oldest son, Prince Hussein, acceded to the throne at age 17, replacing his father who sought medical treatment abroad.13 The newly designated king could not assume constitutional powers until his eighteenth birthday according to the Islamic lunar calendar, which allowed him to take the oath of office on May 2, 1953. King Hussein thus began what was to become 46 years in power in which the political identity of modern Jordan was formed. This long reign seemed an unlikely outcome as the young man assumed leadership of the small country that was linked to some of the most turbulent conflicts in the Middle East. Many of King Hussein’s initial years in power were marked by a dangerous and volatile political situation. The king developed a careful approach to governance early in his reign and became deeply involved in military affairs while always remaining intensely aware of the needs of Jordan’s military services. Additionally, throughout his life, King Hussein’s foreign policy remained consistently friendly to the West and involved a special relationship with the United Kingdom which,


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after 1956, was overshadowed by ties to the United States.14 King Hussein saw these contacts as essential to Jordanian survival and did not view them as incompatible with Arab nationalism. Others within Jordan and throughout the Arab World maintained deep suspicions about such ties since Western countries were often at odds with much of the Arab World over a variety of issues, the most notable of which was the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this changing environment, the king felt compelled to dismiss General Glubb and several other senior British officers in Jordan’s military and replace them with Jordanians. While Glubb had faithfully served Jordan’s government throughout his tenure, he was also widely viewed throughout the region as a power behind the throne, and this perception could not easily be tolerated if Jordan wished to shed its image as a British client state. Glubb and his British associates were correspondingly replaced through a process of “Arabization.” The effort to empower more Arab officers later rebounded against the king when anti-monarchist officers attempted to depose him in 1957 in what became known as the Zarqa affair. While the details of this incident are subject to various interpretations, the king was able to rally his army to support him and vanquish his civilian and military rivals. King Hussein inherited a number of serious problems related to the Palestinians, including a restive Palestinian population and an Israeli leadership that he viewed as potentially aggressive if antagonized. Throughout the 1950s, the danger of border problems between Jordan and Israel was continuously looming. Palestinians displaced to Jordan by the 1948–49 fighting often lived in bleak conditions in various slums and refugee camps. Often these refugees would find it worth the risk to cross into Israel to reclaim their own buried property, steal what they could from the Israelis, or sometimes seek vengeance by killing any Israelis that they encountered. General Glubb estimated that around 10,000 refugees a year infiltrated into Israel annually during the early 1950s.15 This activity was a problem for Jordanian security, since any murder of Israeli citizens threatened to provoke severe reprisal raids. In some other cases, Jordanian and Israeli soldiers became involved in escalating incidents on the border involving an exchange of gunfire and sometimes expanding to include heavier weapons such as machine guns and mortars.16 Additionally, communication between Jordan and Israel was often conducted through mixed armistice commissions and UN intermediaries from the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO). Working through these organizations to defuse an escalating crisis was often slow and inefficient. In response to ongoing and serious threats of war, King Hussein correspondingly opened a secret communications channel to the Israelis in 1960 and began sporadically meeting with Israeli leaders himself in September 1963.17 The king correctly reasoned that the potential for escalation could only be managed with an ongoing process of communications between the two states. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Jordan sought normal relations with the other Arab states, although the king had difficulty justifying friendly relations

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with the West in the face of the revolutionary anti-imperialism of the times which was perhaps best exemplified by Egypt’s President Gamal Abdul Nasser.18 Nasser’s reputation as a pan-Arab leader had soared after he had negotiated a major arms agreement with the Soviet Bloc in 1955 and especially following his ability to stay in power after Egypt was attacked by the United Kingdom, France, and Israel in the 1956 Suez War. Additionally, the Jordanian stand toward Israel was often considered too passive by Arab militants, and King Hussein was continuously criticized by other Arab leaders for not doing enough to allow Palestinian forces to engage in armed struggle against the Israelis from Jordanian territory. Naturally, the critics did not have to bear the consequences of such an approach, and the Jordanian leadership found such advice reckless. To avoid harsh and painful reprisal raids, the Jordanian military was ordered to prevent the crossing of Palestinians into Israeli territory, where they would engage in sabotage and sometimes kill Israelis that they encountered. Unfortunately, some Jordanian officers became more relaxed about enforcing border controls after Glubb’s departure, and the Israeli reprisals became increasingly intense.19 The struggle between Arab revolutionaries and conservatives was dubbed by one scholar as the “Arab Cold War” and reached its height in 1958, sometimes referred to as the “revolutionary year.”20 On July 14, 1958, Iraq’s Hashemite monarchy was overthrown in a military coup, and King Hussein’s friend and cousin, King Faisal II, was murdered by the revolutionaries at age 23.21 Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, the most powerful politician of the old regime, was killed in the street by an Iraqi Air Force sergeant while attempting to flee the country.22 Nuri was probably the most despised man in Iraq due to his reputation for excessive corruption and pandering to the United Kingdom. After burial, his body was disinterred by an angry crowd and dragged through the streets, hanged, torn to pieces, and finally burnt.23 The leader of the Iraqi revolutionaries, who became prime minister after the Hashemites’ fall, was Brigadier Abdul Karim Qassim, an erratic, leftist army officer whom the Jordanians referred to as the “new Hulagu” after the brutal Mongol leader who sacked Baghdad in 1258.24 In this environment, it seemed possible that revolutionary excess would spread across the Middle East following the violence in Baghdad. The United States responded to this possibility by landing U.S. Marines and some Army personnel in Lebanon in to support the embattled government of conservative leader Camille Chamoun, while the United Kingdom briefly sent paratroopers to Jordan to shore up the government in the aftermath of the Iraqi revolution. The British government had to obtain permission to overfly Israeli airspace to land these troops, since no Arab country was prepared to allow the British to overfly their territory to get to Jordan. King Hussein felt particularly disappointed by the Saudi Arabian leadership in this instance. He assumed they had denied British use of their airspace in response to pressure from Egypt. U.S. forces remained in Lebanon from July to October. All of the British paratroopers were withdrawn from Jordan by October 29, 1958.


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Jordan faced some of its bleakest years following the 1958 regionwide upheaval. British troops only stayed in Jordan briefly, due to the king’s fear that their continued presence would give the appearance of a long-term Western military presence in the country. Regionally, Jordan was not only politically isolated but also facing a harsh campaign of subversion, sabotage, and psychological warfare. This struggle reached a crisis point in August 1960 when Prime Minister Hazza Majali and 12 other Jordanian officials were killed by a bomb planted by Syrian agents of the United Arab Republic (the political union of Egypt and Syria which lasted from 1958 to 1961). There were also a number of attempts to assassinate King Hussein during his early years in power, with plans ranging from poisoning his food to placing acid in his nose drops. The former attempt failed when the cook tested his fatal concoctions on a number of cats and raised the suspicions of the security forces by leaving at least 14 of the dead animals on palace grounds. The later effort failed when the king poured what he thought were expired nose drops into a bathroom sink which was promptly destroyed by the acid in the bottle.25 Throughout these ordeals (which would have psychologically destroyed many individuals), the king remained strong and optimistic about his country’s future. Jordan had no consistent allies in the region during the years following the Iraqi revolution and often had to work with the least dangerous enemies to the point that diplomatic relations with Iraq were reestablished in October 1960, although the regime that had overthrown the monarchy remained in power at that time.26 A rapprochement between King Hussein and President Nasser became possible in the aftermath of the dissolution of the United Arab Republic through Syrian secession and the development of serious differences between Egypt and revolutionary Iraq over a variety of issues, but especially on questions of which country should be considered the natural leader of the Arab World. Cairo now had enemies that it considered more serious than the Jordanians or even the Arab monarchies in general, and for a while Egyptian policy reflected these developments. The rapprochement did not last. Relations again became difficult when Jordan and Saudi Arabia supported the royalists in the North Yemen Civil War with military advisors, small arms, and propaganda. Cairo had sponsored a September 1962 military coup in Yemen and was eventually to send 60,000 troops to that country to help the new regime consolidate power. By supporting the Yemeni royalists, Amman and Riyadh hoped to contain Egyptian power. Jordan also supported the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was founded at an Arab League Summit in East Jerusalem in 1964. It would have been difficult for Jordan to oppose this move since the king was seeking to break out of his country’s political isolation and therefore needed to show both regional and domestic audiences that Jordan supported Palestinian aspirations. He did, however, successfully demand that the PLO explicitly

12


renounce designs on the West Bank and that it instead call for liberation only of territory then within Israeli borders. This was an important (if insincere and temporary) concession, which the PLO agreed to accept only in response to significant pressure from a variety of Arab states, and renounced in 1968.27 Also, the king did not initially view the establishment of this organization as a serious problem. The PLO did not become a guerrilla warfare and terrorist organization until later in its history and was then seen mostly as a propaganda prop under the control of President Nasser. Despite his differences with Cairo, King Hussein, like most Arab leaders, saw some value in having the Palestinian issue managed by Arab states such as Egypt, rather than any independent Palestinian leadership that was eventually to develop. Regardless of their rhetoric, the Arab states had a significant stake in avoiding actions that provoked the Israelis into a military response, while the Palestinians might seek to embroil Israel’s Arab neighbors into armed conflict if they could create an incident that did so. Additionally, it was much safer for Jordan to have the energies of young Palestinian militants absorbed into what was then mostly a “talking society” (with a carefully controlled armed branch that almost never saw action) rather than have them take up arms with the emerging guerrillas conducting raids across the Israeli border. Trouble with the Palestinians nevertheless developed in the mid-1960s as a complicated web of tensions threatened to involve Jordan in escalating problems with the Israelis. The creation of the PLO had become increasingly problematic over time for Jordan, and that organization consistently sought rights within Jordan that would severely complicate Jordan’s sovereignty and the delicate relations with Israel. The Jordanians were particularly concerned with PLO requests to draft West Bank Palestinians into a Palestinian Liberation Army, which Jordan refused to permit. Jordan’s relations with the Palestinians were further complicated by the formation of Fatah, a small Palestinian guerrilla group committed to armed struggle to reclaim Palestine from the Israelis. While Fatah was later to dominate the PLO under the leadership of Yassir Arafat, it was initially independent of that organization. It also undertook immediate action in the form of cross-border raids whenever possible. While most of these raids inflicted limited or even fabricated damage against Israeli targets, they occasionally proved effective in complicating the relations between Israel and Jordan. A key event in the triangular relations between Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians was a November 1966 Israeli attack on the West Bank village of Samu in reprisal for an earlier incident where three Israeli soldiers had been killed by a landmine planted in Israel by Palestinian guerrillas. The attack resulted in the destruction of almost every building in the village after the population was ordered out of these structures. Jordanian army units arrived on the scene but were not prepared for the unexpectedly large Israeli force there, and 13 Jordanian soldiers were killed while trying to resist the Israeli incursion. The raid further touched off a crisis between Jordan and the radical Arab nationalists of Egypt,


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Syria, and the PLO whereby these hardliners demanded that Amman either allow the Palestinians in the West Bank to arm themselves or accept foreign Arab troops in the West Bank. They claimed that such measures had now become necessary since Jordan could not protect its own population from Israeli assault. A new and more radical Syrian government that had seized power in February 1966 was particularly critical of Jordan, but President Nasser also put forward harsh criticism of King Hussein for failing to support Palestinian guerrillas. Old divisions between conservative and radical regimes reopened, with the Palestinian issue as the primary source of contention. King Hussein was unwilling to permit the armed forces of opposing Arab regimes on Jordanian soil, nor did he view arming Palestinian militants as a useful way to ensure the establishment of a tranquil border. In this tumultuous environment, a new and explosive problem was introduced in May 1967 when the Soviet Union informed Nasser that Israeli military forces were massing for a strike on Syria to retaliate for that country’s support of Palestinian guerrilla activities and terrorism, possibly by removing the regime. Nasser had previously concluded a mutual defense pact with Damascus, but Egypt had limited options for supporting the Syrians since United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) peacekeeping troops had been stationed on the Egyptian side of the Egyptian-Israeli border since 1957 in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez War. Jordan and other antiEgyptian states were not above ridiculing Nasser for his bellicose rhetoric, which was issued with a UN force stationed between his forces and the Israelis. To appear as a reliable ally and maintain his status as the Arab World’s most prominent leader, Nasser then took a reckless move and ordered the UNEF troops out of Sinai to be replaced by his own forces within the peninsula. In taking over the UN positions in Sinai, the Egyptians also announced the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israel shipping. This narrow waterway was within the range of shore-based artillery, and the Egyptian blockade was a serious setback for Israeli commerce and freedom of the seas. The Middle East had now moved dramatically closer to a new ArabIsraeli war. Although the Jordanians had exceptionally poor relations with Egypt at this time, they now had to reconsider their position. Nasser was standing up to what was widely viewed in the Arab World as an aggressive and dangerous Israel planning to attack a fellow Arab state. His closure of the Straits of Tiran was wildly popular throughout the Arab World, and enthusiastic crowds chanted their support throughout the region, including in Jordan. According to King Hussein’s biographer Avi Shlaim, the Jordanian leader also considered aligning with Egypt because the Samu raid had shaken his belief that Israel and Jordan could work together.28 The Jordanians has been seriously mauled in that encounter, and King Hussein no longer believed that his secret ties with Israel could protect him from future conflicts with the Israelis. Perhaps most importantly, King Hussein was aware of Nasser’s enormous popularity in Jordan and the danger

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of later vindictiveness. A victorious Nasser who felt betrayed by the king would have a very good chance of ending the Jordanian regime through subversion and by publicly calling for its destruction. Having previously been battered by unrelenting charges of being unwilling to help the Palestinians, King Hussein made the decision that he could not remain outside of the Arab coalition facing Israel at this critical time. Instead, the king flew to Cairo, piloting his own aircraft, and signed a military alliance with Egypt. If war came, especially through Israeli action, Jordan was now committed to be part of it through a United Arab Command. Correspondingly, the Jordanian military was placed under the command of Egyptian General Mahmoud Riad, who was sent to Amman to assume military leadership. On June 6, 1967, the Israeli Air Force conducted a brilliantly executed surprise attack against the Egyptian Air Force, destroying 286 military aircraft on the ground in the first few hours of the war with many of the remaining aircraft destroyed later in the conflict.29 This attack was referred to as a preemptive strike, and almost all of Israel’s combat aircraft were involved in the effort. Jordan entered the newly ignited war in accordance with its agreement with Egypt despite Israeli efforts to convince the Jordanians that the attack against Egypt was not directed at them. This message was conveyed to the Jordanians through the commander of the Jerusalem-based UN observer force, General Odd Bull, but the Jordanian military commenced operations in accordance with the agreement with Egypt. King Hussein later acknowledged that he had received the message but that General Riad had already ordered a military response and he was not prepared to reverse this decision. Israel responded accordingly, and Jordanian forces were quickly and massively defeated along with the militaries of Egypt and Syria. A large Iraqi army expeditionary force was also destroyed as an effective fighting force by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) before it was able to enter ground combat. In the 1967 fighting, Jordan lost all of the Palestinian territory that it had previously captured in the 1948–49 War. The capture and occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank by Israeli forces was a major blow to the kingdom’s potential for economic growth. During the 1967 War, Nasserite Egypt, Ba’athist Syria, and monarchist Jordan were defeated in a one-sided conflict that humiliated all three nations and the Arab World in general. For the time being, the ideological divides between conservative and radical Arab states did not seem important, since a variety of regime types had all been equally disgraced. King Hussein, for his part, maintained until the end of his life that a Jordanian decision to remain outside of the conflict would have led to a civil war in Jordan.30 Israeli’s 1967 victory led to fundamental changes in the nature of the Middle Eastern regional system which redefined the ways all involved parties addressed the Palestinian issue. The Jordanian loss of the West Bank and East Jerusalem was a key turning point which threatened to reopen the issue of sovereignty over this territory and reignite Palestinian desires for independent homeland that


15

included this area. Another important result of the war was the rise of the Palestinian resistance organizations, including the Fatah movement led by Yasser Arafat. While many Palestinians had previously hoped to see their former country restored to them by victorious Arab militaries, this option now appeared to be discredited. Palestinian dependence upon others to help them in 1967 had produced disastrous results. Self-reliance, to the extent it was possible for a stateless people, seemed worth exploring. On the other side of the Arab-Israeli divide, a series of Israeli governments were willing to authorize and, in some cases, encourage the construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank as well as in the other captured territories including the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula (although the Sinai settlements were later evacuated in accordance with the terms of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty). These policies are often viewed as beginning a process of creeping annexation whereby certain areas captured in 1967 would be populated with Jews and then eventually incorporated into Israel. In the Arab leadership vacuum following the 1967 war, the Palestinian guerrilla movement rose to political prominence as a result of the March 1968 Battle of Karameh. This battle occurred when a 15,000-man Israeli ground force supported by airpower mounted a major incursion into Jordanian territory to strike at Palestinian guerrillas who had been conducting minor raids into Israel. The Jordanians also maintained that the strike was intended to humiliate or perhaps even destabilize their government, due in part to Israel’s continuing rage over Jordan’s participation in the 1967 war.31 A great deal of misinformation and political mythology surrounds this battle, but it is certain that it did not go the way that the Israeli military leadership had expected. Jordanian forces claimed that they were warned about the coming incursion with information provided by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency which was shared with the Palestinians prior to the battle.32 Arab forces were therefore prepared for an assault with between 12,000 and 15,000 Jordanian troops and 300 Palestinian guerrillas arrayed in defensive positions. While the Israelis destroyed the Palestinian guerilla infrastructure in Karameh, they also received more casualties than expected (as did the Jordanians). While Israeli setbacks in the battle were almost entirely due to the resistance of the Jordanian military action, including the effective use of artillery, the Palestinian guerrillas fabricated stories of superhuman guerrilla heroism, including descriptions of guerrillas with small arms and homemade weapons destroying significant numbers of Israeli tanks. Desperate for any reassuring news after the 1967 war, many ordinary Palestinians were excited and inspired by the otherwise unbelievable accounts of the Palestinian victory at Karameh, with Palestinian claims of Israeli casualties skyrocketing. Although the Jordanian military was responsible for the Israeli setbacks at Karameh, the pro-Palestinian mythology of the battle helped to create serious domestic difficulties for the Jordanian government. Palestinian guerrillas, asserting their own version of the fighting, maintained that they had now done what

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the Arab states had failed to do in the 1967 war—confronted the Israeli military and successfully waged combat operations against them. The military impossibility of 300 poorly equipped and inadequately trained guerrillas performing so successfully against an Israeli force of 15,000 troops with air support did not dull the enthusiasm of the guerrillas’ supporters for the story’s credibility. Rather, the story became more exciting because of the impossible odds. This intoxication with their imaginary, but psychologically real, military victory fed a sense of arrogance that became a major problem for Jordanian internal security. Palestinian guerrilla organizations began acting as sovereign entities within Jordanian borders, engaging in such functions as collecting taxes, emplacing road blocks and checkpoints, and undertaking other activities usually associated with the prerogatives of the state. This situation was to lead directly to the most violent internal unrest in Jordanian history. The Jordanian civil war of September 1970 (initially called “Black September” by PLO supporters) was a brief but intensely violent conflict that came about as a result of King Hussein’s reluctant decision to confront the guerrillas. The king made this decision after a series of provocations by the most extreme of these groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). On September 6, the PFLP unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate King Hussein with a wellorganized ambush of his motorcade.33The PFLP had previously called for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy in its charter and now sought to provoke a conflict between the guerrillas and the Jordanian government, which they viewed as fragile and illegitimate. This effort to ignite a confrontation seemed to be working. On September 6, the PFLP hijacked four Western-owned civilian passenger aircraft, which were forced to land in Jordan and then destroyed on September 12 after several hundred passengers were removed from the aircraft. Less radical groups felt compelled to support this action out of Palestinian solidarity. Later, on September 15, the guerrillas seized control of the northern city of Irbid and declared it to be a liberated area under a new revolutionary government. The power of the Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan could no longer be ignored. On September 17, 1970, King Hussein ordered the army to move against the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan in order to uproot guerrilla power that was threatening to overturn the monarchy. The guerrillas expected and prepared for the strike, but were unable to cope with superior Jordanian military capabilities and were especially vulnerable to tanks. The Jordanian army also moved against the guerrilla-controlled cities of Salt, Zarqa, Jerash, and Irbid. On September 18, a small Syrian armored force crossed the border in support of the guerrillas and thereby threatened to widen the war. In response, the Israelis undertook a series of undisguised preparations for war, including raising the readiness of a variety of key military units and even engaging in overflights of Syrian forces within Jordan.34 Jordan was able to deal with the crisis without Israeli or American


17

intervention, but some Israeli sources strongly assert that Syria was deterred from using its air force in the conflict by the certain knowledge that their aircraft would be shot to pieces by the Israeli Air Force.35 The crisis ended as a result of an Arab Summit conference in Cairo where President Nasser gave King Hussein some limited support shortly before his own death on September 28, 1970 from heart failure and the complications of diabetes. A second outbreak of fighting occurred in the Ajloun area of northern Jordan in July 1971. This final round of fighting destroyed residual guerrilla power in Jordan but also provoked the anger of a variety of Arab states. The remaining Palestinian forces in northern Jordan fled to southern Lebanon, where a much weaker government and military had less power to restrain them. Jordan again suffered from its familiar problem of regional disapproval and hostility as a result of the decision to crush Palestinian guerrilla power in January. The next major regional crisis for the Jordanian leadership was the October 1973 war between Israel and an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria and including expeditionary forces from a variety of other Arab states including Iraq and Morocco. The war began on October 6 with an Arab surprise attack against Israeli forces deployed in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. While planning for the war did not involve Jordan, King Hussein rapidly came under intense pressure to either join the battle or open his territory to Palestinian guerrillas so that they could strike into Israel.36 Jordan, after the traumatic experience of 1967, was wary of doing anything that could invite Israeli conventional strikes against Jordanian military and economic targets. King Hussein felt the need to play for time but also to show at least some Arab solidarity at a key moment of crisis should the war continue. Additionally, he was also conscious of Israeli power and his own lack of an effective air force or suitable antiaircraft weapons such as those then being used by Egypt and Syria. As the war persisted, King Hussein found it politically impossible to remain completely on the sidelines. On October 10, the Jordanian leadership called up their reserve forces in anticipation of a possible military role in the conflict. While the Jordanian leadership did not open a third front against Israel, they eventually sent the 40th Armored Brigade to the Golan Heights, where it fought bravely despite difficulty coordinating with Iraqi expeditionary forces that were involved in nearby fighting. 37 King Hussein later claimed that he did not attempt to open an additional front with Israel in 1973, because he believed the presence of his army on the Jordanian-Israeli border would tie down large numbers of Israeli soldiers without fighting. This assertion may have appeared reasonable, but the Israelis did not follow this strategy. Rather, Israel left the West Bank almost totally devoid of troops and concentrated its efforts on the northern and southern fronts. On October 25, a UN-sponsored cease-fire was subsequently established after intense diplomatic activity by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This cease-fire ended the war, with the Jordanians able to avert

18


the kind of disaster that they faced in 1967. Jordan, along with Egypt and Israel (but not Syria), participated in the postwar Geneva Conference to discuss ArabIsraeli differences, but this meeting did not yield significant results. Following the 1973 war, the Jordanians enjoyed a period of relative regional tranquility and development, although Amman also experienced problems with both the United States and Egypt over the Camp David process, which was opposed by all Arab countries except Egypt on the grounds that Cairo was willing to accept a separate March 1979 peace treaty with Israel prior to a resolution of the Palestinian problem. On the economic front, Jordan’s regional position nevertheless improved dramatically, and it was sometimes described as “an oil state without oil” because of rapid economic advancement fueled by a transfer of wealth from some of the Arab oil states. This prosperity occurred because of generous aid programs from a number of wealthy Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. Additionally, a number of Jordanians, often of Palestinian origin, maintained well-paying professional jobs in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf Arab states. These individuals often sent significant amounts of their earnings to family members in Jordan, thereby injecting much-needed wealth into the economy. Jordan’s economy was also significantly bolstered by the Iran-Iraq War, which began in late 1980 and continued until summer 1988. During the course of this war, Iraq’s few ports came under repeated air attack from Iran, and the Jordanian port of Aqaba became an indispensable point of entry for military supplies that were then transported overland by truck to Iraq.38 Jordan was a major advocate of the Iraqi struggle against revolutionary Iran throughout the fighting. This approach did not create serious difficulties with the West or the Gulf Arabs at the time because they usually tended to view revolutionary Iran as a greater threat than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Unfortunately for Amman, Jordan’s vastly improved relations with many of its neighbors did not continue indefinitely. Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait produced a major foreign policy crisis for Jordan which could not be addressed easily. In a particularly useful comment, Marc Lynch noted that with the exception of Kuwait and Iraq, no state was more deeply impacted or directly threatened by the 1990–91 Gulf crisis than Jordan.39 The monarchy had maintained long and productive aid relations with both Iraq and Baghdad’s new adversaries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United States. Now it was clear that Amman would not be able to fashion one policy that all of its key allies would find acceptable, although it could retain many cooperative relationships by tilting against Iraq. Conversely, the Jordanians were especially concerned about avoiding a complete rupture with Baghdad due to aid and other economic ties as well as Saddam’s popularity with large segments of the Jordanian population—and most especially with a number of Jordanians of Palestinian origin. The Jordanian leadership also remained apprehensive about Iran under the Islamic Republic and was reluctant to discard the view that Saddam’s Iraq was a shield against Iranian power and influence.


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Jordan condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but it also opted to remain outside of the U.S.-led multinational coalition against Saddam Hussein, instead urging a peaceful solution to the crisis. Jordan also tried without success to find a formula to avoid war and continue acceptable relations with Iraq and at least some of the major states opposing Iraq. The mutually exclusive demands of Baghdad and the U.S.-led coalition nevertheless made such compromise impossible. After war broke out on January 16, 1991, the king continued efforts to work with all parties to end the conflict, and on February 6 he made a particularly tough speech denouncing U.S. policy toward Iraq. This speech followed the U.S. destruction of several large Jordanian fuel trucks mistaken for military targets entering Iraq along the Amman-Baghdad highway.40 In his remarks, King Hussein condemned the war and called for a renewed effort to seek a diplomatic solution. The king’s harsh tone was widely viewed as excessively pro-Saddam, although it was extremely well-received by the Jordanian public. After the war, Jordan paid a high price for this approach and had to cope with extremely strained relations with the United States and the Gulf Arab states that had opposed Saddam in the war. Aid to Jordan was strongly disrupted and trading relationships severely damaged. The U.S.-Jordanian relationship remained characterized by a variety of mutual interests even after the disastrous episode of the Gulf War. A particularly strong overlap in the foreign policies of Washington and Amman was the search for a stable Middle East and a negotiated settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. To this end, Jordan participated in the U.S.-sponsored Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, and in general sought to improve relations with the Israelis. Such improvements were politically possible for the Jordanians because of productive Israeli peace talks with the Palestinians. The Israelis began these talks with PLO surrogates and then entered negotiations with the PLO itself as part of the diplomatic breakthrough known as the Oslo Process. Taking advantage of this improved political atmosphere, the Israelis and Jordanians announced an end to the state of war between them in July 1994 and then concluded a peace treaty in October. This treaty was widely praised in the United States and led to dramatic improvements in the relationship between Amman and Washington. The Jordanians continued to push for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks, although ultimately the peace process did not yield the results that had been hoped for by either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Following the failure of the 2000 Camp David II Summit organized by President Bill Clinton, the Oslo peace process was widely considered to have collapsed. By this time, King Hussein had died and Jordan was ruled by his son, King Abdullah II (hereafter King Abdullah). King Hussein had died on February 7, 1999 after a long struggle with cancer, leaving Jordan without the leader who had come to epitomize the state. Moreover, in a startling January 1999 revision to the line of succession, Prince Abdullah, the king’s oldest son, was selected by King Hussein to become monarch rather than

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the king’s younger brother Hassan bin Talal, who had been crown prince since 1965. This change was made only two weeks before King Hussein’s death in apparent response to his fear that Hassan would permanently move the line of succession to his own branch of the family.41 King Abdullah, therefore, unexpectedly assumed the Jordanian throne at the age of 37 after a career as an army officer in which he had risen to the rank of major general and commanded the Jordanian Special Forces.42 His formal coronation as Jordan’s fourth king took place on June 9, 1999, despite holding actual power since February of that year. NOTES 1. Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), ch. 20. 2. Mary C. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 50–54. 3. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989), 504–505. 4. Wilson, 6. 5. Ibid., 3. 6. Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914–1932 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 36. 7. James Lunt, The Arab Legion, 1923–1957 (London: Constable Press, 1999), 27. 8. Ibid., 1–4. 9. Sir John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957), 66. 10. Avi Shlaim, Israel and Palestine (London and New York: Verso, 2009), 46–47. 11. Hussein A. Hassouna, The League of Arab States and Regional Disputes: A Study of Middle East Conflicts (Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana Publications, 1975), ch. 3. 12. Wilson, 207–214. 13. Peter Snow, Hussein: A Biography (New York: Robert B. Luce, Inc., 1972), 42–46. 14. Asher Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan: A Political Biography of Wasfi al-Tall (Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1994), 64. 15. Benny Morris, The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 214. 16. Lieutenant General E. L. M. Burns, Between Arab and Israeli (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969), 53. 17. See Alexander Bligh, The Political Legacy of King Hussein (Brighton, UK and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2002), 3. 18. Ibid., 26–32. 19. Shlaim, 107. 20. Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). 21. For one of the most useful accounts of the Iraqi revolution see Hana Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 764–808. 22. Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 146.


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23. Batatu, 801. 24. Susser, 32. 25. King Hussein of Jordan, Uneasy Lies the Head (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1962), ch. 17. 26. Susser, 33. 27. Nigel Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan: A Political Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 100. 28. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 253, 265. 29. Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 176. 30. Avi Shlaim interview with King Hussein as cited in Shlaim, Israel and Palestine, 324. 31. Brigadier S. A. El-Edroos, The Hashemite Arab Army: An Appreciation and Analysis of Military Operations (Amman, Jordan: The Publishing Company, 1980), 438. 32. Abu Iyad with Eric Rouleau, My Home, My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle (New York: Times Books, 1981), 57. 33. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 326. 34. Susser, 139. 35. Halevy, 23. 36. Ashton, ch. 9. 37. Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), 139–140. 38. “King, Iraqi Vice President Discuss Mideast Situation,” Jordan Times, July 1–2, 1979. 39. Marc Lynch, State Interests and Public Sphere: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 140. 40. Queen Noor, 331–332. Also see James Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons 1995), 450. 41. See Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), 231. 42. Although King Abdullah II assumed power in February, his coronation ceremony did not occur until June 9. See Sana Kamal, “Jordan: Abdullah’s Coronation,” Middle East International, June 18, 1999, 10–11.


CHAPTER

2

Jordan’s Political, Economic, and Military System

OVERVIEW

Jordan is not a democracy, despite its status as one of the most open and tolerant societies in the Arab World. The balance of political power within the country is held by the king and the individuals he appoints to key positions to carry out his policies. Opposition politicians are allowed to participate in the Jordanian political system, but only within proscribed limits defined by ever-changing rules. The Jordanian monarchy was nearly overthrown when it permitted a significantly more liberal political system in the mid-1950s, and Jordanian rulers have shown limited interest in devolving significant amounts of power to elected bodies since that time. Yet, this is not the entire story. In recent years, the Jordanian leadership has often favored legalizing opposition forces so long as these groups remain loyal to the Hashemite monarchy, even if they disagree (sometimes vehemently) with fundamental government policies. Additionally, legal opposition groups and their members can be watched and coopted, while their activities can be regulated through a variety of laws, legal permits, voting regulations, and other instruments of control. The Jordanian approach to reform and democracy has tended to be slow and plodding with numerous false starts and setbacks, although the leadership does understand that some level of reform is required and that the current political system cannot continue indefinitely without more democratic input. As Jordanian political culture becomes more sophisticated, government leaders face the challenge of incrementally opening the political system while avoiding the dangers of what they would view as destabilizing change. There is also a

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special reluctance for Jordanian kings to give up any of their powers in foreign policymaking for fear that a more democratic government will make popular but potentially reckless decisions. In the past, the Jordanian government has implemented a variety of unpopular but politically realistic policies such as establishing normal relations with Israel, the maintenance of a strong political alignment with the United States, and ending special ties with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Jordanian government has viewed such policies as a way of advancing Jordan’s national interest despite their domestic unpopularity at times. Adding to this challenge, around half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian heritage and in some cases may direct their primary loyalty to the advancement of Palestinian interests rather than the well-being of Jordan. The Jordanian leadership thus receives input from opposition sources, but it never allows the process to spin out of control whereby the opposition is able to impose substantial limitations on the options and approaches of the Jordanian monarchy to policymaking. A central challenge for both the current king and his predecessors has been to maintain the legitimacy of the government while pursuing unpopular policies, which the government does not want to enforce with excessive levels of brutality. The Jordanian monarchy has found a number of unique ways to address this issue. THE HASHEMITE MONARCHY

The Jordan monarchy dominates the state and is unquestionably the country’s most powerful political institution. It has been under siege at a variety of points in Jordan’s history, and strong doubts have often been raised about whether it could survive the political and populist challenges presented to it. In 1976 one of the Middle East’s most perceptive observers, Peter Mansfield, captured this reality by noting that “Many obituaries of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan have been prepared for instant use. . . . But it still lives and the obituaries gather dust on the files.” 1 One could now add that instead of being ousted, the overwhelming significance of the monarchy in Jordanian political life, and especially the longtime reign of King Hussein, have become vital components of the Jordanian national identity, even to some extent among many Jordanians of Palestinian origin. Jordanian kings have often favored a paternalistic approach to governance which treats citizens respectfully as subordinate members of a larger Jordanian family so long as they are publicly loyal to the government and any opposition remains within carefully delineated bounds. The king usually strives to be understood as a deeply patriotic man and the wise leader of a nation that is actually a large family. When King Hussein died, his son Crown Prince (later King) Abdullah stated that he grieved equally for losing his father and losing his king, further underscoring the familial analogy.2 This approach has made forgiveness an essential aspect of the Hashemite approach to governance. Throughout his lifetime King Hussein


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pardoned almost every domestic adversary that plotted to overthrow or even kill him. Under King Hussein, amnesties and pardons were a continuing feature of Jordanian governance, especially when applied to individuals who were not viewed as a threat to public security. King Hussein often presented himself as personally stricken for the families of wayward Jordanians and emphasized that he hoped for their relatives’ release as soon as this could responsibly be done. While the king did not enjoy almost 47 years in power without some skill at political drama and public relations, this imagery still presents a somewhat reassuring contrast to other regional states that are known for long and brutal imprisonment of political dissenters. The concept of welcoming many opponents back to the “Jordanian family” after they are punished is also a useful strategy for regime maintenance if such citizens can be brought into the Jordanian system as loyal citizens following the granting of a second chance. One such individual, General Ali Abu Nuwar, fled Jordan in 1957 after being implicated in an apparent coup attempt. He was later pardoned in the mid-1960s and appointed as Jordan’s ambassador to France in February 1971.3 On another memorable occasion in late 1996, the king met dissident Leith Shubeilat at a Jordanian prison and then personally drove him to his mother’s house following a royal pardon.4 Shubeilat had served 11 months of a 3-year prison sentence for slandering the king and his family in a series of lectures criticizing Jordanian-Israeli contacts since 1948. Shubeilat, who is a former head of Jordan’s Engineering Association, is especially well known for his unrelenting hostility to the peace treaty with Israel. While the king’s gesture did nothing to moderate Shubeilat’s views, it is impossible to envision any other Arab leader treating a prominent dissident with such conspicuous courtesy. There are few better ways to indicate that one is a valued member of society than to have the head of state drive you home. All of these individuals were given a strong incentive to continue living their lives and working within the Jordanian political system because they still have standing within that system. Correspondingly, Jordan’s approach to controlling dissent can often be described as directing generosity at those who have tasted punishment and thereby allowing them other options than becoming increasingly hardened lifelong enemies. Secondarily, such a strategy might cause political opponents to moderate their commitment to future legal or especially illegal opposition activities. Some nonviolent opponents like Shubeilat have been pardoned multiple times. Others, who may undertake violence, need to be considered in a different light. Although following his father’s example with a March 1999 pardon, King Abdullah was later to regret his generosity to some pardoned individuals including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi was a career criminal who was imprisoned following his early steps to transition from criminality to Islamist terrorism. He was released following a sweeping pardon of numerous prisoners designed to suggest that the new king would lead the government with the moderation and

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mercy as his father had done. The king may later have blamed some of Jordan’s Islamist leaders for advising him to grant pardons to men who, in retrospect, were committed terrorists who could never have reconciled with the Jordanian government or lived a peaceful life as Jordanian citizens. Nevertheless, by seeking the advice of those Islamist leaders, King Abdullah was following another approach used by his father. This was the use of the Muslim Brotherhood organization to coopt and tame politically oriented Islamists. As previously mentioned, the Jordanian Constitution requires that the monarch always be a male member of the Hashemite family, which is the family of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. All of Jordan’s kings have been intensely aware of this heritage and view it as a serious responsibility. King Hussein was schooled by his grandfather that he was destined to play a special role in the world because of his family’s heritage. The first King Abdullah and all later kings viewed the Arab Revolt of World War I as an example of the destiny of Hashemite leadership to play an important role in the service of the Arab World. The establishment of Hashemite monarchies in Jordan and Iraq following World War I seemed to be an important aspect of this role as well. King Hussein’s ability to survive at least a dozen assassination attempts may have further reinforced his sense of serving a divine providence. The Hashemite family’s links to Islam’s Prophet Mohammed also help reinforce the legitimacy of the monarchy, although by themselves they are not enough to keep the dynasty in power. The Jordanian monarch also seeks to establish domestic legitimacy through the positive qualities and tangible achievements of the king and his family. In order to have meaning for the population, these achievements must help improve the lives of Jordan’s citizens through advancement in such areas as educational opportunities, economic prospects, health, and material well-being. The Jordanian leadership also had to avoid the mistakes of other monarchies, some of which are no longer in power due to coups or violent revolution. A number of monarchs elsewhere became remote from their citizens due to an overemphasis on the majesty of their office.5 Others have appeared to have become intoxicated by luxury and opportunity for self-indulgence provided by their office. Jordan’s Hashemite dynasty has consistently projected a very different image of its leadership. As leaders of a resource-poor country, the Jordanian kings have avoided the appearance of being interested in luxury and attempted to project an image of unrelenting service, nationalism, and loyalty to the population of Jordan. To approach governance in any other way could threaten to divide the Jordanian population from the monarchy in ways that have destroyed earlier monarchical systems. KING ABDULLAH II

Abdullah II, the current king of Jordan, has held that office for over 10 years at the time of this writing. He assumed the office at age 37, which while clearly a


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young age, was a full 20 years older than his father had been when he assumed the same responsibility. Like previous kings, Abdullah is the most powerful and important decision-maker in the country, and he is the major figure in defining Jordanian priorities. Among the king’s numerous powers are the right to appoint governments (including a prime minister and cabinet), approve legislation, and dissolve Parliament. The king is also the Supreme Commander of the military and approves all promotions to the most senior positions in the military and security services. The king further appoints the members of the upper house of Parliament. He often maintains that his primary responsibility is assuring that Jordan moves forward as a stable and prosperous country with strong institutions. King Abdullah is sometimes described as seeking greater democracy in Jordan, but this claim is strongly debated. Often he seems more comfortable with the concept of reform rather than full democracy. Occasionally King Abdullah can speak somewhat contemptuously of Jordan’s Islamist movement, which is the most important force within the political opposition. King Abdullah was a surprise choice for the position of king. He had been aware of a limited possibility of assuming this role, but felt that it was more likely that he would spend his entire career as a soldier. While Abdullah had been briefly designated as crown prince while an infant, his uncle Prince Hassan assumed that role in 1965 due to the need to fill that position with a mature leader. Crown Prince Hassan was widely considered an “assistant king” from 1965 until 1999, at which point he had been preparing to become head of state for over 30 years.6 The expectation that Hassan would attain the highest office only changed around three weeks before King Hussein’s death, when the brothers had a serious falling out. The reasons for this disagreement are the subject of debate, but the level of anger can be seen in an extremely harsh letter that King Hussein wrote to his younger brother. This 14-page typed letter was rambling in a variety of places, but expressed unmistakable disappointment in Crown Prince Hassan and ordered that he be replaced with Prince Abdullah. One of the most important reasons for this change may have been Hassan’s lack of interest in the activation of a family council to help decide issues of future succession. King Hussein may have felt that his brother’s reluctance signaled Hassan’s interest in shifting the line of succession to his own family. Upon taking office, King Abdullah emerged as an energetic and detailoriented leader, who spoke in careful and measured ways. In a particularly insightful assessment, author Alan George wrote that “King Abdullah presents not so much as a monarch but as an approachable, plain speaking, down to earth and even slightly self-effacing professional army officer.”7 Also, like his father, King Abdullah is widely perceived as an extroverted man of action and personal courage. This image is quite different from that of Prince Hassan who is more often viewed as a bookish intellectual who does not relate as well to ordinary citizens. Kings who are withdrawn and out of touch tend to endanger their thrones,

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so King Abdullah has good reasons to be approachable and “even slightly selfeffacing.” At the beginning of his reign he even occasionally disguised himself and then attempted to deal with the Jordanian bureaucracy as though he were an ordinary citizen. King Abdullah also notes that his time in the military did a great deal to familiarize him with the problems of the poor, since many young men of impoverished backgrounds joined the army as a way to provide for their families and pull themselves out of poverty. King Abdullah is openly comfortable with Westerners and Western approaches to problem solving and, like his father, has been criticized for being too close to the United States. Some of his critics even went so far as to suggest that Abdullah spoke English better than Arabic when he first became king.8 This criticism is probably unfair, since King Abdullah’s background as a soldier caused him to favor a straightforward and even blunt style of Arabic in contrast to the more poetic and flowery approach sometimes favored by Arab intellectuals and politicians. In any event, he rapidly overcame any shortcomings with formal spoken Arabic, although it remains clear that King Abdullah has a longstanding association with the West in a region where such ties are sometimes looked upon with suspicion. In addition to having a British mother (who converted to Islam), Abdullah received much of his early education in the United Kingdom (at the Saint Edmonds School in Hindhead) and the United States (at two schools in Deerfield, Massachusetts). As a young man, he was admitted to the United Kingdom’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and upon graduation he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Jordanian Army. 9 He was then assigned, at his own request, to the British Army for a tour of duty as a “reconnaissance troop leader,” serving in both England and West Germany. 10 Such an assignment is an excellent way of developing infantry fighting skills as well as small unit leadership abilities. King Abdullah’s pro-Western outlook appears to have been reinforced by the values he developed as a modern military leader, including a belief in discipline, efficiency, hard work, and careful planning. Consequently, his initial approach to national leadership sometimes caused problems in his interaction with Jordanian tribal leaders. Early in his administration, some such leaders reportedly complained that he was a bit too abrupt and has lost touch with tribal customs and traditional values.11 Others understood that traditional methods of indirectness as well as a reluctance to plunge directly into important issues can be difficult for a military man such as the king. Early in his reign, King Abdullah started and ended meetings on time, which was not always been viewed as appropriately respectful by more traditional Jordanian leaders. The king’s patience for timeconsuming social events which help bind the tribal leaders to the monarchy was initially more limited than that of his father, but he later appeared to enjoy such efforts. Over time, he has become much closer to the various tribal leaders and more comfortable with the role of “sheikh of sheikhs.”


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THE OFFICE OF CROWN PRINCE, THE PRIME MINISTER, AND THE CABINET

The Jordanian Constitution describes the role of crown prince as a mostly ceremonial position, but the importance of this position has seen an uneven history depending upon who holds the office. Originally, the Constitution stated that the crown prince was to be appointed from among the king’s sons, but it was amended in 1965 to allow the king to designate a brother to that position. This change was made at a particularly turbulent time in Jordanian politics that included a number of attempts to assassinate King Hussein. In response to these difficulties, King Hussein appointed his younger brother Hassan to the position of crown prince. The timing of the amendment was not accidental since Hassan, who was 11 years younger than the king, had just come of age to be able to rule if this was required. He continued to hold the position of crown prince for almost 34 years. Over time, it is possible that Crown Prince Hassan’s role in office served as something of a deterrent to future assassination attempts since he projected an image as less tolerant of Palestinian nationalism than his older brother. The idea of assassinating King Hussein only to see Crown Prince Hassan replace him was not particularly appealing to many potential assailants. Prince Hassan’s replacement as crown prince on the eve of King Hussein’s death by a significantly younger man initially caused some concerns in Jordan and internationally. The sudden change of plans regarding such an entrenched figure could have caused serious problems in a number of other Arab countries, but the Hashemites would not allow a dynastic issue to become violent or even the subject of public disagreement among the leadership. Instead, members of the Hashemite family have sought to avoid any kinds of squabbles that could make them appear divided and perhaps cause observers to take sides. This approach is particularly clear in the conduct of Prince Hassan, who has remained in Jordan and made a special effort to display his continuing loyalty and subordination to King Abdullah. He has publicly asserted that he believes that “primogeniture is the right of the head of state in the Hashemite context” and that Abdullah’s succession “was in a sense a return to normalcy.”12 In a favorable commentary on the stability and solidarity of the Jordanian leadership, Prince Hassan continues to be engaged in a number of high-profile projects which are well covered by the Jordanian press. In the absence of serious governing responsibilities, Prince Hassan has paid attention to a number of his intellectual and scientific interests and helped to organize and support research and conferences on solar power, cultural diversity, and other such issues. King Abdullah’s half-brother Prince Hamza became crown prince in 1999 when Abdullah became king but was removed from this position in late 2004.13 Rather surprisingly, King Abdullah explained his decision to remove Hamza by suggesting that the office of crown prince was a burden that interfered

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with his performance of other duties. Jordan remained without a crown prince until July 2, 2009, when King Abdullah issued a royal decree naming his oldest son Prince Hussein to that position. Prince Hussein was born on June 28, 1994 and was therefore 15 years old at the time of the announcement. Should King Abdullah die before Prince Hussein reaches the age of 17, a regent or regency council would have to be appointed to govern the country. If he died when Prince Hussein was over 17 but still very young, some arrangement would probably be found to allow him to complete his education and military service and perhaps develop some governmental experience before assuming office. (It is difficult to imagine that he will not continue the family tradition and attend Sandhurst.) Although King Hussein entered office at age 17, Jordanian political culture has evolved to the point that it is no longer possible for such a youthful king to assume the full powers of the office. King Abdullah’s relative youth and good health make it unlikely that a succession will be required any time soon. Should Crown Prince Hussein become ill or face any other serious problems in the future, King Abdullah may, if he wishes, designate a new crown prince. Although King Abdullah refers to his wife as a full partner, she cannot succeed him. Queens do not rule in Jordan since the succession is limited to either the king’s son or brother. Jordan also has a cabinet consisting of a prime minister and the other ministers appointed by the king to implement the kingdom’s policies and to manage their respective bureaucracies. The king does not have to appoint the prime minister from the parliament’s leading political party as in some countries and can appoint someone from outside of Parliament if he wishes. In December 2009, for example, King Abdullah appointed Samir Rifai to the office of prime minister. While Rifai had an extensive background in politics and media relations, he was then serving as the CEO of Jordan Dubai Capital, and thus was quite remote from Parliament.14 Jordan has also maintained the positions of prime minister and cabinet ministers throughout periods when the parliament has been suspended. The type of person appointed as prime minister often reflects the king’s priorities at the time, and the prime minister correspondingly does not serve for a fixed term. Senior military officers may be appointed at a time when security problems are particularly serious. Technocrats are often appointed when the economy is in need of intensive management. Prime ministers rarely serve more than a few years, although the same individual may be appointed to this position multiple times in a political career. Some of these individuals, such as former Prime Minister Nader Dahabi, have simultaneously held an additional portfolio. (Dahabi was also minister of defense.) Another important element of the monarchical system is the Royal Court. The Royal Court serves as the main political institution in Jordan. Its chief function is to maintain administrative links between the office of the king and the other major organs of government, including the armed forces and security organizations. The Court has a professional and administrative staff of around 300 people.


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THE JORDANIAN PARLIAMENT

At various points in its history the Jordanian monarchy has permitted limited experiments in democracy, including the creation of a national legislature (universally referred to as Parliament) and the establishment of political parties. The first parliament was established in 1929 and was composed of individuals appointed by the king or notables who were indirectly elected. Jordan’s first attempt to hold multiparty elections for a national legislature recognizable to Western observers occurred in 1956 and produced a chaotic outcome in which the king was almost overthrown and Jordan’s future existence as an independent state (rather than a part of some larger pan-Arab entity) came under threat. Jordanian kings have been cautious about allocating significant powers to the parliament since that time. As a result of this reluctance, some foreign observers view Jordanian political reform as little more than an exercise in image management by the ruling elite, but this interpretation is a serious oversimplification. Although the Jordanian leadership is concerned about how the regime is viewed by the West and other sources of foreign aid, carefully managed and halting political reform in Jordan is part of an overall strategy of meeting public expectations to ensure regime survival. Jordanian political reform programs tends to expand during times of economic discontent but contract when the government is seeking to implement unpopular policies, such as when it first negotiated the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and various forms of Israeli-Jordanian cooperative behavior based upon that treaty. In recent years Jordanian leaders have become interested in underscoring their image as democratic reformers in order to avoid running afoul of the post 9/11 U.S. demands for increased democracy in the Middle East. Unlike Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the Jordanians have been able to deflect most U.S. media and other criticism about limiting democracy by stressing their interest in reform, maintaining acceptable relations with Israel, and serving as an especially important partner in efforts to stabilize the Middle East during its current era of turbulence. Yet, Jordan has also shown concern over even the relatively mild U.S. criticism it has received for it slow pace of democratization, and the Amman leadership strongly defends its commitment to reform and (slow) democratization.15 Although it is easy to view Jordanian objections to international criticism over the pace of democratization as delaying tactics, these factors may underscore how difficult it would be for Jordan to retreat back into a fully autocratic system. Jordan’s national legislature was created in its modern form by the 1952 Constitution. Parliament’s lower house, or Chamber of Deputies, is elected and includes 110 (formerly 80, then 105) members who hold office for a four-year term. The upper house (the Chamber of Notables or Senate) is appointed by the king and has 55 members. The parliament has limited powers which, while

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real, are dwarfed by the power of the monarchy. According to its formal powers, Parliament can veto actions by the king by a two-thirds majority of both houses. Such assertions of power do not occur in practice because the upper house is directly appointed by the king and the lower house always has strong proroyalist elements. These individuals are sometimes elected with the aid of various electoral regulations and redistricting laws that are favorable to pro-regime candidates. Nevertheless, Parliament since 1989 has been known for hosting a number of strong critics of Jordanian policies and serving as a place where serious discussions of national problems occur. Parliament was previously suspended and temporarily replaced with a National Consultative Council (1978–84) in the aftermath of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Israel seized control of the West Bank. The Jordanian leadership resorted to this expediency because they were not prepared to hold elections with the West Bank (then considered by the king to be Jordanian territory) under Israeli occupation. They were also unwilling to conduct East Bank–only elections, which might have appeared too accepting of the Israeli occupation of what Amman viewed as Jordanian land. This problem was rendered moot when King Hussein severed Jordan’s legal and administrative ties with the West Bank in 1988. After a hiatus of over 22 years, Jordan held parliamentary elections in 1989, achieving a 70 percent voter turnout.16 Subsequent elections were held in 1993, 1997, 2003, and 2007. Women had been granted voting rights in 1974 and exercised this right for the first time in 1989. The year 1989 is generally seen as a watershed for reform in Jordan, when the king responded to severe economic problems and some resulting political unrest by partially opening the political system. Jordanian democratic and economic reform then made significant strides from 1989 until 1994 but slowed as a result of King Hussein’s decision to implement unpopular policies on Israel and Iraq. These policy changes could be reasonably expected to garner intense opposition in any sort of strengthened Parliament elected under more democratic election laws than those currently in place. The most controversial of the new policies was the establishment of the IsraeliJordanian Peace Treaty, signed in the presence of U.S. President Bill Clinton in October 1994. Another unpopular change was the progressive hardening of Jordanian policies toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.17 In the aftermath of the 1991 fighting, the Jordanian government had initially limited their criticism of Saddam due to widespread public sympathy for the defeated Iraqis and because of Amman’s uncertainty over the long-term consequences of antagonizing its larger neighbor. This situation had changed by 1995 when the Jordanian government granted political asylum to Saddam’s defecting sons-inlaw, Lieutenant General Hussein Kamil and Lieutenant Colonel Saddam Kamil, and their families.18 Other problems for democracy continued to exist, including occasional delays in the implementation of Jordanian elections due to regional and domestic problems.


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In recent years, King Abdullah dissolved the parliament in June 2001 and announced plans for new elections in November 2001. 19 These elections did not take place as scheduled, partially because of the crisis in Middle East politics that began on September 11, 2001. A new election was held in June 2003 when about two-thirds of the delegates elected to the lower house were proestablishment supporters of the king. Seventeen seats went to the opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF) of the 30 seats it contested in the elections.20 In addition to the IAF members, a limited number of independent Islamists were also elected in 2003. Most Jordanian parliaments nevertheless tend to be dominated by tribal candidates and other strong supporters of the king’s policies who invariably do well. While charges that the electoral rules have been designed to favor such candidates are correct, their strength also has a great deal to do with the enduring importance of tribal and family ties in “locking in” votes. IAF officials have told the Jordanian media that they are “very aware” that they cannot displace the power of the tribes.21 In November 2009, King Abdullah dissolved Parliament and ordered that new elections be held by the fourth quarter of 2010, after the reform of election laws. King Abdullah directed the government to establish election procedures which improve “democratic performance” and strengthen “public participation,” but any detailed guidance on adjusting the exact mechanics of the election process were not made public in the immediate aftermath of this announcement. Under the Jordanian Constitution (Article 24), the cabinet can enact temporary laws which enter into force with the approval of the king. This call for reform was welcomed by the political opposition, which frequently complains that current the current election law has led to the overrepresentation of rural districts at the expense of urban areas that are often dominated by Palestinian voters and serve as the strongholds of Islamist power.22 Under the current law, tribal candidates can also work around bans on electioneering before the appointed time by flowery media descriptions of how and why a particular tribal candidate was chosen to stand for public office. In assessing the viability of Jordan’s parliament, it is also important to consider the issue of political parties. These parties came into legal existence following the passage of the 1992 Political Parties Act. By 2007 the kingdom had 36 parties, but 24 of the smaller parties were forced to dissolve themselves under the more stringent 2008 Political Parties Act that requires a party to achieve some minimal indicators of viability in order to enter the electoral process. These requirements include a minimum of 500 founding members, with members drawn from at least five of the country’s 12 governorates.23 The previous law set the number of founders at 50 from anywhere in Jordan. Under the new law, a wide variety of parties have qualified to retain their legal status including the IAF, Communist Party, Green Party, and Ba’ath Party, as well as various establishment and Palestine-oriented parties. Despite this eclectic assortment of parties, many

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Jordanians are reluctant to become involved with any of them out of a concern that the government may view political activity and activism unfavorably.24 Such concern is not surprising since political parties were outlawed in Jordan for decades, and open membership could at that time mean prison. Doubts about the wisdom of joining a political party are often most pronounced among the many Jordanians who work in public sector jobs. Additionally, Jordan’s opposition parties have often complained that the press and election laws are designed to ensure the dominance of pro-government forces in Parliament. THE JORDANIAN ECONOMY

Jordan is a small desert country with few natural resources, very little water, and no known oil reserves of any consequence except for oil shale. The oil shale has not provided Jordan with revenues of any consequence to date because the process to extract oil remains too expensive to be commercially viable, but the Jordanians hope that this situation will change as new ways to exploit this resource are developed. Under an agreement with Shell Corporation, the first commercial quantities of oil are expected to be extracted from Jordanian oil shale between 2021 and 2029.25 Additionally, a variety of other foreign energy companies have concluded agreements with Jordan on various preliminary steps to help exploit its oil shale resources. Jordan’s most important natural resources currently being exploited include phosphates and potash, which are exported as fertilizers. The Jordanians also have a significant tourism industry because of various spectacular ruins (particularly the ancient cities of Petra and Jerash), as well as some wellpreserved desert castles and sites that appeal to Biblical tourism such as Mount Nebo. Agricultural activity is mostly confined to the Jordan Valley and betterwatered lands in the north, with less than 4 percent of the GDP comprised of agricultural activities. Only a relatively small portion of the Jordanian population is involved in agriculture due to the limited availability of suitably watered land that can support such activity. The kingdom does have a national gas field in Risheh in the eastern portion of the country, which currently produces the modest amount of around 21 million cubic feet (mcf ) per day but may have some potential for future development and expansion.26 Jordan’s lack of oil resources has required it to import significant quantities of oil for its own domestic needs throughout its history. Jordan is correspondingly unable to create a welfare state such as exists in various Gulf states, but the leadership is deeply interested in establishing a rising standard of living for a variety of reasons, including the maintenance and expansion of a strong middle class with an economic stake in the continuation of the current political system. Progress toward obtaining this goal has been tangible, and the Jordanian standard of living is significantly higher than its natural resource base would suggest because of the infusion of funds from outside sources. The most important


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source of outside resources is usually foreign aid, which Jordan has received from the West or the Arab World (or both) throughout its history. The nature and levels of this aid are linked to Jordan’s strategic position in the Middle East. Moreover, Jordan benefits greatly from its citizens accepting employment in wealthier Arab states and then sending some of their earnings to their families in Jordan in the form of remittances. Jordan has a large number of welleducated people who can provide professional services in fields such as medicine, management, education, and engineering, and these people can often earn good salaries in wealthier Arab countries (discussed in Chapter 5). Additionally, some young people from wealthier Arab countries come to Jordan for a university education, thereby supporting the Jordanian educational system with their tuition payments. The number of such students from wealthier Gulf states increased significantly following the September 11 terrorist strikes in the United States due to a fear by some Arabs that they were no longer completely welcome in the West and particularly the United States.27 Economic problems have political consequences in a variety of countries, and Jordan is no exception. One of the most dramatic examples of this situation occurred in 1989 when Jordan was unable to meet its repayment obligations to foreign creditors without support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As a condition of such support, Jordan was required to implement an austerity plan that led to a significant rise in the price of basic commodities. After this economic adjustment occurred, the city of Ma’an in southern Jordan was swept by rioting in April, which spread to neighboring towns and villages. Rioting and angry mobs are not unknown in Jordan, but this development came as a shock since it occurred among tribesmen with strong traditional ties to the monarchy. The riots were put down by security forces, although the king and prime minister appeared somewhat removed from this process as they were both out of the country.28 The combination of economic and political problems led to King Hussein’s decision to open up the political system and hold elections for a new parliament, underscoring how seriously he viewed the need to respond promptly to the 1989 problems. Another potential source of instability is high rates of unemployment, which can be a serious problem in Jordan even with large numbers of Jordanians working abroad. Currently, official figures report unemployment to be between 12 and 14 percent, and it is likely that these figures underestimate the problem.29 A great deal of this unemployment extends to young people, and Jordan like most Middle Eastern states has an exceptionally young population. Severe youth unemployment can be a problem for a nation seeking stability. Currently, around 55 percent of the Jordanian population is under age 25.30 Adding to the problem, Jordan continues to have a somewhat underdeveloped private sector and an exceptionally large number of people working in government administration. The public sector is heavily composed of East Bankers (people from the former

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area of Transjordan rather than the West Bank) and has fewer Jordanians of Palestinian origin because they are sometimes seen as less loyal to the state. In the face of these problems, King Abdullah has aggressively sought international investments in Jordan. As in a number of societies, Jordan is known to experience serious corruption problems, and such corruption can be a serious problem for economic productivity and regime legitimacy. The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for 2009 placed Jordan in 49th place for the apparent level of public sector corruption out of 180 nations surveyed, with the number 1 representing the lowest level of perceived corruption.31 Jordan’s number is a much better rating than most Middle Eastern countries, and is on par with a variety of more developed countries in areas such as Eastern Europe. Additionally, Jordan maintains an Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) which investigates corruption cases and refers problems cases for legal action. Problems investigated by the commission have included fraud, bribery, forgery, embezzlement, and misuse of authority.32 The Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (GID; discussed below) also has a role in fighting corruption in Jordan. This approach has some advantages, since the GID is a powerful organization that is well-placed to discover corrupt practices and arrest the individuals engaged in such activities. There are, however, some problems with giving the GID a large role in the enforcement of anti-corruption activities because the GID, as an intelligence service, cannot always be open and transparent about its activities. Waging war against corruption is probably most effective if it is done in a way in which the public sees action being taken against corrupt individuals regardless of the fact that they may hold important positions of power. Additionally, there may always be suspicion that an organization such as the GID is too close to the senior leadership of the Jordanian government and that it will only arrest those individuals who are not sufficiently protected politically. The Jordanian economy has also experienced a variety of distortions as a result of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Jordan has traditionally been welcoming to Iraqis, and around 400,000 Iraqis were living there just prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.33 This figure swelled to between 700,000 and 1 million in its first few years after the invasion.34 In May 2007, King Abdullah stated that the number was around 750,000, but this was basically an informed guess.35 Many Jordanians believe that the number is much higher. The influx of Iraqi refugees fleeing war and insurgency since 2003 is often viewed as responsible for major distortions in the Jordanian economy. Housing has become a particularly serious problem, and the cost of rent has risen dramatically in many instances.36 These changes have occurred not only because of increased demand for housing but also because of widespread real estate speculation spurred by the influx of Iraqis.37 Problems with housing costs have come at an unfortunate time for less prosperous Jordanians, since the price of gasoline and petroleum products has


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also continued to rise due to the loss of some free oil supplied by the Saddam Hussein regime.38 In the years immediately following the outbreak of war, the effects of the refugee influx were not all negative, since spending by wealthier and middle-class Iraqis helped to prop up the hotel, restaurant, and other service industries. These benefits have declined over time as many Iraqis used up any savings they might have been able to access while in Jordan. Iraqi refugees have also placed a strain on the Jordanian government’s ability to provide public services and most notably health care and education, although the Jordanians have received foreign assistance to help with these problems. The United States has provided a series of grants to assist Jordan, Syria, and several other states in their efforts to provide educational facilities to Iraqi refugee children following a UN appeal for approximately $130 million to defray these educational expenses. 39 In 2009 the United States provided $400 million in humanitarian assistance to the Middle East, with a large portion of this earmarked for support to Iraqi refugees.40 The United States also remains the largest donor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which plays a major role in supporting Iraqi refugees.41 The European Union is also in discussions with Amman about increasing aid to help Jordan cope with refugee problems.42 Despite important international support, the Jordanians worry that the world community is losing interest in Iraqi refugee issues and that funding cuts may soon follow. This is a serious problem, since many refugees have already used up their own resources after years of exile. Additionally, Jordan, with its own serious unemployment problem, has limited the opportunity for refugees to obtain a permit to work legally in Jordan. The Jordanians have been further disappointed that Baghdad has only provided about $7 million in total aid to help the Iraqi refugees in their country.43 THE ROLE OF THE ISLAMIC ACTION FRONT AS AN OPPOSITION PARTY IN JORDAN

The Islamic Action Front (IAF) is Jordan’s most important political party at the present time and identifies itself as a loyal opposition.44 The IAF is the political arm of the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and serves as a key opponent of many government policies, including support for U.S. efforts in Iraq and the continuation of normal relations with Israel. Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood was established in Amman around 1945. It is an offshoot of the much older Egyptian organization founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 to bring Islamic values more firmly into politics and to resist Western influence and secularization in the Middle East.45 Throughout much of its history, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has been willing to accept and even support the Hashemite monarchy, and it was often opposed to political groups that constituted a more serious threat to the throne. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Islamists were a useful

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counterweight to Jordanian Nasserites and other leftist Arab nationalists opposed to the monarchy.46 Throughout many of these years, Egyptian President Nasser’s anti-Jordanian rhetoric coincided nicely with his unyielding campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, helping to push both sides toward each other. On at least one occasion in the 1960s, the Jordanian government and the Islamists cooperated to organize an Amman demonstration protesting the Nasser government’s repression of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as well as the execution of several of its members.47 During the 1970 civil war, Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood sided with the Jordanian government against the PLO.48 King Hussein appreciated the loyalty shown by the Muslim Brotherhood on key occasions and generally regarded them as much less dangerous than several other Islamist organizations such as the Liberation Party, which was outlawed in 1956 and severely repressed thereafter.49 Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood was seldom repressed following the 1957 decision to outlaw political parties, since it was registered as a charitable society and not generally viewed as subversive. Nasserist, Communist, and other leftist parties were considered significantly more dangerous and faced much more serious problems with the security forces if they engaged in illegal political activity. Thus, the organizational foundation for the IAF’s success was set at a time when the Jordanian authorities allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to grow and develop while competing opposition movements faced harassment by the security forces. When political parties were legalized once again in September 1992, the IAF was correspondingly well prepared to fill the political void and establish itself as the leading Jordanian party.50 The IAF also sought to become one of the primary beneficiaries of the public discontent over the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and the subsequent normalization effort, although it was impossible to consolidate such gains due to government manipulation of the electoral laws. In the 1993 national elections, the IAF lost 6 seats in the lower house and was reduced to 16 members of Parliament due to new electoral laws and vigorous government restrictions of political activity in the aftermath of the Madrid peace talks with Israel, which the IAF opposed.51 The organization then boycotted the 1997 elections because of constricting electoral rules, but in 2003 it ran 30 candidates and won 17 seats in the expanded 110-seat lower house.52 In 1997, disagreement with the government over election procedures reached an impasse, and the IAF chose to boycott parliamentary election. They have periodically threatened to repeat this tactic but have usually been reluctant to follow through on such a threat. In July 2007 the IAF announced that it was boycotting local elections, but the government said it was too late for such a decision, and the names of IAF candidates who had successfully filed as candidates remained on the ballot. Despite these setbacks, the IAF won two mayor’s seats. The IAF then experienced the worst national election in its history on November 20, 2007, when only 6 of its candidates won seats in Parliament out of 22 IAF candidates


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that stood for office. They claimed the reason for this defeat was that the electoral laws had been designed to marginalize political parties and allow former army generals, intelligence officers, and tribal leaders to dominate Parliament. This argument seemed quite compelling since the IAF was the only political party to win seats in this election at all.53 No other political party won a single seat. Despite Islamist setbacks in the 2007 elections, Western observers have sometimes viewed the IAF’s emergence as Jordan’s dominant opposition party with alarm due to its opposition to strong Jordanian ties with the West and Israel as well as various extreme statements and actions by some of its members (such as when two IAF members of Parliament paid their respects at a funeral service for Abu Musab Zarqawi as discussed in Chapter 6). While such concerns are understandable, the regime has solid political reasons for allowing the Muslim Brotherhood and the IAF to participate in the Jordanian political system as a nonviolent political opposition that has traditionally accepted Hashemite rule. Amman’s approach to coopting Islamists has sometimes been studied by other Arab states which refer to it as the “Jordanian model.” The Jordanian political system may work best for the regime when the Muslim Brotherhood and IAF are legal but never strong enough to present a serious challenge to regime power or disrupt key policies. This situation allows these groups to serve as a “safety valve” for venting opposition concerns and may prevent the radicalization of the most discontented elements within the Jordanian opposition. These opposition groups naturally have no interest in playing this governmentscripted role indefinitely, and seek a serious chance to share power with the monarchy. Correspondingly, the IAF continues to pressure the Jordanian government to open the political system and actually share power through various tactics including legislative action, boycotts of some elections, charges of rigged voting procedures, and appeals to international organizations and the world media.54 The IAF’s ability to increase its standing as a political opposition movement has also suffered for reasons apart from regime manipulation of the electoral system. In recent years it has experienced a number of internal setbacks, and is seriously handicapped by factionalism along a variety of divisive political issues. Two of the most serious concerns provoking disagreement are how aggressively to confront the monarchy over policies on which they disagree and to what extent they should establish links to the Palestinian militant organization, Hamas. There are also more traditional problems, including differences over electoral tactics and the management of finances. At various points, it has even appeared possible that the party would split should the leadership be unable to contain the differences among major factions. In May 2009, Ishaq Farhan was elected as the interim director of the IAF to serve a one-year term. The Arab press sometimes refers to Farhan as a moderate, but he has made some fairly tough statements about the United States including an especially harsh critique of President Barack Obama’s outreach speech delivered at Cairo University in 2009.55

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THE JORDANIAN MILITARY

Throughout its history, the Jordanian military (with only a few exceptions) has been deeply loyal to the Hashemite monarchy and has protected it from a variety of internal threats. It has also been involved in a number of conflicts with neighboring states, including Israel, which was Jordan’s most powerful external adversary from 1948 until 1994. As discussed earlier, Jordanian forces fought in the 1948–49 war and distinguished themselves to a greater extent than the militaries of the other Arab states fighting in this conflict. The 1967 war was another matter, and the badly mauled Jordanian military had to be substantially rebuilt after this time. Unsurprisingly, Jordan’s most important military museum, the Martyrs Monument in Amman, contains almost no displays related to that conflict. After the 1967 war, the Jordanian military was nevertheless able to recover many of its prewar capabilities fairly quickly due to the influx of aid provided by Arab oil producers to all of the countries defeated in the 1967 war. Later, during the 1970s and 1980s, Jordan continued to supplement military assistance from Western countries with financial support for military modernization from Arab oil-producing states. This situation changed in the early 1990s when Jordanian military procurement was disrupted as a result of difficulties in relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, following King Hussein’s decision not to join the 1990–91 U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein. These problems severely disrupted the flow of the foreign aid necessary for the Jordanian military to make key purchases and move forward with military modernization. This situation later changed dramatically in response to the new military circumstances created by the peace treaty with Israel when Western military aid programs were restored to previous high levels, and in November 1996 the United States designated Jordan as a major non-NATO ally. Currently, the Jordanian armed forces comprise about 100,000 active duty personnel and 65,000 reservists. The most important branch of the service remains the army (with 88,000 active duty personnel) with the air force as a distant second (with 12,000 active duty personnel) while the coast guard (sometimes informally called a navy) is a minor service with only around 500 people and 13 patrol and coastal defense craft. The contemporary Jordanian Arab Army is a highly professional force with high quality officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs). In recent years it has been reorganized from a division structure into four separate commands. These are the Armor Command, the Mechanized Infantry Command, the Special Operations Command, and the Strategic Reserve. Jordanian combat doctrine is almost entirely defensive since Jordan does not have the resources for conducting large-scale offensive operations, or even much interest in doing so. In addition to their conventional self-defense role, Jordanian troops have been assigned to secure the country’s borders often with a special interest in preventing infiltration by terrorists or smugglers.


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Jordanian forces have also been placed on the border with Israel to prevent possible terrorist infiltration into Israel or the West Bank from Jordanian soil. Such infiltration can lead to tragic human consequences as well as major bilateral problems with Israel if terrorist strikes are even partially successful. Jordanian ground forces are in the process of converting to a lighter and more agile force structure based on the command system noted above and including a number of smaller combat formations with greater mobility. Such a force has fewer tank battalions and is both cheaper and better equipped to deal with terrorism, border security, and internal security problems than are armor-heavy or mechanized infantry units. Nevertheless, Jordan retains over 1,000 tanks in active service, all of which are of U.S. or British manufacture. Since 2004 Jordan has also undertaken a major upgrade program for its U.S.-made M-60 tanks, while some of Jordan’s British-made Challenger tanks have been subject to either British or domestic Jordanian updating and modification. Older tanks, including the M-48s (U.S.) and Centurions (U.K.), are not operational or are in storage. The Jordanian Army has around 400 self-propelled artillery pieces (a significant number for a force its size) as well as around 100 older towed artillery pieces. It also has acquired large numbers of modern and effective antitank weapons such as the U.S.-made Javelin and upgraded Dragon. These systems may have been acquired as a cost-effectiveness approach to help compensate for the decision to de-emphasize conventional capabilities. Jordan’s Special Forces troops are among the best in the region, and in recent years have emerged as an important and expanding component of the Jordanian military. King Abdullah commanded the Special Operations Command when he served as a major general, and he continues to show a special interest in its status and activities. Partially because of King Abdullah’s lifelong involvement with Special Forces (first as a prince and then as monarch), the force structure of these troops expanded dramatically from one brigade in the early 1990s to a separate command in the years that followed. Currently Jordan’s Special Forces command includes one airborne brigade (with two paratrooper battalions and one artillery battalion), two Special Forces battalions, one psychological operations unit, and the Royal Guard. The missions assigned to special operations troops have expanded as well in past years. In the years prior to the 2003 Iraq war, Jordanian special forces troops played a leading role in securing the Iraqi border, where almost nightly clashes took place between Jordanian forces and Iraqi smugglers.56 Currently, they have an important role in counterterrorism (see Chapter 6). The Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF) is led by King Abdullah’s younger brother, Prince Faisal, who is himself a pilot and includes around 12,000 personnel. It has approximately 100 fixed wing combat aircraft with 85 fighter aircraft, including U.S.-manufactured F-16 and F-5 fighter aircraft and various French aircraft including multiple versions of the Mirage F-1. The older F-5 aircraft are considered obsolete for use in aerial combat against a modern adversary but

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can still play a valuable role in ground support, training, and opposing an adversary without the latest equipment and avionics. The RJAF also has 14 transport aircraft, including 4 U.S.-manufactured C-130 Hercules aircraft. Jordan further maintains over 40 military helicopters, including attack helicopters and support helicopters such as the French Super Puma and U.S. Black Hawk, which are designed to carry troops. Around 22 of Jordan’s helicopters are U.S.-manufactured Cobras equipped with TOW anti-armor missiles. While RJAF has excellent pilots and good training, its modernization efforts have been limited by Jordanian resource constraints. Air defense forces have likewise suffered from a period of neglect following the 1991 Gulf War as well as other episodes of budgetary shortfalls. Jordanian air defense systems, including its Improved Hawk (I-Hawk) missile batteries, have a number of limitations, although some upgrading has been taking place. The Jordanian military also has three Patriot missile batteries, which include an anti-missile capability and can be particularly useful against Scuds. Beyond defending Jordan itself, another major mission of the Jordanian Army is support for UN peacekeeping operations. Jordan has provided more than 61,000 peacekeeping troops to 18 conflict areas since 1989 and has correspondingly become the fourth largest provider of such forces to the United Nations after Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.57 The peacekeeping missions that Jordan supported most extensively were in Croatia in the 1990s (3,200 Jordanian troops deployed) and in Sierra Leone (where Jordan had a peak of about 1,800 troops in 2000). At the time of this writing, there are around 2,064 Jordanian peacekeepers stationed throughout the world. They are mainly in Congo, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Haiti. The importance of this involvement should not be underestimated. Contributions from smaller nations such as Jordan are an important way of keeping these efforts viable, since many peacekeeping operations do not include troops from major powers to prevent local nationals from becoming concerned about great power agendas in their region. Jordan has also paid a price for its involvement in these UN operations. Since 1989, 20 Jordanian personnel have been killed in peacekeeping operations, the most recent of which were 5 army officers who died in Haiti in 2009. Jordanian peacekeeping troops are also exceptionally well trained for their duties and make good use of the Peacekeeping Operations Center based in Zarqa, Jordan.58 The Jordanians further train Arab officers from friendly countries in peacekeeping procedures at their facilities, including the Jordanian National Defense University. One of the most visible and important forms of humanitarian assistance that Jordan provides to military operations in conflict areas involves the deployment of military field hospitals. Jordan has sent field hospitals to support humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in various conflict areas, including the West Bank cities of Jenin and Ramallah, Sierra Leone, post-Saddam Iraq, and Afghanistan. During the January 2009 Israeli intervention against Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip,


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Jordan also set up a field hospital in Tal al-Hawa. These field hospitals are able to perform a variety of surgeries as well as treat a number of diseases. A typical field hospital of this kind consists of 180 doctors and medical staff commanded by a brigadier general.59 On other occasions, Jordanian medical personnel serve as part of a larger UN medical team. An example of this approach occurred in Liberia, where 115 Jordanian military medical staff under the command of a colonel served as part of the staff of a large UN-administered hospital.60 THE JORDANIAN SECURITY SERVICES

As a small country with powerful neighbors and concerns about internal subversion, Jordan has maintained a clear interest in a capable intelligence service. Moreover, stronger neighbors are not the only external security threat. Ironically, the weakness of a neighbor such as Lebanon has occasionally created problems for Jordan because that country is not always able to control terrorist groups that are hostile to Jordan as well as the Lebanese government. In Jordan’s early years, actions by unfriendly intelligence organizations and terrorist groups were resisted by a combination of forces from Jordan’s interior ministry, police forces, and military intelligence organizations. This situation changed in 1964 with the establishment of the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (GID), often called by the more generic term mukhabarat, to work for the “security and safety of Jordan.” The GID became the principle security agency in Jordan, having the lead responsibility for both domestic and international intelligence operations. The law establishing the GID requires other Jordanian security services to assist the GID in executing its tasks but does not require that the assistance be reciprocal. Its importance and visibility have tended to increase in times of crisis or potential instability. GID activity, for example, was reported to have been expanded domestically after the conclusion of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty in 1994 due to a fear of widespread unrest. The organization again became especially active in monitoring political activity following the death of King Hussein and the consolidation of power by King Abdullah. Another such period of concern followed the massive 2005 al-Qaeda terrorist strikes at three western hotels in Amman (see Chapter 6). Nevertheless, while the GID is tough and pervasive, it does not seek to terrorize the population into obedience as occurs with the security forces of some other Arab countries, and it has not been a notable presence in the everyday life of ordinary citizens. The GID director is almost always an army or air force general who has earned a particularly high level of trust from the king. The GID director formally reports to the prime minister, although he is often called upon to discuss security matters with the king, and most GID directors simply bypass the prime minister on extremely sensitive matters. It is virtually inconceivable that a GID director would have difficulty seeing the king if he felt that it was important to speak with him.

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Some GID directors have gone on to other important positions, including prime minister. GID officials are considered military personnel, although they wear civilian clothes in the course of their duties. The exact number of individuals serving with the GID is not publicly available, although informed observers estimate that it runs into the thousands.61 The GID has been reported as refusing to accept Jordanians of Palestinian heritage into its ranks since the 1970 civil war.62 This may be an exaggeration, but it can also be safely assumed that this organization is composed of individuals whose background indicates total loyalty and support for the king. As might be expected, very little has been made public about GID structure, intelligence procedures, and internal structure. In a January 2006 interview, then–GID Director Major General Sami Asfoura stated that Jordanian intelligence-gathering depended more heavily on human intelligence than any other form of espionage activity. He also stated the GID was seeking to upgrade its technical intelligence capabilities but did not provide any details on this effort.63 The GID is also one of the few intelligence agencies to maintain an internet website, although it does not provide many details about the organization. One of the central tasks of the GID is to monitor the internal and external actions of Palestinian groups that may be hostile to Jordan or may be interested in attacking Israel in ways that could drag Jordan into the conflict. In his January 2006 interview, General Asfoura further stated, “We in Jordan have of course been very close to the Palestinian cause. It has created difficult situations for us, which have required us to have a strong intelligence apparatus.”64 In the same interview Asfoura stated the GID had dismantled the Abu Nidal terrorist group cells operating in the kingdom during the 1980s. Another GID mission is to monitor subversive activity in Jordan. Since the 1990s, the GID paid close attention to Islamist radicals who have gained military or explosives expertise in other parts of the world, particularly Afghanistan. A number of Jordanian and Palestinian veterans of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan were watched with special care, and some of them spent at least a short time in custody following their return. This approach was probably designed to warn them that they were under some measure of suspicion and their behavior needed to conform to Jordanian standards.65 In some ways such an approach could head off mistakes before they were made, but it must also have served to alienate a number of individuals who viewed themselves as returning heroes and not as dangers to society. Those who were viewed as dangerous naturally encountered a higher degree of GID surveillance following their release, and this was sometimes combined with hostility from their local community. Under such conditions, radicals sometimes left to join new jihad causes outside of Jordan. Jordan has also maintains a long-standing intelligence relationship with the United States dating back to the 1950s. The effort to help the Jordanians build a professional and efficient regional intelligence service was a special concern for


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one of the earliest and most powerful leaders of the CIA Operations Directorate, Frank Wisner. 66 Wisner moved forward with this program to help the Jordanians after obtaining the backing of U.S. Director of Central Intelligence Allan Dulles.67 CIA support for the GID continued for decades after the initial commitment. Moreover, the Jordanians welcomed such help, as they often viewed their intelligence operations as a central pillar for their country’s safety in a very dangerous region. Journalistic sources sometimes assess the Jordanian GID to be closer to the United States than other Middle Eastern intelligence services, including the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.68 In early 2010, this relationship was tragically highlighted in Khost, Afghanistan when an al-Qaeda suicide bomber killed seven CIA officers and one GID official, Captain Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a distant cousin of King Abdullah.69 According to journalistic accounts, the Jordanians had captured an al-Qaeda sympathizer and then become convinced that he had been turned and brought over to their side due to the flow of valuable information that he provided.70 This assessment turned out to be a tragic mistake, since the individual involved was either an al-Qaeda operative all along or decided to repent his cooperation with the United States and Jordan and undertake operations against them. It is, of course, one of the central cliche´s of the intelligence field that failures are much more likely to come to light than successes. This clear failure is an example of an operation gone wrong, but it in no way should be assumed to be part of a trend. King Abdullah, for his part, attended his cousin’s funeral, while the Jordanian news agency referred to him as a martyr.71 Critics of both the CIA and the Jordanians, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have claimed that the United States has turned over terrorists to the GID so that they can be interrogated using brutality and even torture.72 A variety of Jordanian Islamist groups, trade unions, human rights activists, and professional associations have called for an independent investigation of these allegations, although the Jordanian leadership has shown no interest in such an inquiry.73 The Jordanian government has also consistently denied that it uses torture, but reports of such abuse have been so numerous and credible that this is almost impossible to believe. Nevertheless, reports of Jordanian human rights violations have significantly declined since 2007 in apparent response to journalistic reports and the activities of human rights organizations.74 Jordan has also been credibly reported as having an extensive intelligence exchange program with Israel.75 These exchanges are clearly in the interests of both countries, since they maintain a number of common concerns including an interest in fighting various terrorist organizations. It is unclear how much information is shared, but some of the Israeli officers involved in these programs have become remarkably pro-Jordanian in the course of their duties. Efraim Halevy, an intelligence officer who served as liaison to Jordan, has recounted a situation where he was asked to provide senior U.S. officials with advice on how to deal with a crisis involving the Israelis and Jordanians. When an irritated

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U.S. diplomat asked him which country he was representing, Israel or Jordan, Halevy unhesitatingly responded “both,” which he was doing in spirit despite the fact that Amman would never authorize an Israeli official to speak for Jordan.76 Halevy was later to become the head of Mossad and the author of an exciting and interesting book about his experiences in Israeli intelligence, entitled Man in the Shadows. This work is unrelentingly pro-Jordanian. NOTES 1. Peter Mansfield, The Arab World: A Comprehensive History (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976), 433. 2. See interview with King Abdullah as cited in “ ‘I only accept the best for my country,’ ” Jordan Times, November 12, 2009. 3. Peter Snow, Hussein: A Biography (Washington and New York: Robert B. Luce, Inc., 1972), 165. 4. Sana Kamal, “Jordan: Shubeilat freed again,” Middle East International, November 22, 1996, 11. 5. The writings of Ryszard Kapuscinski are particularly compelling on this point. See Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs (New York: Vintage, 1992) and Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat (New York: Vintage, 1989). 6. Queen Noor, 98. 7. George, 85. 8. Asher Susser, “Abdullah’s Scolding of Arafat: The Coming of Age of a Hashemite King,” Daily Star (Beirut), September 8, 2004. 9. Four of King Hussein’s sons and one daughter (Princess Aisha—now a brigadier general and head of the Royal Jordanian Army Women’s Corps) have attended Sandhurst. See Jane’s Information Group, “Jordan,” Jane’s World Armies, June 21, 2006; Queen Noor, 173; “Prince Hashem turns 26,” Jordan Times, June 10, 2007. 10. Government of Jordan, “Official Web Site for King Abdullah of Jordan,” 2009, http:// www.kingabdullah.jo. 11. Author’s interviews with numerous Jordanian citizens; Borzou Daragahi, “Jordan’s King Risks Shah’s Fate, Critics Warn,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2006. 12. Lisa Beyer, “A Man Who Might Have Been King,” Time, November 23, 1999, http:// www.time.com. 13. “From Heir to Nowhere,” Newsweek, December 13, 2004, 8. 14. “Dahabi Gov’t Resigns; Samir Rifai Appointed PM,” Jordan Times, December 10, 2009. 15. Jon Leyne, “Jordan Fears Loss of US Favor,” BBC News, April 25, 2005, http:// news.bbc.co.uk. 16. George, 177. 17. Lynch, 239–252. 18. Lynch, 239; Marr, 271–273. 19. Sana Kamal, “Jordan: Fracas with Qatar,” Middle East International, June 29, 2001, 13. 20. “King Loyalists Win Jordan Poll,” BBC News: World Edition, June 19, 2003, http:// news.bbc.co.uk. 21. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “‘Tribes’ Blessings Important Even for Islamists, as Election Nears,” Jordan Times, September 28, 2007.

Jordan’s Political, Economic, and Military System 22. “Jordan’s Islamists see ‘last chance’ in elections,” Kuwait Times, September 27, 2007. 23. “Text of Jordan Political Parties Law of 2007,” published in the Jordanian Official Gazette, March 2007. 24. According to the Jordan Centre for Social Research ( JCSR), at least 98.3 percent of Jordanians have never been a member of a political party. See “Parliament Watch,” Jordan Times, March 14, 2007. 25. Hani Hazaimeh, “Kingdom Set to Sign Oil Shale Deal with Shell,” Jordan Times, February 25, 2009. 26. Taylor Luck, “Government Signs Deal with BP on Risheh Gas Field,” Jordan Times, October 26, 2009. 27. Barbara Ferguson, “Lingering Economic Effects from 9/11 Attacks Still Being Felt,” Arab News, September 10, 2004. 28. Ashton, 261. 29. “Unemployment rises to 14% in Q3,” Jordan Times, September 16, 2009. 30. International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 2008 (London: Routledge, 2008), 248. 31. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2009, http://www .transparancy.org/policy_research /surveys_indices/cpi/2009/c. 32. “Over 400 Corruption Cases Probed in the First Half of 2009,” Jordan Times, July 16, 2009. 33. John F. Burns, “Jordan’s King, In Gamble, Lends Hand to the U.S.,” New York Times, March 3, 2003. 34. Jon Leyne, “Doors Closing on fleeing Iraqis,” BBC News, January 24, 2007, http:// news.bbc.co.uk. 35. Richard Beeston and Michael Binyon, “The Times Meets King Abdullah,” The Times, May 18, 2007, http://timesonline.com.uk. 36. Omar Fekeiki and Yasmine Mousa, “Living in Jordan, Longing for Iraq,” Washington Post, August 5, 2006. 37. Tom A. Peter, “Iraqi Refugees Spill into Jordan, Driving Up Prices,” Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 2006. 38. On the price of oil after the war, see Sana Abdullah, “Jordan: Appeasing the Tribes,” Middle East International, July 22, 2005, 16. 39. “UN Refugee Chief Calls for Solidarity with Jordan, Syria,” Jordan Times, August 31, 2007. 40. “US Commends Jordan for Hosting Refugees, Displaced Iraqis,” Jordan Times, November 18, 2009. 41. Ibid. 42. “EU Recognizes Jordan’s Burden, Pledges More Support,” Jordan Times, November 5, 2007. 43. Julien Barnes-Dacey, “Iraq Refugees Face Dwindling UN Funds, Creating Concerns of Unrest,” Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2009. 44. Jillian Schwedler, “More than a Mob: The Dynamics of Political Demonstrations in Jordan,” Middle East Report, Spring 2003, 18. 45. The most valuable book on this subject is Marion Boulby, The Muslim Brotherhood and the Kings of Jordan, 1945–1993 (Atlanta, Georgia: University of South Florida Scholars Press, 1999). 46. Ibid., 60–61. 47. Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan, 107.

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Global Security Watch—Jordan 48. Jillian Schwedler, Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 139–140. 49. Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan (London and New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 1998), 175. 50. Boulbe, ch. 3. 51. Ibid., 156. 52. Nathan J. Brown, Jordan and Its Islamic Movement: The Limits of Inclusion? Carnegie Paper Number 74 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2006), 11; Dallas, 255–256. 53. “Opposition Party Leaders Urge Immediate Elections Under New Law,” Jordan Times, November 25, 2009. 54. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “Opposition Parties to Run, IAF Still Undecided,” Jordan Times, September 14, 2007. 55. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “Islamist Movement ‘Heals Growing Rift among Senior Party Leaders,’ ” Jordan Times, June 29, 2009. 56. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Military Balance in the Middle East (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 191. 57. “Jordanian Peacekeepers Earn Country Good Reputation,” Jordan Times, September 26, 2007; Mohammad Ghazal, “Fallen Peacekeepers Laid to Rest,” Jordan Times, October 15, 2009. 58. Mohammad Ghazal, “Peacekeeping—Not Just a Military Mission,” Jordan Times, October 17, 2005. 59. Mohammad Ghazal, “Field Hospital Heads for Gaza,” Jordan Times, January 27, 2009. 60. “Jordanian Medical Contingent in Liberia Honoured,” Jordan Times, May 20, 2009. 61. Paul McGeough, Kill Khalid: The Failed Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas (New York: The New Press, 2009), 84. 62. Neil MacFarquhar, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday (New York: Public Affairs Books, 2009), 198. 63. “Interview with Major-General Samih Asfoura, Director Jordanian General Intelligence Department,” Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor, January 18, 2006. 64. Ibid. 65. International Crisis Group (ICG), Jordan’s 9/11: Dealing with Jihadi Islamism, Middle East Report Number 47 (Brussels, Belgium: ICG, November 2005), 5. 66. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 137. 67. Ibid. 68. Borzou Daragahi, “Jordan’s King Risks Shah’s fate, Critics Warn,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2006; Arieh O’Sullivan, “Jordan Closer CIA Ally That Mossad,” Jerusalem Post, November 12, 2005. 69. Richard A. Oppel, Jr., and Souad Mekhennet, “Bomber at CIA Base Had Ties to Jordan Spy Agency,” New York Times, January 5, 2010. 70. Mark Hosenball, Sami Yousafzai, and Adem Demir, “Anatomy of a Double Cross: How a Jordanian Jihadist Turned CIA Operative—and Back Again,” Newsweek, January 18, 2010, 40. 71. Joby Warrick, “Jordan Emerges as Key CIA Counterterrorism Ally,” Washington Post, January 4, 2010. 72. Glenn Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (New York: Crown Publishers, 2007), 251.


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73. Agence France Presse, “Coalition Demands Inquest into Torture in Jordan,” Daily Star, June 18, 2007. 74. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 2008 Human Rights Report: Jordan, February 25, 2009. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rsl/hrrpt/2008. 75. Jane’s Information Group, “The Jordanian-Israeli Alliance,” Jane’s Foreign Report, September 23, 1999. 76. Halevy, 88.


CHAPTER

3

Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians

JORDAN AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE PALESTINIAN ISSUE AFTER THE 1967 WAR

Jordanian involvement with both Israel and the Palestinian people has been long and intense. Jordan has a longer border with Israel than does any other state, and the patterns of conflict and cooperation between the two states have often been one of the most important factors influencing overall Middle East politics. While Jordan is usually identified as the most moderate Arab state on Israeli issues, the relationship between these countries has experienced dramatic fluctuations including Jordanian involvement in two wars against the Israelis as well as a number of acts of informal cooperation and eventually a Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. The Jordanian government under both King Hussein and his son King Abdullah has repeatedly maintained that the Israeli-Palestinian problem is the most serious problem in the Middle East, and the region’s first priority should be addressing it in a way that is just for all. The most important issues in Jordan’s relations with both Israel and the Palestinians have consistently been the status and future of the West Bank and Jerusalem. After Israel seized control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the June 1967 War, Jordan’s ability to control these territories directly from Amman ended, although Jordan still exerted considerable influence through friendly Palestinian notables, continuing legal ties (until 1988) and an ongoing program to pay Arab judges, bureaucrats, and teachers in the area (also until 1988). The Israelis consistently viewed Jordan as the only acceptable Arab partner

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for any future negotiations over the status of the West Bank, since they then refused to conduct formal negotiations with any independent Palestinian leadership and especially the PLO until the early 1990s. In the aftermath of the Palestinian challenge to Jordanian authority leading to the 1970 civil war, Amman was particularly interested in asserting its right to reestablish control over any part of the West Bank relinquished by Israel. King Hussein sought to maintain Jordanian links to this territory to resist any Israeli annexationist impulses, but he also feared that any decline in his own authority would lead to an expansion of PLO influence in the region. The experience of the 1970 civil war had underscored that the PLO could be a deadly adversary. Even in the best of times, Amman considered the PLO and its longtime leader, Yasser Arafat, to be untrustworthy and a potential rival for the loyalty of Palestinians in the West Bank and even within Jordan itself. After the 1973 war, the Jordanians attempted to work with the United States in the hope that Washington could persuade Israel to give up some portion of the West Bank to Jordan as a way of emphasizing the legality of the Jordanian claim and allowing the expansion of Jordanian influence in the area. The Jordanians were especially interested in obtaining a phased Israeli withdrawal from a significant portion of the West Bank without compromising Amman’s claims to the entire area. The Israelis saw little advantage to making serious concessions to Jordan at the same time they were attempting to engage in the serious task of setting up a series of disengagement agreements with Egypt (the pre–Camp David Sinai I and Sinai II agreements) and Syria. The disengagement agreements on the southern front had some potential to remove Israel’s most dangerous Arab adversary from the conflict. Throughout the 1970s, the Jordanians feared that without progress in regaining the West Bank their claim to that area could be progressively eroded in the Arab World. If developments moved in this direction, an eventual PLO-ruled West Bank state could not be ruled out. While such a concept would become acceptable in later years, it was hardly welcomed so soon after the Jordanian civil war. The Amman leadership was aware that the PLO was progressively gaining popularity and influence with Palestinians and throughout the Arab World, and the stage was increasingly set for the organization to mount a serious challenge to Jordan’s claim to represent the West Bank Palestinians. This struggle reached its height at an Arab League summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco in 1974. At the summit, King Hussein made a vigorous case for his kingdom to continue representing the Palestinians on the West Bank, emphasizing that Jordan had the greatest chance of limiting what most Arabs viewed as the danger of Israeli expansionism. While the king understood that his position would be strongly contested, he expected some support from conservative Arab regimes and Egypt. Instead, the Jordanians found themselves diplomatically isolated while all of the other Arab League states sought to designate the PLO as the sole representative


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of the Palestinian people. In the end, Jordan agreed to accept this decision, but it did so bitterly and only as a result of overwhelming political pressure. In practice, the Jordanians remained interested in regaining control of the West Bank for another 14 years, although they could no longer openly pursue this ambition without inviting widespread Arab disapproval and retaliation. A further setback for Jordan occurred in May 1977 when the hard-line Likud party under Menachem Begin won Israel’s elections, and Begin became prime minister. Begin considered the West Bank to be an inseparable part of Israel and rejected the concept of negotiating with the Jordanians (or anyone else) on the issue of territorial compromise. After one unproductive meeting between King Hussein and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, Begin discontinued secret meetings with the Jordanians and these backchannels remained closed until 1985.1 Begin referred to the West Bank as liberated territory and aligned his government with the Israeli settlers’ movement seeking to build permanent Israel communities in the area. Settler activities were widely regarded as a prelude to either partial or full annexation of West Bank territories. The Begin government also began the practice of providing significant financial incentives to encourage Israelis to move to the West Bank. Such an approach created a new class of nonideological settlers and helped to establish a critical bloc of Israeli voters who would never support a government willing to accept significant territorial compromise. While Begin was later to agree to transfer the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for peace with that country, he would not tolerate the idea of giving up the West Bank. Jordan’s decision to remain outside of the U.S.-sponsored Egyptian-Israeli Camp David negotiations (discussed in Chapter 4) without a clear commitment that it would regain the West Bank and East Jerusalem also contributed to lukewarm Israeli-Jordanian relations in the Begin era. Yet, joining the Camp David process while Begin was prime minister offered no serious chance for Jordan to regain the West Bank. King Hussein’s public willingness to support the Arab consensus on the West Bank and Jerusalem and remain outside of the Camp David negotiations disturbed the United States but did not help the king with the problem of eroding support among West Bank Palestinians. Even with this problem, Jordan remained a legitimate player in the struggle for West Bank influence after 1974 for two reasons acceptable to most Arabs. The first of these reasons was the need to resist Israeli efforts to change the character of the territory in ways that would make it easier for them to absorb later. This was a process which some Israeli leaders referred to as “creating facts” and related primarily to settlement construction and expropriation of land and water rights. The second way in which Jordan legitimized its involvement in the territory was by exploiting a loophole in the Rabat resolution. While the resolution had clearly stated that the PLO was the sole representative of the Palestinian people, the Jordanians emphasized that the PLO claimed to be a democratic organization and that the people they

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represented may yet opt for union with Jordan. A future Jordanian role on the West Bank was therefore not permanently ruled out. It remained an open question based on the needs and desires of Palestinians. Over time, manifestations of Palestinian public opinion increasingly did not help the Jordanians make their case for a wider West Bank role. By the 1980s, almost all elected Palestinians officials within the West Bank and particularly city mayors had clearly identified with the PLO. Other indications of declining Jordanian influence occurred as a result of the Palestinian uprising known as the intifada. This uprising began in December 1987 with a spontaneous series of anti-Israeli resistance acts beginning in the Gaza Strip and then spreading to the West Bank. Despite being surprised by these events, the PLO quickly claimed leadership of the intifada, and most intifada activists on the West Bank indicated their formal allegiance to the PLO. The entire uprising was characterized by a demand for an independent Palestinian state. In an early communique´, the intifada leadership denounced collaborators with both the Israelis and Jordanians.2 At least some of the intifada leaders saw Jordan as an additional obstacle to a Palestinian state, and anti-Jordanian sentiment threatened to spin out of control. King Hussein’s most trusted supporters within the West Bank informed Amman that support for West Bank unity with Jordan was virtually nonexistent and that pro-Jordanian politicians were too intimidated to speak out on the king’s behalf.3 Further complicating the situation, significant numbers of Palestinians crossed into Jordan as the intifada intensified, potentially swelling the ranks of angry Palestinians within the kingdom. King Hussein renounced all “legal and administrative ties” to the West Bank in favor of the PLO on July 31, 1988, accepting the reality of Palestinian nationalism and widespread Arab support for PLO claims to represent the Palestinian people. The king made the decision to disengage shortly after the failure of an effort to launch a Jordanian-Israeli peace initiative under the formula usually known as the London Agreement.4 King Hussein’s renunciation of West Bank ties went a long way toward defusing potential Jordanian-Palestinian hostility over the future of the Palestinian territory. Even without the West Bank and East Jerusalem, at least half of Jordan’s current population is believed to be composed of Jordanians of Palestinian origin, and Jordanians of Palestinian origin dominate the private sector of the economy.5 Thus, Palestinian events were still to have a tremendous impact on Jordan, and it is difficult to imagine a future Palestinian state being viable without close ties to Jordan. There was also something of a mixed reaction to the disengagement among Jordan’s Palestinian population. While many of these people believed that the PLO should rightfully assume responsibility for the West Bank if it fell back under Arab control, some also feared that they might lose their Jordanian citizenship if the leadership continued to distance itself from the Palestinian issue. In an unexpected complication, some Jordanians of Palestinian heritage moved significant amounts of their savings


overseas, fueling the acute domestic economic problems of 1989. Palestinian fears of losing their citizenship later proved unfounded. JORDANIAN MOVES TOWARD PEACE WITH ISRAEL

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jordan continued its traditional policy of maintaining discreet but tolerant relations with Israel, although the potential for increased problems was always present. Prime Minister Begin had left office in August 1983 but was replaced by the equally conservative Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir, who remained in power until 1984 and then served again as Prime Minister from 1986 until 1992. Many Jordanians became particularly worried as some of Israel’s conservative politicians became increasingly enamored with the slogan “Jordan is Palestine.” This slogan and the approach it represented suggested that Jordan could serve as an alternative Palestinian homeland, and there was correspondingly no need for a Palestinian state created out of the Palestinian territories captured in 1967. An early advocate of the alternative homeland theory was Israeli General Ariel Sharon, who favored allowing the PLO to overthrow King Hussein in 1970.6 Almost no other responsible Israeli leaders supported this idea at that time, but some later suggested that Jordan was the proper homeland for the Palestinians even if the Hashemites remained in power. The Jordanian leadership would have nothing to do with such ideas, which they viewed as designed to enable Israel to annex the West Bank while claiming that they were not depriving the Palestinians of a national existence. In practical terms, many Jordanians feared that the alternative homeland approach could lead to an Israeli effort to encourage mass Palestinian emigration to Jordan. In Jordan’s worst case scenario, Israel could annex the West Bank and then expel huge numbers of Palestinians into the kingdom, overwhelming Jordanian economic infrastructure and radically altering the kingdom’s demographic balance. This did not occur, but the Jordanians remained worried. The 1991 Gulf War raised the danger of further problems between Israel and Jordan. Prior to the conflict, King Hussein met secretly with Israeli officials to discuss potential difficulties that could develop between the two countries in an effort to head them off. The king quickly promised that he would not allow the Iraqi Air Force to use Jordanian airspace for military operations against Israel, but he also refused to allow Israeli military overflights of Jordan to bomb Iraq in retaliation for any future strike. The Israelis viewed this policy as a problem since Iraq was threatening to attack them with modified increased-range Scud missiles rather than aircraft, although the Israeli response would almost certainly have involved air strikes. The Iraqi strategy correspondingly did not require overflight rights, while the Israeli strategy would need such permission unless the Israeli leadership was willing to violate Jordanian airspace. Pro-Jordanian Mossad official (later Mossad Director) Efraim Halevy was deeply concerned about the

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possibility that King Hussein’s decision on overflight rights would be seized as an opportunity by what he called “the anti-Jordan lobby in Israel” to denounce the Jordanians as Iraqi allies.7 Additionally, if the Israelis decided that it was in their interests to attack Iraq, legalities over Jordanian airspace would not have been likely to prevent them from doing so. Fortunately, the airspace issue never became a crisis, since Israel did not retaliate against Iraq for missile strikes during the 1991 Gulf War at the request of the United States. Washington feared that an Israeli attack on Iraq could help fracture the UN coalition against Iraq and correspondingly called for Israeli restraint while promising to make the destruction of Iraqi Scuds a top priority. The Israelis were further calmed by the limited number of casualties they suffered, with no one killed directly by missiles although several people died because they misused chemical protective gear and administered overdoses of nerve agent antidote in fear of a chemical weapons attack. After the war this situation had some surprising benefits for Jordan. In particular, many Israeli leaders saw the enthusiastic Palestinian response to Iraqi attacks on Israel and worried that a post-Hashemite government in Jordan would be much more closely allied with Saddam Hussein than Jordan had been under King Hussein. This intense identification of the Palestinian street with Saddam’s actions against them suggested serious flaws in the “Jordan is Palestine” approach. Jordan without the Hashemites now looked to many Israelis as an Iraqi junior partner that would coordinate all security-related activities with Saddam Hussein. The alternative homeland idea correspondingly lost some, but not all, of its appeal to conservative Israeli nationalists. Another bright spot in post–Gulf War Israeli-Jordanian relations was the October 1991 Madrid Peace Summit. This large multilateral conference on Middle East peace was a special priority for the U.S. leadership, and Secretary of State James Baker was a key driving force in organizing it. In addition to Israel, participants included Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and a number of other Arab states as well as a Palestinian delegation. Known members of the PLO were not allowed to serve on the Palestinian delegation, but all of the Palestinian delegates clearly had PLO sympathies. Interestingly, the highly nationalistic and pro-PLO leader Dr. Hader Abdel Shafi gave a moderate speech at Madrid in which he stated that an independent Palestine would probably eventually seek confederation with Jordan. The speech was a pragmatic recognition that a small West Bank state could not flourish easily without the cooperation of the Jordanians. Such an approach was also a significant departure from most long-standing PLO rhetoric. In another dramatic development, the Madrid conference set up separate bilateral “tracks” that were to continue after the Madrid plenary had concluded. The tracks included a Syrian-Israeli bilateral track, a Jordanian-Israeli bilateral track, and a Palestinian-Israeli bilateral track, although the latter did not formally include members of the PLO. The Jordanian-Israeli track was to yield significant results within less than three years.


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THE JORDAN-ISRAEL PEACE TREATY AND ITS AFTERMATH

In addition to the formal Palestinian-Israeli negotiating tracks noted above, secret negotiations were conducted between the Israelis and the PLO in Norway in 1993. These talks had been authorized by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had taken office in 1992 and come to believe that peace with the PLO was a realistic possibility. The negotiations led to the Oslo Accords, which were signed by Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat on the White House lawn in the presence of President Bill Clinton on September 13, 1993. The Oslo Accords were widely viewed as the beginning of a gradual process by which the Palestinians would be able to establish their own state next to Israel and Jordan. Syria was also engaged in serious bilateral negotiations with the Israelis at this time, and there seemed to be a general momentum toward peace. This environment allowed Jordan to improve its own relations with Israel as part of an overall Middle Eastern trend—and with dramatic results. On July 24, 1994, King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin announced the Washington Declaration whereby the two leaders declared an end to the formal state of war between their countries at a White House ceremony in the presence of President Clinton. This declaration laid the groundwork for a peace treaty between the two countries which was expected to be forthcoming in a matter of months. While some complications and disagreements followed the Washington Declaration, the treaty negotiations were never in serious danger of collapse due to the personal commitment maintained by both King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin as well as the friendship that had developed between them. Earlier, King Hussein had been especially impressed by the strong Israeli effort to lobby the U.S. Congress for Jordanian debt relief and weapons transfers to Jordan after the Washington Declaration. King Hussein viewed these priorities as especially helpful since the mood in Congress was against such actions until after Israel intervened. Jordanian and Israeli leaders signed a formal peace treaty on October 26, 1994 at a ceremony in the Arava Valley, south of the Dead Sea in an area which had formerly been a minefield. The treaty helped resolve a number of important, longstanding differences over key issues including borders, water, and the security of both nations. The Israelis returned 380 square kilometers of Jordanian territory that had been taken as Israeli farmland following the 1967 war. The Israelis also agreed to provide Jordan with water resources to compensate for water drilling into Jordanian land. The treaty further recognized that Jordan held a special and privileged position in protecting the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and that the border between the two countries was explicitly defined. The Jordanians saw a number of advantages to making such an agreement beyond the specific details of the treaty on the functional issues noted here. The decision to make peace with Israel was clearly based on pragmatism since Jordan needed the restoration of U.S. aid, which had been dramatically reduced due to U.S.-Jordanian disagreements

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during the 1991 Gulf War. Moreover, there was not much to be gained by maintaining a state of belligerency. A conventional war between Israel and any Arab coalition seemed out of the question in any future scenario due to the massive imbalance of military strength between Israel and the Arab World. This has been particularly true since 1979, when the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty removed Israel’s most dangerous potential adversary from any future military coalition. Also, by 1994, Arab leaders were certain that Israel possessed a wide array of nuclear weapons which it could use under a variety of circumstances. 8 Under these circumstances, an “Arab military option” which led to victory seemed unrealistic, if not inane. Another key Jordanian reason for seeking the treaty with Israel was to gain as much security as possible in the face of any future right-wing Israeli government unsympathetic to Jordanian interests. In 1994, Amman continued to be alarmed by the rhetoric of various hard-line Israeli leaders that Jordan was an alternative homeland for the Palestinians. Israeli political leader and later Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had continued to show interest in the “Jordan is Palestine” concept and presumably had not fully given up on his belief that the Hashemite government needed to be overthrown to allow indigenous Palestinian institutions to develop in the new Palestinian homeland. The establishment of a treaty with Israel created obligations on the part of both countries to respect the other’s sovereignty and institutions. Sharon, for his part, did not openly oppose the treaty in the Knesset, although he did abstain in the vote to ratify it. The final Knesset vote for ratification of the treaty was 105 in favor, 6 against, and 6 abstentions. King Hussein was particularly pleased with this lopsided result, which indicated that peace with Jordan was broadly accepted by the Israeli leadership and not simply an agreement between Jordan and Israel’s Labour Party under Prime Minister Rabin. The Jordanian leadership was also aware that the peace treaty received this sweeping Knesset endorsement at a period of deep political polarization in Israel over the nature of Palestinian peace, when especially fierce invective was used in the debate between Israeli hawks and doves over other issues. Even in this environment, the Jordanian peace treaty did not become politically divisive in Israel. The advantages of the peace treaty, including the restoration of significant U.S. aid, did not prevent it from becoming controversial within Jordan. Organized Islamists, including the IAF, were particularly opposed to the treaty, and the less well-organized leftists also found the agreement objectionable. Many Palestinians opposed it despite the then-promising Oslo Peace Process and the rise of a strong peace camp in Israel, led by Prime Minister Rabin. The oppositionists failed to block the treaty’s ratification in Parliament due to intensive lobbying by the palace, and because of a pragmatic understanding that desperately needed U.S. aid was contingent on the treaty coming into effect. The treaty correspondingly passed by a vote of 55 to 23 in the lower house in a vote by the elected delegates.9 Interestingly, after the peace treaty entered into force, King Hussein and later


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King Abdullah were often willing to address the Israeli public directly and speak to the Israeli media about their concerns rather than simply deal with Israel’s leadership. King Hussein was popular with significant elements of the Israeli public and may have had some real influence with liberal Israelis. King Abdullah is much closer to the United States than to any Israeli leaders and therefore has less influence with the Israeli public than his father. He continues to make a special effort to reach out to the more liberal Israeli news outlets in order to reach those Israelis that he deems most interested in the Jordanian point of view. He has also exchanged views with the leaders of various American Jewish organizations.10 The Jordanian peace with Israel was initially “warmer” than the Israeli-Egyptian relationship, involving more economic and political cooperation. King Hussein stated that he did not accept the concept of a “cold peace” in which relations were normalized, but interaction between the states involved was kept to a minimum. Rather, he maintained that peace involved cooperation and friendship, or why have it. The Jordanian leader was also especially optimistic that he could work to build a durable peace with his friend, Prime Minister Rabin, whom he viewed as a straightforward man with a genuine interest in cooperation with Jordan. This hope was extinguished in October 1996 when the Israeli prime minister was assassinated by a Jewish extremist at a massive peace rally at Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv. The Jordanian ambassador to Israel had spoken at the rally and sat next to Rabin, but left shortly before the assassination when the event was starting to wind down. After King Hussein was informed of the tragedy, he became deeply distressed and immediately decided to attend the funeral. When King Hussein spoke at Rabin’s funeral in Israel, he compared Rabin to his grandfather King Abdullah, who was also assassinated for pursuing peaceful relations between Israel and Jordan. King Hussein referred to the fallen Israeli leader as “a brother” and incurred considerable criticism for doing so.11 Jordan’s Queen Noor was also stricken by the murder and strongly identified with Rabin’s wife, Leah, in the full understanding that it could easily have been her own husband who had been murdered as a result of the agreement. Later, in January 1996, the king returned to Israel to dedicate the trauma center at Ichilov Hospital in Rabin’s name.12 The Jordanians had a great deal more difficulty with Likud Prime Minister Netanyahu, who assumed power in 1996 after defeating Rabin’s successor, Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres, at the polls. King Hussein did not trust Shimon Peres, whom he viewed as a schemer, and after the election he was prepared to work with Netanyahu if this was possible. Netanyahu, for his part, valued the treaty with Jordan but was never committed to the Oslo process and was wellknown for his opposition to a Palestinian state. Any land for peace formula was therefore met with severe Israeli reservations, and the prime minister only moved forward along such lines in limited ways designed to limit U.S. pressure and possibly to retain the possibility for enhanced economic ties with the Arab World. Netanyahu also provoked a serious crisis with Jordan by ordering the Mossad

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to assassinate Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in the streets of Amman in 1997. This assassination plot involved pricking Mishal with a needle coated with a poison that was expected to mimic a heart attack. According to plan, Mishal would appear to have died of natural causes, and the Jordanians would never know that the assault had taken place.13 In this case, the elegant Mossad plan went deeply wrong, and provoked the most serious confrontation between Israel and Jordan since the signing of the peace treaty. The potential for the Mishal covert action to go wrong was always there. While Hamas was already starting to become known for spectacular instances of suicide terrorism, Mishal was viewed throughout the Arab World as more of a political operative than a terrorist mastermind at the time. The attack against him was then bungled, and two of the Mossad agents were captured by Jordanian security forces while two others sought sanctuary in the Israeli embassy. King Hussein, while having no love for Hamas, was infuriated by the attack, which threatened to undermine his image throughout the Arab World. Israeli spies appeared to be running wild in the streets of the Jordanian capital and using the Israeli embassy as their headquarters as a direct result of the peace treaty. In this highly charged political environment, a diplomatic crisis between the two states was only averted when Israel agreed to release a number of Palestinian prisoners, including Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. The Israeli government also provided an antidote for the poison administered to Mishal, who had been poisoned by the Mossad attackers. King Hussein, in turn, allowed all of the Mossad agents involved in the attack to return to Israel. The Jordanian leader never showed any trust for Netanyahu again after this crisis, and Jordanian-Israeli relations did not progress much over the next couple of years. Netanyahu left office in 1999, the same year as King Hussein died. JORDANIAN-ISRAELI RELATIONS FOLLOWING KING HUSSEIN’S DEATH

In the aftermath of King Hussein’s death, the new king chose not to visit Israel for around 14 months while he adapted to his position as leader of the country. This initial reluctance to make a state visit was annoying to the Israelis, but King Abdullah might have been concerned about the danger of making a public and media-worthy mistake in his dealings with the Israelis so early in his administration. Israeli-Palestinian differences were relatively calm in the first year of King Abdullah’s reign, but this changed rapidly after the collapse of the U.S.-sponsored Camp David II peace talks in July 2000. Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis exploded two months later as the second intifada erupted following a provocative visit by Israeli Likud party leader Ariel Sharon to the holy sites of Jerusalem. This second uprising, which the Palestinians called the al-Aqsa Intifada, was much more violent than the first intifada, with Palestinians making


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greater use of homemade weapons and adopting suicide bombing techniques which had been effectively used by the Shi’ite radical organization Hezbollah against Israeli troops in Lebanon. The Israelis responded to the new wave of terrorism with great intensity and were particularly angry that most of the attacks were directed against civilian targets. The violence of this new intifada and the lack of any political progress on Middle East peace created serious difficulties for Jordan. In the first two years of the al-Aqsa Intifada, as many as 200,000 refugees fled the Palestinian territories to Jordan in order to escape the violence and economic strife caused by the confrontation.14 The influx of refugees continued at reduced levels for several years following that spike. Public opinion was also inflamed over what many Jordanians viewed as an excessive use of force against the Palestinians.15 The Jordanian authorities correspondingly severely restricted demonstrations protesting Israeli activities over fear that they could escalate to dangerous and unmanageable levels. In Israel, the decline of the peace process led to severe weakening of the political left and the election of a series of right-wing or center-right governments beginning with Ariel Sharon becoming prime minister in February 2001. The Israelis also began the construction of what they called the “separation barrier” and what Palestinians called “the wall.” This massive barrier was designed to limit Palestinian access to Israel in order to halt the epidemic of suicide bombings. Sources critical of the Israeli government also claimed that the barrier was being built so that between 15 and 25 percent of the West Bank land would be on the Israeli side of the structure once it is completed.16 Such construction cut into Palestinian agricultural areas and sources of water, as well as leading to demolished houses and businesses on expropriated land. The Israeli army also expanded its operations in the West Bank, while Palestinian radicals kept finding ways to enter Israel and engage in suicide bombings and other terrorist acts. In this grinding attrition, the Israelis eventually gained the upper hand and Palestinian terror attacks became significantly less effective. The exact end point for the second intifada is difficult to establish, but most observers agreed that it had ended with a truce between Israel and the Palestinian Authority leadership in November 2006, if not before. Almost a year earlier, the Israeli right wing lost the services of its leading champion when Prime Minister Sharon became incapacitated by a stroke in January 2006 and was replaced by his prote´ge´ Ehud Olmert. Olmert was eventually driven from office by corruption charges, and Benyamin Netanyahu was again elected prime minister in 2009. At a political level, Jordan responded to the breakdown of the PalestinianIsraeli peace process by supporting the March 2002 Arab League Peace Plan, which was originally sponsored by Saudi Arabia, but heavily based on ideas previously advocated by Jordan (see Appendix C). This initiative calls for a return of all lands captured by Israel in the June 1967 War and the establishment of a Palestinian state in return for security guarantees and blanket formal diplomatic

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recognition of Israel by all Arab League states (a two-state solution). Such an approach would also allow for full normalization of Arab economic and cultural relations with Israel and encourage a variety of non-Arab Muslim and other states to do the same. King Hussein had favored such a plan in 1998, but felt that Jordan was too small and poor to play more than a supporting role in advocating this kind of dramatic effort. The king had attempted to gain Egyptian sponsorship for such an initiative, but President Mubarak was restrained from doing so by the United States, which favored an alternative approach to the peace process at that time.17 Since the plan’s announcement in 2002, various Israeli leaders including Defense Minister (and former Prime Minister) Ehud Barak and the leader of the large and powerful Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, have stated the plan is a useful basis for discussion, but cannot be addressed on a take it or leave it basis.18 Despite these positive Israeli responses, no progress has actually been made on implementing serious negotiations over the plan which cannot be altered without another Arab League resolution. The Saudis have expressed occasional exasperation for lack of progress, noting that this effort should not be considered open-ended. In this less hopeful environment, Jordanian leaders have been criticized by both domestic and regional opponents for being too tolerant of controversial Israeli activities. The Jordanians often justify their involvement with Israel with arguments similar to those traditionally used to justify involvement with the West, indicating that they can make more progress on key Arab goals with engagement rather than confrontation. They suggest that Israel is too strong and too close to be ignored and that failure to engage, manage, and moderate Israel will have catastrophic consequences for the Arab World. More importantly, many Jordanians continue to fear an Israeli mass expulsion of Palestinians to Jordan if the peace treaty is ever renounced. These concerns are often magnified in an environment where escalating Arab-Israeli tension strengthens the Israeli right and demoralizes the already much-weakened Israeli left. When asked about the Jordanian-Israeli relationship by a reporter from the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, King Abdullah candidly stated, “Our relationship is getting colder.”19 Jordanian leaders also maintain that they are using their relationship with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians and the larger Arab World.20 The Arab League has recognized this role and formally requested both Jordan and Egypt to undertake efforts to restart the peace process with Israel.21 In late July 2007, Cairo and Amman moved forward with this effort by sending their foreign ministers on a diplomatic visit to Israel. This effort was a mostly symbolic move designed to highlight Arab willingness to seek peace with Israel within the context of the 2002 Arab League peace plan. While many Israelis accept the need for a two-state solution that forms the core of this plan, there are serious differences among them over how much land to return to Palestinian control. A number of Israelis also have doubts about the future of Palestinian governance following


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the January 2006 election of a Hamas-dominated Palestinian legislature and the Hamas seizure of power in the Gaza Strip from its secular rival, Fatah, in June 2007. The Jordanians, by contrast, have been strong and consistent supporters of the 2002 Arab peace initiative despite the severe rise in intraPalestinian problems and the increasing political power of Hamas. Jordan remains interested in maintaining links to the West Bank despite the kingdom’s 1988 formal renunciation of sovereignty, although the Jordanians have also strongly rejected the idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian union or confederation at the current time.22 The idea of returning the West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty was supported by King Hussein even if this was done in stages until 1988, when the Jordanian government renounced all political ties to the West Bank. In recent years, right-wing Israeli leaders, especially including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have hinted that this approach may still have value, although it is unclear how much of the West Bank they would ultimately be willing to return.23 The Jordanians have stated that they want nothing to do with the confederation approach or any other sort of effort at unity under present circumstances. In particular, Amman will not allow itself to be seen as negotiating with Israel over the future of the West Bank over the heads of the Palestinian leadership, and the Jordanians are especially wary of being portrayed as willing to accept sovereignty over a rump West Bank which allows Israel to retain important parts of that area.24 King Abdullah wants no part of a Jordanian-Israeli agreement dividing the West Bank between them or even interim steps that could seem to support this goal, and he calls such proposals “a conspiracy” against Jordan.25 If he ever did accept such a proposal, this action would probably lead to unrest that could threaten his throne. Some observers have suggested that King Abdullah de-emphasized Jordan’s ties to the Jerusalem holy places in the first years of his reign by allowing Palestinian leaders to become the principal Arab party addressing these issues. This approach is understandable since the king does not have the same emotional investment in Jerusalem as his father, who felt the weight of losing the city to the Israelis in 1967. Nevertheless, problems in Jerusalem have a way of involving Jordan in serious disagreements with Israel regardless of efforts to step back from them. This problem was especially apparent in late 2009 when a series of incidents between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police once again drew Jordan into the conflict involving Jerusalem, with the king publicly cautioning the Israelis and increasing financial assistance to Arab clerics involved with preserving and protecting the holy shrines. He also sought to gain U.S. and European support for Palestinian grievances over Jerusalem and was particularly pleased with a European Union statement that Jerusalem must be the capital of two states, Israel and Palestine.26 Unfortunately, Arab-Israeli tensions are likely to remain on edge for some time, as many Arabs view the Netanyahu government as seeking to consolidate Israeli control of the city through a number of measures including

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expanding a Jewish presence in Palestinian districts. Israel has already built settlements around the eastern side of the city in a way that separates it from the West Bank, and many Palestinians fear that additional construction may further dim their hopes for regaining any portion of the city for a future Palestinian state. THE ANTI-NORMALIZATION CAMPAIGN

The Jordanian government has faced a number of regional political difficulties since 1994 because of the peace treaty with Israel, which has survived despite the collapse of the Oslo process following the unsuccessful U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian Camp David II summit in 2000. Additionally, the Jordanian leadership has sometimes seemed interested in a warm peace (including fully normalized economic relations), and King Hussein was especially optimistic about Jordanian-Israeli relations in the immediate aftermath of the treaty’s conclusion. Conversely, the treaty was never popular with the majority of the Jordanian public, and a strong anti-normalization movement has developed as a backlash against efforts to move toward better relations with the Israelis. This campaign, which remains a source of contention between the Jordanian government and opposition, has been designed to ensure that Jordan’s relations with Israel remain shallow, limited, and reversible. The campaign’s supporters have sought to achieve these results by preventing or limiting Jordanian-Israeli interactions at the functional and organizational levels. Campaign leaders also seek to influence popular opinion against the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty and thereby underscore their assertions that there is a disconnect between the Jordanian government and people on this issue. Among the leading sources of opposition to normal Israeli-Jordanian relations are the 14 Jordanian professional associations which have opposed normalization since the signing of the peace treaty in 1994. These organizations include such associations as the Jordanian Pharmacists Association, Jordanian Lawyers Association, Jordanian Writers Association (JWA), and the Jordanian Engineers Association. They are organized under the Professional Associations Council, which serves as an umbrella for the professional associations.27 While the professional associations have disagreements with the government on a variety of issues, the question of Israel is often the most high-profile difference. Members of these associations who are discovered to have commercial linkages with Israel or have sought visas from the Israeli embassy face disciplinary action that in some cases includes expulsion from the relevant association.28 Once expelled, individuals can no longer legally work in their field of expertise, although the authorities have been known to ignore such expulsions and allow such people to work anyway. The professional associations claim to represent 150,000 Jordanians. Labor unions have also been actively involved in the anti-normalization efforts.


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Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood and the IAF are another set of key players in anti-normalization activities, and sometimes coordinate their activities with the professional associations and labor unions. Hamam Said, the leader of the Brotherhood, has been particularly blunt on this point, stating that the Arab countries including Jordan should “withdraw the Arab peace initiative,” and focus on supporting the Palestinian resistance and especially Hamas. 29 An important minority of the Brotherhood does not agree with the portion of Said’s statement that calls for increased cooperation with Hamas, but participation in the anti-normalization campaign is not controversial within the organization. In general, the IAF has been successful in exploiting the unpopularity of the peace treaty with the Jordanian public as a way of increasing its own popularity with the public, although opposition to links with Israel is a core value of the organization’s membership and not simply a tactic to get votes. Additionally, the IAF raises frequent charges of corruption and favoritism that tend to strike a receptive chord among those who feel that the political system favors others and not them. This situation often means that their voting base is especially strong among the Palestinians in Jordan, further encouraging them to engage in anti-normalization activities. The anti-normalization activists are surprisingly assertive in their criticism of the Jordanian government on the issue of Israel. Maysarah Malas, the head of the freedoms committee of the Jordanian Engineers Association, told al-Jazeera satellite television that “Generally speaking, the official [Jordanian] position towards the Zionist entity [Israel] is high sensitivity, yields to the Zionist wishes, and does not act in favor of the Jordanian society.”30 Anti-normalization activists also issue public statements and call on Jordanians to refrain from even the most cosmetic acts of cooperation with Israel, such as attending parties at the Israeli embassy. Any decline in Israeli exports to Jordan is usually heralded as a victory of the anti-normalization forces. The anti-normalization forces tend to portray all interactions that take place between Jordan and Israel as detrimental to Jordan while being beneficial to Israel. They also accuse the government of attempting to suppress their views through such actions as denying permits for demonstrations. Charges about the permits are true, although the Jordanian government has been fairly tolerant of angry dissent, especially by the standards of the region. After the conclusion of the peace treaty, King Hussein maintained that each Jordanian citizen was free to decide whether or not they would deal with Israel.31 Over the years, the anti-normalization activists nevertheless attempted (often successfully) to punish those Jordanians who did so. Opponents to normalization have used a number of tactics to resist improved relations with Israel and to punish those who interact with Israelis. Activists involved in this campaign have assembled “black lists” of Jordanian citizens and companies that have been discovered to have even the most limited contacts with Israelis. The Jordanian government has arrested leaders of these campaigns for publishing the lists, but

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the courts have upheld the rights of the activists to do so. Another tactic of the anti-normalization forces is for Islamic leaders to issue fatwas (Muslim religious edicts) prohibiting certain acts of cooperation with Israel, such as the purchase of Israeli products.32 Anti-normalization groups have also engaged in a number of demonstrations to protest such activities as the importation of Israeli products or the export of Jordanian products to Israel. Often the authorities break up the demonstrations, while the demonstrators usually respond that they have a right to freedom of assembly under both the Jordanian Constitution and international law. The authorities usually attempt to disperse the demonstrators with a minimum of force. King Abdullah is clearly aware of the dangers of overreacting to such incidents and has been reported to have become angry with security officials who have called for increasing toughness. Inevitably, the anti-normalization campaign gains momentum when the peace process appears to be failing to improve the prospects for a Palestinian state or when tensions or outright fighting between Arabs and Israelis increase. During the 2009 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, hostility towards Israel became particularly intense due to the Palestinian casualties associated with the operation. Gaza health officials maintained that around 1,300 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli invasion, and most Jordanians believed that at least that number had been killed.33 Within Jordan and the Arab World more generally, there was a widespread belief that the attack was disproportionate to the launching of homemade missiles by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. The Israeli response to Arab criticism was that some of its citizens had been killed by these missiles and that the Hamas strikes had grown from an irritant (the early primitive missiles had been nicknamed “flying stovepipes”) to a threat that made use of Iranian rockets smuggled to Gaza in tunnels along the Egyptian border. As might be expected, the Muslim Brotherhood organized a conference on the Gaza invasion where the participants issued a statement calling for the Jordanian government to renounce the 1994 peace treaty with Israel and expel the Israeli ambassador from Jordan, although the government ignored this action.34 Later, the 2009 election in Israel of the hardline Netanyahu government and its commitment to retaining and expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank also increased the level of activity within the anti-normalization campaign. Once again, the Jordanian government struggled to cope by balancing angry domestic public opinion with a pragmatic need to maintain acceptable relations with Israel. JORDAN AND THE FATAH/HAMAS RIVALRY

Israeli-Palestinian problems are an especially serious Jordanian concern at the present time when Jordan is also coping with Iraqi refugees and the danger of future spillover problems from Iraq following a full U.S. military withdrawal from that country. Jordanian-Palestinian relations within the kingdom are


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nevertheless always sufficiently complex that the government is consistently sensitive to actions and events that might aggravate them. Radicalization of Palestinians within Jordan’s 13 refugee camps or more generally among the Jordanian public of Palestinian origin remains an important government concern. One current dilemma centers on the political, economic, and humanitarian implications of the Hamas/Fatah power struggle and the emergence of separate Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (discussed below). Another central Jordanian concern is that the Iraqi and Palestinian conflicts may become increasingly unmanageable simultaneously creating difficulties for Jordan on both its eastern and western borders.35 Also, even at the height of Iraqi bloodshed in 2005–2006, many Jordanians remained convinced that the most serious problems they faced involved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and not problems in Iraq. This outlook predates the Hamas seizure of Gaza, which is a problem for Jordan and can be seen as further vindication of making Palestinian problems a central priority. Jordan has often dealt with Palestinian leaders whom it has viewed as seriously flawed since before the beginning of the current King Abdullah’s tenure. King Abdullah, like a variety of other world leaders, was occasionally blunt in criticizing former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s arbitrary and chaotic approach to governance and continuing acceptance of scandalous levels of corruption. Arafat never took such scoldings to heart or at least never attempted to construct a reasonably functional bureaucracy within the Palestinian Authority, although he managed to maintain some popularity among the Palestinian public because of his historic leadership of the cause.36 Palestinian politics reached a turning point when Arafat died on November 11, 2004 in a Paris hospital after being medically evacuated from his compound in Ramallah on the West Bank. His replacement as the leader of the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), was not a particularly well-known figure and is certainly not viewed as a historic leader such as Arafat. Instead, he is often described as colorless and uninspiring, although he is also politically moderate and seems to aspire to be a competent administrator. Moreover, real limitations exist over what the Palestinian leader can realistically be expected to accomplish. Abbas is not a strong leader and faces serious rivals within his own Fatah movement, although his most popular and charismatic secular rival, Marwan Barghouthi, remains in an Israeli jail serving a life sentence after being convicted of incitement to murder. The Jordanian leadership has been able to work well with Abbas, although they are uncertain how long he will be able to retain leadership of the Fatah party or the Palestinian Authority. Amman appreciates the Palestinian leader’s moderate views but is also concerned by his political weakness, including his continuing problems competing with Hamas for the support of the Palestinian public. Despite his shortcomings as an effective leader, Amman views Abbas as pro-Jordanian and

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generally comfortable with a Jordanian role in assisting and advising Fatah forces.37 Jordan has even trained some Palestinian security forces loyal to Fatah, including the 1,000–1,500 person Badr Brigade of the Palestinian Liberation Army.38 This unit has been stationed in Jordan and seems to function as an auxiliary of the Jordanian Army. Currently it must remain in Jordan according to an agreement with the Israelis.39 Other Palestinian police units have been trained at the Jordan International Police Training Center (JIPTC), which had previously been used to train Iraqi police officers for service in post–Saddam Hussein Iraq. Palestinian JIPTC graduates were deployed in West Bank cities including Nablus, Bethlehem, Jenin, and parts of Hebron.40 Palestinian graduates of this program have also helped to provide training to police officers inside the West Bank at a training facility established in Jericho. Much of the financing for the training of Palestinian forces in Jordan and Jericho has been provided by the United States.41 While Jordan has found ways to work with Fatah, it has encountered far more serious difficulties working with Hamas. Hamas was formed in Gaza in late 1987 and grew important during the first intifada. Initially, the Jordanians appear to have been uncertain as to whether Hamas might have been easier for them to work with than the secular Palestinian leadership and especially Arafat. The Jordanian government therefore tentatively allowed Hamas to engage in limited political activity in Jordan subject to a number of serious restrictions. The Hamas leadership was told that they could establish a public relations office in Jordan, but they could not seek to undermine Jordan’s relations with Israel, mount military actions from Jordan, or claim responsibility for military or terrorist actions from their office in Jordan.42 In the aftermath of the 1994 treaty, Jordan came under pressure from both Israel and the PLO to crack down on Hamas. In partial response to these concerns, King Hussein imposed additional restrictions on the organization’s activities in Jordan, and King Abdullah went even further with the 1999 expulsion of senior Hamas officials from the kingdom. Jordanian relations with Hamas have suffered significantly under King Abdullah, and many Hamas leaders have publicly lamented his less sympathetic view of Hamas than that of his father. This leadership suggests that King Hussein maintained relatively good relations with Hamas, but that his son severely compromised this legacy in a way of which the former king would no doubt disapprove. This is the type of distortion that U.S. politicians traditionally call “spin.” Relations between King Hussein’s government and that of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu were at their nadir from 1996 until King Hussein’s death in February 1999, when little progress was made on the peace process. Netanyahu was then defeated in May 1999 elections, to be replaced by Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak. King Hussein’s relative gentleness with Hamas during his last years of power was more reflective of his disappointment in the Israeli leadership than any particular goodwill for the organization. Netanyahu had also made it difficult for the king to move against Hamas by authorizing the failed covert action to


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assassinate Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in Amman. The attack had dramatically elevated both Mishal and Hamas in Palestinian politics. The relationship between Jordan and Hamas changed after King Abdullah took power in 1999. Shortly after he assumed the role of monarch, King Abdullah’s government issued arrest warrants for three key Hamas leaders, including Khalid Mishal, who was then the leader of the Hamas political bureau. Since these leaders were in Iran at the time, they were essentially being warned that to return to Jordan would mean arrest. As part of the same crackdown, Hamas offices were charged with engaging in illegal activity, and the Hamas political office was transferred from Amman to Damascus. While Hamas has no fundamental conflict with Jordan, the Jordanian monarchy remains deeply concerned about the potential rise of Hamas’ influence within the kingdom. This concern is not unreasonable since Hamas has achieved a certain level of acceptance among the majority of the Jordanian population. In August 2008 a Jordan Center for Strategic Studies poll indicated that 71 percent of the Jordanian public believed that Hamas was a “legitimate resistance organization.”43 These numbers seem high, but they may also be less straightforward than it would seem. At the time of the poll, the Gaza Strip was under severe economic sanctions and widely viewed within the kingdom as an “open air prison” because Hamas had seized power there. Jordanians may have been willing to assert that Hamas was a legitimate organization because they were appalled by the conditions that had been imposed on Gaza’s population in order to punish Hamas. Additionally, a Pew poll taken in the same time frame showed only 25 percent of the Jordanian public believed that suicide bombings (a tactic favored by Hamas) could ever be justified.44 These results seem to indicate mixed feelings about Hamas among the Jordanian public. Jordanian-Hamas tensions have remained high in recent years due to Amman’s concern that Hamas could become a domestic threat. The Jordanians are traditionally sensitive about the dangers of allowing a Palestinian armed presence in their country, and have accused Hamas of storing weapons in Jordan on several occasions. A particularly large arms cache was discovered by Jordanian security forces on April 18, 2006, leading to the cancellation of a visit to Jordan by Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar.45 According to Jordanian spokesmen, the arms cache included katyusha rockets and antitank missiles of Iranian origin.46 These weapons may not have been received directly from Iran, but could have obtained indirectly through Iraqi sources. The Jordanians even maintained that these weapons were for use by certain Hamas members against Jordanian targets. In another low point in Jordanian relations with Hamas, three Hamas activists had their confessions of hiding these weapons broadcast on television in May 2006.47 Jordanian sources stated that these weapons explosives were to be used in a “Hamas plot” to “destabilize Jordan.”48 Hamas emphatically denies this charge and claims that they had nothing to do with the weapons seized by the

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Jordanian authorities.49 Rather, they insisted that the accusations against them were part of an effort to undermine the Hamas leadership after its victory in January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections.50 The Jordanian leadership has also been concerned about the possibility that hardliners within the IAF may coordinate with Hamas in the future. Jordanian security forces closely monitor this relationship. The head of the GID also met with Hamas leaders on two occasions in 2008, but Jordanian government officials stated that such discussions were limited to security matters.51 Prior to the Obama presidency, the Jordanians were also deeply aware that the George W. Bush Administration detested Hamas, and that one of the major U.S. criticisms directed at neighboring Syria was that it was much too supportive of that organization.52 The Obama Administration does not view this issue with the same intensity, and may be interested in bringing Hamas into the peace process should it be willing to renounce terrorism and accept the concept of a two-state solution with Israel.53 Jordan will probably be willing to follow the lead of the United States if it improves relations with Hamas, but it will not be interested in getting too far out front of this issue. There are some advantages for the Jordanian to consider dealing with Hamas. One of the most important of these would be to help separate the organization from its Iranian supporters and paymasters. Also, while current Jordanian relations with Fatah are good, a leading Jordanian foreign policy principle is to generate as many options as possible. Hamas currently seems stronger than Fatah, and it is possible that it will eventually dominate Palestinian politics. It is also possible that Hamas, like the PLO before it, will eventually meet U.S. demands to accept a two-state solution and renounce terrorism. If it does so, the organization may enter the peace process. If this occurs, Jordan would probably like to have some ties to those leaders within the organization that it finds the least unpalatable. JORDAN AND THE FUTURE OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

King Abdullah maintains a cool but stable relationship with Israel that is designed to satisfy the United States and keep the border stable, while also limiting the volume of domestic unhappiness over Israeli ties. These policies are likely to continue so long as progress on the Palestinian issue remains stagnant. The Jordanians will not allow the fundamentals of the peace treaty with Israel to be threatened, although they will probably not move closer to the Israelis without serious progress on wider Arab issues. Jordan will however remain engaged in the peace process, and Jordanian leaders retain hope that events in the Middle East will at some point evolve in ways that make the pursuit of peace based on a two-state solution more promising. Until such a time, Jordan has also done a credible job of marketing its ties with Israel and the United States as assets for the Arab World. Jordanian involvement in advancing the Arab League peace plan


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has not yielded serious results, but hardline policies do not have much hope either. No Arab military is strong enough to take any part of the West Bank from Israel, and terrorism is both morally unacceptable and deeply counterproductive to the development of a revitalized Israeli peace movement. Yet, if this cooling of relations sometimes annoys the Israelis, they cannot help notice the king’s ongoing distrust and hostility for Hamas. To some observers King Abdullah seemed to enter office almost spoiling for a fight with Hamas and was willing to describe their differences in military terms, stating, “Every good soldier knows it’s best to fight his battles at a time and place of his choosing . . . I was going to have to take on these guys sooner or later.”54 He clearly chose sooner, and has rarely let up ever since that time. In the future, Jordanian can be expected to continue such policies designed to seek Palestinian allies while carefully monitoring the activities of individuals and organizations considered dangerous to the Jordanian national interest. While Jordan may improve its relations with Hamas at some point, it will almost certainly not do so unless the United States appears interested in improving its own relations with the Islamist organization. Amman will also be loath to undercut moderate Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas so long as these allies display any serious ability to gain a popular following. NOTES 1. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 671–672. Note that the Jordanians and Israelis revealed the existence of all of their secret meetings after the signing of the peace treaty in 1994. 2. Ibid., 464. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., ch. 21. 5. Sana Abdullah, “Jordan: Tilting Towards Israel,” Middle East International, July 23, 2004, 10. 6. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 421. 7. Halevy, 30. 8. Roger W. Claire, Raid on the Sun (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 22. 9. Ryan, 29. 10. “King Urges American Jewish Involvement in Mideast Peace,” Jordan Times, November 18, 2009. 11. Dan Kurzman, Soldier of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin 1922–1995 (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 514. 12. Muasher, 67. 13. McGeough, ch. 11. 14. Ed Blanche, “Refugees, Jordan’s Nightmare,” The Middle East, December 2002, 21. 15. Muasher, 108. 16. Shlaim, Israel and Palestine, 291. 17. Muasher, 106–107. 18. “Tel Aviv ‘mulling Saudi Peace plan,’ ” Jordan Times, October 20, 2008. 19. As cited in Khetam Malkawi, “Jerusalem Provocations Threaten Jordanian-Israeli Ties— Monarch,” Jordan Times, October 9, 2009.

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Global Security Watch—Jordan 20. “Arab League Picks Egypt, Jordan Approach Israel,” Kuwait Times, April 19, 2007. 21. AFP, “Israeli Delegation Visits Jordan for Peace Talks,” May 10, 2007. Also see “Amman, Riyadh Say Summit Should ‘Readopt’ Peace Offer,” Jordan Times, March 22, 2007. 22. “Jordan Seeks No Role in W. Bank,” Jordan Times, March 11, 2009; “Confederation Out of Question—King,” Jordan Times, June 12, 2007. 23. AFP, “Jordan-Palestinian Confederation Would Improve Peace Prospects: Netanyahu,” May 23, 2007. 24. Randa Habib, “Jordan Fears New Pressure to Merge with Rump West Bank,” Kuwait Times, June 11, 2008. 25. Associated Press, “Jordan’s King Reject Confederation with Palestinians,” International Herald Tribune, July 1, 2007. 26. “Jordan Hails Statement on Holy City,” Jordan Times, December 9, 2009. 27. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “Associations Urge Government Not to Receive Netanyahu,” Jordan Times, May 14, 2009. 28. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “Jordan Engineers May Abandon Jerusalem Conference over Visas,” Jordan Times, September 14, 2009. 29. Muhammad Ben Hussein, “Muslim Brotherhood Warns against Dangers of ‘Israeli Plot,’ ” Jordan Times, February 25, 2009. 30. Al Jazeera as quoted by BBC Monitoring Middle East, July 6, 2009, Lexis-Nexis. 31. Sana Kamal, “Jordan: Defining Normalisation,” Middle East International, November 12, 1999, 9. 32. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “50 Islamist Scholars Sign Fatwa Prohibiting Purchase of Israeli Products,” Jordan Times, May 7, 2009. 33. Ben Hubbard and Alfred de Montesquiou, “Hamas Holds Victory Rallies as UN Chief Tours Gaza,” Associated Press, January 20, 2009. 34. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “Activists Demand an End to Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty,” Jordan Times, January 21, 2009. 35. Ed Blanche, “Refugees: Jordan’s Nightmare,” The Middle East, December 2002, 20–23. 36. Asher Susser, “Abdullah’s Scolding of Arafat: The Coming of Age of a Hashemite King,” Daily Star, September 8, 2004. 37. “Egypt and Jordan in West Bank Rivalry,” Jane’s Foreign Report, March 10, 2005. 38. AFP, “Jordanian-Trained Unit Loyal to Fatah Prepares for Gaza Role,” Daily Star, November 20, 2006. 39. “Jordan—Security and Foreign Forces,” Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessment-Eastern Mediterranean, January 20, 2009, Lexis-Nexis. 40. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, Country Reports: Middle East and North Africa—Jordan, April 30, 2009. 41. Ethan Bronner, “U.S. Helps Palestinians Build Force for Security,” New York Times, February 27, 2009. 42. McGeough, 74. 43. Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, Country Reports: Middle East and North Africa—Jordan, April 30, 2009, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/ crt/2008. 44. Ibid. 45. “Jordan Wants Hamas Team to Search for More Hidden Arms,” Bahrain Tribune, May 15, 2006. 46. Ibid.


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47. “Jordanian Television Airs Confessions of Three ‘Hamas Plotters,’ ” Daily Star, May 12, 2006. 48. Jane’s Information Group, “Jordan Reveals More Details of ‘Hamas plot’ to Destabilise Kingdom,” Jane’s Intelligence Watch Report, May 11, 2006, Lexis-Nexis. 49. Jane’s Information Group, “Hamas Denies Jordanian Weapons Cache Allegation,” Jane’s Terrorism Watch Report, April 19, 2006. 50. Jamal Halaby, “Jordan Broadcasts 3 Hamas Confessions but Group Denies Amman’s Charges,” Boston Globe, May 12, 2006. 51. “Jordan Acknowledges Meetings with Hamas,” Kuwait Times, August 21, 2008. 52. “Bush Says Hamas to Blame for Gaza,” BBC World News, January 3, 2009, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7809289.stm. 53. Howard Schneider and Glenn Kessler, “Ex-U.S. Diplomat Talks with Hamas,” Washington Post, July 16, 2009. 54. McGeough, 249.


CHAPTER

4

Jordan and the United States

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Throughout Jordan’s existence, its leaders have consistently sought a powerful Western patron and partner in order to ensure that its key national objectives are met. Since the 1950s, a number of other Arab states have criticized Jordan for its friendly relations with the United Kingdom and then with the United States, but Amman has been unresponsive to such arguments. In addition to defending these policies with economic arguments, King Hussein and then King Abdullah have consistently responded to such attacks with what has sometimes been termed the “window on the West” concept. This line of reasoning maintains that the United States is too important of a player in the Middle East to be ignored. The interests of the Arab World require that some key Arab leader or leaders seek and maintain the ear of U.S. policymakers. Otherwise, the only voices they will hear are those that either wish the Arabs ill or have different priorities for the region than most Arabs. Prior to 1994, this argument was frequently applied to Israel, and Jordan still insists that its treaty with the Israelis does not negate the need for clear articulation of Arab interests in Washington. One former Jordanian foreign minister recently stated that his country “had a unique understanding of how to market the [Arab] case to the Western world.”1 Jordan and the United States established diplomatic relations in 1949, although Washington accepted that Jordan’s most important external supporter was the United Kingdom at the time. The United States began providing limited amounts of development aid to Jordan in 1951 while continuing to respect Amman’s special relationship with London. This approach started to change in

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the late 1950s when the United Kingdom was increasingly unable to meet its worldwide security commitments, and London had no choice except to consider ways to scale back its overseas responsibilities. In January 1957 the British government approached U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles about the possibility that the United States might take over the role of subsidizing the Jordanian government.2 The subsidy at that time was around £13 million per year. The United States was initially reluctant to provide an equivalent sum to keep the Jordanian monarchy in power. A number of U.S. senators and other leaders felt that the Jordanian political system was not viable and could not survive regardless of how much Western aid it received. Any funds spent on Jordan would consequently be wasted and place the United States in confrontation with any successor government. Many U.S. leaders were also uncertain that maintaining the monarchy was of much value in supporting key U.S. objectives for the region. The Anglo-Jordanian treaty formally ended in March 1957 with Jordan facing the prospect of bankruptcy without a committed Western patron. While the United Kingdom remained willing to sell weapons to Jordan on favorable terms and offer occasional limited economic aid, it was no longer going to provide the ongoing subsidy upon which the kingdom previously depended for its economic survival. The noncommittal response of U.S. leaders to British overtures about replacing them in Jordan added to the uncertainty. This U.S. indifference started to erode when Jordan’s problems, like those of the larger region, were reevaluated through a Cold War mindset and deepening worries about the perceived links between leftist Arab nationalism and Communism. Many officials within the U.S. government increasingly viewed radical Arab leaders as being either dupes or partners in an international Communist conspiracy led by the Soviet Union. President Nasser’s decision to seek Soviet Bloc weapons in 1955 and Egypt’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China on May 16, 1956 fed these U.S. concerns. King Hussein, by contrast, seldom missed an opportunity to rail against Communism or to stress its incompatibility with Islam and traditional Arab values. The Jordanian leader’s approach to this issue made some progress in altering U.S. opinions on the question of aid. The CIA began providing funds to the monarchy at least as early as 1957, and CIA officials were also involved in training King Hussein’s personal security forces.3 In April 1957, the United States began openly providing Jordan with a series of loans and grants which soon exceeded the levels of support previously provided by the United Kingdom. The tumultuous events of the 1950s further led to the 1957 announcement of the Eisenhower Doctrine, which stated that the United States would assist Middle Eastern countries struggling against Communist subversion or subversion directed at them by countries “controlled” by Communist powers.4 Jordan was viewed as a prime candidate for such support. The July 1958 Iraqi revolution, as well as other revolutionary turbulence throughout the region, helped to push the United States and Jordan closer together.


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In March 1959, the king visited the United States and met President Eisenhower with the goal of convincing the U.S. president that Jordan was a friendly and stable state able to serve as a Cold War asset.5 King Hussein also traveled to a number of U.S. cities and made impassioned anti-Communist speeches, further strengthening the U.S.-Jordanian relationship. To some extent, he even became personally popular with the American public due to his skillful diplomacy and especially in response to his personal courage, which was obvious to any consistent observer. Avi Shlaim notes that while King Hussein’s enemies heaped considerable abuse on the monarch over the years, no one ever criticized him as cowardly.6 Such a charge simply was not credible. In this period and with a Western audience in mind, King Hussein published his first book, Uneasy Lies the Head. The memoir contains a forceful denunciation of Communism while poignantly describing the problems Jordan was having with subversive actions conducted by neighboring Arab states, most especially Syria and Egypt. The autobiography, which is also noteworthy for its unpretentious tone, further consolidated King Hussein’s positive image in the West. In the aftermath of the 1967 War, Jordan was one of the only Arab countries that did not sever diplomatic relations with the United States over its support of Israel in the conflict (Saudi Arabia was another). Six other Arab states had broken relations with the United States shortly after Egypt’s President Nasser had issued false and outrageous charges that the United States had sent its own air force and naval aviation units into the fighting to wage war on behalf of Israel (a charge later retracted by Nasser’s successor President Anwar Sadat).7 Jordan’s decision to remain in a cooperative relationship with the United States was unpopular with a variety of Arab audiences as well as with many Jordanians during this time frame. Such concerns also intensified as U.S. ties with Israel continued to grow during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Yet, King Hussein’s decision to retain positive ties with the United States was also widely understood to have benefits for the entire Arab World, and the king received strong political cover from his former enemy President Nasser. After the 1967 defeat, Nasser saw a great deal of value in exploiting Jordan’s ties to the United States. In particular, the Egyptian leader sought to rely on Jordanian intermediaries to seek common ground with Washington on a diplomatic process for regaining Arab lands lost in the recent war. After the 1967 conflict, Nasser was convinced that the Arabs had no military option for the time being and that a diplomatic and political solution brokered by the West had to be considered and pursued. According to Nasser’s friend and confidant Mohammed Heikal, the Egyptian president was extremely concerned that Israel would use the postwar period of Arab weakness to build Israeli settlements in the captured territories and therefore consolidate its hold over them. Heikal maintains that Nasser told King Hussein, “Go to the Americans, kiss their hands if necessary, find a way to negotiate. The important thing is to regain those territories before the Israelis

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change their character.”8 Unsurprisingly, the effort to regain Arab land without formal negotiations with Israel was doomed to failure. Jordan had trouble attending to its own concerns in this time frame (especially regaining the West Bank) and was in no position to address the problems and priorities of the larger Arab World. Despite problems resulting from the 1967 war, the United States once again displayed a strong interest in the survival of the Jordanian monarchy during the September 1970 crisis and particularly after Syrian forces intervened in the conflict. President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger believed the Syrians had been emboldened to intervene in Jordan through the backing of the Soviet Union. The situation therefore was elevated to a Cold War confrontation. At that point, the United States was prepared to support an Israeli air strike against Syrian forces, although it is doubtful that King Hussein favored such a strike as anything but a last resort. In any event, direct foreign intervention did not become necessary, although the Syrians were clearly aware of the increased state of Israeli military preparedness. A little over three years later Jordan also kept the United States and the United Kingdom fully informed of its intensions during the 1973 war, when Amman used both countries as intermediaries to assure the Israelis that Jordan was not planning to open a third front.9 King Hussein clearly feared that without such assurances, Israel would at least consider an attack against Jordanian forces. King Hussein was also quick to cooperate with U.S.-supported peace talks in Geneva following the war. In June 1974, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Jordan while in office. He did so as part of a larger trip that also included Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even Syria. Jordan faced substantial disagreement with the Carter Administration over the Camp David Accords and negotiations leading to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979. President Jimmy Carter wanted to gain as many Arab supporters as possible for the Camp David process, but Jordan was an especially important prize due to its special links to the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian people. While Jordanians did not participate in the Camp David summit, the final documents “invited” them to play a prominent role. Despite this pressure, the Jordanians did not become part of this process because they received no clear indication of an Israeli willingness to return the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Arab sovereignty. King Hussein strongly believed that Israel’s Likud government was unwilling to return this territory to either Jordan or a Palestinian entity. The Jordanian leader could not accept any future document which ceded large portions of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel or included some arrangement that perpetuated Israeli control over the Palestinian territories. Nor did he want to accept the political costs of negotiating with Israel if such an accord was the only possible result. This type of agreement would be viewed throughout the kingdom and the Arab World as treason, and the king might also


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have considered it to be a betrayal of his grandfather’s vision of a special Hashemite role in protecting the holy places in Jerusalem. King Hussein also had some latitude to resist U.S. pressure to join the Camp David process, since he was being offered significant levels of aid from various Arab oil-producing countries to help him resist U.S. pressure. The Carter Administration had little sympathy for King Hussein’s dilemma, and put serious pressure on him to reconsider his decision. Aid to Jordan was cut dramatically and severe restrictions were placed on arms sales. After President Carter’s defeat in the 1980 election, King Hussein hoped to establish better relations with the United States under the new president, Ronald Reagan, who often saw the world in Cold War terms and had a strong distrust of Hussein’s rivals in the PLO. King Hussein and President Reagan also personally liked each other, which seemed to improve the prospects for better U.S.-Jordanian relations. Despite these advantages, the Reagan Administration and the Jordanians started out poorly when Reagan expressed his view that Israeli West Bank settlements were not illegal, contradicting statements by all previous American presidents who had to deal with the issue. Further, many of the differences between Jordan and the United States that developed during the Carter Administration remained problematic following Carter’s departure, despite Reagan’s more generous attitude toward the Jordanians. In contrast to President Reagan, the U.S. Congress was often unreceptive to Jordanian requests for aid and arms sales due to the king’s unwillingness to engage in direct public negotiations with Israel. Many members of Congress viewed Jordan with disfavor when compared to Egypt, which had established a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. President Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz has stated that attempting to obtain an advanced weapons package for Jordan under these circumstances was viewed as nearly impossible even though the funds for such a purchase would have been provided by the oil-producing Arab states. The clearest sign of Jordan’s continued good standing with President Reagan occurred in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when the president presented a peace plan for the Middle East known as the Reagan Plan. Lebanon had been invaded by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon shortly after the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist organization had attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. The initial invasion gained widespread support from the Israeli public for the goal of destroying Palestinian weapons caches stockpiled in Lebanon and crushing PLO power within that country. Later, many Israelis and others became concerned that the goals of the invasion had become too ambitious and that Israel was unsuccessfully attempting to remake the Lebanese political system as it became increasingly bogged down in the fighting there. The young, Israeliinstalled President Bashir Gemayel was assassinated shortly after taking office, undermining these plans. This event led his followers to carry out massacres in

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two large and virtually undefended Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. An Israeli Commission of Inquiry held Sharon responsible for allowing this massacre to happen, and he was subsequently replaced as defense minister. In this troubled environment, the American president felt the need to act. This concern led to the announcement of the Reagan Peace Plan for the Middle East on September 1, 1982. Jordan was central to the Reagan Plan, which envisioned an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with these territories to establish self-government in association with Jordan, rather than being granted full independence. King Hussein responded favorably to many of the details of the plan, but could not approach this situation as an independent actor on Palestinian issues due to the constraints imposed by the Rabat Summit meeting. Instead, the king needed to coordinate his actions with the PLO if he was to avoid a direct Jordanian challenge to an Arab consensus of Palestinian issues that he had previously accepted. Conversely, the Israeli leadership was suspicious of the plan, and the Begin government was particularly concerned about President Reagan’s interest in freezing settlement construction as part of any negotiations process. In a further complication of the situation, many of the Arab states disliked the plan because it did not clearly require the return of the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem to Arab sovereignty and did not recognize the role of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. After a great deal of negotiations, the PLO ultimately refused to authorize King Hussein to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. The Jordanians reluctantly informed the US president that they would be unable to go forward with the plan due to the lack of PLO cooperation. After the collapse of this effort, King Hussein did not hesitate to criticize his fellow Arabs for failing to support the process. Reagan himself had attempted to persuade the Saudi Arabians to support the plan without any success. Relations between Jordan and the Reagan Administration were not damaged by the episode, but the U.S. Congress remained highly critical of Jordanian unwillingness to enter direct public negotiations with Israel on the basis of the president’s initiative. It is also possible that King Hussein never expected much to come of the Reagan Plan but felt the need to appear publicly cooperative in order to try to repair problems he was having with the United States. Jordan’s relations with the United States became even more strained over King Hussein’s response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. As previously discussed, the Jordanians were unwilling to join the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq while the United States, now led by President George H. W. Bush, saw value in including as many Arab states as possible in the anti-Saddam effort. The Jordanian decision was particularly difficult for some U.S. leaders to understand when Egypt and even Syria were willing to participate and send military forces to Saudi Arabia. Richard Haass, who was a key member of the U.S. National Security Council staff at the time, stated that President Bush liked King Hussein and did not want


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to refuse to meet with him during the crisis, but the differences between the two men were too significant to ignore.10 While the two leaders had a personal meeting with a free exchange of views, no understanding on the issues came of it, and relations continued to suffer. Haass noted, “by saying that we exaggerated the Iraqi threat to Saudi Arabia [King Hussein] was fast depleting his stock of goodwill in the United States.”11 King Hussein had hoped for a certain amount of U.S. understanding for his dilemma since a Jordanian reversal of the popular and long-standing relationship with Iraq in response to U.S. priorities could have severely damaged the king’s credibility with the Jordanian public. The U.S. leadership believed that King Hussein had let them down at a critical point, and aid to Jordan was dramatically cut for several years after the war. This time the U.S. actions did far more damage to the Jordanian economy and military budget than had occurred during the Carter Administration, since Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf nations also ended their aid programs to Jordan for the foreseeable future. By late 1994 the value of the Jordanian dinar had declined by half, and the country was experiencing its worst economic crisis in decades. In the years immediately following the war, it became clear that Jordan needed to reestablish good relations with aid-providing nations and particularly the United States unless it was to regress into deepening poverty. This development became possible in the early 1990s as a result of the improving political climate for peace with Israel. Two days after the July 1994 Washington Declaration laid the groundwork for the October peace treaty, the U.S. Congress forgave almost $200 million in Jordanian debt. 12 President Clinton also ordered the U.S. Navy to end its rigorous and disruptive searches of ships on their way to Aqaba in order to ensure that contraband destined for Iraq was not aboard. Another result of the Jordanian-Israeli treaty was that President Clinton became the first U.S. president since Richard Nixon to visit Jordan. In addition to attending the signing ceremony for the treaty, Clinton addressed a session of the Jordanian parliament. In his speech, the president recognized the contributions of the Hashemite family to the Arab nation while also emphasizing U.S. respect for Islam.13 Turning to the future, the president stated that the United States would never let Jordan down and that it would continue to help the kingdom meet its economic and military needs. Most Jordanians regarded the speech as an important statement of goodwill, although some members of Parliament opposed to the treaty boycotted Clinton’s address. As expected, U.S.-Jordanian relations were excellent throughout the remaining years of the Clinton Administration. Jordan joined the World Trade Organization in 2000 with U.S. support and later entered into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States in 2001 (after it was signed by President Clinton and King Abdullah on June 6, 2000). This was the first U.S. FTA with an Arab country and at the time was only the fourth such agreement that the United States had concluded. The agreement eliminated duties and various commercial barriers to bilateral trade.

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U.S.-JORDANIAN RELATIONS FOLLOWING THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS

In January 2001, the George W. Bush Administration began its eight years in power that were to have profound reverberations throughout the Middle East. Jordanian leaders saw opportunities to work with the United States at this time, but also maintained concerns about U.S. Middle Eastern policy during the Bush presidency. The opportunities for Jordan centered on Bush’s search for allies in the “Global War on Terrorism,” which he declared after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets by al-Qaeda terrorists. Jordan quickly became involved in this effort, as is discussed in Chapter 6. Conversely, Jordanians worried about President Bush’s early calls for the rapid implementation of democratic reform throughout the Middle East in what the U.S. Administration referred to as the “Freedom Agenda.”14 The Bush Administration appeared to view major problems in the Middle East as having been complicated, if not caused, by a lack of democracy. Jordanian leaders, whose country was not a democracy, feared they might face rapid and potentially destabilizing pressure for a radical transformation of its domestic institutions. The administration’s public statements had consistently stressed that the expansion of democracy would lead to the weakening of all forms of radicalism and the reinforcement of a moderate Arab center. Moreover, these Arab democracies were expected to be friendlier to the United States and perhaps to Israel. In his early years in office, President Bush and his aides were sometimes willing to criticize U.S. regional allies, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for an insufficient commitment to democracy.15 The motivation for this activity was partially related to the administration’s desire to avoid domestic and international charges of hypocrisy. The “Freedom Agenda” had to be seen as something more than a propaganda tool directed against U.S. adversaries. Also, the U.S. Administration seemed to be sincere and committed to its theory that opening up Middle Eastern societies would produce more moderate, secular, and pro-Western countries. The many unresolved grievances that the Arab World held regarding the Palestinians and U.S. foreign policy in general were often taken as a symptom of the lack of democracy rather than a set of sincere beliefs about regional injustice. The Jordanians and other Arabs attempted to persuade President Bush that the problem was more complicated than his rhetoric reflected, but they were uncertain of the progress they were making in doing so. King Abdullah often suggested that moderation would be dramatically strengthened by a renewed focus on solving the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but this never became a central focus of the U.S. Administration’s approach to the Middle East for a variety of reasons including ongoing problems with Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the president’s low regard for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.16 While the Jordanians often disagreed with President Bush’s approach to Middle East problems, they continued to value the relationship with the United States


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and worked to maintain it. Amman responded to the Bush Administration’s democratization effort by embracing its rhetoric but moving extremely slowly on its substance. King Abdullah spoke to a number of U.S. audiences about Jordan’s interest in expanding reform and democracy, while remaining concerned about Jordan’s future if it actually implemented majority-rule democracy. In retrospect, this policy seemed inevitable. The Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq was deeply unpopular in Jordan, and the president’s friendly relations with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were badly received by most of the Jordanian public. Jordan’s decision to provide limited logistical support to the U.S. invasion of Iraq also had the potential to become extremely controversial domestically if it had become widely known during the initial invasion period. Under these conditions, it would be difficult for the monarchy to find a worse time to open up its political system without provoking major confrontations with the public over Jordanian policy regarding relations with the United States and Israel. King Abdullah may have convinced the Bush Administration of his delicate situation because Jordan never received particularly sharp criticism from senior administration figures over this issue in contrast to the criticism directed at other Arab countries. Jordan’s anxiety in balancing these factors also became less pronounced over time, as the Bush Administration’s commitment to expanding Middle Eastern democracy appeared to them to be increasingly fading in the face of other, more pressing problems. U.S.-Jordanian difficulties over democracy issues should not be placed exclusively at the doorstep of the Bush Administration. Jordanian officials have been complaining since the early 1990s that they found themselves in trouble for dragging their feet on elections while fearing that they would find themselves facing even more serious difficulties if the public elected candidates whom the United States viewed as too radical. The 1989 election which began Jordan’s reform effort was also characterized by an extremely strong showing by the Islamist candidates at the polls, in which they gained 34 seats in the lower house (22 of whom were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood), which then only had 80 members. Many of these people were deeply hostile to the United States, and it was also unclear how much power King Hussein was prepared to share with them since the reform process was just beginning.17 Jordan’s parliament then became one of the most assertive legislative bodies in the Arab World in opposing the U.S. actions in the 1990–91 Gulf crisis and war.18 These developments were clearly of concern to the United States, but did not seem to alter the belief among many Americans that democracy would produce more moderate and pro-American governments over time. The George W. Bush Administration may have more clearly articulated the belief that democracy could and should lead to moderation, but its members were far from the only adherents to that belief.19 Nevertheless, by the end of President Bush’s term in office, the Jordanian public seemed thoroughly jaded on the issue of the U.S. commitment to democracy.

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According to polling done by the respected WorldPublicOpinion.Org, only six percent of Jordanians believed that the United States had an unconditional commitment to democracy in Muslim countries. Another 40 percent believed that the United States favored democracy “only if the government is cooperative with the U.S.,” while 41 percent of the sample stated that the United States “opposes democracy in Muslim countries.”20 Jordan has also received criticism from the U.S. State Department over a variety of restrictions imposed upon the press.21 The criticisms are based on real problems, but the situation is more complicated than it might initially appear. While the United States objects to press restrictions, U.S. leaders have also expressed concern over what they view as the anti-American coverage of media outlets such as Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television.22 Anti-Israeli and sometimes crudely anti-Semitic stories and cartoons in the Egyptian press have been similarly criticized by U.S. officials. In these instances, both the Qatari and Egyptian governments have responded by stating that they will not interfere because of the principle of freedom of the press. Jordanian media outlets permit tough criticism of the United States and Israel, but the authorities have also established limits beyond which it is unwise for journalists to go. The use of the words “Zionist entity” for Israel seem to be permitted even though this phrase is meant to cast doubt on Israel as a legitimate state. Conversely, the use of the term “Zionist enemy” can be a problem and lead to a suspension of publishing privileges. In late 2002 and early 2003, King Abdullah sought to persuade the United States against military intervention in Iraq, warning of a potential post-invasion Iraqi civil war that could spread and involve Iraq’s neighbors including Jordan.23 The U.S. leadership was not persuaded by these entreaties, and the king was not prepared to let this issue undermine U.S.-Jordanian relations as had occurred in the 1990–91 conflict. Instead, Jordan was willing to work with the Bush Administration’s anti-Saddam policies that would culminate in the 2003 invasion, although the full scope of this support (described below) was not made public at the time. The United States also agreed to increase U.S. civilian economic aid to Jordan in what was probably an effort to reduce Jordanian economic dependence on Iraq. Jordanian leaders understood that the free and subsidized oil provided by Iraq was probably a vanishing asset and that Jordan’s need for U.S. support could increase dramatically in a postwar era. Jordan’s dilemma was described by former Foreign Minister Jawad Anani, who maintained that “Jordan has learned the hard way from the previous war, and this time, his Majesty believes Jordan should not be exposed to another bitter experience.”24 Many Jordanians disagreed with this approach, and virtually all felt the war was unjust. Another reason that the Jordanian leadership sought to avoid antagonizing the United States was its fear of an openly hostile Iraqi government if Washington was successful in ousting Saddam. In particular, Amman was concerned that the United States might install Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi as the new


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leader in Iraq or that he would at least play a highly prominent role in Iraq’s future. Such a development would have presented a serious challenge to the Jordanians, whose relations with Chalabi were abysmal following the failure of the Chalabi-controlled, Jordanian-based Petra Bank. This institution collapsed in a 1989 scandal, costing Jordanian stockholders and investors around $1 billion. Chalabi was convicted in absentia of embezzlement by a Jordanian court and sentenced to 20 years in prison.25 While the Jordanians would almost certainly have made efforts to improve their relations with Chalabi had he taken power in Baghdad, such an effort may have been long and painful with no guarantee of a friendly response. Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Amman strongly considered formally pardoning Chalabi for all crimes committed in Jordan.26 The idea of a pardon was later discarded after Chalabi appeared to be marginalized in Iraqi politics while many of his U.S. supporters became disillusioned with him or lost influence in U.S. political circles. As the United States and some of its allies prepared to invade Iraq in early 2003, Jordan moved to align itself with Washington, although it was not prepared to send troops to support the invasion. Shortly before the outbreak of war, both Amman and Washington had publicly acknowledged that the United States had sent Patriot missile defense systems with U.S. crews to Jordan to protect that country against attacks by Iraq’s suspected surface-to-surface missiles, including Scuds.27 This missile defense network could also be used to protect Israel, a much more likely target had Saddam been able to retain some sort of residual Scud missile capability (which proved not to be the case). In another indication of solidarity with the United States, three days before the war began, Jordan accused five Iraqi diplomats of espionage and expelled them from Jordan. One of the Iraqis was further accused of being involved in a foiled terrorist attack within Jordan.28 Amman also agreed to accept a temporary and limited deployment of U.S. and possibly British ground forces on Jordanian soil in 2003 to infiltrate Iraq once the war began. In his memoirs, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the former chief administrator in Iraq, stated that Jordan “had helped us considerably during the invasion, allowing Coalition Special Operations forces to operate from its territory,” although he does not mention troop numbers.29 In reference to the same events, General Tommy Franks, the former U.S. Central Command Commander, wrote that “We flooded Western Iraq with hundreds of special operators [from Jordan] to secure the Scud fields.”30 These operations have also been discussed in Cobra II, a highly detailed and informed work by New York Times reporter Michael Gordon and retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor. In this study, the authors wrote that the U.S. and Jordan engaged in lengthy negotiations over the numbers and types of U.S. forces to be stationed in Jordan temporarily to support the invasion and that the United States and Jordan eventually agreed upon a troop strength of 5,000 U.S. soldiers,

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down from a U.S. request to place 14,000 troops in the kingdom.31 This number would have included Patriot air defense missile crews as well as the Special Forces troops Ambassador Bremer and General Franks described in their Iraq War memoirs. Jordan’s leadership knew that they could not prevent the invasion of Iraq, but they also hoped that the Jordanian domestic consequences of it could be minimized if the invasion took place quickly and the majority of U.S. forces were withdrawn rapidly after the regime was ousted. If this approach had succeeded, the Jordanian government expected that some domestic Jordanian anger over the invasion would be dissipated. Unfortunately, this hopeful scenario did not occur. Rather, the Bush Administration chose to retain a strong presence in Iraq to suppress a growing insurgency and help establish a new Iraqi government. In this environment, a number of Jordanian public figures unsuccessfully called upon the king to denounce the U.S. presence in forceful terms, claiming his refusal to do so was not reflecting the will of the people.32 Once the Sunni-led insurgency had taken root in Iraq, some Jordanian Islamists then began praising guerrilla bravery and commitment. King Abdullah responded to these developments by stressing the need for Jordan to maintain its credibility with the United States and engage in constructive action to help support a favorable outcome in Iraq. According to the Jordanian leader, such an outcome would reflect the interests of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community in Iraq and limit Iranian influence. The king also engaged in some gestures designed to mollify public opinion. One such action occurred when King Abdullah gave Saddam’s daughters, Raghad and Rana, and their nine children refuge in Jordan in 2003.33 Since neither daughter was complicit in Saddam Hussein’s crimes, this decision on asylum was presented to the world as a reasonable act of Arab chivalry, despite some Iraqi government anger over the decision. 34 This choice created problems when the Iraqi government requested the extradition of Raghad in 2007 for allegedly providing funds to Iraqi insurgents.35 The Jordanians declined such an extradition, partially because they viewed the Iraqi justice system as hopelessly biased against Sunni Arabs.36 Moreover, allowing the Iraqis to arrest Raghad would have been especially unpopular with the Jordanian public if she had later been mistreated, imprisoned, or especially if she was executed.37 Such actions might also have inflamed additional unrest in Iraq. Jordanian popular resentment of the Iraq War reached another high point in 2004 as a result of publication of photographs of U.S. military personnel mistreating Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison. When these crimes became public, President Bush publicly expressed his regrets to the Arab and Muslim Worlds in the presence of King Abdullah as well as making this remorse known in Egypt’s leading newspaper, Al Ahram.38 Such statements did little to mollify Arab outrage, and the Jordanian opposition again took the opportunity to criticize government ties with the United States. Later problems between Jordan’s


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government and opposition over policies toward the United States again manifested themselves in November 2006, when President Bush visited Amman. President Bush’s primary purpose for the visit was to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, who also flew to the Jordanian capital. Bush met separately with Jordanian leaders, including King Abdullah, to discuss Jordanian concerns and the peace process. The IAF strongly denounced the government’s decision to host the U.S. president, stating, “Bush is not welcome because he is a bad omen for the region as he has flooded it with blood and destroyed a strong Arab country where he also ignited a civil war.”39 Many Jordanian citizens also disapproved of the January 2007 execution of Saddam Hussein. In an interpretation shared by few Westerners, some ordinary Jordanian citizens (and other Sunni Muslims) viewed the execution of Saddam Hussein as an act of pro-Iranian Shi’ite revenge against an Arab nationalist leader rather than the long overdue punishment of a brutal tyrant.40 The November 2008 election of President Barack Obama in the United States was of tremendous interest to both the Jordanian leadership and public. The series of speeches by President Obama to reach out to the Islamic world were praised by the Jordanian government and cautiously well received by most Jordanians. Others, including various opposition leaders, denigrated the speeches and expressed particular dissatisfaction with the pro-Israeli portions of the presentations.41 Some sympathetic but doubtful Jordanians suggested that Obama needed to go beyond what they referred to as “good intensions,” while others suggest that he has only a limited ability to reshape U.S. policy in the Middle East.42 In early polling on the Obama presidency, 31 percent of the Jordanian population stated that they had confidence in President Obama in a threefold increase of the approval rating Jordanians had given to President George W. Bush, although the number is still lower than in a variety of other Arab countries.43 As the Obama Administration policies on the Middle East unfolded, many Jordanians were initially impressed by President Obama’s support for a freeze on the construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories and his willingness to press Prime Minister Netanyahu on this issue. Jordanian critics have also noted that Netanyahu has continued to support settlement construction despite Obama’s concern. In this environment, the Jordanians have also shown considerable caution about U.S. calls for Arab states to improve their ties with Israel. The Jordanians have indicated that they are not prepared to move beyond the current Arab consensus on normalizing ties until Netanyahu makes more serious concessions on Palestinian territory. Officially, Jordan has stated that further normalization would require serious negotiations on the basis of the 2002 Arab League Peace Plan or an Israeli declaration that it plans to withdraw from all Palestinian territory captured in 1967. In reality, Jordan would probably allow increased normalization in any environment where the peace process appeared to be making progress even on an incremental basis. Jordan currently has the most extensive

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relations with Israel of any Arab state, and it has maintained this level of normality through some extremely difficult times such as the 2009 Israeli-Palestinian war in the Gaza Strip. In contrast, various other Arab states such as Qatar have scaled back or discontinued their contacts with Israel and are unlikely to improve them under current circumstances.44 JORDAN AND THE U.S. CONGRESS

Jordan has experienced numerous difficulties with the U.S. Congress prior to the 1994 Israel-Jordanian peace treaty that often overshadowed any problems that it was having with the executive branch. These disagreements usually involved the issue of arms sales to Jordan, which must be approved by Congress after they are recommended by the president. In the years prior to 1994, Congress was often unwilling to provide Jordan with a variety of major weapons systems due to professed concerns that weapons transferred to Jordan could eventually be used against Israel. In many cases, U.S. presidents chose not to wage an intense political fight with Congress on behalf of Jordan because they did not feel it was worth the expenditure of political capital to do so. Also, on at least one occasion in 1975, the offer of a significant arms package (in this case containing mobile Hawk antiaircraft missiles) for sale to Jordan had to be withdrawn after congressional opposition became unmanageable following bad prior coordination with key congressional leaders. 45 If the degree of congressional opposition had been correctly assessed, the offer would never have been made. Additionally, on those occasions when U.S. weapons were provided, they were often transferred in limited packages that would help the Jordanian government defend itself from Palestinian guerrillas, but could not serve as a serious threat to Israel. Jordanian use of American weapons, including tanks in the June 1967 War, was often cited as a reason not to sell Amman more than a bare minimum of weaponry for internal security and limited national defense. Jordan’s standing with the U.S. Congress turned around dramatically following the 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Like Egypt, the Jordanians immediately became eligible to receive an array of modern weapons systems, as detailed later in this chapter. Later, King Abdullah’s decision to side decisively with the United States in the struggle against al-Qaeda also helped to reinforce Jordan’s positive image in Congress, as did his cooperation with the United States over Iraq policy. As a result of these policies, U.S. Congressional leaders have displayed a continuing interest in working productively with Jordanian leaders, and King Abdullah accepted the opportunity to address a joint session of Congress in February 2007 (see Appendix C).46 This is a rare honor for a foreign leader. At this presentation, the king emphasized U.S-Jordanian friendship while also noting the need for greater U.S. urgency in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian problem. He received a standing ovation from Congress, although some of Israel’s more conservative


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supporters suggested that the speech was too negative about Israeli policies. King Abdullah’s address to Congress was the first such session by a Jordanian leader since his father made a joint appearance with Prime Minister Rabin 13 years earlier to speak about the end of hostilities between the two countries. U.S. aid to Jordan also increased significantly after the September 11 attacks against U.S. targets in New York and Washington. Since 2003, U.S. aid to Jordan has averaged over $760 million per year with no real conflict in Congress over the provision of such aid. A particularly positive trend for Jordan has been the establishment of a “Friends of Jordan Caucus” by the U.S. House of Representatives in March 2008 and in the U.S. Senate in April 2009. The House Caucus is bipartisan and has been led by Congressman Adam Schiff and Congressman Brian Baird. Founding members of the U.S. Senate Friends of Jordan Caucus included Senator Daniel Inouye, Senator Judd Gregg, and Senator Joseph Lieberman.47 All of these senators and representatives have emphasized that they recognize the significance of U.S. relations with Jordan and are interested in helping Jordan deal with the challenges it faces in the region. They have also indicated their strong interest in further expanding Jordan’s positive relationship with the United States. The House Caucus has also introduced resolutions friendly to Jordan in the U.S. Congress, and in at least one instance highlighted Jordan’s 2004 Amman Message which denounces terrorism in the name of Islam (see Chapter 6).48 Although both caucuses are still relatively small, their members seem particularly committed to advancing U.S.-Jordanian relations. In the future, they might also be expected to play important roles in convincing their colleagues to support reasonable legislation related to Jordan’s economic and national security needs. Some of the members of the Friends of Jordan Caucuses are also strong supporters of Israel. Consequently, these people look with great favor on Jordan’s moderation on Arab-Israeli issues as well as its peace treaty with the Israelis. The Jordanians understand and appreciate this outlook, but they have also tried to ensure that a pro-Israeli outlook does not mean a quick dismissal of Palestinian concerns. While many supporters of Israel will always consider Jordan’s welfare as secondary to Israel’s welfare, Jordanian leaders believe that they may also become more skeptical of the theories and ideas of the Israeli far right wing if they are provided with alternative viewpoints by reasonable and moderate people. Members of the Friends of Jordan Caucuses have on occasion visited Jordan for discussions with senior Jordanian leaders, including both individuals associated with the monarchy and elected members of Parliament. They have also visited Palestinian refugee camps and been briefed on the services that are provided to the people housed there.49 These actions may lead to a fuller appreciation of the complexities of the Middle East, while in no way raising doubt about legitimate Israeli security concerns. Conversely, the Jordanians are always willing to listen to the ideas and hopes of pro-Jordanian U.S. policymakers.

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Americans who have proven their friendship with the Jordanians will always have a useful role in providing their insights to the Amman leadership. U.S.-JORDANIAN MILITARY TIES

U.S.-Jordanian military relations and arms sales to Amman have reflected the occasional difficulties in the relations between Washington and Amman as well as eras of substantial agreement and cooperation since this military relationship first began in 1957 with limited transfers of U.S. weaponry. The U.S.-Jordanian military relationship expanded dramatically in August 1964 when Washington agreed to supply Jordan with M-48 Patton tanks and armored personnel carriers. This expansion of U.S.-Jordanian military relations occurred in part because of declining U.S. relations with Nasser’s Egypt and a corresponding willingness to support his regional political opponents through military sales. Later, in February 1966, a turning point was reached when the United States agreed to sell a small number of high-performance F-104 fighter aircraft to Jordan.50 These aircraft had previously been flown by the U.S. Air Force and were supplied in such small numbers that their primary impact was probably political rather than military. Nevertheless, by early 1967, the United States had joined the United Kingdom as one of Jordan’s primary arms suppliers, although this relationship would later suffer because of the war with Israel in June. On the eve of the 1967 war, Jordanian forces included 55,000 ground troops, approximately 350 tanks, and a small air force of mostly obsolete aircraft. The Jordanians fought bravely and professionally after the outbreak of hostilities, but the army’s military performance suffered as a result of Israeli air supremacy over the battlefield and variety of confusing instructions issued by the Egyptian general placed in charge of the Jordanian front. Jordan’s small operational force of 21 older British-made Hawker Hunters were destroyed or disabled to the last aircraft (the F-104s had been sent to Turkey because they were not yet combatready). Jordan also lost 179 tanks and 700 troops, with large numbers wounded, missing, and taken prisoner. Almost half of Israel’s total casualties in the conflict occurred on the Jordanian front, despite Jordan’s armed forces being the smallest of the major Arab combatants. In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, Israelis were thus particularly disinclined to show much understanding of Jordanian motivations for entering the war. The Israeli leadership also strongly emphasized their opposition to most prospective U.S. arms sales to Jordan and especially those involving high-performance weaponry. As a result, Amman had considerable difficulty acquiring U.S. aid in rebuilding its shattered army and air force. In this atmosphere, King Hussein seriously considered expanding military relations with the Soviet Union to establish an alternative source of weaponry. Despite Jordan’s status as a monarchy, the Soviets were extremely interested in becoming an arms supplier to Jordan. The United States then grudgingly


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agreed to an expanded military relationship with Jordan.51 In February 1968 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara offered the Jordanian leadership a limited arms package that was reluctantly treated as acceptable by Amman. The issue of military sales continued to be problematic for decades to follow. After a long and painful series of negotiations over the sale of Hawk antiaircraft missiles, Jordan eventually had to agree to place them in fixed sites set in blacktop pavement as a condition of their delivery in the late 1970s.52 Deliveries of some of U.S. weapons systems were again slowed down under the Carter presidency because of important U.S.-Jordanian differences over the Camp David peace process.53 In June 1979, tensions reached the point where the Jordanians felt compelled to purchase 36 Mirage F-1 fighter aircraft from France because the United States was unwilling to sell them F-16s.54 When Amman sought to purchase 300 U.S. made M60 A3 main battle tanks in late 1979, the proposed transfer was presented with so many conditions that Jordan purchased 274 British-made Chieftain tanks instead.55 While it has already been noted that President Reagan was friendlier to Jordan than President Carter, he also had difficulties selling weapons to Jordan due to congressional opposition. An even more serious interruption of arms supplies occurred after the 1991 Gulf War, when the United States suspended the approximately $55 million in aid provided to the Jordanians.56 Moreover, Jordan’s conservative Gulf backers were equally angry with Amman for its wartime policies and thus were unwilling to help Jordan cope with the lack of U.S. military support. Jordan began receiving important levels of military aid again after it agreed to the 1994 peace treaty with Israel. In 1996 the United States designated Jordan as a Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA), a special designation given to countries with exceptionally close security relationships with the United States that are nevertheless not members of NATO. This designation allows for expedited delivery of military equipment and more favorable purchasing arrangements than those for countries without either NATO membership or MNNA designation. Jordan was the second Arab state (after Egypt in 1989) to be named under the MNNA program, although others have followed, including Kuwait and Bahrain. Israel was also given this designation in 1989. Later, following the 9/11 attacks, military aid to Jordan rose to over $576 million for 2002. In 2003 the United States then nearly tripled U.S. military aid to Jordan to more than $1.5 billion.57 This figure has not been surpassed, and military aid in subsequent years has ranged between $500 million and almost $1 billon per year. Jordan does not permit the United States to maintain permanent military bases on its soil due to longstanding regional sensitivities about the effects such bases have on national sovereignty. Amman does, however, participate in a variety of recurring joint exercises with the United States, and extensive military cooperation exists between the military components of the two countries. These include Exercise Eager Tiger and Exercise Eager Light, which focus on counterterrorism and

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border security.58 The U.S. Marine Corps works with the Jordanian military in Exercise Infinite Moonlight, and U.S. Special Forces conduct Exercise Early Victor with the Jordanians.59 While these exercises occur on Jordanian soil, some other friendly Arab states sometimes participate as well. The Jordanians also participate in multilateral exercises supported by the United States, such as the Bright Star exercises in Egypt. Additionally, British units based in Cyprus usually travel to Jordan every year to train under desert warfare conditions.60 Jordan has also deployed medical and mine clearance units to Afghanistan to provide symbolic support for the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.61 THE FUTURE OF U.S.-JORDANIAN RELATIONS

Jordanian relations with the United States have vacillated a great deal since the 1950s, but have established a new and especially solid foundation as a result of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. This treaty has brought U.S. and Jordanian interests into a much firmer alignment that will help to compensate for future disagreements and probably assure that relations do not deteriorate to some of the previous low levels as were seen under the Carter and George H. W. Bush Administrations. Additionally, King Abdullah has shown a continuing interest in maximizing his country’s safety and prosperity by working with the United States to achieve Jordanian goals. While he disapproved of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he nevertheless realized Jordan could not prevent this from occurring and instead accepted the situation while attempting to find ways to maximize the Jordanian national interest in the new regional environment. By training police forces for post-Saddam Iraq and other such acts, Jordan gained the gratitude and support of the United States while making the case domestically that the country was helping the Iraqis by doing what was possible to halt chaos that was then engulfing that country. Moreover, as will be discussed in more detail later in this study, Jordan has become a key partner in the war against terrorism, future strengthening ties with the United States. Under current circumstances, it therefore appears that Jordan will continue to have a productive and friendly relationship with the United States. In recent years, Jordan has been one of the top 10 recipients of U.S. aid and is likely to continue advancing its own interests in ways that keep this aid flowing. Unexpected policy differences do of course arise upon occasion, and unpleasant surprises can severely disrupt relations between allies. Nevertheless, for the time being the U.S.-Jordanian relationship seems to be moving forward on extremely firm ground. Differences over democracy currently do not threaten the relationship and probably will not do so unless a major domestic upheaval were to cause Jordanian security forces to behave in a way that increases repression to highly visible and perhaps scandalous levels. Such developments seem highly unlikely at this time due to a reasonable level of legitimacy enjoyed by the current


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government as well as the clear and understandable line between current Jordanian foreign policy and domestic prosperity in a country that still has severe economic problems. NOTES 1. Muasher, 149. 2. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 125. 3. Ibid., 146; Halevy, 7. 4. Kennett Love, Suez: The Twice Fought War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 646–648. 5. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 175. 6. Ibid., 140–141. 7. William B. Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993), 51 8. Mohamed Heikal, Secret Channels: The Inside Story of Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), 132. 9. Shlaim, 372. 10. Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity: War of Choice, a Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 79. 11. Ibid., 85. 12. Russell E. Lucas, “Jordan: The Death of Normalization with Israel,” Middle East Journal, Volume 58, Number 1, Winter 2004, 106. 13. Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 626. 14. International Crisis Group, The Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (Brussels, Belgium: ICG, 2004), 3. 15. Wayne Washington, “Bush Urges Mideast to Accept Democracy,” Boston Globe, November 7, 2003. 16. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 296. 17. Boulby, ch. 4. 18. Curtis R. Ryan, Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (Tampa: University Press of Florida, 2009), 138. 19. Federal News Service, “ ‘There is No Justice Without Freedom,’ The Full Text of President Bush’s Second Inaugural Address,” Washington Post, January 21, 2005. 20. Taylor Luck, “41% of Jordanians Believe US Opposed Democracy in Muslim Countries—Poll,” Jordan Times, December 19, 2008. 21. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 2008 Human Rights Report: Jordan, February 25, 2009. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/ nea/136071.htm 22. Hugh Miles, Al-Jazeera, The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West (New York: Grove Press, 2005), 299. 23. Robin Wright, “Jordan’s King Sees Pitfalls in a Strike on Iraq,” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2002. 24. Scott Peterson, “Jordan Caught between US and Iraq,” Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 2002. 25. Sana Abdallah, “Jordan: Oil Worries,” Middle East International, May 16, 2003. 26. “Jordan’s Two Faces of Reform,” Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, July 1, 2005.

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27. Anthony Shadid, “Jordan to Allow Limited Stationing of US Troops,” Washington Post, January 30, 2003; E. A. Torriero, “Jordanians Conflicted Over Growing US troop Presence,” Chicago Tribune, March 11, 2003. 28. Associated Press, “Alliances with U.S., Iraq Put Jordan in Tight Spot,” Baltimore Sun, August 8, 2003. 29. L. Paul Bremer III, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 76. 30. Vago Muradian, “Allied Special Forces Took Western Iraq,” Defense News, May 23, 2007. 31. Gordon and Trainor, 110. 32. Ian Fisher and Alan Feuer, “In Jordan, It’s Long Live Iraq and Woe on the King,” New York Times, April 5, 2003. 33. Paul Reynolds, “How Jordan Became a Target in Iraq,” BBC News, August 7, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 34. Sana Abdallah, “Jordan: Row with Iraq,” Middle East International, April 1, 2005, 15. 35. AFP, “Jordan Refuses to Hand Over Saddam’s Daughter to Iraq,” Daily Star, August 21, 2007. 36. Ibid. 37. See Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer, “Shiite Militias Control Prisons, Official Says,” Washington Post, June 16, 2006, 1. 38. Gilles Kepel, Beyond Terror and Martyrdom, The Future of the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 32. 39. “Islamists Reject Bush’s Visit to Jordan, Say He is ‘No Friend,’ ” Khaleej Times, November 24, 2006. 40. Linda Hindi and Khalid Neimat, “Iraqi Expatriates, Jordanians Express Disapproval of Saddam’s Execution,” Jordan Times, January 3, 2007; Michael Slackman, “Hangings Fuel Sectarian Split Across Mideast,” New York Times, January 17, 2007. 41. Mohammad Ghazal, “Intellectuals, Politicians Accept Obama’s Approach but Want ‘Action,’ ” Jordan Times, June 5, 2009. 42. Taylor Luck, “Jordanians Hopeful over Obama Peace Quest,” Jordan Times, January 23, 2009. 43. Mohammad Ghazal, “Rising US Favorability Reflect Confidence in Obama,” Jordan Times, July 24, 2009. 44. Qatar News Agency, “Qatar Closes Israeli Office, Orders Staff to Leave,” as reprinted by the Gulf Research Center, January 19, 2009. 45. Cordesman, Anthony H., Jordanian Arms and the Middle East Balance (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1983), 23. 46. Abdul Jalil Mustafa, “Skepticism Over Outcome of Jordan’s King U.S. Trip,” Kuwait Times, March 3, 2007. 47. “Friends of Jordan Caucus Launched at US Senate,” Jordan Times, April 24, 2009. 48. Jordanian News Agency, “U.S. House of Representatives Approves Resolution Highlighting Jordanian-American Friendship,” November 18, 2009, accessed through Lexis-Nexis. 49. “At a Glance: Dahabi Meets with Friends of Jordan Caucus,” Jordan Times, June 30, 2009. 50. Zach Levey, “United States Arms Policy Toward Jordan, 1963–68,” Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 67, Number 3, July 2006, 527.

Jordan and the United States 51. Jordanian acquisition of significant amounts of Soviet weaponry and military equipment briefly seemed like a serious possibility following the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. See Mohamed Heikal, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East (New York: Harper & Row Publishers), 1978, 12–13. 52. Cordesman, Jordanian Arms and the Middle East Balance, 23. 53. Queen Noor, 157, 190–191. 54. Cordesman, Jordanian Arms and the Middle East Balance, 24. 55. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 410–411. 56. “ ‘Trying to Catch Our Breath,’ King Hussein on the Odds of Mideast Peace,” Newsweek, August 19, 1991, 28. 57. Scott Wilson, “Jordan Acts to Curb a Rising Chorus of Critics,” Washington Post, September 30, 2004, 18. 58. Linda Robinson, “Plan of Attack,” U.S. News and World Report, July 24, 2005, http:// www.usnews.com; Soldiers Radio and Television, U.S. Army Public Affairs, “Exercise Eager Light,” October 2, 2007, http://www.army.mil. 59. Global Security.org, “Early Victor,” April 4, 2005; Gunnery Sgt. Mark E. Bradley, “Marines Return to Jordan for Infinite Moonlight,” Marine Corps News, August 25, 2005. 60. Jane’s Information Group, “Jordan,” Jane’s World Armies, June 21, 2006. 61. Philip Robins, A History of Jordan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 204.

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CHAPTER

5

Jordan’s Relations with Other Arab States and Iran

OVERVIEW

Jordan currently maintains normal relations with all major Arab states and good relations with many of them. This situation is a vast improvement from earlier times in Jordanian history when the country was isolated and besieged by a number of radical Arab countries which sought to overthrow the monarchy. Throughout much of its early history, Jordan was periodically on indifferent or even bad terms with most of its Arab neighbors, including some moderate states with leaderships who believed it was too politically costly for them to provide political support to King Hussein. This problem was particularly serious throughout much of the 1950s and early 1960s, when various revolutionary Arab states identified Jordan as a “reactionary” country that stood in the way of modernization and victory in the struggle with Israel and the efforts to oppose Western domination of the region. Later, Jordan once again faced severe political and economic isolation after the 1970 civil war. In a continuing effort to avoid regional isolation, Jordan has struggled assiduously to maintain and expand friendly ties with other Arab countries whenever possible. Jordan has also sought Arab consensus on key issues of regional significance, such as the peace process with Israel or the Iran-Iraq war. Only on matters of considerable significance has Jordan publicly taken a stand that will antagonize its Arab neighbors or depart from Arab key norms. In times when there is no Arab consensus, Jordan must either attempt to remain neutral (if this option is available and wise) or choose a side in interArab disputes.

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The Jordanian leadership understands that their country benefits tremendously from maintaining strong trading relations with neighboring states and aid relations with wealthy Arab states when this is possible. Favorable relations with key Arab states can mean much greater prosperity for the Jordanian public and help to support regime viability and legitimacy. Unfortunately, it has often been difficult for Jordan to maintain acceptable relations with all of its neighbors simultaneously, and there have sometimes been instances where Jordan is so isolated that it has sought limited cooperation with its least dangerous adversaries. Throughout its history, Jordan’s most important Arab relationships have traditionally been with Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf monarchies for a variety of reasons to be explored in this chapter. The Jordanians are also deeply interested in Iranian activities that influence their interests, although relations between the two nations have ranged from distrust to open hostility since 1979. JORDANIAN-IRAQI RELATIONS

Jordanian relations with Iraq’s leadership were problematic for at least 20 years following the 1958 revolution, but improved dramatically as Iraq attempted to assert a leadership role in the Arab World following Egypt’s ostracism over its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Saddam Hussein, who was by then the de facto strongman of Iraq and about to become president, made his first visit to Jordan in July 1979. After meeting with King Hussein, Saddam agreed to provide some limited aid to help Jordan resist U.S. pressure to join the Camp David process.1 Amman, for its part, viewed Iraq as a particularly desirable ally because of its potential as both an important trading partner and a provider of aid (including oil) for Jordan. This interest was probably enhanced by Jordanian concern about the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when the overthrow of the Shah deprived King Hussein of one of his most trusted regional allies. The most dramatic turning point for Jordanian-Iraqi relations occurred in the early stages of the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War. Jordan, like the United States, was deeply concerned that Tehran would defeat the Iraqis and emerge from the victory more empowered to export its radical ideology throughout the Middle East. Jordan responded to this situation by throwing itself unreservedly behind the Iraq war effort. Iraq, for its part, was interested in improving its relations with Jordan for a variety of reasons related to the war effort against Iran. This strategy was clearly effective. In addition to speaking favorably to U.S. leaders about Iraq, King Hussein made a strong effort to convince Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab countries to support Baghdad financially and diplomatically as the only available bulwark against Khomeini’s Iran. For this and other reasons, the Gulf states eventually agreed to provide billions of dollars in aid to Iraq. This support helped to prevent an Iraqi defeat which seemed possible following a series of Iranian battlefield victories in 1982 and 1983. The Jordanians also allowed Baghdad to import


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large quantities of war supplies through their port of Aqaba for transport to Iraq by truck. In a more symbolic move, Jordan sent a handful of volunteers to participate in non-combat military missions, and Jordanian generals may have consulted with Iraqi senior officers about war strategy.2 When the Iran-Iraq War ended in summer 1988, Jordan was one of Baghdad’s closest allies. Jordan’s stand in favor of Iraq was within the Arab political mainstream, with Libya and Syria as the only Arab countries providing political support to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. King Hussein’s enthusiastic support of Baghdad was widely viewed as the appropriate nationalist stand for an Arab leader, and Jordan’s expanding relations with Iraq seemed a logical outcome of the deemphasis of ideology in intra-Arab politics. The 1988 cease-fire ending the Iran-Iraq War therefore found Jordan in a particularly favorable regional position. Jordan was receiving aid from the United States and a variety of Western countries as well as Baghdad and a number of the Gulf Arab states. Two years later everything changed, and this comfortable arrangement with multiple aid donors became untenable as Amman faced a major foreign policy crisis resulting from Saddam Hussein’s unexpected and reckless invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. King Hussein maintained that both he and Yasser Arafat made a series of attempts to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait and accept a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The king has also stated that Iraq suffered its massive 1991 defeat because Saddam refused to listen to reason in these discussions due to his own stubborn unwillingness to back down from an untenable position.3 After the war, Jordan maintained some of its former economic relations with Iraq, although Saddam’s post-1991 status as an international outlaw prevented the restoration of friendly prewar political relations. Jordan continued to receive some free and the rest subsidized oil from the Baghdad regime in return for ongoing trade relations in food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods allowed under allowed under the UN embargo of Iraq.4 The Jordanian trucking industry was also dependent on Jordanian-Iraqi trade and needed to continue to conduct commercial operations as close to prewar levels as could be managed. Just prior to the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraqis were purchasing around $500 million in Jordanian exports annually.5 The United States did not oppose such JordanianIraqi economic ties and instead chose to understand Amman’s continuing economic problems and especially the need to obtain oil on the best possible terms wherever it could be found. The Jordanian-Iraqi oil and trade agreements were never challenged by the UN sanctions committee, which officially “took note” of the transactions, with language that was widely regarded as tacit approval.6 Correspondingly, the Jordanian government asserted that they had met the requirements of all pertinent UN resolutions, and their trade agreements with Iraq were therefore legal. The implementation of a new and harder-line Jordanian political policy toward Iraq began gradually in 1993 and reached a key turning point in

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August 1995, when King Hussein granted asylum to the defecting sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein. This policy of distancing Jordan from Iraq was unpopular with the Jordanian public, but King Hussein viewed such actions as essential to restore good relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and some of the smaller Gulf Arab states. The suffering of Iraqi citizens under UN sanctions was well known to the Jordanian public, and many blamed the United States rather than Saddam for the continuation of sanctions for years after the war. Additionally, some Jordanians believed that Saddam had important positive qualities, including his continuing rhetorical and financial support for the Palestinian cause. Saddam’s hard-line statements on Israel and Palestine were often well received by large portions of the Jordanian public and especially those of Palestinian origin. Moreover, Iraqi financial support to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers killed in attacks against Israeli targets was viewed as a humanitarian gesture by some elements within the Jordanian public. By contrast, most Israelis and Americans viewed such payments as an incitement to the murder of innocent civilians. As the United States moved closer to a second war against Iraq, the Jordanian leadership found itself again caught between its pragmatic instincts and domestic public opinion. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq was launched, there were large anti-American demonstrations in Amman and other Jordanian cities. Tens of thousands of Jordanians demonstrated peacefully against the war while the authorities stood back, deeming it wise to allow them to vent their anger. 7 On some occasions, there were also short-lived riots and clashes with the police, but these never rose to menacing levels. Angry antiwar reporting by the Jordanian media was permitted and, in combination with other Arab news outlets (especially satellite television), threatened to increase domestic anger over Jordan’s ties to the West—perhaps to a new level of intensity. Under these circumstances, it appeared possible that the regime might have felt the eventual need for a harsh crackdown to control the potential for increased violence on the street.8 The Jordanian government correspondingly viewed the rapid defeat of Iraqi conventional forces and the fall of Baghdad with some relief. Despite their previous warnings of possible Iraqi civil war, at least some Jordanians now viewed the worst dangers associated with the war to be over. This complacency rapidly dissipated as the Jordanians became concerned over early U.S. decisions about Iraq, including the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the sweeping process of de-Ba’athification.9 These decisions were sometimes seen as setting the stage for a long and controversial U.S. presence in Iraq. As Iraq’s post–Saddam Hussein era continued to unfold, Jordanian leaders also worried about the possible emergence of either a hostile Iraq or an Iraq in chaos. In either of these cases, a dramatic increase in terrorism and cross-border crime would almost certainly become major problems. Moreover, Jordanian-Iraqi trade could be expected to be in danger of collapse in both of these situations. The Jordanians also remained concerned that a chaotic Iraq would continue to


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produce waves of refugees in addition to the 750,000 or more Iraqis who have already fled to Jordan as a result of problems in that country and continuing doubts about Iraq’s future. Jordan probably has a stronger stake in a stable, united, and prosperous Iraq than any other Arab state except Kuwait. To the extent possible, Amman has consistently supported U.S., international, and Iraqi efforts to achieve these goals. Both before and after the 2003 invasion, Iraq was Jordan’s most important export market.10 Correspondingly, U.S. and international contractors with business in Iraq often maintained supporting facilities in Jordan, and the Jordanian port of Aqaba continues to receive large quantities of goods to be sent to Iraq.11 In keeping with this continuing involvement, Jordan was the first Arab country to appoint an accredited ambassador to Iraq, doing so in August 2006.12 Later, in August 2008, King Abdullah became the first Arab head of state to visit Iraq since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. Jordan also sought to help the Iraqis improve their internal security in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion. The centerpiece of the Jordanian effort was a program initially designed to train 30,000 Iraqi police, with this number subsequently adjusted upward to 35,000.13 The candidates selected for this program were given an eight-week course in police skills and procedures in classes of 1,500 students at the Jordanian International Police Training Center ( JIPTC) near the village of Mawaqqar, 20 miles east of Amman.14 The U.S. chief administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, called this effort “the world’s largest police training program,” and the United States agreed to provide funding for the program which King Abdullah had suggested on September 29, 2003.15 Around 50,000 Iraqi police cadets were trained at this facility from 2004 until 2007, thus significantly exceeding the initial projections for the number of police officers to be trained under the program.16 The final class of Iraqi police and police cadets graduated in summer 2007, although limited numbers of Iraqi police candidates may still receive specialized training in Jordan. After 2007, Iraqi police training had transitioned to facilities inside Iraq, although a limited number of Jordanian police instructors continued to support these training efforts in Iraq. 17 The Mawaqqar facility continued to be used to support other Iraq-related concerns for some months after the departure of the police classes, although its mission changed to the training of Iraqi prison guards. In retrospect, the Jordanian program to train Iraqi police officers was not as successful as its supporters had initially hoped for it to be. While the police training program was successful in imparting police skills, this effort was not enough to reform and rebuild an efficient and professional Iraqi police force that could operate within the political turmoil then facing that country.18 The January 2005 election of highly sectarian leaders in Iraq helped to undermine police professionalization since various internal security figures sought to bring their favored militiamen into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which supervises the national police force. Militiamen associated with the most important Shi’ite political parties

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were consequently favored for admission into the Interior Ministry police forces in a number of instances despite a lack of police training.19 Once Jordaniantrained recruits returned from Mawaqqar, they were often caught up in problems associated with the militia power struggle for control of the police. The recruits were often resocialized into patterns of choosing sectarian loyalties over professionalism if they were hired and then retained for police service at all (which some were not).20 The limited success of the police training program therefore occurred because of political, cultural, and sectarian conditions in Iraq and not because of shortcomings attributable to the Jordanians. The Jordanians further sought to support Iraqi national security efforts through additional measures, including the transfer of military equipment and especially armored vehicles to the new Iraqi army that was being formed in the aftermath of Saddam’s removal from power.21 While most of this equipment was comprised of older systems being phased out of the Jordanian inventory, it was still useful to the Iraqis since they were critically short of armored vehicles. Some Iraqi military personnel also received specialized training in Jordan, including officers forming the nucleus of Iraq’s new air force.22 The Jordanian Army also established a military field hospital in the troubled city of Fallujah shortly after Saddam’s ouster.23 Unfortunately, Jordanians serving in this medical unit faced insurgent attacks early in the post-Saddam era despite their status as Arabs, Sunni Muslims, and medical personnel.24 They continued to operate under adverse conditions, but later had to evacuate the area temporarily because of intensive combat between insurgents and the U.S. Marine Corps in April and November 2004. The hospital personnel returned to their duties in Fallujah once order was restored. Despite all of these efforts, Jordanian security ties with Iraq have steadily declined as the Iraq military and police forces are increasingly able to meet their needs without help from Amman. In non-security realms, the Jordanians and Iraqis have also shown a continuing interest in cooperation. On an economic level, Jordan hopes to receive a significant and reliable supply of discounted Iraqi oil once again, and Amman has seen this process begin to make progress over the last few years.25 The first shipment of Iraqi oil sent to Jordan in four years arrived on September 30, 2007. The shipment consisted of eight oil trucks which were loaded in Kirkuk and delivered their cargo to Jordan’s Zarqa oil refinery.26 Such an action was largely symbolic, and many subsequent shipments were delayed by the unrest in that country, but progress occurred over time. By late 2009, Jordan was importing 10,000 barrels a day of raw crude oil for refinement and domestic use. These shipments comprised 10 percent of Jordan’s oil needs at a discounted price most recently set at $22 per barrel. Jordan would like to increase its imports of discounted oil to around 30 percent of its current needs. Iraq has agreed that this number is an acceptable goal, but it is unable to meet such a high threshold due to what the Jordanians have described as “technical problems.”27


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It is also possible that Jordan’s future relations with Iraq may turn bitter despite King Abdullah’s best efforts to advance friendly ties. Under some circumstances following the planned U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, Jordan might also be expected to approach Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated government to express concerns it holds about the treatment of Iraqi Sunni Arabs, which is sometimes seen as worsening. The Jordanian government has consistently shown apprehension over the future of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs for reasons related to both Iraqi stability and the concerns of Jordan’s overwhelming Sunni population (estimated at 92%).28 Any Jordanian efforts to support Iraq’s Sunnis and present their concerns to the international community are viewed favorably by the Jordanian public. To these ends, Amman has attempted to advise the United States on ways to reduce tensions with Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. These measures have included urging the United States to reach out to Sunni leaders and longstanding efforts to convince the United States to reverse much of the de-Ba’athification process, which many Jordanians view as vindictive and anti-Sunni.29 The Jordanian leadership also meets with some of Iraq’s Sunni Arab leaders including tribal leaders that have ties to Jordanian tribes.30 RELATIONS WITH EGYPT

King Hussein’s searing experiences during the Arab cold war caused him to place a high value on good relations with Egypt whenever such ties were possible. While Jordan and Egypt were frequently at odds during the 1950s and 1960s, the defeat of both countries by Israel in the June 1967 war changed the political dynamic between them and led to the improvement of relations in ways that King Hussein had sought throughout his early reign but never obtained. After the 1967 defeat, Egypt reconciled with the conservative Arab countries and began accepting aid from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies to rebuild its military. Such relationships ended charges of reactionary regimes standing in the way of a bright Arab future, and Egyptian-Jordanian relations were correspondingly normalized. President Nasser’s death in September 1970 led to the emergence of the more pragmatic Anwar Sadat as Egypt’s leader in a change that initially appeared promising to the Jordanians. Following the October 1973 war against Israel, Sadat moved rapidly to realign Egypt from a Soviet ally to a supporter of the United States. These moves eliminated some of the most important differences between the Egyptian and Jordanian governments. The Cairo leadership could hardly call King Hussein a tool of the West as they moved to consolidate relations with the United States. While ideological problems had been largely set aside following the 1967 war, new difficulties arose between Jordan and Egypt in the late 1970s that became almost as intense. The most important of these differences centered on policies involving Israel. As previously mentioned, President Sadat along with President Carter sought to bring Jordan into the Camp David process, and both were

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disappointed when the king resisted their efforts to include him. Sadat had assumed that the other Arab states would inevitably follow Cairo’s lead on regional policy due to Egypt’s status as the largest and most important Arab state. In a 1977 conversation with then–Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, Sadat brushed off the Israeli leader’s concern that other Arab states might remain outside of the Camp David process, claiming, “The Jordanians will follow in our footsteps. So will the Syrians. Things in the Arab World happen the way Egypt decides.”31 King Hussein, for his part, felt that Sadat’s decision to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel prior to the return of the West Bank to Arab control stood in contrast to an earlier promise made to him by President Nasser to avoid exactly such an action. Conversely, Sadat was enraged when other Arab states did not follow Egypt’s lead, and Jordan agreed to Arab League sanctions against Egypt. He described the opposition to his policies as “the hissing of snakes.”32 Despite this animosity, the Jordanians were deeply uncomfortable with Egypt’s isolation from the Arab World and began advocating its reintegration as early as 1981. In 1984, Jordan became the first Arab state to reestablish diplomatic ties with Egypt, which was then led by Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak. Both Mubarak and King Hussein strongly supported Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War, although the two states would sharply diverge later over Iraq policy. Egyptian-Jordanian relations were again strained over Amman’s tilt toward Iraq in 1990–91 when Egypt played a significant role in supporting the U.S.-led coalition’s efforts to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait. President Mubarak saw the Iraqi invasion as an unforgivable aggression against a fellow Arab state. In addition, the Egyptian leader may have assumed that an Iraq strengthened and energized by the annexation of oil-rich Kuwait might have mounted a serious challenge to Cairo’s interest in Arab leadership. Moreover, Saddam had told Mubarak confidentially that he would never invade Kuwait and allowed the Egyptian leader to assure other countries that Iraqi-Kuwaiti differences could be peacefully resolved. Mubarak thus felt the Iraqi leader had played him for a fool, adding a personal dimension to a geopolitical problem. Cairo’s backing for U.S. policy included not only supporting a military solution to reverse Iraqi aggression but also deploying around 30,000 troops in support of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The Jordanians were quick to notice that Egypt was handsomely rewarded for its support of the anti-Iraq coalition through U.S. and Gulf Arab aid programs and debt forgiveness. Egypt and the United States were also drawing closer as a result of the crisis, while neither was showing much understanding for Jordanian actions. In discussions with U.S. leaders, President Mubarak described King Hussein as a corrupt opportunist who expected to benefit from the looting of Kuwait.33 Such crude comments may have reflected ongoing Egyptian anger in instances where smaller Arab states refused to follow their lead, but they did not indicate a lasting break. Normal relations between Egypt and Jordan continued throughout the war, and


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both sides subsequently cooperated in attending the multinational peace conference in Madrid in 1991. Several years later, the Egyptians were reported to be irritated that they were not given advanced notice of the Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty, but no lasting differences emerged as a result of this irritation. By the mid-1990s, the leaderships of both states were coordinating on a variety of key issues, and both were serving as consistent advocates of relaxing the UN sanctions against Iraq that had been imposed following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. These sanctions had remained in place following Saddam’s 1991 defeat, and were not to be removed until his ouster in 2003. If the 1960s were an era of turmoil in Jordanian-Egyptian relations, the mid-1990s initiated an era of reasonable cooperation characterized by both political coordination and significant trade relations. In the crisis leading up to the 2003 Iraq war, the Egyptian and Jordanian leaderships each expressed strong doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq, with both King Abdullah and President Mubarak publicly warning the United States of the potential negative consequences of such an invasion. In contrast to the 1991 conflict, Egypt considered a new invasion to be unjustified and declined to play a military role in the war. Amman approached the problem differently and was willing to support the operation in limited and covert ways, primarily in order to remain on good terms with the United States (see Chapter 4). These political differences did not lead to any serious difficulties between Jordan and Egypt since the leaderships of both nations continued to share similar concerns about Iraq, and neither one of them believed the invasion could be prevented. Other differences with the United States also helped to draw the two countries together, including the Bush Administration’s emphasis on the need for more democracy in the Middle East. This approach would have been viewed as troubling by both states even in relatively placid times, and was of special concern to them while public emotions were being stirred over the Iraq War. Egypt and Jordan consequently continued to urge the United States to show patience on expanding democracy, which neither nation was prepared to implement beyond certain limits. The Egyptians and Jordanians also continue to maintain similar concerns about the threat to regional security presented by Iran and its regional allies Hamas and the Lebanese radical group Hezbollah. These apprehensions increased in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War when the invasion failed to produce a stable government in that country that could serve as a counterweight to Iran. It is sometimes difficult to say whether Cairo or Amman is more hostile to Iran and its subnational supporters, but Egypt has been especially confrontational recently, such as in early 2009 when a number of Hezbollah members were arrested for planning terrorist attacks on Egyptian targets, including plans to assassinate senior Egyptian leaders.34 Cairo, like Amman, is also deeply suspicious of Hamas, which accepts Iranian aid and more importantly emerged from the

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Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 and has been a consistent opponent of the many of the key policies and practices of the Egyptian regime. The origins of Hamas as an offshoot of the Egyptian regime’s most powerful domestic critic naturally raises suspicions in Cairo, although Egypt seeks to remain engaged with each of the major Palestinian groups. Correspondingly, Cairo has maintained a longtime role in mediating unity talks between Hamas and Fatah. Although these talks have not yielded a lasting de´tente between the rival groups, they are a useful forum for efforts to contain the conflict and address more limited issues such as prisoner exchanges. In April 2007, the Arab League gave Egypt and Jordan the task of pursuing a diplomatic initiative with Israel to promote the 2002 Arab peace initiative (see Appendix C). This joint effort has sometimes required a high level of coordination between the two nations, and occasionally the two countries have held tripartite meetings with U.S. representatives at various levels, including that of foreign ministers meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State. Senior diplomats from Egypt and Jordan have also traveled to Israel together as a single delegation to work with the Israelis and discuss “practical steps” that they view as useful to the prospects of a permanent settlement.35 The Jordanians and Egyptians have also occasionally issued joint statements on the peace process and the need for a two-state solution based upon the Arab League initiative. High-ranking representatives of both countries have also met with Israeli leaders to discuss the Arab League Peace Initiative. On other occasions, they have issued joint statements. On November 2, 2009, for instance, President Mubarak and King Abdullah jointly expressed their concern over Israeli settlement activities and unilateral measures that “threaten the identity of Jerusalem and the holy sites in the city.”36 It is also significant that Egypt and Jordan have sometimes been described as competitors for influence in the Palestinian territories, but such competition is kept within narrow bounds by an assortment of common concerns. RELATIONS WITH SYRIA

Syria, under a variety of leaders and regimes, has often been comfortable meddling in the domestic politics of Arab neighbors, with the worst example of this approach being the occupation of parts of Lebanon for a number of years, ending in 2005. Jordanian foreign policy behavior has often been of interest to the Syrians, and Amman often maintained a tumultuous relationship with Syria in the early decades following the independence of both nations. While there were periods of good relations, tensions were more often the norm for these two countries which were often guided by very different principles and ideologies. In the years prior to the 1973 war, relations between Jordan and Syria were often strained to the point that Syrian intelligence agents were sometimes involved in


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plots to subvert the Jordanian government or even assassinate its leaders. As described earlier, a Syrian expeditionary force invaded Jordan in September 1970 in support of the Palestinian guerrillas and with the apparent goal of overthrowing the Jordanian government. In the aftermath of a series of post-1973 agreements between Israel and Egypt, the relationship between Jordan and Syria dramatically improved as both countries became increasingly fearful of a separate Egyptian peace with Israel. This rapprochement, which had many of the features of an outright alliance, reached its height in the mid-1970s, but these close relations only lasted a few years due to Jordan’s steadily improving relations with the rival Ba’ath party regime in Iraq. It is difficult to underestimate the degree of hostility between Presidents Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad throughout most of the years when their time in power overlapped, and the Jordanians were eventually forced to choose which of the two countries to seek as an ally since good relations with both were often impossible. Iraq, under any friendly leader, was a more attractive prospect for a variety of reasons including the prospect of better trade relations and the potential for a steady supply of oil either for free or at concessionary prices. King Hussein, who had been a close friend of Iran’s last shah, was also particularly wary of the virulent anti-Western and anti-monarchist Islamism that he saw emerge in Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran. Like the Saudi Arabians and other Gulf sheikhdoms (including Kuwait), the Jordanians viewed Iran as a more serious threat to Middle Eastern stability than Iraq. Damascus, on the other hand, supported the government in Tehran. Part of this approach may have been a reflex reaction of finding any available way to confront the Iraqis, but this relationship has proven remarkably durable over the following decades and seems to have developed deep roots. King Hussein’s intense partisanship in favor of Iraq throughout the eight-year war was a constant problem for Jordanian-Syrian relations throughout that period. The dramatic improvement in Jordanian-Iraqi relations in the late 1970s came shortly after the Syrians had been angered and insulted by Saddam Hussein’s 1979 purge of the Iraqi leadership of any conceivable rival. The Iraqi dictator conducted this purge using the excuse that various Iraqi officials had been conspiring against Saddam with the aid of the Syrians.37 This charge was false and served as a clear indicator that Saddam did not wish to ally his country with Damascus. Rather, he wished to dominate the region while marginalizing them. Following the purge, Saddam moved from his position as de facto Iraqi strongman to president of Iraq. Jordan remained Iraq’s closest ally, and by 1980 relations between Damascus and Amman reached their lowest point since the September 1970 crisis. The hostility between Amman and Damascus became especially clear in December 1980 when Syria massed significant numbers of troops on the Jordanian border. At this time, the Damascus leadership was especially angry that Jordan was hosting a December 1980 Arab League summit conference.

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Both Jordan and Iraq were attempting to use this event to generate additional Arab support for Baghdad in the Iran-Iraq War. Syria boycotted this conference and massed its troops on the border while claiming that the Jordanian government was supporting Syrian Islamist organizations attempting to overthrow the government. These charges could well have been partially true. Syrian anti-government Islamist movements were a serious threat to the regime in the early 1980s, and King Hussein might have considered some level of contact with them in case they came to power later. The king would never have welcomed an Islamist regime in Damascus, but he also needed at least to be aware of the nature of the challenge that the Syrian leadership was facing. Moreover, he allowed the leader of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood to denounce the Syrians to the media for the crushing repression they were directing at the Islamist rebels.38 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jordanian-Syrian relations continued to be characterized by distrust and antagonism. Jordan and Syria again found themselves divided on a major regional issue when Iraq overran Kuwait. The Syrian government strongly condemned the invasion of Kuwait by its Iraqi rival in August 1990, and quickly demanded a full Iraqi withdrawal from its smaller neighbor. If the Iraqis were able to consolidate control over the small oil-rich emirate, Assad would face a new and greatly energized archrival in Baghdad. A powerful response therefore seemed imperative, and the Syrians made it known that they were willing to support a military solution to the crisis that included U.S. military intervention. In a move that was highly unpopular domestically, Damascus supported U.S. efforts to oust the Iraqis from Kuwait and even sent 12,000 troops to serve as part of the U.S.-led coalition to oust the Iraqis from the conquered emirate. These troops did not participate in combat operations, but their involvement in the coalition helped legitimize the Saudi Arabian decision to invite U.S. troops to defend their kingdom and then to liberate Kuwait. While Operation Desert Storm probably did nothing to worsen the relations between Syria and Jordan, it did nothing to improve them either, although both nations participated in serious post-1991 negotiations with Israel. Later, the peace process proved much more promising for Jordanian diplomacy than for the Syrians. The announcement of Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel came as an unpleasant surprise to government in Damascus. The Syrian leadership felt that the Jordanian decision to make peace with Israel isolated Syria and made it more difficult for them to gain concessions in their own negotiations with Israel.39 Moreover, following the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the Israeli-Syrian negotiations collapsed. Syrian relations with Jordan also remained cold. King Hussein and President Hafez Assad remained hostile to each other until the end of the Jordanian monarch’s life. When King Hussein died in 1999, relations between Syria and Jordan were therefore at a nadir, although the Damascus leadership made an unexpected effort to turn this situation around. In a surprise move,


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President Assad and a large entourage of senior officials attended King Hussein’s funeral despite the Syrian president’s own ill health.40 This gracious act was a clear Syrian attempt to make a fresh start on relations with Jordan under a new king. When King Abdullah took office in 1999 he was painfully aware of the difficulties his country had suffered from bad relations with Syria in the past as well as the advantages of maintaining acceptable political and economic relations with that country. He was therefore cautiously responsive to the olive branches extended by President Assad and his son Bashar, who had by then become the heir apparent for the Syrian presidency. Bashar became president in July 2000, following his father’s death in what critics called succession in a “republican monarchy.” Ideological and foreign policy differences between the two states remained, but King Abdullah felt that it was best to attempt to manage relations with Damascus through political engagement rather than to fall back on a new cold war. This approach seemed to have a reasonable chance of success since Jordanian relations with Iraq were no longer a major problem dividing Jordan and Syria. By 1999, the Jordanians distanced themselves from the Saddam Hussein regime, while Bashar Assad did not evince the visceral personal hatred of Saddam that had characterized his father’s rule. He correspondingly did not consider Jordan’s residual links to Iraq to be a problem for expanding relations with Jordan. Additionally, while most Jordanians were uncertain about the future direction of Syrian policy under Bashar, they were optimistic over Bashar’s positive qualities, including a broader understanding of the world than his father due in part to the time the younger Assad spent in the United Kingdom as a medical student. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Syria had new reasons to seek improved relations with Jordan. While Syria had not been one of the countries included in President Bush’s famous “axis of evil” described in the 2002 State of the Union speech, the Damascus leadership knew that they were held in severe disfavor by the U.S. administration over their form of government, friendly relations with Iran, and policies regarding Lebanon and Israel. Western hopes for Bashar Assad had dimmed substantially by then due to the power that old-guard regime members retained within his government and because of the continuing suppression of dissent after a brief loosing of political restrictions. The existence of any friendly voice to speak in Washington on Syria’s behalf would have been a scarce and important commodity for the regime in Damascus. This need became even more important in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion, when various U.S. political leaders and conservative opinion leaders suggested that Syria might have been sheltering evacuated Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, a charge which was later dismissed.41 A more enduring concern was that Syria was not doing enough to prevent radicals from crossing its border into Iraq to join the insurgency there. At various times, the Damascus leadership seemed to fear the possibility of direct

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U.S. military intervention, and under these circumstances any channel to Washington had to be treated as vital.42 Damascus viewed Jordanian intermediaries as vital assets provided they were willing to make Syria’s case to the Washington leadership during their frequent trips to the United States. While King Abdullah continues to favor engagement with Syria, there are still significant difficulties between these two countries. Jordan remains deeply uncomfortable with Syria’s ties with Iran, which have dated back to the 1980s but became closer as a result of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and the efforts by the Bush Administration to isolate both of these powers.43 Jordan has also been alarmed by the post-2003 rise in Iranian influence in Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon, making the ties between Damascus and Tehran seem even more problematic. Conversely, Damascus maintains strained relations with many of the Gulf Arabs, including the Saudi Arabians, over a variety of issues, but most clearly over their relations with the Iranians. Many Saudi Arabian elites also dislike Syria over its militantly secular form of government, and some are angry over the murder of former Lebanese president Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005 in what is widely believed to have been a Syrian-ordered assassination. Hariri had spent many years living in Saudi Arabia and was on cordial terms with a number of its leaders. In the face of these problems, Syria considers Jordan to be of some value as an intermediary to the Gulf States in difficult times. One of the most fundamental divides between Jordan and Syria involves Arab policies toward Israel. Syria has maintained a much harder line on Israeli policies than the Jordanians, although Damascus has also engaged in recent indirect political discussions with the Israelis, with Turkey serving as an intermediary.44 These Turkish-mediated talks were almost entirely unproductive, and Damascus formally suspended them in 2008. Correspondingly, Syria was never enthusiastic about the 2002 Arab League peace plan, claiming that it had granted too many concessions to Israel prior to negotiations. President Assad even proposed withdrawing the Arab League peace offer to Israel in the aftermath of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in January 2009.45 The Syrian suggestion was not welcomed in Amman, since support for the peace initiative is a cornerstone of Jordanian foreign policy. A variety of other states agreed with Jordan, so the Syrian proposal came to nothing. Nor was this an isolated incident. After an aggravating but unsuccessful attempt to push the Syrians into denouncing Palestinian suicide bombings directed at Israelis, former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher stated that Damascus was showing its “typical . . . lack of understanding about how the world works.”46 Syria, in turn, occasionally drifts back into bluster and angry rhetoric when describing Jordanian policies of which they do not approve. The Syrians, for example, became particularly upset over what King Abdullah called his “Jordan First” approach to governance, and President Assad issued a March 12, 2006 statement suggesting that “such a slogan is a separation from the Arab [identity] and pan-Arab nationalism.”47 He also stated that “first


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slogans effectively mean that the United States, Israel, or any other non-Arab country comes second.”48 The Jordanian leadership hotly denies this interpretation of their policies, and Syrian-Jordanian relations were strained for a short time after Assad made his comments, although they had improved significantly within a year.49 RELATIONS WITH SAUDI ARABIA AND THE OTHER GULF MONARCHIES

The Saudi Arabian government was established following the defeat of Hashemite power by King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud in the Arabian Peninsula in the early 1920s. The Hashemites had hoped to rule much of the Arab World following World War I, but were driven out of the Hejaz area of what is now Saudi Arabia in 1924 when Hussein bin Ali, the former Sharif of Mecca, abdicated as king of the Hejaz. Hashemite bitterness and Saudi concern about renewed Hashemite claims to Saudi territory led to decades of distrust between the two states throughout the early history of both kingdoms. This situation changed to some extent as a result of the ideological turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s, when Jordan and Saudi Arabia often had similar interests in containing Arab radicalism and justifying their ongoing ties to the United States. The Saudis therefore showed some interest in supporting the Jordanian monarchy’s continued existence and provided Jordan with financial assistance as far back as at least the late 1950s. Additionally, both nations supported royalist rebels in the Yemeni civil war that took place in the 1960s. Jordan appears to have become especially important to Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s, when both countries were at odds with the United States over pressure to join the Camp David initiative. If Jordan had joined the Camp David process, the Saudis would have then been under intensified pressure from the United States to follow the Egyptian-Jordanian lead on this issue. This policy change would have been especially difficult for Riyadh without major Israel concessions on Jerusalem, which Israel’s Begin government would have been unprepared to make. Riyadh and Amman closely coordinated their diplomacy during this time frame. Throughout the 1980s, Jordan enjoyed continued good relations with Saudi Arabia, although later in the decade Riyadh’s aid to Jordan was limited by financial constraints caused by a worldwide oil surplus (leading to low oil prices) as well as a variety of other foreign policy priorities.50 In particular, Riyadh was then interested in supporting the Palestinians with direct aid and providing financial backing to the Iraqi war effort against the Iranians. While Jordan continued to receive some Saudi aid, it was less than Amman had hoped to obtain. More reassuringly for Jordan, Amman was able to continue developing strong national security ties with the smaller Gulf states whereby Jordanian military and intelligence officials helped to train Gulf soldiers, intelligence personnel,

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police, and security specialists.51 All of these relationships suffered dramatically when Jordan failed to support U.S.- and Saudi-led measures to oust Saddam from Kuwait in 1991. While King Hussein steadfastly maintained that he was attempting to mediate the crisis in a way that led to a withdrawal from Kuwait, this argument was given little if any credibility in the Gulf. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia’s military commander during the Gulf War, HRH General Khalid bin Sultan, fell back on dynastic rivalries to explain inter-Arab differences, stating that “With Saddam’s armies at the door, it was not far-fetched to fear that King Hussein dreamed of retaking the Hijaz, once ruled by his great grandfather.”52 This statement is perhaps especially revealing since it was not said in an angry moment but rather included in a 1995 book, thus allowing Prince Khalid several years to reflect on the political developments of the time. Many of the Gulf Arab states were torn over what to do about their relations with Jordan following the 1991 war. These states had to balance their anger with King Hussein against the dangers of engaging in counterproductive postwar policies designed to punish the Jordanian monarchy in ways that might ultimately rebound against their own interests. Such policies could result in a new Jordanian government drawn from alternative centers of power, such as the Islamists or the Palestinian nationalists, neither of which would clearly be good for Gulf interests. Additionally, the replacement of a monarchy by a non-monarchy anywhere in the Arab World is usually unwelcome by the few remaining countries adhering to that form of government. Despite these concerns, some Gulf Arab leaders could not resist expressing serious disapproval at King Hussein’s actions through whatever course of action was available. The former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, Efraim Halevy, has stated that the Saudi leadership supported Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood with funding as revenge against the Jordanian government for its policies during the Gulf War. According to Halevy, this aid “had the potential of destabilizing the Hashemite regime.”53 It is nevertheless doubtful that the Saudis wanted to actually overthrow King Hussein rather than simply make his life uncomfortable. The Saudi leadership may perhaps have wanted to pressure him to abdicate in favor of his brother or some new king as the price of restoring aid, but this goal had no chance of being met. The Kuwaitis were naturally least inclined to take a detached view of King Hussein’s actions as well as the pro-Iraqi actions of Palestinians in Kuwait. Some of these Palestinian residents had collaborated with the Iraqi occupation despite the generous and compassionate treatment that they had previously received from the Kuwaitis. Moreover, after the Gulf War, one of the only individuals that the Gulf Arabs were angrier with than King Hussein was Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, who sided decisively with Saddam against the U.S.-led coalition, further undermining the Palestinian position in Kuwait. Unfortunately, Kuwaiti fury with the Palestinians rebounded in an extremely negative way for Jordan.


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After the 1991 war and liberation, the Kuwaiti government required almost all of the Palestinians working in Kuwait to leave their country. Many of these Palestinians held Jordanian citizenship and passports, so their most obvious response was to return to Jordan. Around 300,000 Palestinians were eventually expelled from Kuwait to Jordan, creating severe pressure on the Jordanian economy in addition to the cessation of aid. Jordan had tremendous difficulty absorbing many of these people into its own shrinking economy. Amman’s estrangement from Saudi Arabia remained the most important regional consequence of the 1991 war for the Jordanians. Furthermore, forgiveness for the Jordanian monarch was slow and incomplete. Amman’s 1993 change in policy to begin distancing Jordan from the Iraqis helped in this regard, but did not yield quick and decisive results. When King Hussein made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1995, Saudi King Fahd refused to see him out of lingering anger over Jordanian actions during the 1990–91 crisis and war.54 The first postwar meeting between the two leaders finally occurred in 1996, although it was strained and unproductive. This coldness only started to thaw toward the end of King Hussein’s life. In a somewhat surprising move, Saudi Crown Prince (later King) Abdullah and Kuwaiti Foreign Minister (later Emir) Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah visited King Hussein in September 1998 in the United States while the Jordanian leader was near death. 55 The visit was deeply appreciated and well received by the dying monarch. Later, after King Abdullah took power in 1999, he moved quickly to consolidate the emerging ties to Saudi Arabia since these relations, while much improved, were still fragile. Many of the small Gulf Arab states had already established diplomatic relations with Jordan prior to King Hussein’s death (such as Qatar in 1994). Throughout his early years in power, King Abdullah continued efforts to improve Jordanian relations with the Gulf Arab states. This effort was made easier by the new king’s lack of responsibility for the 1990–91 decisions which had so offended the Kuwaitis, Saudis, and others. Over time and with a great deal of effort, Jordanian ties with the Gulf Arabs improved dramatically. King Abdullah has forged strong personal ties to the younger generation of Gulf royalty, and there has also been some intermarriage between Jordanian and Gulf royalty. The most prominent example of the latter trend is the 2004 marriage of King Abdullah’s half-sister, Princess Haya, to the Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum.56 Additionally, Jordanian workers were increasingly able to return to the Gulf in numbers that eventually became higher than before the 1991 war. By 2009, over 600,000 Jordanian citizens worked abroad, with the overwhelming majority of them finding employment in the Gulf. This trend is especially dramatic in Saudi Arabia, where 260,000 Jordanians are employed in a variety of fields including business and education. In the much smaller United Arab Emirates, 250,000 Jordanians are employed. Forty-two thousand Jordanians are employed in Kuwait and 27,000 in Qatar.57

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As expected, the Kuwaitis remained the last Arab leaders to forgive the Jordanians for their ties to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This approach changed slowly as Kuwaiti anger cooled and pragmatic concerns become more relevant. In a careful modification of strategy, the Kuwaiti leadership attempted to improve relations with Iraq’s former sympathizers (such as Jordan and Yemen) in an effort to keep Iraq isolated and ensure that Saddam could not reach out to these same countries in any future regional crisis. Correspondingly, the Kuwaitis watched with interest when King Hussein began distancing himself from the Iraqis in the mid-1990s, and they were eager to encourage this trend. Still, the Kuwaitis could not bring themselves to accept an official visit by King Hussein throughout the last years of his life. In a carefully timed event, Kuwait finally agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations with Jordan in March 1999, around a month after King Hussein’s death. The Kuwaiti leaders also received King Abdullah on an official visit shortly after he took power, and trips to Kuwait by the Jordanian monarch are no longer unusual. Eventually Jordan was allowed to receive loans once again on concessionary terms from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). The Kuwaiti leadership was also pleased that Jordan did not support Iraq in 2003, and financial aid continued to flow to Amman after Saddam’s ouster. In a 2008 loan the KFAED provided $30 million to Jordan in order to support a power transformation expansion project in Amman.58 Another example of improved Jordanian relations with the Gulf Arabs can be seen in the flow of financial capital into Jordan. In this regard, Jordan has made a successful effort to convince Gulf entrepreneurs to invest in Jordanian infrastructure investments. The level of Gulf investment skyrocketed following the September 11 attacks on the United States when various investors responded to what they believed was an increasingly negative environment for Arab investment in the West and especially the United States. These investors have funded a number of important Jordanian projects, particularly in the construction sector.59 Such projects include a number of modern skyscrapers and Western-style shopping malls. Gulf entrepreneurs have also purchased a significant amount of real estate from the Jordanian government. Such investment helps create jobs in Jordan, where unemployment is a serious problem, and it can also increase tourism in cities such as Aqaba where modern hotels and other facilities are being built with Gulf financing. The negative side of this growth is the backlash that has been provoked against what some Jordanians see as unplanned development that is increasing real estate and rent prices. The Muslim Brotherhood charges that the opacity of the agreements is also “entrenching corruption.”60 The palace has responded that Gulf investment is building the country, and such funds will certainly go elsewhere if Jordan does not continue to encourage such involvement. Both sides may be correct since the potential for corruption always exists with such transactions, but Jordan’s unemployment problem is so serious that fighting corruption is not always viewed as an equally important issue.


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In recent years, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian foreign policy have supported many similar objectives and have sometimes been coordinated. As noted in Chapter 3, both states have been deeply involved in the 2002 Arab League peace initiative. They have also coordinated with Egypt to oppose Palestinian suicide bombing, which they have labeled as barbaric and harmful to efforts to secure Palestinian rights. Riyadh is particularly pleased with King Abdullah’s usually low-key approach to foreign policy, which they see as less likely to give them problems than King Hussein’s sometimes “flashy” behavior on the world stage. Closer to home, Jordan’s experiments with limited democracy have not always been welcomed by Saudi Arabia, as they have sometimes been seen as offering the wrong kind of model for how a monarchy should interact with its citizens.61 Nevertheless, U.S. pressure to advance Middle Eastern democracy has made it difficult to oppose Jordanian reform initiatives in public. Also, in a sign of almost total forgiveness for Jordan’s actions in 1990–91, the Saudi Arabian oil company ARAMCO is shipping around 3 million barrels of crude oil per month to Jordan, although the exact nature of any discount on the price of this oil is not publicly known. As of late 2009, it seem likely that Jordanian leaders believe they can obtain better discounts from Iraq because they are attempting to increase the amount of oil that they receive from that country in a way that will allow them to reduce imports from Saudi Arabia.62 JORDAN AND IRAN

Although Iran is not an Arab state, it is an important regional power, and its actions are of considerable interest to the Jordanians. King Hussein was a close friend of Iran’s last shah, and Amman maintained a consistently good relationship with Iran while the Shah was in power. The Jordanian leader also served as a useful intermediary between the Shah and the Gulf Arabs, many of whom feared and distrusted Iran even when it was ruled by a royalist government. Jordan’s Queen Noor has even gone so far as to state that King Hussein “talked the shah out of precipitating a war” by persuading the Iranian monarch not to seize the island nation of Bahrain upon its independence from the United Kingdom in 1971.63 While King Hussein was not the only influence on the Shah and a variety of people may have contributed to his decision not to seize Bahrain, Queen Noor’s recollections are still indicative of the close relationship between the two monarchs, which was manifested on a number of occasions during the Shah’s years in power. King Hussein was deeply saddened by his friend’s ouster from leadership and his subsequent exile from Iran and replacement by antiWestern Islamic radicals. Jordanian relations with the Iranians after the establishment of the Islamic Republic were strained from the start by King Hussein’s friendship with the former leader and by Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary pronouncements that

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Islam is incompatible with monarchy. Relations were further undermined during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War when Jordan provided political, diplomatic, and logistical support to Iraq. After the war, the hostility between the two nations subsided, and Jordan reestablished normal diplomatic relations with Iran in 1991 following Iraq’s decision to do so in 1990. This thaw did not overcome longstanding distrust between Jordan and Iran. Although Jordan reluctantly accepted the U.S. plan to oust Saddam in 2003, the Jordanians were deeply concerned that pro-Iranian revolutionaries might seize power in post-Saddam Iraq. As early as July 2003, King Abdullah stated that the United States was insufficiently concerned about potential Iranian domination of Iraqi Shi’ites leading to the creation of an Islamic republic in Iraq.64 Despite these concerns, King Abdullah made a two-day visit to Iran in September 2003, the first such visit by a Jordanian monarch since the Revolution. The king may have reasoned that such a trip could be useful since both Jordan and Iran had a stake in supporting measures to ensure that Iraq did not collapse into chaos. The Iranian president at this time was the reformist leader Mohammad Khatami, who was widely viewed as reasonable, although his ability to act was severely limited by leadership of Iran’s clerical establishment. The visit produced a joint Jordanian-Iranian communique´ welcoming the establishment of an Iraqi Governing Council.65 Although both the Jordanians and Iranians sought to prevent chaos from developing in Iraq, it is not clear that their visions for the Iraqi future shared much beyond that objective. In December 2004, King Abdullah expressed further concern in an interview with the Washington Post and charged that the Iranians were preparing for a massive intervention in the Iraqi elections by arranging for more than 1 million Iranians to cross the border to vote illegally as Iraqis. In the same interview, King Abdullah also expressed concern about the rise of what he called a “Shi’ite Crescent” running from Iran to Lebanon, dominated by Tehran.66 This concern was not simply a slip (as it is sometimes characterized), and was reiterated and emphasized by other senior Jordanian officials following the king’s remarks. In January 2005, Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani Mulki, in an obvious allusion to Iran, stated, “Religion and politics are two different things, and when we talk about a Shi’ite crescent we mean a non-Arab religious rule.”67 The Jordanians feared pro-Iranian politicized Shi’ites and were not anti-Shi’ite in general or on religious grounds. Nevertheless, Shi’ite unhappiness about such statements was probably unavoidable, given the blunt nature of the remarks. King Abdullah attempted unsuccessfully to convince the Bush Administration to postpone the January 30, 2005 Iraqi elections on the basis of the concerns and accusations noted above. It is unclear if he fully believed the charges about Iranian intervention in the Iraqi elections or if he was simply concerned that Iraq’s pro-Iranian Shi’ite parties would win the election.68 Shortly before the election, the king asserted that “If Iraq goes Islamic republic, then yes, we’ve opened


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ourselves to a whole set of new problems that will not be limited to the borders of Iraq. I’m looking at the glass half-full, and let’s hope that’s not the case. But strategic planners around the world have got to be aware that is a possibility.”69 It should also be noted that in the aftermath of the January 2005 election, both the Iraqi Independent Electoral Commission and UN election observers found only limited problems with fraud that in no way approached the level of corruption which concerned King Abdullah.70 Pro-Iranian parties did exceedingly well in the elections, although they did not achieve total dominance of the Iraqi political system. King Abdullah’s concerns about Shi’ites and his apparent fear of a pro-Iranian Shi’ite bloc in the Middle East are clearly more political than religious. The original break between Shi’ites and Sunnis occurred because of the Shi’ite belief that members of the Prophet’s family are the most legitimate leaders of the Muslim community. While contemporary Shi’ites do not seek their leadership from the family of the Prophet, they have often displayed respect for the Hashemites. King Hussein’s widow, Queen Noor, for example, has commented on Shi’ite esteem for the Hashemite family.71 King Abdullah makes the same type of claims stating, “We [the Hashemite family] have a very warm and very special relationship with Shi’ites not just in Iraq but also in Iran and elsewhere throughout the Islamic world.”72 A number of Iraqi Shi’ites nevertheless feel that the king has severely strained his relationship with their community by his continuing expressions of concern about the dangers of a powerful Iranian-backed Shi’ite leadership in Baghdad. His inflated charges of Iranian voting in Iraqi elections were viewed as a challenge to the legitimacy of a government reflecting Shi’ite dominance of Iraqi political institutions. Despite the important and longstanding differences between Jordan and Iran, the two countries continue to maintain a wary dialogue, and King Abdullah has cautiously called for the improvement of Jordanian-Iranian ties. This approach relates to the fundamental Jordanian principle of engaging and trying to influence all states in the region when this is possible. King Hussein repeatedly throughout his rule made the point that “engagement is not endorsement” and that unexpected opportunities may arise in dealing with potential adversaries.73 This approach was forged in the early years of his monarchy, when Jordan was deeply isolated within the region and struggled to maintain ties to even the most untrustworthy of enemies, including Brigadier Qassim’s Iraq. It is a policy approach which King Abdullah has been quick to accept and adopt. Jordan has publicly expressed opposition to a U.S. or Israeli air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities out of a concern that such an action may incite unrest and terrorism within the region, especially in neighboring Iraq. In a May 2007 meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, King Abdullah stated that “We do not allow anybody to use Jordan’s soil or aerospace to attack Iran.”74 While the Iranians may take some limited comfort from such

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assertions, they are experienced enough to know that such pledges can be reevaluated at critical times. In this regard, King Abdullah found it useful and easy to state in 1999 that “Jordan will not serve as a springboard for any hostile actions against Iraq,” but this pledge was not the last word on the subject.75 Jordan’s public opposition to military attacks against Iran may nevertheless not be tested. U.S. leaders even under the Bush Administration described a U.S. military strike on that country as a “last resort” to deal with the Iranian nuclear program.76 President Obama has called for engagement with Iran while also considering a variety of creative ways to impose tough new sanctions on Iran if talks fail. He does not seem interested in a military strike Such a strike would severely aggravate pressing problems in Iraq just as the United States and Iraq are seeking to move forward on a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.77 Even if the United States chose to attack Iran at some future point, it is doubtful that Jordan would be a reasonable point to provide logistical support for such an operation, although such an attack would create controversy within Jordan even if that country were in no way involved. JORDAN AND THE FUTURE OF REGIONAL POLITICS

In the foreseeable future, Jordan can be expected to continue seeking good political and economic relations with all of its neighbors while seeking to avoid becoming overly dependent on any of them. Egypt and Syria are both important trading partners, and often difficult problems over water issues are important for the Jordanian-Syrian relationship. These relationships appear stable, mutually beneficial, and likely to continue. Conversely, Iraq may still emerge as a friendly state, although this is not assured. King Abdullah is obviously making a strong effort to reach out to the Iraqi leadership but will have trouble maintaining a strong relationship if Sunni-Shi’ite conflict rises to the level of civil war following a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Without U.S. involvement in Iraq, it is possible that the Baghdad government may be much harsher towards the Sunni Muslim areas than has yet been seen. Under such circumstances Jordanian-Iraqi relations could suffer considerably. The Hashemites and especially Jordan’s current king are deeply aware of the need for a solid friendship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States if at all possible. The shattering experience of 1991 is too painful to consider repeating, and King Abdullah will continue to reach out to these countries on a variety of occasions. Correspondingly, Jordanian ties to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations appear to be growing. Despite occasional dynastic paranoia, the Saudis may also have come to understand that the continued rule of the Hashemites in Jordan can support their interests rather than challenge them. They may be less impressed by the establishment of Jordan’s parliament, which while weak is allowed to direct harsh and continuing criticism at the government’s foreign and domestic policies.


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The Saudis, in particular, could see such a development as a bad example that could create problematic expectations among their own citizens. Conversely, younger Gulf leaders may not find the example all that bad, and it is possible that other monarchies may choose to learn from the Jordanian example. In either event, issues over domestic governance are not expected to become a serious problem in Jordan–Gulf Arab relations in the foreseeable future.

NOTES 1. Said K. Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (New York: Bloomsbury, 2000), 168. 2. Laurie A. Brand, Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations: The Political Economy of Alliance Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), ch. 6; W. Andrew Terrill, “Saddam’s Closest Ally: Jordan and the Gulf War,” Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Volume IX, Number 2, Winter 1985, 43–54. 3. Shlaim, Israel and Palestine, 335. 4. Hani Hourani, “Jordan Pays too Heavy a Price for U.S. War,” Miami Herald, April 9, 2003. 5. Ibid. 6. Vivian C. Jones, Iraq’s Trade with the World: Data and Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, 2004), 18; Sana Kamal, “Jordan: Warming to Iraq,” Middle East International, February 11, 2000, 12. 7. Megan K. Stack, “Anti-War Protesters Riot in Amman,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2003. 8. Michel Sailhan, “TV Pictures of Civilian Casualties Take Arab Anger to New Heights,” Jordan Times, April 3, 2003. 9. Paul Richter, “Jordan Wants Hussein’s Soldiers to be Rehired,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2004. 10. Rami Abdelrahman, “Iraq Remains Largest Arab Importer of Jordanian Products,” Jordan Times, April 26, 2004. 11. Richard Cohen, “A War Without Winners,” Washington Post, November 3, 2005, 21. 12. Associated Press, “Jordanian First Arab Ambassador in Iraq,” USA Today, August 18, 2006. 13. Jerry Seper, “U.S. Helps to Train 35,000 Iraqi Cops,” Washington Times, January 23, 2004. 14. Sana Abdallah, “Jordan: ‘Helping’ Iraq,” Middle East International, October 10, 2003, 17. 15. Bremer, 157. 16. Dale Gavlak, “Iraqi Guard Training in Jordan,” Associated Press, June 22, 2007. 17. Iraqi police training facilities are dismal, and it is not impossible that the Jordanians may again be called upon to help with police training at some future point. See James Glanz, “Iraqi Police Academy Remains Largely Unusable,” New York Times, November 6, 2007. 18. David S. Cloud, “Panel Will Urge Broad Overhaul of Iraqi Police,” New York Times, August 31, 2007. 19. “Abizaid: Development of Iraqi Police Forces Hindered by Infiltration,” Inside the Army, March 20, 2006; Ed Blanche, “Divided Loyalties,” The Middle East, July 2006, 22–24; Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer, “Shiite Militias Control Prisons, Official Says,”

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Washington Post, June 16, 2006; Michael Hastings, “The Death-Squad War,” Newsweek, February 27, 2006, 44. 20. Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 421–422. 21. “Interview: General Khalid Al-Sarayrah, Chairman, Jordanian Armed Forces’ Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Defense News, May 15, 2006, 38. 22. Thom Shanker, “Officers Being Trained at Base in Jordan to Lead New Iraqi Army,” New York Times, February 25, 2004; Robin Hughes, “Air Corps Evolves from Jordan to Back Army in Iraq,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, March 24, 2004. 23. “King Discusses Jordan’s Position on Regional Issues with Media Leaders,” Jordan Times, May 18, 2004. 24. Author’s interviews with Jordanian Ministry of Defense personnel, 2004. 25. “Jordan to Receive Iraqi Oil Soon—Minister,” Jordan Times, August 24, 2007. 26. Petra: Jordanian News Agency, “First Iraqi Oil Shipment Arrives at Refinery Today,” September 30, 2007. 27. Hani Hazaimeh, “ ‘Technicalities Hindering Larger Oil Shipments from Iraq,’ ” Jordan Times, February 13, 2009. 28. “King Urges Iraqi Unity to Quell Sectarian Violence,” Jordan Times, November 28, 2006. 29. David Ignatius, “A King’s Advice,” Washington Post, December 16, 2003, 37. 30. Martin Asser, “Jordanian Tribes Despair over Iraq,” BBC News, April 3, 2003, http:// news.bbc.co.uk; “Jordan’s Border Virtually Closed to Iraqi Refugees,” Jane’s Intelligence Watch Report, March 1, 2007. 31. Ezer Weizman, The Battle for Peace (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), 89. 32. Queen Noor, 157. 33. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 481. 34. Yoav Stern, “Egypt to Hezbollah: We’ll Strike Back if You Attack Us,” Ha’aretz, March 13, 2009. 35. “Jordan, Egypt FM Brief Peers on Israel Visit,” Jordan Times, July 31, 2007. 36. “Jordan, Egypt Back Palestinian Stand on Talks,” Jordan Times, November 2, 2009. 37. Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography, (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 117. 38. “Islamic Extremist Leader Admits Plans to Precipitate Civil War,” An Nahar Arab Report and Memo, September 17, 1979. 39. Itamar Rabinovich, The Brink of Peace: The Israeli Syrian Negotiations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 159. 40. Curtis R. Ryan, Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2009), 172. 41. Richard Sale, “U.S.: Syrians Hiding Iraqi Weapons for Cash,” UPI.com, February 6, 2003, http:///www.upi.com; Dana Priest, “Report Finds No Evidence Syria Hid Iraqi Arms,” Washington Post, April 26, 2005. 42. International Crisis Group, Engaging Syria? U.S. Constraints and Opportunities, Middle East Report 83 (Brussels, Belgium: ICG, 2009), 3. 43. International Crisis Group, Reshuffling the Cards? Syria’s Evolving Strategy, Middle East Report 92 (Brussels, Belgium: ICG, 2009), 9. 44. Natasha Mozgovaya, “Turkey: We’re Ready to Launch Israel-Syria Talks,” Ha’aretz, July 3, 2009.

Jordan’s Relations with Other Arab States and Iran 45. Alistair Lyon, “Iran Bolstered by Hamas Survival,” Kuwait Times, January 27, 2009. 46. Muasher, 147. 47. Sana Abdullah, “Analysis: Assad Risks Losing Needed Friend,” United Press International, March 12, 2006, http://www.upi.com. 48. Ibid. 49. See Fahd al-Khitan, “Friendly Courtship,” Al-Arab al-Yawm, May 31, 2007. 50. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Touchstone, 1991), ch. 36. 51. W. Andrew Terrill, “Jordan and the Defense of the Gulf,” Middle East Insight, Volume 4, Number 1, March–April 1984, 3–14. 52. HRH General Khaled bin Sultan (with Patrick Seale), Desert Warrior: A Personal View of the Gulf War by the Joint Forces Commander (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 181. 53. Halevy, 43. 54. Ryan, Inter-Arab Alliances, 197. 55. Muasher, 80. 56. Official Website of HRH Princess Haya Bint al Hussein, http://www.princesshaya.net/ profile.shtm. 57. Jordanian Department of Statistics as cited by Omar Obeidat, “Remittances Down 3.7 Per Cent in First 7 Months,” Jordan Times, September 14, 2009. 58. “KFAED Lends Jordan $30 Million,” Kuwait Times, March 23, 2009. 59. “Developer Announces ‘Historic $10 billion project,’ ” Jordan Times, February 26, 2009. 60. “Jordanians Fear Gulf Investors Taking Over,” Kuwait Times, July 14, 2008. 61. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 484. 62. Hazaimeh, “ ‘Technicalities Hinder Larger Oil Shipments from Iraq.’ ” 63. Queen Noor, Leap of Faith, 142–143. 64. As cited in Robin Wright and Peter Baker, “Iraq, Jordan See Threats to Election from Iran,” Washington Post, December 8, 2004. 65. “Khatami Greets Jordan King on First Visit to Iran,” Arab News, September 3, 2003. 66. Ibid. 67. AFP, “Jordanian FM Iraq Neighbors Conference Aims to Support Elections,” Daily Star, January 6, 2005. 68. Uri Dan, “Beware of ‘Shiite Axis’ After Iraqi Elections,” New York Post, January 15, 2005. 69. As cited in Robin Wright and Peter Baker, “Iraq, Jordan See Threats to Election from Iran,” Washington Post, December 8, 2004. 70. Richard Boudreaux, “Iraqi Electoral Officials Find Few Irregularities,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2006. 71. Queen Noor, 142. 72. “King Optimistic about Iraqi, Regional Future,” His Majesty King Abdullah’s Interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Jordan Times, February 1, 2005. 73. Queen Noor, 118. 74. Islamic Republic News Agency, May 19, 2007, http://www.iran.ir/en. 75. See “Jordan: Building Bridges,” Middle East International, April 23, 1999, 16. 76. Associated Press, “Bush, in Interview with Arab TV, Denies U.S. Planning to Attack Iran,” Arizona Daily Star, October 6, 2007; “US Says ‘All Options’ on the Table with Iran, but Prefers Diplomacy,” Jordan Times, September 17, 2007. 77. James Fallows, “Will Iran Be Next?” Atlantic Monthly, December 2004, 99–110.

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CHAPTER

6

Jordan and the Threat of Terrorism

JORDAN’S LEGACY OF FIGHTING TERRORISTS

Jordan has an extensive history of being targeted for terrorist attacks by both state-sponsored groups and organizations operating without state support. In a trend that was particularly prevalent in Jordan’s early years, the country often suffered as a result of terrorist activities directed by unfriendly neighbors who sometimes operated in the belief that Jordan lacked the capacity to strike back with a forceful response. Also, as noted earlier in this study, a variety of Jordanian leaders have faced successful and unsuccessful assassination attempts. Jordan’s first king was murdered, while King Hussein is believed to have survived at least a dozen assassination attempts. Two Jordanian prime ministers have been assassinated, one by Syrian agents and one by the Black September terrorist organization. The details of any serious efforts to assassinate the current king are not well known, although there has been at least one attempt which has been publicly discussed. King Abdullah has stated that he was on vacation in Europe on a friend’s yacht when he received information that “al Qaeda was planning an ambush on one of the islands, so we returned to Jordan.”1 Additionally, one of al-Qaeda’s former leaders, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, publicly announced that he was planning to behead King Abdullah for his struggles against his organization. This statement was entirely empty bravado by the now dead terrorist leader.2 Conversely, Osama bin Ladin has been less graphic about his opposition to the Jordanian monarchy, but he has strongly denounced its leadership and called for its overthrow.

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Jordan’s geographical position and particularly its long border with Israel has contributed substantially to terrorism problems throughout its history. In the aftermath of the 1967 war and the later Battle of Karameh, a major ideological divide among the newly empowered Palestinian guerrilla groups centered on whether or not it would be necessary to overthrow those Arab governments viewed as insufficiently committed to the Palestinian Revolution as a preliminary step to defeating Israel later. Jordan, with its large Palestinian population and proximity to Israel, became a special target for groups accepting the more radical school of thought. Marxist Palestinian leader George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) maintained a political platform calling for the overthrow of the Hashemite government. The PFLP political platform, which was strongly influenced by the North Vietnamese struggle against the United States, contended that Amman needed to become an “Arab Hanoi” to confront and defeat the Israelis.3 While revolutionary leftist organizations such as the PFLP were a serious threat to Jordan in the 1960s and helped to inspire the Jordanian civil war in September 1970, they have now been replaced by new threats including takfiri terrorist organizations. Takfir is part of the doctrine which motivates al-Qaeda and some of the other terrorist organizations that support al-Qaeda. The takfiri doctrine denounces less militant and more moderate Muslims as infidels who by their actions have proven themselves apostates to Islam according to the judgment of the takfiri militants. Some takfiri groups, such as al-Qaeda, assert that they have the right to kill less militant Muslims. Al-Qaeda is particularly willing to kill Muslims whom they view as open to Western ideas or especially those who seek cooperation with the West. The new terrorism threat from al-Qaeda and its allies is therefore not surprising given Jordanian moderation, ties with Israel, and long-standing national security links with the United States. Moreover, al-Qaeda has developed an elaborate critique that views virtually all of the Hashemite family’s major achievements as traitorous to Islam dating back to the Arab Revolt. Bin Laden’s secondin-command and al-Qaeda’s chief ideologue, Ayman al-Zawahari, has stated that the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire during World War I was treason to Islam and that the Hashemites were responsible for this treason.4 Zawahari notes that the Ottoman Empire was ruled by a Muslim sultan with both political and religious authority and that it was the last important Islamic power in the world. This is an unusual critique since few Arabs long for the days when Turkish overlords decided their fate, but it does have the advantage of portraying the Hashemites as multigenerational traitors for attacking the Ottomans. Zawahari’s analysis conveniently overlooks the certainty that the Ottoman Empire would have been defeated in World War I with or without the Arab Revolt and that the Arabs were almost certainly better served by affiliating with the winning side than suffering defeat alongside the Turks. In a March 2009 audiotape obtained by the Qatari satellite news channel al-Jazeera, bin Laden has followed Zawahari’s


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theme into contemporary times, maintaining that “It is clear that some of the Arab leaders have collaborated with the Crusader-Zionist alliance against our people, those whom America calls the moderate leaders.” In this tape, bin Laden also accused the Israelis of war crimes and stated that in order to deal with the threat from Israel a renewed jihad was necessary, first to conquer Iraq, then to move on to Jordan and the West Bank. He stated that with this strategy, militant Islamists had a “rare and precious chance” for moving in the direction of ultimately taking control of Jerusalem.5 JORDAN’S STRUGGLE AGAINST AL-QAEDA

Jordan’s leadership viewed the September 11 terrorist strikes against U.S. targets with shock and revulsion. In response to these attacks, King Abdullah strongly and unequivocally denounced the strikes and later met with President Bush to express his support for the United States on September 28.6 By this time, the U.S. administration had already responded to the disaster by declaring what they called a Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), which while having some aspects of a global campaign often seemed to Muslims to be heavily focused on the Islamic World. Middle Eastern radicals, including Osama bin Laden, were quick to claim that the United States was waging a war against Islam and that all Muslims had a religious obligation to resist this effort and kill Americans if the opportunity presented itself. In this highly charged atmosphere, it correspondingly became important for the United States to maintain a number of Muslim allies to refute bin Laden’s accusations. From the beginning of this struggle, Jordan was one the most assertive U.S. allies in condemning al-Qaeda and the Taliban as murders, heretics, and embarrassments to Islam. Jordan also supported the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and sent field hospitals to the war zone there to serve as its contribution to the struggle to replace the Taliban with a new government that did not support terrorism. As Jordan aligned itself more closely with the United States in the struggle against terrorism, it faced a series of challenges from radical Islamist terrorist groups and especially al-Qaeda following the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (actual name: Ahmad Fadel Khalayla) was the key terrorist figure who dominated the struggle between Jordan and al-Qaeda until his 2006 death in Iraq as a result of a U.S. air strike. While Zarqawi was most often known to Westerners for his actions as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, he was Jordanian by birth and also had a long history of illegal activities in Jordan. Zarqawi began his career as a small-time criminal in Jordan who, lacking options, fled to Afghanistan to become part of the anti-Soviet jihad. While he arrived there too late to fight against Soviet troops, he was able to participate in military operations against the pro-Soviet Afghan government that had been left behind following the

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Soviet withdrawal. In Afghanistan, Zarqawi was mentored and supported by al-Qaeda terrorist mastermind Abu Zubayda. Zarqawi was later to become one of the most important figures in Jordan’s struggle against terrorism. Jordan’s initial wave of returning Afghanistan war veterans began arriving home in September 1991, with Zarqawi returning to the kingdom in early 1993.7 Although fighting against the Afghan Communist regime was not illegal or dishonorable for a Jordanian, the GID was concerned about the radical ideologies that inspired the insurgents and was also uneasy about the weapons and explosives expertise that militants might have acquired in Afghanistan. They also viewed Zarqawi as a potentially dangerous terrorist organizer, and placed him under surveillance almost immediately upon his return to Jordan. This scrutiny yielded rapid results. Zarqawi was arrested and convicted by a Jordanian court in 1994 for possessing mines and bombs without a permit and for using a false passport.8 The aspiring terrorist leader admitted to possessing the explosives during his trial, but his codefendant, Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, also credibly claimed the bombs and mines were for use against Israel and not to strike against targets in Jordan.9 The court refused to consider this argument as an extenuating circumstance and found both Zarqawi and Maqdisi guilty. Zarqawi was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, but was pardoned after 5 years of incarceration as part of King Abdullah’s far-ranging March 1999 amnesty following his father’s death. Zarqawi had no interest in taking advantage of King Abdullah’s amnesty to start a new and more peaceful life. Instead, after leaving prison he quickly became involved with his former al-Qaeda mentor Abu Zubayda, who was then believed to be the chief planner for what later was to become known as the millennium plot. This conspiracy involved strikes planned against targets in Jordan and Los Angeles International Airport. Zarqawi was apparently given an important role in both the Los Angeles and Jordanian portions of the mission.10 In Jordan, Zarqawi’s network formed sleeper cells and stockpiled weapons and explosives to strike at the Radisson Hotel in Amman, as well as important tourism destinations including the historic site of the Jesus baptism along the Jordan River, and the remains of a Byzantine church on Mount Nebo where Moses was said to have looked down to see the Promised Land.11 Striking at the Radisson and the religious tourist sites in Jordan would have met the overlapping al-Qaeda goals of killing Western (and particularly American) nationals and undermining the tourism industry, which serves as one of the economic mainstays of the Jordanian economy and therefore the regime. The GID uncovered the Jordanian portion of the millennium plot and seized the al-Qaeda stockpile of weapons and explosives in early December before they could be used, once again proving their effectiveness in the struggle against al-Qaeda. In his 2007 memoirs, former CIA Director George Tenet (1997–2004) stated that he was exceptionally pleased by U.S.-Jordanian intelligence cooperation to foil the


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plots, and he takes the opportunity to compliment Sami Battikhi, the head of the GID at the time, in his book.12 Tenet suggests that the millennium attacks might not have been so effectively thwarted if such cooperation had not been forthcoming. He also cites a Jordanian claim that their intelligence organization included individuals with “direct links” to bin Laden.13 Unfortunately, while a number of terrorists were captured as a result of GID actions, Zarqawi remained at large. While he had been in Jordan briefly to help organize the attacks, he returned to Afghanistan before the authorities could apprehend him. The Jordanians indicted him in absentia for the planned attack, but he was now clearly out of their reach. Conversely, Abu Zubayda was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, where he was badly wounded by the authorities. After his arrest, he was turned over to the United States and remains in U.S. custody facing trial.14 On a smaller scale, Zarqawi’s organization was responsible for the October 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman, although Zarqawi himself was not in Jordan at the time.15 Rather, in summer 2002, Zarqawi had already entered Iraq to coordinate with anti-Saddam Kurdish extremists from the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group in northern Iraq. This move was almost certainly designed to position him to coordinate with other anti-American forces after the anticipated U.S.-led invasion of that country, which occurred in March 2003. Zarqawi believed that the post-Saddam power vacuum in Iraq would provide a number of opportunities to commit acts of terrorism against U.S. forces and their allies and perhaps transform Iraq into a radical Islamist state. Unsurprisingly, Zarqawi was quickly identified as the chief organizer behind an August 7, 2003 truck bomb attack against the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq that left 18 dead and 57 wounded.16 The car bomb itself was rigged by Abu Umar al-Kurdi, a member of the Zarqawi organization who was later captured and confessed.17 At the time, this strike was the most destructive attack on a nonmilitary target in Iraq since the fall of Saddam’s regime. It also underscored the continuing grudge Zarqawi held against Jordan despite his overarching focus on preventing the emergence of a stable, pro-U.S. government in Iraq. By April 2004, the Jordanian leadership was making its own view of al-Qaeda clear by sentencing eight terrorists to death for the murder of Foley. Six of the militants, including Zarqawi, were sentenced to death in absentia.18 Two others were in Jordanian custody at the time. They were tried, found guilty, and later hanged.19 Jordanian antiterrorism measures seemed particularly prudent as al-Qaeda expanded its position in Iraq from 2004 until 2006 and then used the Iraqi safe havens to infiltrate terrorists into Jordan. According to a September 1, 2006 speech by then–GID Director General al-Dhahabi, “The al-Qaeda organization is the biggest threat to our Jordanian security. We foiled many of the schemes that targeted Jordan. But we do not announce these schemes.”20 Jordanian authorities also allege that Zarqawi was responsible for an elaborate 2004 plot to attack Jordan’s GID, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the U.S. Embassy in Amman with 3 trucks laden with 20 tons of explosives and toxic chemicals. Jordanian sources maintain that such an

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attack could have killed 80,000 people, although other sources consider this claim to be highly exaggerated if not fanciful.21 The plot was foiled by the security forces before it was undertaken. Some of the money associated with this operation may have been provided by Syrian donors who probably believed that their funds would be used to conduct operations against U.S. troops in Iraq.22 When asked much later about Syrian money going to anti-Jordanian terrorists the head of GID refused to comment, thereby adding to the speculation that already exists on this issue.23 Since that time, Damascus has every reason to crack down on such transactions due to Syrian political isolation resulting from the strong and widespread suspicion that Damascus was involved in the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.24 This isolation could become even more severe should evidence emerge of Syrian involvement in terrorist activity against Jordan and other regional targets. Moreover, both countries will continue to need a great deal of international assistance to help them cope with Iraqi refugees, and they probably would be more effective in lobbying for this aid if they cooperate in doing so. The next well-known terrorist attack in Jordan was considerably more limited in scale and potential impact, but it was also a headline-grabbing event. On August 19, 2005, terrorists fired three Katyusha rockets at U.S. naval vessels moored at the Jordanian port of Aqaba. All of these rockets missed the U.S. warships, although one landed nearby on the Israeli city of Eliat, another struck near a Jordanian military hospital, and a third landed on a Jordanian military post, killing one Jordanian soldier and wounding another.25 Even if the ships had been hit it is difficult to imagine that the projectiles would inflict much damage, although the possibility of a few casualties was clearly present. Any strikes at a U.S. military target would excite Middle Eastern radicals, and even light damage on the ship would probably be exaggerated for propaganda purposes. Two al-Qaeda affiliates separately claimed responsibility for the attack. These were Zarqawi’s group and the Abdullah al-Azzam Brigades of al-Qaeda in the Levant and Egypt.26 Zarqawi’s claim is probably more credible and suggests an effort to keep steady pressure on Jordan. Yet, if the Aqaba attack was modest, it by no means reflected the limits of al-Qaeda’s ambitions against Jordan. The most spectacular al-Qaeda terrorist strike against Jordanian targets came a few months later on November 9, 2005 with nearly simultaneous suicide bombings directed against three large Western chain hotels in Amman, resulting in the deaths of 62 people (including 3 suicide bombers). These hotels were the Radisson SAS, the Grand Hyatt, and the Days Inn hotels. Only four Americans and two Israeli citizens (who were Arabs rather than Jews) were killed in the attacks despite these nationalities being the professed terrorist targets. The majority of the victims were guests at a wedding reception at the Radisson SAS for a Jordanian couple of Palestinian origins.27 The bride’s father and nine other family members died in the explosion. More people might have been killed had a fourth suicide bomber been able to blow


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herself up in the attack on the Radisson. This woman’s suicide explosives belt failed to detonate when the trigger mechanism jammed, and she was apprehended by Jordanian police after giving up on the attack and attempting to flee the scene.28 Elsewhere in Amman, Palestinian Authority Lieutenant General Bashir Nafe, the head of West Bank security, was killed in the Grand Hyatt hotel explosion.29 The internationally known film director Moustapha Akkad was also killed along with his daughter at the Radisson SAS hotel.30 Iraqi terrorists were used for the assaults in response to the almost certainly accurate al-Qaeda suspicion that violence-oriented Jordanian radicals were so well known to the authorities that they would have a much greater likelihood of being arrested. In the aftermath of the Amman attacks, Zarqawi clearly felt the need to justify his actions on ideological and strategic grounds, although his interest in attacking Jordanian targets has often seemed more like a personal vendetta against the regime than a comprehensive strategic plan. To counter the perception of a personal grudge, he asserted that by striking at Jordan he was able to hurt Israeli interests. In defending their actions against criticism of the strikes against the Amman hotels, the Zarqawi network described the hotels as “playgrounds for Jewish terrorists” that were frequented by Israeli intelligence agents.31 Zarqawi also accused Jordanian authorities of concealing the casualties of Israeli and American agents.32 Most Jordanians found such claims to be unconvincing if not absurd. More importantly, the Zarqawi organization’s claim that the attacks were justified also proved that that they were indeed responsible for the strikes, thereby heading off any future conspiracy theories involving Israel or the United States. Zarqawi also made matters worse for himself with Jordanian public opinion by claiming that he would continue to conduct operations in Jordan. He further posted an audio recording on a jihadist website claiming that his group would attack tourist sites throughout Jordan and they would behead King Abdullah.33 These barbaric statements had no appeal for any Jordanians except those already completely radicalized and estranged from their government. Immediately prior to the Amman attacks, Zarqawi was well known as a terrorist and insurgent leader, and some elements of the Jordanian public viewed with him with respect for his role in opposing the highly unpopular U.S. presence in Iraq. Others opposed him for his group’s suicide bombings which killed Muslims and Muslim children as well as U.S. troops in that country.34 Following the hotel attacks, Jordanian public opinion turned decisively against Zarqawi, and at least 200,000 people demonstrated in Amman against Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, some with signs directing them to “burn in Hell.” Protesters carried banners with the names of their tribes to indicate the scope of their opposition and underscore that they were from every part of Jordan.35 Jordanian opposition groups also moved to distance themselves from the terrorist leader. Senior officials of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood also denounced Zarqawi, although they stressed that such renunciation did not imply a lack of support for Iraqi “resistance movements”

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fighting U.S. and coalition troops there. According to Brotherhood spokesman Salim al-Falahat, “resistance alone is not enough to get a good conduct certificate,” indicating the Brotherhood’s view that anti-American combat in Iraq (which they praised) did not compensate for acts of terrorism in Jordan.36 Additionally, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also denounced Zarqawi’s crimes, asserting that, “Those [terrorists involved with the attack] are affiliated to obscurity, blackness, and sabotage. May God curse them from this day until Judgment Day.”37 If Zarqawi hoped to suggest that the hotel strikes were in solidarity with Palestinian interests, he did not convince the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and he almost certainly did not convince many Palestinians that attacking Jordanian hotels would ultimately rebound to their favor. Abbas’s statement nevertheless would not matter much to Zarqawi since the Palestinian leader had been condemned as a traitor by al-Qaeda for a variety reasons, including his willingness to negotiate with Israel. Even Hamas is viewed as dangerously soft by al-Qaeda and has been heavily criticized for such actions as taking part in elections, being willing to establish cease-fires with Israeli forces, and especially for failing to kill its one Israeli military prisoner, Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was captured in June 2006. JORDANIAN RESPONSES TO THE AMMAN HOTEL BOMBINGS

King Abdullah responded to the Amman attacks by appointing National Security Advisor Marouf al-Bakhit as prime minister, with instructions to wage “all out war” against terrorists targeting Jordan.38 Bakhit was an experienced national security professional who had served in the army for 35 years, rising to the rank of Major General. During his years in the military, he had spent considerable time on intelligence duties, including service as the head of the GID.39 The Jordanian leadership also stated that the November 9, 2005 attacks were their 9/11 and these terrorist actions demanded a response. More than revenge was at stake for the Jordanians since Zarqawi had already promised additional attacks against the Jordanians. Once again, the terrorist leader’s personal grudge against Jordan seemed key to his actions. Since emerging as the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Zarqawi is not known to have planned attacks in any other countries than Jordan and Iraq, although some operations in Europe and North Africa were inconclusively linked to him before other contradictory evidence was uncovered and seemed to discredit this linkage.40 While Zarqawi was interested in global jihad at a theoretical level, Jordan was an especially important target. According to a variety of sources including the New York Times, King Abdullah and Prime Minister Bakhit responded to the hotel attacks by creating a new intelligence unit referred to in the press as either the “Knights of God” or the “Knights of Justice,” both distinctly Islamic-sounding names. This organization was reportedly designed to hunt down hostile terrorists, and particularly the


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Zarqawi network outside of Jordan.41 Although Jordan was reported to be cooperating with U.S. efforts against Zarqawi prior to the hotel bombings, journalistic sources claim that this effort became an overarching priority after the November 2005 strikes. According to Los Angeles Times reporting, Jordanian intelligence operatives “flooded [into Iraq] cultivating informants and working the periphery of the Zarqawi network to find ways into the organization.”42 This intelligence operation was believed to have been conducted with the permission of the Iraqi government. It also produced results. On June 7, 2006 Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike against his headquarters about 30 miles north of Baghdad. The Jordanians maintain that this attack would not have been possible without their own tenacious intelligence work to track him down. Details about Jordanian actions in helping to hunt down the terrorist leader remain murky, but in 2009 King Abdullah stated that the Jordanian security forces had “a role” in bringing Zarqawi to justice.43 Zarqawi’s death was an important tactical victory in the struggle against al-Qaeda, but the Jordanians remain concerned about long-term trends involving the growth of terrorist organizations near their borders. Zarqawi’s death was received by most Jordanians with considerable satisfaction, and the Jordanian government’s interest in claiming a role in the terrorist leader’s death is not surprising. Nevertheless, Jordanian public opinion, in contrast to government policy, was often more sympathetic to the “Iraqi resistance” than the U.S. “occupation forces” and until the hotel bombings appeared less attuned to the need to fight al-Qaeda.44 Although Zarqawi’s popularity declined dramatically in Jordan due to the hotel bombings, a hardline minority continued to respect his willingness to strike at the U.S. presence in Iraq to the point that the hotel strikes became secondary.45 Two parliamentary representatives from the Islamic Action Party carried this viewpoint to an extreme by visiting a funeral tent honoring the “martyrdom” of Zarqawi and offering condolences.46 Both of these individuals were subsequently arrested on charges of fueling national discord and inciting sectarianism. After these arrests, some Jordanian officials were more inclined to express doubts about the patriotism of the IAF and the Muslim Brotherhood. In response to this problem, various Islamist leaders felt compelled to sign loyalty statements which pledged fidelity to the Hashemite throne and renounced religious extremism.47 King Abdullah eventually pardoned the detained deputies following the intercession on their behalf of a moderate former leader of the IAF.48 Jordanian authorities have arrested a number of individuals on terrorismrelated charges since the hotel bombings and Zarqawi’s death seven months later, but nothing nearly as spectacular as the hotel strike has occurred since then. On a more routine level, some individuals have been charged with recruiting would-be terrorists to fight in Iraq, but this option is becoming increasingly unattractive to Islamist militants due to al-Qaeda’s defeats in that country. The most ambitious terrorism plan was a plot to assassinate President George W. Bush during his visit to Jordan in November 2006, but the would-be assassins were never a danger to

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the U.S. leader. Rather, the plot was easily foiled and three Jordanian men were convicted to serve 15-year prison terms for “conspiring to commit acts of terrorism.” While these people were quite serious about killing President Bush, they seem to have been incompetent misfits more than dangerous terrorists. Their only previous act of terrorism was an attempt to bomb a beer brewery in Amman. While their late night raid against the brewery did not encounter any resistance from guards or night watchmen, they were unable to get past a locked gate and therefore did not inflict much damage on the facility.49 Another more serious effort to strike at Jordan occurred in February 2008 when the GID broke up an al-Qaeda plan to attack targets at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman.50 OTHER JORDANIAN ANTITERRORISM MEASURES

In addition to the activities of the remnants of the Zarqawi network or likeminded terrorists, a number of other factors served to complicate Jordan’s potential problems with terrorism. In one particularly unfortunate trend, a number of Jordanian radicals left their own country (and especially the towns of Zarqa and Salt) to fight U.S. troops in Iraq and possibly Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. interventions in these countries. Along with their commitment to the struggle against the West, Jordanian extremists also sought to leave their homes and travel to Iraq for a variety of reasons including problems with surveillance by local authorities, a lack of acceptance by their home communities (usually due to their time in prison for violent offenses), and a lack of economic opportunities in Jordan. Problems within Jordan, nevertheless, did not constitute their only challenges. After 2004 the flow of terrorist recruits from Zarqa and Salt into Iraq faced serious interdiction efforts by the Jordanian authorities.51 A few Jordanian radicals still managed to get through to Iraq, and one was reported to have conducted a high-profile suicide bombing that killed 125 people in Hillah in 2005, almost all of whom were police and army recruits.52 After 2007, as al-Qaeda faced serious setbacks in Iraq, the flow of would-be insurgents from Jordan decreased to almost nothing, although the future activities of Jordanians already radicalized through participation in jihadist causes remains of serious concern to the Jordanian leadership. The long-standing problems with radicals from Zarqa province may have helped convince Jordanian authorities of the importance of the economic dimension to fighting domestic terrorism. The government has therefore responded to this situation with a struggle to reduce poverty and hopelessness among people living in areas that have shown the highest propensity for terrorist recruiting. In particular, the Jordanian government has made serious efforts to relieve poverty in the region around the cities of Zarqa and Salt (which are around 25 miles apart) in what is almost certainly a partial response to that area’s


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links to the problem of terrorism. A centerpiece of this effort is the construction of modern and affordable housing near Zarqa, with funding from Saudi Arabia including both houses and apartments, many of which are designed for middleand low-income families. Current plans call for the construction of the “King Abdullah bin Abdul Azziz al Saud Residential City,” which is designed to include parks, banks, mosques, and cultural and recreation centers. The total project is expected to cost almost $2 billion.53 Jordanian banks will provide loans for citizens to purchase these homes at subsidized rates of interest, which will involve some government role in extending the payback period to about 25–30 years.54 The project is further expected to create numerous local jobs. Additionally, several projected U.S.-sponsored aid projects have been have been directed at improving the Zarqa Governorate’s water and sewage facilities.55 Another element of Jordan’s antiterrorism strategy has been a program of cooperating with friendly regional countries opposed to the same terrorist organizations that Jordan views as enemies. One of these countries has been postSaddam Iraq. In August 2004 Jordanian and Iraqi authorities concluded an agreement to share intelligence on cross-border crime including terrorism, kidnapping, smuggling, drug trafficking, and money laundering.56 This agreement was concluded when Jordan was still especially concerned about the activities of the Zarqawi group and the danger that they might infiltrate additional agents into Jordan from Iraq. Moreover, Jordanian intelligence is sometimes reported as having especially useful connections to some of Iraq’s large Sunni tribes.57 Senior Jordanian officials have stated that enhanced intelligence exchange is a key goal in their relations with Iraq.58 While obtaining terrorism-related intelligence from Iraqi sources is an important national security goal, it is doubtful that Amman wants to share much of its sensitive intelligence in return. Jordanian leaders are concerned about the security of information passed to the Iraqis and have warned them that their security forces have been extensively infiltrated by Shi’ite militias, with ties to Iranian intelligence. In response to Jordanian concerns, Iraqi National Security Advisor Muwaffaq Rubaie stated, “We listened to these complaints. We are realistic and know that the Iraqi security forces have seen some penetrations and excesses.”59 While the Iraqi acknowledgement of their security problems is admirable, it has probably not encouraged senior Jordanian intelligence officials to share information with such a problematic ally unless there were specific and compelling reasons to risk doing so. THE AMMAN MESSAGE AND THE JORDANIAN INFORMATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST TAKFIRI DOCTRINE

The Jordanian government has publicly denounced al-Qaeda as un-Islamic since shortly after the September 11 strikes and has used its intelligence agencies to wage war against that organization since well before then as indicated earlier

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in this chapter. On November 9, 2004 Jordan sought to present its theological case against al-Qaeda in a more methodical way when it issued the Amman Message as a statement designed to reflect the Jordanian leadership’s view of the true meaning of Islam. It was delivered as a Ramadan sermon by Jordanian Chief Justice Sheikh Iz-al-Din al Tamimi in the presence of King Abdullah with the objective of promoting a moderate and authentic form of Islam worldwide. (The Amman Message is reproduced in full in Appendix C.) A central theme of the document is that Muslims may never engage in takfir, and that the killing of a fellow Muslim through the use of this doctrine is an unpardonable crime before God. The message appears to assume that undermining the doctrine of takfir is not a difficult argument to make using Islamic logic and that without the false justification provided by takfiri thinking, Islamic radicals will be more identifiable as criminals. It also denounces “extremism, radicalism and fanaticism,” and provides an especially clear renunciation of terrorism. Another aspect of the Amman Message is the challenge presented to what it describes as a brazen campaign of distortion designed to portray Islam as a violent religion. A significant amount of the text is devoted to the assertion that Islam is an intensely humanistic religion that values every human life. This part of the Amman Message clearly portrays al-Qaeda’s wrongful actions as aiding the most virulent enemies of Islam. It is not clear how much impact the Amman Message has had in steering potential recruits away from takfiri radicalism or in improving the image of Islam outside of the Islamic World. Jordanian leaders have characterized it as is a strong intellectual response to bin Laden’s efforts to define a good Muslim as someone engaged in intolerant thinking and then descending into murder. Yet, its impact may be limited by its origins with a pro-Western government and endorsement by clerics who are interested in friendly relations with the Jordanian regime. Perhaps the greatest service of the Amman Message in combating terrorism has been to provide the Jordanian public with a strong intellectual framework to channel their anger in the aftermath of the hotel bombings and reject al-Qaeda in a comprehensive way. The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood has also endorsed the central ideas in the Amman Message, including the renunciation of both terrorism and takfiri ideology. The Jordanian government has placed the Muslim Brotherhood’s statement on this matter on the Amman Message’s official website. This remarkably straightforward document leaves no doubt or potential for equivocation in its opposition to al-Qaeda. It is reproduced in full in Appendix C of this book. The Amman Message should not be understood as a discrete event but rather as an important milestone in a Jordanian campaign to both advance a moderate form of Islam worldwide and to undermine and oppose religious bigotry directed at Muslims. The Jordanians have continued to stress the importance of the Amman Message’s opposition to terrorism in the years following 2004 in public statements and a variety of international forums. In July 2005, for example,


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Prime Minister Adnan Badran followed up on the Amman Message by stating that Jordan was planning to undertake an active international role in clarifying that Islam renounces extremism and violence. He stated that the “real image and principles of Islam” were moderation and tolerance.60 The purpose of this proposed campaign seems to have been to help marginalized al-Qaeda by forcefully refuting their use of Islam as a tool to recruit terrorists. Additionally, the Jordanians may have hoped to moderate anti-Islamic anger in some sectors of the Western population and to reduce any stereotyping of and discrimination against Muslims in the West. The Amman Message also attempts to challenge the religious bigotry of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups by advocating dialogue. This approach has led the Jordanian government to advocate a number of interfaith and outreach efforts designed to achieve some level of understanding and harmony among various religious groups. Jordan, which has been criticized by the U.S. State Department on a variety of grounds, has been praised for its interfaith efforts and welcoming of representatives of other religions within Jordan. The 2009 State Department Religious Freedom Report stated that Christian-Muslim relations in Jordan “generally were good” and noted Christian participation in the Jordanian government as cabinet ministers and representatives in both houses of Parliament.61 The small Druze and Bahai communities are not recognized as official religions, but their religious practices are not disrupted. Jordanian actions indicating an interest in religious outreach included the opening of the Evangelical Baptism Center at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the efforts of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, and the hosting of Pope Benedict XVI on a visit to Jordan in May 2009. The Jordanians have not undertaken this effort as a secular Arab society, which they are not. Rather, Jordan has undertaken this effort as an Islamic nation which recognizes Islam as its state religion but also believes in religious tolerance and respect. JORDAN’S ROLE IN COUNTERTERRORISM TRAINING PROGRAMS

One of the most important regional tasks Jordan has performed in recent decades involves the training and support Amman has provided to friendly Arab officers and soldiers. This training is not limited to counterterrorism, but a great deal of it is relevant for fighting against terrorist enemies and insurgents. Jordanian service schools, including their national defense college, have a number of nonJordanian Arabs from friendly nations attending courses there.62 Jordan also hosts a number of Arab officers and soldiers at shorter training courses involving important skills, including Special Forces operations. According to the commander of the Royal Jordanian Special Operations Command, Brigadier General Ahmad Sarhan al-Faqeeh, “Jordan has been more or less the main special operations school for many Arab armies.”63 This role has existed for decades and is a natural

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niche for the Jordanians to fill, as their Special Forces troops are among the best in the region. Jordan’s Special Operations Command was formerly led by King Abdullah while he served as a major general, immediately prior to becoming king in 1999. In the years prior to the 2003 Iraq War, Jordanian Special Forces troops played a leading role in securing the Iraqi border, where frequent clashes took place between Jordanian forces and Iraqi smugglers. Such experiences imparted a number of important lessons about preventing terrorist infiltration. Training Special Forces therefore became an important way for Jordan to contribute to fighting terrorism in the region in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. While the Jordanian role in training friendly troops is not new, it has clearly received much greater international attention in the aftermath of the efforts to support Iraq’s post-Saddam governments.64 It has also expanded dramatically in recent years thanks to U.S. support including financial backing for the creation of the King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC; pronounced kass-oh-tech) in the Yajooz Cliffs, about 20 kilometers northeast of Amman.65 The creation of this center was an important priority for General John Abizaid when he was the Combatant Commander at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and is designed to help improve the military skills of Arab students attending courses there. 66 The initial U.S. grant for the center was $99 million from the U.S. government with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers serving as the projects contracting agency.67 KASOTC became fully operational on May 20, 2009 in a ceremony presided over by the king and attended by General David Petraeus of U.S. Central Command. The center functions to train not only Jordanian Special Operations Forces, but also to train soldiers from a number of other pro-Western Arab and other allied nations.68 The King Abdullah Center has housing and dining facilities for 650 people at a time allowing it to undertake substantial training activities in both counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Training facilities include a large urban warfare live fire facility which includes simulated homes, shops, embassies, industrial buildings, and palaces. Other skills taught at the center will include counterterrorism, urban combat, VIP protection, border control, civil defense, hostage rescue procedures, and close quarters combat. The center also trains troops to deal with the problems presented by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), more commonly known as roadside bombs.69 Training is carefully monitored and military exercises are recorded by up to 360 cameras located throughout the facility.70 Troops participating in KASOTC exercises will have an opportunity to review film of their operations under simulated combat conditions in order to identify and correct mistakes. The King Abdullah Center will also use affiliated facilities being constructed at Zarqa with outdoor facilities including a light antitank weapon range. Additionally, the Zarqa facility will offer training in sniper activities and infantry marksmanship. There will also be a maritime counterterrorism facility at Aqaba, Jordan’s only port.71


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A new Jordanian training program, financed by U.S. funds, was also adapted to support the U.S. “surge” strategy announced by President Bush in January 2007 and especially the Baghdad security crackdown. This program involved training about 2,400 new Iraqi prison guards at the Muwaqqar facility in Jordan during the summer of 2007.72 Iraqi recruits were trained on how to manage prisoners confined in tent cities, which the U.S. military set up around Baghdad as regular prisons were filled to more than capacity. The volume of prisoners was expected to vastly increase as a result of the Baghdad crackdown.73 The prison system as then administered by the Iraqi government was ridden with serious problems including brutality and torture, according to a variety of respected nongovernmental organizations.74 It is uncertain that the Jordanians or even U.S. forces can inspire Iraqi prison officials and guards to behave in a more professional manner, but any efforts to do so are worthwhile for both human rights and national reconciliationrelated reasons. The Jordanians, who retain a vested interest in Iraqi national reconciliation and Sunni Arab rights, made a strong effort to train Iraq guards in professional ethics and conduct. Another aspect of Jordan’s strong interest in regional security has been the Jordanian involvement with the Special Operations Forces Exhibit (SOFEX), which serves as a military trade fair for Special Forces equipment and services. Jordan hosts SOFEX every two years, with U.S. Army post at Fort Bragg hosting a smaller version of the program for those years it is not held in Jordan. SOFEX 2006 was held in Amman in March of that year and had the theme of “Counterterrorism: United in the Fight Against a Common Enemy.” At the conference, a number of Jordanian officials including King Abdullah and then Prime Minister Bakhit visited various stalls at the exhibition highlighting military technology and services. Prime Minister Bakhit also delivered the keynote address at the conference, speaking on the struggle against terrorism.75 SOFEX 2008 was also hosted in Jordan and included a three-day program of Special Forces demonstrations conducted at King Abdullah II Air Base. At both SOFEX 2006 and SOFEX 2008 there were around 300 special operations and national security exhibitors representing 50 countries. 76 Jordan is currently preparing to host SOFEX 2010. The United States has announced that it will increase its participation at SOFEX 2010.77 JORDAN AND THE CONTINUING STRUGGLE AGAINST TERRORISM

Jordan is so deeply involved in the U.S.-led struggle against al-Qaeda and its allies that this effort can reasonably be designated as a fundamental of contemporary Jordanian foreign policy. Amman is also an exceptionally valuable ally in this confrontation, and it is in the interests of both nations to continue cooperation in counterterrorism activities. One of the principal reasons Jordan has been so valuable to the United States in its struggle against Islamist terrorist organizations

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is the deep Jordanian understanding of the cultural, tribal, and political situation in Iraq. If journalist sources can be believed, this understanding helped bring the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to a successful conclusion. GID cultural, linguistic, and political knowledge can also be usefully applied elsewhere in the Arab World. It therefore seems likely that Jordan will not alter these policies significantly in the near future and that the United States will continue to value Jordanian support against the common enemy. It should also go without saying that the Jordanian public does not ever wish to be ruled by the likes of Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahari, and that they seek government protection from Islamist extremists who seek to make political points by actions such as attacking a Palestinian wedding reception. Beyond this basic need for self-defense, Jordan’s intense involvement in the war on al-Qaeda terrorists is also of value to the entire Islamic World since it helps to refute Islamophobia advanced by fringe elements and anti-Islamic activists in the United States and Europe. While such ideas are not mainstream, they can still be dangerous and could yet find resonance among publics who are predisposed to believe the worst about foreign religions. While many of Jordan’s actions against al-Qaeda operatives are conducted in the shadows, enough are publicly known to show the ongoing importance of this Muslim ally in destroying al-Qaeda’s ability to function. Jordan is a blood enemy of al-Qaeda, and the Jordanian leadership will keep waging war against this organization until it is no longer a threat to Jordan or the moderate Islam that most Jordanians embrace. NOTES 1. “Interview with King Abdullah II: ‘I accept only the best for my country,’ ” Jordan Times, November 12, 2009. 2. Michael Slackman, “Iraqi Qaeda Leader Is Said to Vow Attacks on Jordan,” New York Times, November 19, 2005. 3. “Platform of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” as cited in The Terrorism Reader: A Historical Anthology, editors Walter Laqueur and Yonah Alexander (New York: Meridian Books, 1987), 145–149. 4. Bruce Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008), 25–27. 5. “Bin Laden Slams Gaza ‘Holocaust,’ ” Gulf Daily News, March 15, 2009. 6. Muasher, 111. 7. Jean-Charles Brisard (with Damien Martinez), Zarqawi, The New Face of Al-Qaeda (New York: Other Press, 2005), 27. 8. Ibid., 41. 9. Ibid., 41. 10. Riedel, 95. 11. Ibid., 95. 12. George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 125. 13. Ibid.


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14. Ron Suskind, The One Per Cent Doctrine (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 85–89. 15. Neil MacFarquhar, “Jordan Sentences 8 Militants, Linked to Qaeda, to Death,” New York Times, April 7, 2004. 16. Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 180. 17. Ibid. 18. Neil MacFarquhar, “Jordan Sentences 8 Militants, Linked to Qaeda, to Death,” New York Times, April 7, 2004. 19. “Jordan Hangs 2 for Killing U.S. Diplomat,” New York Times, March 12, 2006. 20. Sami Mahasinah, “Intelligence Chief Addresses Youth on Domestic, Regional Security Issues,” al Arab al Yawm, September 1, 2006. 21. Ed Blanche, “Terrorists Gun for Arab Intelligence Services,” Daily Star (Beirut), May 8, 2004. For a more skeptical account of these events, see “Foiled or Fabricated?” Middle East International, May 14, 2004. 22. Alfred B. Prados, Jordan: U.S. Relations and Bilateral Issues, Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, April 2006. 23. Jane’s Information Group, “Interview with Major General Samih Asfoura, Director, Jordanian General Intelligence Department,” Jane’s Terrorism & Security Monitor, January 18, 2006. 24. See Marwan Iskandar, Rafiq Hariri and the Fate of Lebanon, London and San Francisco, Saqi, 2006, ch. 7, and Nicholas Blanford, Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East (London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 175–179. 25. Sana Abdullah, “Iraq Spill-Over?” Middle East International, September 2, 2005, 11–12. 26. Ibid. 27. “Targeting Innocents,” The Middle East, December 2005, 15. 28. “Trial of Failed Amman Suicide Bomber Begins,” Gulf News, April 27, 2006, 14, and Jane’s Information Group, “Failed Suicide Bomber Sentenced to Death in Jordan,” Jane’s Terrorism Watch Report-Daily Update, September 2, 2006. 29. Anthony Cordesman, “The Zarqawi Attack on Jordan: A Single Point Does Not Make a Trend,” Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 15, 2005. 30. Moustapha Akkad, “ ‘The Message’ Filmmaker Dies in Amman Explosions,” Jordan Times, November 12, 2005. In addition to “The Message,” Mustafa Akkad also produced and directed the film known as The Lion in the Desert in the West and Omar Muktar in the Arab World. 31. Craig Whitlock, “Amman Bombing Reflect Zarqawi’s Growing Reach,” Washington Post, November 13, 2005, 1. 32. Jamal Halaby, “Al Zarqawi Tape Threatens Jordan’s King,” Associated Press, November 18, 2005. 33. Michael Slackman, “Iraqi Qaeda Leader Is Said to Vow More Attacks on Jordan,” New York Times, November 19, 2005. 34. “Jordanians Disavow Zarqawi but Anti-US Feeling High,” Peninsula, November 15, 2005. 35. “200,000 Protest Amman Attacks,” Washington Times, November 19, 2005. 36. Muhammad Ashur, “Interview with Salim al Falahat, Controller General of the Muslim Brotherhood,” al Ra’y, September 6, 2004. 37. Jackie Spinner, “Motive Glimpsed in Jordan Attack,” Washington Post, November 15, 2005. 38. “Jordan’s Intelligence Service Leads,” Jane’s Intelligence Digest, December 2, 2005.

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39. Ibid. 40. David Crawford, “Jordanian May Be Mastermind Behind Bomb Attacks in Madrid,” Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2004; “Madrid Bombing Trial Concludes,” BBC News: International Edition, July 2, 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk. 41. Bill Powell and Scott MacLeod, “Zarqawi’s Last Dinner Party,” Time, June 11, 2006, http://www.time.com. 42. Borzou Dargahi and Josh Meyer, “Zarqawi Attack Put Jordan Hot on His Trail,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2006, 1. 43. “ ‘Our Country’s Security, Stability Red Line,’ ” Jordan Times, November 11, 2009. 44. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, support for al-Qaeda was at 20 percent in 2007, down from 56 percent in 2002. See “Reassuring, but Not Surprising,” Jordan Times, September 28, 2007. 45. Ibid. 46. Mohammad Ben Hussein, “Muslim Brotherhood Condemns Jailing of MPs as ‘Politically Motivated,’ ” Jordan Times, August 8, 2006. 47. Rana al Sabbagh, “The Government and the Islamists in the Snakes and Ladders Game on the Eve of the Municipal and Parliamentary Elections,” al Arab al Yawm (Amman), June 3, 2007. 48. Nathan J. Brown, Jordan and the Islamic Movement: The Limits of Inclusion? (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2006). 49. Rana Husseini, “3 Convicted of Plotting to Assassinate Bush,” Jordan Times, December 9, 2009. 50. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Country Reports: Middle East and North Africa–Jordan, April 30, 2009, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/ crt/2008. 51. Martin Patience, “City of Martyrs Salutes Zarqawi,” BBC News, June 9, 2006. 52. Rawya Rageh, “Iraqis March on Jordanian Embassy,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 19, 2005. 53. “Mega Housing Project near Zarqa,” Jordan Times, June 29–30, 2007. 54. “2,160 ‘Affordable’ Housing Units to Be Built in Zarqa,” Jordan Times, March 16, 2009. 55. “US-Funded Projects to Improve Zarqa Residents’ Water Supply, Sewage Services,” Jordan Times, October 30, 2009. 56. “Iraq, Jordan to Share Cross-Border Intelligence,” Jordan Times, August 20–21, 2004. 57. Borzou Daragahi and Josh Meyer, “Zarqawi Attack Put Jordan Hot on His Trail,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2006. 58. “Premier Calls for Greater Cooperation with Iraq,” Jordan Times, November 30, 2005. 59. Jordan Times Staff and Agencies, “King Renews Support for Iraq’s Unity, Security,” Jordan Times, August 16, 2007. 60. “Jordan to Mount Global Campaign to Show Islam Is Opposed to Violence,” Daily Star, July 15, 2005. 61. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report 2009, October 26, 2009. http://www.state.gov. 62. The author of this book has had the honor of addressing the students of the Jordanian National Defense College on two occasions and encountered a number of non-Jordanian Arab officers.


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63. “Interview with Brigadier General Ahmad Sarhan al Faqeeh, Commander, Royal Jordanian Special Operations,” Defense News, February 14, 2005. 64. For an examination of the early years of Jordanian military cooperation and assistance to other Arab nations see Terrill, “Jordan and the Defense of the Gulf,” 34–41. 65. Jane’s Information Group, “King Abdullah II Special Forces Training Centre Stays on Track for 2008 Completion,” International Defense Review, April 1, 2007. 66. “Jordanian Facility to Train Regional and International Forces,” National Defense, August 2006, 22–23. 67. Jane’s Information Services, “Jordan Signs Second Phase Contract for Special Operations Training Centre,” International Defense Review, March 1, 2006. 68. Pierre Tran, “Conference News: Center Offers Global Special Ops Training,” Defense News, SOFEX 2006 Conference, March 27, 2006. 69. “King Inaugurates Special Operations Training Centre,” Jordan Times, May 20, 2009. 70. Ibid. 71. Robin Hughes, “Jordanian Special Forces Training Centre Moves Ahead,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, February 9, 2005. 72. Janine Zacharia, “Behind the Lines, Iraqis Learn a Dangerous Craft,” International Herald Tribune, May 22, 2007. 73. Dale Gavlak, “Iraqis Train in Jordan as Detainee Numbers Surge,” Jordan Times, June 22–23, 2007. 74. See Finer and Knickmeyer, Washington Post, June 16, 2006. 75. Pierre Tran, “Conference News: Bakhit: Fight Terrorism with Dialogue, Pluralism,” Defense News, SOFEX 2006 Conference, March 27, 2006. 76. Mohammad Ghazal, “King Tours SOFEX, Attends Military Exercises,” Jordan Times, March 30, 2006. 77. “SOFEX 2008 Concludes, Exhibitors Confirm Participation in 2010 Edition,” Jordan Times, April 4, 2008.


CHAPTER

7

Jordan Looks Toward the Future

After a prolonged period of struggle and uncertainty, Jordan under its Hashemite monarchy has emerged as an enduring feature of the Arab World. Currently, Amman maintains stable relations with Israel as well as good relations with the United States and with most of its Arab neighbors. This development would have surprised many early observers of Jordanian history. The future of monarchies in the twenty-first century is seldom considered bright, and Jordan’s existence once seemed particularly precarious due to its lack of resources and its proximity to some of the world’s most intractable problems. This proximity meant that Jordan made dangerous enemies no matter what policy decisions its leadership reached on issues involving Israel, the Palestinians, Iraq, or other regional flashpoint issues. Yet, rather than being broken by these problems, Jordan survived and gained regional acceptance. Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, Jordan is no longer treated as an illegitimate actor with a government that should be singled out for special criticism within mainstream Arab politics. Only extremists and outliners such as al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden are prepared to make the charges of treason that once came from the leaders of powerful Arab countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, and their criticism is also directed at virtually all other Arab states. Despite reasons for optimism, Jordan’s major systemic problem of an abysmal natural resource base remains the central reality of its politics. Jordan continues to require good relations with key aid donor nations to cope with its ongoing economic problems. On several occasions, the Jordanian economy has been seen to have suffered disastrous setbacks because of problems with these donors during times of political turmoil. Moreover, Jordan’s systemic economic problems are so massive that it cannot flourish on a pittance as the low priority of

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those wealthy nations that provide foreign aid. Jordanian policies must therefore attract significant amounts of aid while continuing to adjust the political system in ways that address the needs of Jordan’s modernizing political culture. While Jordanian monarchs have been prepared to make unpopular decisions, they would prefer not to oppose public opinion on a continuing basis. Therefore, King Abdullah, like his father, must show ongoing dexterity at balancing the internal and external pressures on the Jordanian government. To be successful, this effort must be conducted in ways that benefit the monarchy’s longevity by maintaining vital foreign allies and attending to the welfare of ordinary Jordanians. Under these circumstances, Jordan has a political system and a geopolitical situation which will face clearly face continuing challenges in the modern world. Also under the current circumstances, the top Jordanian elite and their supporters feel that a gifted king is more able to accomplish such objectives than an unruly democracy, despite the potential for alienation such an approach involves. The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians remains Jordan’s most important national security difficulty at the present time, rather than problems with Iraq or other Arab countries. Correspondingly, there are questions of how far Jordanian democracy can develop if a just settlement of the Palestinian problem continues to remain elusive in future decades. Westerners and liberal Jordanians may wish to accelerate the forward movement of democratic reform, but democracy may also mean a deepening confrontation with Israel over Palestinian issues. However moral such policies may appear to most Jordanians, the dangers are also obvious. The Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty remains an important pillar of Jordanian foreign policy despite the stagnation of the peace process, and Jordan is now able to manage its disagreements with its strongest neighbor in cooperative ways that often make it difficult for Israel to dismiss reasonable Jordanian security concerns. Having obtained this treaty, the Hashemite monarchy cannot be expected to let it go in the foreseeable future. To do so would invite a return to the days when mainstream Israeli politicians could casually discuss the “Jordan is Palestine” theory whereby the inhabitants of the West Bank would do well to leave their homes and go to Jordan. This approach is viewed as the doomsday scenario for the Jordanian leadership. It is in the vital national interest of Jordanians to avoid being overrun by over 1 million additional Palestinians with angry grievances against the regional status quo. Equally important, an abrogation of the treaty with Israel would be viewed as a betrayal by the United States and would almost certainly mean an end to a great deal of essential U.S. aid. Moreover, while renouncing the treaty with Israel would provide psychological satisfaction for Jordanians angry over Israeli policies, such actions would do little to moderate the behavior of Israel’s most conservative politicians. The policies Jordanians see as most objectionable, such as expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, would be much easier to justify in the face of a government which was no longer led by a Hashemite monarch.


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Beyond the treaty with Israel, the other security asset that the Jordanian monarchy never wishes to give up is its relationship with the United States. Jordanian assertions that they have a unique understanding of how Americans think and how to market the Arab cause in the United States are good arguments to make to gain wider Arab support for such an alliance, but this is not the foundation of the relationship. Jordanian security is the core of the relationship for Amman, while taking advantage of the numerous ways Jordan can help the United States in the region is a key factor in the relationship for Washington. Fortunately for Amman, there are a number of ways that even resource-poor Jordan can serve as an important partner for the United States beyond the previously noted ties with Israel. Jordan has also shown that it is able to find ways to support regional stability in post-Saddam Iraq, support moderate Palestinians and work against Palestinian radicals, advocate and theologically justify moderate Islamic principals such as those contained in the Amman Message, and maintain an ongoing close relationship with the U.S. military. Additionally, the GID, for all its bad publicity, is an especially valuable asset in the shadow war against al-Qaeda terrorism. A highly professional Arabic-speaking intelligence organization that has built its effectiveness on human intelligence agents and deep understanding of Middle Eastern regional dynamics would seem to be a valuable if not indispensible tool for crushing terrorist networks. Jordanian advancement in press freedoms, interreligious dialogue, and decent treatment of prisoners may correspond with American values, but these factors will never be enough to help Jordan retain its recurring position as a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid. It is Jordan’s invaluable security role that has made that goal a reality. It is possible that the Jordanian leadership would show greater trust in their population’s ability to elect leaders able to cope with Jordan’s most pressing problems if calmer conditions prevailed in the region and if Jordanian problems of national identity politics between Palestinians and Transjordanians were more thoroughly settled. It is equally plausible that the monarchy would be unwilling to share real power with elected officials no matter how stable the regional situation might become. In the absence of such conditions, one can only speculate. What does seem clear is that the Jordanian monarchy often implements national security policies that an elected government would probably find untenable. These often unpopular policies allow the Jordanians to manage a number of difficult regional problems in ways that a government seeking votes would have extreme difficulty doing. Thus, many observers can (however reluctantly) understand the rationale for a government that is not fully accountable to voters, however offensive this is to Western values. Jordan has reasons that are more than just excuses for its slow movement toward democracy. To avoid economic collapse, it seeks to preserve a set of mutually reinforcing policies that are needed to keep a consistent flow of outside aid through a variety of actions which Jordanian leaders view as advancing Jordanian, Palestinian, and Arab interests. At least at some

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level, the population understands this approach. In a January 2009 poll, WorldPublicOpinion.org reports that 44 percent of Jordanian respondents believe their country’s morality in foreign police is “above average,” while 26 percent believe it is average. Only eight percent said it was “below average.”1 In the past, Jordanians have felt free to speak out to the pollsters associated with this organization, and while a certain amount of caution may be apparent in these results, they are still impressive. JORDAN AND THE UNITED STATES: RECOMMENDATIONS

If the United States chooses to emphasize democracy in its relations with Jordan, it must also accept that that a more democratic government will probably be much less willing to cooperate with the United States and, especially, Israel. In Jordan, a pro-Western government and a fully democratic government may be mutually exclusive goals. As noted earlier in this study, over half the population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin, and there is frequent populist outrage among this group regarding Israeli policies. Those Jordanian political institutions that are allowed a certain degree of self-expression often call for the abrogation of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty and an end to U.S.-Jordanian cooperation on a variety of matters, including Iraqi policy. While the United States favors democratic development in all states, a rational assessment of U.S. interests suggests that a Jordanian go-slow approach to democracy may be the best thing for both Jordan and the United States. Beyond that issue, it is morally unacceptable and undemocratic for the United States to pressure Jordan to implement farreaching democratic reforms and then to punish the Jordanians because their elected government opposes U.S. policies. When Jordan’s 1989 election produced what one scholar called “the Muslim Brotherhood parliament,” this was hardly welcomed in the United States.2 If U.S. leaders demand democracy, it has to be with a “let the cards fall where they may” approach. It cannot be based on the discredited theory that free elections and fully democratic institutions will inevitably produce pro-American, pro-Israeli governments in the Arab World. This situation does not mean that the United States should give up on democracy, but it should perhaps pay more attention to supporting the building blocks of a future democratic government. The United States should make efforts to support the Jordanian government reform agenda and, most especially, anticorruption measures. Any governmental system without a path to reform cannot be considered a long-term solution to Jordan’s problems. Those Jordanians who are dissatisfied with the status quo need to know that there are other avenues to domestic change than violent extremism. The Jordanian government is aware of this situation and, for its own survival, will undertake reform at the most reasonable pace available to it. Jordanian efforts to build a strong and viable middle class are also valuable in preparing the country for democracy. Within this


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framework, Washington should not be alarmed about Jordanian policies that give breathing room to nonviolent opposition groups. Rather, the United States needs to remain aware that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan are not terrorist organizations, although they have radical fringes. Some extremists are part of these organizations, but these groups are nonviolent and loyal to the Hashemite crown even though they disagree with many Jordanian policies favored by the United States. The continued existence of these organizations may provide a vital channel for opposition to current government policies which, in the absence of these channels, could be expressed in violent and radical ways. The United States can also count upon the Jordanian government to prevent these groups from becoming too close to Hamas. In meeting both its own and allied security requirements, the U.S. leadership would also do well to support even a crippled Middle East peace process as a way of not only moving toward Arab-Israeli peace but also supporting moderate Arab governments whose leadership emphasize that there are nonviolent alternatives to resolving the Palestinian issue and other sources of Arab-Israeli division. This statement is not meant to minimize the difficulties of moving forward with the peace process. Sometimes, something as limited as continued discussions can be viewed as a victory if it staves off hopelessness and prevents any parties to the conflict from seeking violent alternatives. Additionally, President Obama’s public statements of concern about expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank as well as his demands for an end to Palestinian terrorism are also steps in the direction of peace. The U.S. policy of continuing to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is both justified and wise since peace is ultimately impossible without some consideration of Palestinian national rights. Otherwise, Palestinian politics can become increasingly radicalized. At one time, the key struggle for Arab leadership of West Bank politics was between Jordan and the PLO (including Fatah). Now, that struggle has evolved to one whereby Jordan is out of the picture and the Fatah movement is often seen to be losing ground to Islamists, including Hamas. In the absence of any progress in meeting Palestinian national rights, it is not difficult to envision a scenario decades from now whereby the struggle is between a weakened Hamas and a strong, energized al-Qaeda type organization in the Palestinian territories with Fatah completely marginalized. It is already one of bin Laden’s fondest wishes to take possession of the Palestinian issue as part of his international crusade against “Jews and Crusaders.” The U.S. leadership would also be well advised to continue its strong security links to Jordan in ways that fully recognize Jordanian concerns. While in many cases, U.S. and Jordanian interests closely overlap, this may not always be the case, and one source of potential differences is Iraq. Despite strong improvements in the Iraqi security situation, Jordan may still be faced with a number of difficult decisions about how to address the danger of potential terrorism originating from Iraq should that country be stricken with new civil conflict after

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U.S. troops depart. The Jordanians have strong ties to a number of Sunni tribes and political groups which may aid them in addressing potential problems with terrorists. These links include ties with Sunni organizations and groups which are opposed to al-Qaeda, but are also deeply distrusted by the Iraqi government. After a U.S. withdrawal, it is conceivable that the Jordanian leaders may provide intelligence and supplies to anti-al-Qaeda Sunni groups as a way of protecting their eastern border and ensuring that Sunnis can defend themselves from any emerging Iranian-supported Shi’ite government in Iraq. The United States should not hurry to be disapproving of such links and consistently seek to understand Jordan’s need to advance core national values and protect its own survival. NOTES 1. Taylor Luck, “Jordanians Have Favourable View of Kingdom’s Foreign Policy,” Jordan Times, January 23, 2009. 2. Boulby, ch. 4.

APPENDIX A

Biographies

KING ABDULLAH I (1882–1951)

King Abdullah was the founder of modern Jordan (originally Transjordan). He was born in Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia in February 1882. At around age 11, he moved to join his father in Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and remained there for 16 years. From 1912 until 1914 he was a deputy in the Ottoman Parliament representing Mecca. Later, he became a key leader of the Arab Revolt against Turkey in alliance with the United Kingdom. After the war, Abdullah became Transjordan’s first emir [prince] and ruler under the League of Nations’ mandate administered by the United Kingdom. Following a number of years of as emir he took the title of king when Jordan became formally independent in 1946. Abdullah ruled the country for over 30 years in close alliance with the United Kingdom. King Abdullah was also a committed Arab nationalist who believed in the potential for the Arabs to reestablish their former greatness of pre-Ottoman times. He further believed that his own Hashemite family has a special role in leading and modernizing the Arab World. He worked extremely well with the leaders of most of the Transjordanian tribes and was highly effective in gaining their loyalties through political maneuvers and using money provided by the British to meet some of their needs. King Abdullah was ambitious to rule territories beyond Jordan and at various points in his reign sought to form a single political entity with Syria or Palestine. After the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war, he quickly annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem to become part of his kingdom. He fended off criticism of this action by noting that such an annexation was the only way to protect the territory from

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Appendix A

being seized by Israel. King Abdullah was often distrusted by the leaders of other Arab countries due to his open and intense ambition for Arab leadership. His ambitions were also irritating to the Iraqi branch of the Hashemite family since he sometimes suggested that Iraq might at some point merge with Transjordan and form a single political entity. As the oldest member of the Hashemite family in power in the and the only surviving member of the Arab Revolt after his brother Faisal’s death in 1933, he assumed he would be the leader of such an entity.1 King Abdullah is often described as having been pragmatic and realistic toward Israel. Once it became clear that the United Kingdom was going to evacuate Palestine, he hoped to divide the country between himself and the Jews seeking their own state with the areas designated as set aside for an Arab state absorbed into Transjordan. He further hoped that such an arrangement could lead to the division of Palestine without bloodshed but later escalated his demands to include the incorporation of all of Palestine into Transjordan with strong guarantees for Jewish autonomy and civil rights. This demand was unacceptable to the future Israelis. After the first Arab-Israeli war, he entered into secret negotiations with Israel on the possibility of establishing a peace treaty between the two countries. King Abdullah correctly assumed that Israel was becoming increasingly powerful and that Jordan could not stand alone against Israeli military power. He also rightly assumed that he could not count on other Arab states to help defend Jordan in times of need. King Abdullah was assassinated at age 69 by a Palestinian nationalist on July 20, 1951 because of his interest in peace with Israel. King Abdullah was not close to his sons Talal and Naif, but had an exceptionally good relationship with his grandson, Hussein, who later became king. King Hussein has maintained that his grandfather was the most important influence on his life, inculcating him with a sense of duty to his family, country, and the Arab nation. KING HUSSEIN (1935–1999)

King Hussein was Jordan’s third and longest reigning monarch. He was born on November 14, 1935 in Amman, and became the first native-born Jordanian king. He assumed office after his father, King Talal, abdicated in 1953, and he died in office in 1999. King Hussein has been the dominant figure in building a Jordanian national identity and establishing the domestic and foreign policy foundations of the Jordanian state. When King Hussein assumed office at age 17, Jordan was a poorly-defined political entity with an uncertain future. When King Hussein died at age 63, after 46 years in power, the political system that he established was stable and did not have the oppressive type of police state apparatus that existed in many other Arab countries. Jordan also had one of the most advanced qualities of life found in the Arab World despite an absence of oil and

Appendix A

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other significant natural resources.2 By the time King Hussein died, he was considered one of the most important statesmen produced by the modern Arab World. Like his grandfather, King Hussein was widely known as one of the Arab World’s leading moderates. He was also pro-Western and maintained a special relationship at first with the United Kingdom and then later with the United States. This relationship was often controversial in the Arab World, and the Jordanians often faced virulent criticism from self-described revolutionary powers who maintained that Western and Arab interests were deeply divergent and that Western influence therefore had to be resisted. This criticism was most virulent in the 1950s and 1960s. At this time of regional unrest, King Hussein also faced a variety of assassination attempts by both Palestinian nationalists and the agents of neighboring Arab regimes. During this time frame, he was deeply saddened by the murder of his cousin and friend King Faisal II of Iraq in 1958. Hussein and Faisal were around the same age and especially close due to the time they had spent together in school at Harrow in the United Kingdom. Later in his reign, Jordan under King Hussein’s leadership gained much wider regional acceptance and eventually considerable admiration. King Hussein was also deeply interested in Arab-Israeli peace for a variety of reasons, including the need to establish a working relationship with a much stronger neighbor and concerns that the other Arab states could sometimes be undependable if not treacherous allies . Throughout much of his career, King Hussein maintained confidential contacts with the Israelis including secret meetings with Israeli leaders that started in September 1963 and continued for decades. The existence of such meetings was extremely well known by the 1970s if not before, but reports of them were treated as propaganda by the Jordanians until they signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. At that point, the existence of the meetings and many of their details were made public. King Hussein considered the 1994 peace treaty with Israel to be of tremendous value to Jordan. This treaty had become possible because of a changing regional environment whereby Israel had undertaken serious public negotiations with the PLO. King Hussein was also able to work closely with the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had by then become a close friend. King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin had known each other for almost 20 years when the peace treaty was concluded. Throughout his life, King Hussein had an intense interest in military affairs and in foreign policy. He was less interested in economic matters, which he often delegated to subordinates. King Hussein’s two greatest mistakes have often been identified as ordering Jordan’s participation in the June 1967 war with Israel and tilting toward Iraq in the 1990 crisis over the invasion of Kuwait. Both decisions had severe consequences for Jordan, but it is not clear that he could have behaved otherwise in either instance due to the overwhelming public upsurge in Jordan for supporting President Nasser in 1967 and supporting Iraq in 1990. King Hussein

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told his biographer Avi Shlaim that Jordan would have faced a civil war if he did not support Egypt in 1967.3 King Hussein also hoped that an “Arab solution” could be found for the U.S.-Iraqi confrontation over Kuwait. This hope proved illusory, but the monarch’s credibility within his own kingdom was strengthened as a result of his efforts to prevent war. This rise in domestic popularity may have been useful for him in negotiating the controversial peace treaty with Israel. The king believed that 1994 presented a rare confluence of events that could allow peace to become a reality. These events included the PLO negotiations with Israel, his own strong standing with the Jordanian public, public awareness of the need to reestablish aid relations with the United States after disagreements over Iraq, and the presence of a pro-peace prime minister in Israel. KING ABDULLAH II (1962–)

King Abdullah II is King Hussein’s oldest son, who became Jordan’s fourth king in February 1999. He was born January 30, 1962 to King Hussein and his Britishborn second wife, Princess Muna (Antoinette Gardiner). The couple later divorced in 1972. King Abdullah entered Sandhurst in 1980 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Jordanian Army upon graduation in 1981. He then served as a Reconnaissance Troop Leader in a British Army unit in the United Kingdom and West Germany. He has also served with the Jordanian Air Force’s antitank wing and qualified as a Cobra helicopter attack pilot and tactics instructor. In early 1993, King Abdullah became the Deputy Commander of the Jordanian Special Forces Brigade. He became commander in November 1993. In 1996 he was instructed to organize a Special Operations Command (SOCOM) consisting of Jordan’s expanding Special Forces and other elite units. In 1998 he was promoted to the rank of Major General.4 He was also given an office at the Royal Court and in March 1998 accompanied his father to the United States, where he participated in some key discussions. Throughout his military career, King Abdullah has served with elite Special Forces units. He is deeply popular with the military and widely believed to embody key military virtues such as courage, self-discipline, a strong work ethic, and a willingness to assert himself on behalf of Jordanian principles. In 1999, Abdullah left the service to become king after having served as the commanding officer of the elite Jordanian Special Forces Command. He has continued the key policies of his father, including seeking close ties with the West and with other Arab countries. King Abdullah’s ties to the United States are particularly noteworthy and he is often viewed as even closer to Washington than his father. He is also frequently described as having close ties to the U.S. national security establishment developed through years of interaction with such individuals while he was in the military.5 King Abdullah also deeply distrusts Iran, and has irritated Tehran with various statements of concern about Iranian activities in Iraq and elsewhere.

Appendix A

Nevertheless, Abdullah continues to follow his father’s example in maintaining cautious contact with unfriendly countries. King Abdullah has also favored political reform, but has been criticized for going slow on expanding democracy. He also allows some domestic criticism of ties with Israel but has also sought to place limits on the expression of anti-Israeli anger. While King Abdullah’s first year in office was reasonably tranquil, he was soon faced with a number of Middle East crises which cause potential problems for Jordan, including a new Palestinian uprising against the Israelis, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the rise of Iranian power in the Gulf. King Abdullah continues to maintain exceptionally close ties to the Jordanian military and frequently visits various military headquarters and often attends various field training exercises. QUEEN NOOR AL HUSSEIN (1951–)

Queen Noor was King Hussein’s fourth and last wife. The king’s earlier marriages ended in divorce in two instances while his third wife, Queen Aliya, died in a fatal helicopter crash. Queen Noor is the former Lisa Halaby and a former U.S. citizen. She is of Lebanese heritage and is the daughter of Najeeb Halaby, a wealthy businessman who served as President John F. Kennedy’s aviation advisor. A graduate of Princeton University, she held a job in Iran before moving to Jordan in early 1977 to work for her father’s aviation company there. Ms. Halaby married King Hussein on June 15, 1978 after being intensively courted by him. As part of her transition to her new role, she changed her name to Noor al Hussein (Light of Hussein) and converted to Islam shortly before her marriage. She also dramatically improved her ability to speak Arabic and became the stepmother to her husband’s children by earlier marriages, including very young children from King Hussein’s marriage to Queen Alia. Her own marriage to King Hussein produced four children: Prince Hamza, Prince Hashim, Princess Iman, and Princess Raya. During King Hussein’s later life, Queen Noor often served as a spokesperson for Jordan in the United States. He also valued her advice on U.S. foreign policy. She is the author of an insightful, bestselling autobiographical book, Leap of Faith. Since her husband’s death in 1999, she has continued her interest in environmental causes and other charities, but has assumed a much less visible profile than in previous years. Queen Noor is also the chair of the King Hussein Foundation, which was created in 1999 to help facilitate social and economic progress throughout the kingdom. The King Hussein Foundation has 450 staff members and hundreds of Jordanian and international partner organizations.6 She has also been active in efforts to support nuclear disarmament and de-mining efforts. QUEEN RANIA (1970–)

Queen Rania is the wife of King Abdullah II. She is of Palestinian background and grew up as part of the Palestinian expatriate community in Kuwait. She was

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born in Kuwait on August 31, 1970 and attended primary and secondary school there. She and her family were forced out of Kuwait as part of a policy of group punishment in the aftermath of the 1990–91 Gulf Crisis and Gulf War, when some Palestinians collaborated with the Iraqis. Upon liberation, Kuwaitis were no longer willing to accept a large Palestinian presence in their country and most of these people were expelled. This event placed the future queen squarely in the middle of one of the more recent traumas of Palestinian exile life. Queen Rania’s father is a physician and her family originally comes from the town of Tulkarm in the West Bank. She earned a business degree at the American University in Cairo. King Abdullah II and Queen Rania were married on June 10, 1993, at which time she became the youngest queen in the world. Queen Rania is one of the most high-profile and modern first ladies in the Arab World. As with the previous queen, the Jordanian media closely covers her activities. She has accompanied her husband on a number of trips abroad and is guardedly willing to speak out on controversial issues. She expressed her concern for Palestinian lives during the January 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza, and both she and the king publicly gave blood to help the wounded in Gaza and to encourage others to give. Queen Rania is publicly supportive of a number of charities dealing with issues such as children’s rights, fighting global illiteracy. She and King Abdullah II have four children including Crown Prince Hussein, Princess Iman, Princess Salma and Prince Hashem. Queen Rania’s Palestinian heritage and her personal experience with key Palestinian difficulties are generally considered assets for the monarchy due to the large number of Jordanians of Palestinian heritage. NOTES 1. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 22. 2. Mohammad Ghazal, “Jordanians Enjoy Second-Highest Quality of Life in Arab World,” Jordan Times, January 10, 2010. This statement is based on a U.S.-based survey including cost of living, culture and leisure, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety, and other factors. 3. Shlaim, Israel and Palestine, 327. 4. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 593. 5. Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 153–155. 6. “King Hussein Foundation Marks Tenth Anniversary,” Jordan Times, July 7, 2009.

APPENDIX B

Chronology

April 1921

Formation of the first government of the Kingdom of Transjordan from territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Arab Revolt leader Abdullah bin Hussein becomes emir and ruler.

March 22, 1946

Anglo-Transjordanian treaty negotiations conclude, allowing for Transjordanian independence with certain qualifications. Emir Abdullah becomes king.

November 29, 1947

UN General Assembly Resolution calling for the partition of Palestine.

March 15, 1948

Anglo-Jordanian Treaty of Alliance signed and enters into effect.

May 14, 1948

Israel becomes an independent state.

1948–49

First Arab-Israeli war. Transjordanian troops fight credibly and control the West Bank of the Jordan River and the city of East Jerusalem at the time of the cease-fire.

April 24, 1950

The West Bank and East Jerusalem are formally annexed to Jordan in an action by the Jordanian Parliament ratified by the King.

July 20, 1951

King Abdullah I murdered at the al-Aqsa mosque in the presence of his grandson, Prince Hussein.

September 6, 1951

King Abdullah’s son, Crown Prince Talal, becomes king.

January 1, 1952

New Jordanian Constitution is established.

August 11, 1952

King Talal abdicates.

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Appendix B May 2, 1953

Hussein becomes king of Jordan.

December 1955

Jordan experiences the worst riots in its history due to public hostility to Jordan’s prospective membership in the Baghdad Pact.

October 29–November 7, 1956

Suez War. Israel, the United Kingdom, and France attack Egypt to depose President Nasser. Nasser survives, largely due to U.S. unwillingness to support the nations attacking Egypt.

March 14, 1957

Termination of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty.

April 1957

Zarqa coup attempt. King Hussein rallies troops. British paratroopers intervene to support Jordanian government.

April 1957

U.S. military aid to Jordan begins.

February 14, 1958

A hasty federation is formed between Iraq and Jordan in response to an earlier Syria/Egypt union.

July 14, 1958

Iraqi Revolution deposes the Hashemite monarchy in that country and ends the Iraq-Jordan union.

August 29, 1960

Jordanian Prime Minister Hazza Majali was assassinated by Syrian agents in Amman in a bombing plot that might have also included King Hussein.

June 5–10, 1967

Six Day War in which Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, capturing significant amounts of Arab territory including the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and East Jerusalem.

March 21, 1968

Battle of Karameh. Jordanian and Palestinian forces engage in a major clash with the Israel military. Palestinian force claims victory over Israeli forces, although this claim is not credible.

September 17–27, 1970

Jordanian Civil War. Heavy combat occurs as the Jordanian army destroys the military and political power of Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan.

October 6–26, 1973

October 1973 Arab-Israeli war (also called Yom Kippur War). Jordan sends limited numbers of troops while refusing to open a third front with Israel.

October 26–29, 1974

Rabat Arab Summit designates Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. King Hussein reluctantly accepts the resolution on a formal level.

1979

Iranian Shah is deposed. King Hussein is deeply concerned by the ouster of his friend and colleague by Islamic revolutionaries.

September 17, 1980

Iran-Iraq War begins with an Iraqi invasion of Iran. Jordan strongly supports Iraq.

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December 9, 1987

Palestinian intifada, or uprising, begins in the Gaza Strip and spreads to the West Bank.

July 31, 1988

King Hussein announces the disengagement of Jordan from the West Bank.

August 1, 1988

United Nations sponsored cease-fire goes into effect, ending the Iran-Iraq War.

November 8, 1989

As part of a wide-ranging program of reform, Jordan holds its first national elections since the 1960s.

August 2, 1990

Iraq invades Kuwait. Iraq illegally annexes that country shortly thereafter.

January 16–February 28, 1991

Gulf War between Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition. Jordan alienates the United States by remaining outside of the coalition and opposing the war.

September 13, 1993

Oslo Accords signed, beginning an era of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

October 26, 1994

Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty signed.

November 4, 1995

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a young Israeli extremist opposed to the peace process.

February 7, 1999

King Hussein dies of cancer.

February 7, 1999

King Abdullah II becomes the new king.

July 11–25, 2000

Camp David II Summit fails to produce agreement among Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Oslo peace process collapses.

September 2000

Second (al-Aqsa) Intifada begins and lasts until 2005.

September 11, 2001

Al-Qaeda terrorists attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center Twin Towers. Jordan reacts with revulsion.

March 2002

Arab League peace plan announced.

March 2003

U.S- led forces attack Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. Journalistic accounts state limited numbers of U.S. forces are operating out of Jordan.

November 9, 2004

Amman Message issued as a denunciation of terrorism and Islamic extremism.

November 11, 2004

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies. Mahmoud Abbas becomes Palestinian Prime Minister.

November 9, 2005

Al-Qaeda terrorists from Iraq bomb three major hotels in Amman with significant loss of life.

January 25, 2006

Islamist group Hamas unexpectedly wins Palestinian parliamentary elections.

June 7, 2006

Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi killed in Iraq. Jordanian intelligence is widely believed to have helped locate him.

July 2, 2009

Prince Hussein named crown prince at age 15.


APPENDIX C

Documents

DOCUMENT 1 The Arab League Peace Initiative Adopted at the Beirut Arab Summit, March 2002

The Council of Arab States at the Summit Level at its 14th Ordinary Session, Reaffirming the resolution taken in June 1996 at the Cairo Extra-Ordinary Arab Summit that a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic option of the Arab countries, to be achieved in accordance with international legality, and which would require a comparable commitment on the part of the Israeli government, Having listened to the statement made by his royal highness Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, crown prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in which his highness presented his initiative calling for full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land-for-peace principle, and Israel’s acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context of a comprehensive peace with Israel; Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council: 1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

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Appendix C 2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm: I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon. II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194. III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. 3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following: I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region. II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace. 4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries. 5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighbourliness and provide future generations with security, stability and prosperity. 6. Invites the international community and all countries and organisations to support this initiative. 7. Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union.

Source: As cited by the British Broadcasting Corporation, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/middle_east/1844214.stm. DOCUMENT 2 The Amman Message (November 2004)

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Peace and blessings upon His chosen Prophet, and upon his household, his noble blessed companions, and upon all the messengers and prophets: God Almighty has said: O humankind! We created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes that you may know each other. Truly the most honored of you before God is the most pious of you. (49:13)

This is a declaration to our brethren in the lands of Islam and throughout the world that Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is proud

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to issue during the blessed month of Ramadan in which the Quran descended as guidance to humankind and as clarifications for guidance and discernment. (2:185) In this declaration we speak frankly to the [Islamic] nation, at this difficult juncture in its history, regarding the perils that beset it. We are aware of the challenges confronting the nation, threatening its identity, assailing its tenets (kalima), and working to distort its religion and harm what is sacred to it. Today the magnanimous message of Islam faces a vicious attack from those who through distortion and fabrication try to portray Islam as an their enemy. It is also under attack from some who claim affiliation with Islam and commit irresponsible acts in its name. This magnanimous message that the Originator—great is His power—revealed to the unlettered Prophet Muhammad—God’s blessings and peace upon him, and that was carried by his successors and the members of his household after him, is an address of brotherhood, humanity, and a religion that encompasses all human activity. It states the truth directly, commands what is right, forbids what is wrong, honors the human being, and accepts others. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has embraced the path of promoting the true luminous image of Islam, halting the accusations against it, and repelling the attacks upon it. This is in accordance with the inherited spiritual and historical responsibility carried by the Hashemite monarchy, honored as direct descendants of the Prophet, the Messenger of God—peace and blessings upon him—who carried the message. For five decades, his late Majesty King Hussein Bin Talal—God rest his soul—demonstrated this way with the vigorous effort that he exerted. Since the day he took the flag, His Majesty King Abdullah II has continued this effort, with resolution and determination, as a service to Islam, fortifying the solidarity of 1.2 billion Muslims who comprise one fifth of humanity, preventing their marginalization or extrication from the movement of human society, and affirming their role in building human civilization and participating in its progress during our present age. Islam is founded upon basic principles, the fundamentals are attesting to the unity of God (tawhid Allah); belief in the message of His Prophet; continuous connection with the Creator through ritual prayer (salat); training and rectifying the soul through the fast of Ramadan; safeguarding one another by paying the alms tax (zakat); the unity of the people through the annual pilgrimage (hajj) to God’s Sanctified House, [performed] by those who are able; and [observing] His rulings that regulate human behavior in all its dimensions. Over history these [basic principles] have formed a strong and cohesive nation and a great civilization. They bear witness to noble principles and values that verify the good of humanity, whose foundation is the oneness of the human species, and that people are equal in rights and obligations, peace and justice, realizing comprehensive

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security, mutual social responsibility, being good to one’s neighbor, protecting belongings and property, honoring pledges, and more. Together, these are principles that provide common ground for the followers of religions and [different] groups of people. That is because the origin of divine religions is one, and Muslims believe in all Messengers of God and do not differentiate between any of them. Denying the message of any one of them is a deviation from Islam. This establishes a wide platform for the believers of [different] religions to meet the other upon common ground for the service of human society, without encroaching upon creedal distinctions or upon intellectual freedom. For all of this we base ourselves upon His saying: The messenger believes in what has been revealed unto him from his Lord as do the believers. Each one believes in God and His angels and His scriptures and His messengers. We make no distinction between any of His messengers—and they say: “We hear, and we obey. [Grant us] Your forgiveness, our Lord. Unto You is the journeying.” (2:285)

Islam honors every human being, regardless of his color, race or religion: We have honored the sons of Adam, provided them transport on land and sea, sustained them with good things, and conferred on them special favors above a great part of our creation. (17:70) Islam also affirms that the way of calling [others] to God is founded upon kindness and gentleness: Call to the path of your Lord with wisdom and a beautiful exhortation, and debate with them in that which is most beautiful (ahsan). (16:125) Furthermore, it shuns cruelty and violence in how one faces and addresses [others]: It is by some Mercy of God that you were gentle to them. Were you severe—cruel hearted— they would have broken away from you. So pardon them and ask forgiveness for them and consult with them in the conduct of affairs. And when you are resolved, put your trust in God; truly God loves those who trust [in Him]. (3:159)

Islam has made clear that the goal of its message is realizing mercy and good for all people. The Transcendent has said, We did not send you [Muhammad] but out of mercy for all creatures. (21:107) And the Prophet Muhammad—blessings and peace upon Him—said, “The Merciful has mercy upon those who are merciful, be merciful to those on earth, He who is in heaven will be merciful unto you.” Islam calls for treating others as one desires to be treated. It urges the tolerance and forgiveness that express the nobility of the human being: The recompense for an evil is an evil equal thereto, but who forgives and reconciles, his recompense is from God. (42:40) Good and evil are not equal. Repel with what is most virtuous. Then he between whom and you there is enmity will be as if he were an intimate friend. (41:34) Islam confirms the principle of justice in interacting with others, safeguarding their rights, and confirms that one must not deny people their possessions:

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And let not the hatred of others make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is closer to piety; (5:8) God commands you to return trusts to their owners, and if you judge between people, you shall judge with justice; (4:58) So give [full] measure and [full] weight and do not deny the people their goods, and work no corruption in the land after it has been set right. (7:85) Islam requires respect for pledges and covenants, and adhering to what has been specified; and it forbids treachery and treason: Fulfill the covenant of God when you have entered into it, and break not oaths after they have been confirmed and you have made God your surety; truly God knows what you do. (16:91) Islam recognizes the noble station of [human] life, so there is to be no fighting against non-combatants, and no assault upon civilians and their properties, children at their mothers’ bosom, students in their schools, nor upon elderly men and women. Assault upon the life of a human being, be it murder, injury or threat, is an assault upon the right to life among all human beings. It is among the gravest of sins; for human life is the basis for the prosperity of humanity: Whoever kills a soul for other than slaying a soul or corruption upon the earth it is as if he has killed the whole of humanity, and whoever saves a life, it is as if has revived the whole of humanity. (5:32) The primordial religion of Islam is founded upon equanimity, balance, moderation, and facilitation: Thus have we made of you a middle nation that you might be witnesses over the people, and the Messenger a witness over yourselves. (2:143) The Prophet Muhammad—peace and blessings upon him—said: “Facilitate and do not make difficult, bear good tidings and do not deter.” Islam has provided the foundation for the knowledge, reflection and contemplation that has enabled the creation of this deep-rooted civilization that was a crucial link by which the West arrived at the gates of modern knowledge, and in whose accomplishments non-Muslims participated, as a consequence of its being a comprehensive human civilization. No day has passed but that this religion has been at war against extremism, radicalism and fanaticism, for they veil the intellect from foreseeing negative consequences [of one’s actions]. Such blind impetuousness falls outside the human regulations pertaining to religion, reason and character. They are not from the true character of the tolerant, accepting Muslim. Islam rejects extremism, radicalism and fanaticism—just as all noble, heavenly religions reject them—considering them as recalcitrant ways and forms of injustice. Furthermore, it is not a trait that characterizes a particular nation; it is an aberration that has been experienced by all nations, races and religions. They are not particular to one people; truly they are a phenomenon that every people, every race and every religion has known. We denounce and condemn extremism, radicalism and fanaticism today, just as our forefathers tirelessly denounced and opposed them throughout

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Islamic history. They are the ones who affirmed, as do we, the firm and unshakeable understanding that Islam is a religion of [noble] character traits in both its ends and means; a religion that strives for the good of the people, their happiness in this life and the next; and a religion that can only be defended in ways that are ethical; and the ends do not justify the means in this religion. The source of relations between Muslims and others is peace; for there is no fighting [permitted] when there is no aggression. Even then, [it must be done with] benevolence, justice and virtue: God does not prevent you, as regards those who do not fight you in religion’s [cause], nor drive you from your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: truly God loves the just; (60:8) Then if they cease, let there be no aggression, save against the oppressors. (2:193)

On religious and moral grounds, we denounce the contemporary concept of terrorism that is associated with wrongful practices, whatever their source and form may be. Such acts are represented by aggression against human life in an oppressive form that transgresses the rulings of God, frightening those who are secure, violating peaceful civilians, finishing off the wounded, and killing prisoners; and they employ unethical means, such as destroying buildings and ransacking cities: Do not kill the soul that God has made sacrosanct, save for justice. (6:151) We condemn these practices and believe that resisting oppression and confirming justice should be a legitimate undertaking through legitimate means. We call on the people to take the necessary steps to achieve the strength and steadfastness for building identity and preserving rights. We realize that over history extremism has been instrumental in destroying noble achievements in great civilizations, and that the tree of civilization withers when malice takes hold and hearts are shut. In all its shapes, extremism is a stranger to Islam, which is founded upon equanimity and tolerance. No human whose heart has been illumined by God could be a radical extremist. At the same time, we decry the campaign of brazen distortion that portrays Islam as a religion that encourages violence and institutionalizes terrorism. We call upon the international community to work earnestly to implement international laws and honor the international mandates and resolutions issued by the United Nations, ensuring that all parties accept them and that they be enacted without double standards, to guarantee the return of rights to their [rightful] holders and the end of oppression. Achieving this will be a significant contribution to uprooting the causes of violence, fanaticism and extremism. The way of this great religion that we are honored to belong to calls us to affiliate with and participate in modern society, and to contribute to its elevation and progress, helping one another with every faculty [to achieve] good and to comprehend, desiring justice for all peoples, while faithfully proclaiming the truth

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[of our religion], and sincerely expressing the soundness of our faith and beliefs— all of which are founded upon God’s call for coexistence and piety. [We are called] to work toward renewing our civilization, based upon the guidance of religion, and following upon established practical intellectual policies. The primary components of these policies comprise developing methods for preparing preachers, with the goal of ensuring that they realize the spirit of Islam and its methodology for structuring human life, as well as providing them with knowledge of contemporary culture, so that they are able to interact with their communities on the basis of awareness and insight: Say, “This is my way. I, and those who follow me, call for God with insight;” (12:108) taking advantage of the communication revolution to refute the doubts that the enemies of Islam are arousing, in a sound, intellectual manner, without weakness or agitation, and with a style that attracts the reader, the listener and the viewer; consolidating the educational structure for individual Muslims, who are confident in their knowledge and abilities, working to form the integral identity that protects against corrupting forces; interest in scientific research and working with the modern sciences upon the basis of the Islamic perspective that distinguishes between creation, life and the human being; benefiting from modern achievements in the fields of science and technology; adopting an Islamic approach for realizing the comprehensive development that is founded upon [maintaining] the delicate balance between the spiritual, economic and social dimensions [of life]; providing for human rights and basic liberties, ensuring life, dignity and security, and guaranteeing basic needs; administering the affairs of society in accordance with the principles of justice and consultation; and benefiting from the goods and mechanisms for adopting democracy that human society has presented. Hope lies with the scholars of our Nation, that through the reality of Islam and its values they will enlighten the intellects of our youth—the ornament of our present age and the promise of our future. The scholars shield our youth from the danger of sliding down the paths of ignorance, corruption, closemindedness and subordination. It is our scholars who illuminate for them the paths of tolerance, moderation, and goodness, and prevent them from [falling] into the abysses of extremism and fanaticism that destroy the spirit and body We look to our scholars to lead us in partaking of our role and verifying our priorities, that they may be exemplars in religion, character, conduct, and discerning enlightened speech, presenting to the nation their noble religion that brings ease [in all matters] and its practical laws in which lie the awakening and joy of the nation. Among the individuals of the nation and throughout the regions of the world, they disseminate good, peace and benevolence, through subtle knowledge, insightful wisdom and political guidance in all matters, uniting and

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not dividing, appeasing hearts and not deterring them, looking to the horizons of fulfillment to meet the requirements and challenges of the 21st century. We ask God to prepare for our Islamic Nation the paths of renaissance, prosperity and advancement; to shield it from the evils of extremism and closemindedness; to preserve its rights, sustain its glory, and uphold its dignity. What an excellent Lord is he, and what an excellent Supporter. God Almighty says: This is My straight path, so follow it. And follow not the [other] ways, lest you be parted from His way. This has He ordained for you, that you may be God-fearing. (6:152-153) The last of our supplications is that praise be to God, Lord of the worlds. Amman The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Ramadan 1425 Hijri November 2004 AD Source: http://ammanmessage.com. DOCUMENT 3 Declaration Issued by the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan on 12 July 2006 and posted on the Amman Message Official Website

At an official national meeting at the Prime Minister’s office which included His Excellency the Prime Minister, the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Jordan, and a number of respected members of parliament as well as government representatives, the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood affirmed, in light of this official exchange, that it: 1. Will adhere to established constitutional principles and binding law; affirms its respect for the democratic system, multi-party politics, and majority opinion; and will uphold peaceful methods and dialogue as principles for dealing with differences and disagreements. 2. Will absolutely place Jordanian national interests above all other interests, and rejects giving precedence to any other area at the expense of Jordan and its interests, regardless of circumstance or justification. 3. Clearly and explicitly declares its allegiance to God Most High, then to the nation and the king. 4. Affirms that it explicitly rejects terrorism in all its forms, whatever its source, and rejects all terrorist acts and practices, especially those that target Jordan and its greater interests, and moreover rejects the terrorist acts that have targeted Jordan’s security, its institutions, and its citizens—in particular the hotel bombings. 5. Rejects the destructive takfiri ideology in all its forms, and declares its determination to combat this ideology. It also declares it will uphold the con-sensus arrived at by the

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scholars and thinkers of the Islamic community from all eight schools of Islamic Law in July 2005 (in Amman, Jordan), namely, that whoever follows any of these schools of law cannot be declared a disbeliever, and that their life, property, and honor are inviolable. 6. Upholds the (Islamic Fiqh Academy’s) Amman Conference (in June 2006) declaration regarding the issuing of fatwas, which affirmed the importance (of the issuing of fatwas), and that it is not permissible for an individual or group to issue fatwas without certain individual qualifications set out by all of the eight schools of Islamic Law. 7. Explicitly rejects any statements that offend the sensibilities of those who lost loved ones in the Amman hotel bombings, as well as the sensibilities of the Jordanian people as a whole.

The Islamic movement hopes to settle unresolved issues, and reinforce the spirit of trust which strengthens our national unity and national security, and to expend utmost efforts to realize the goals of our people and our Ummah, and to establish serious dialogue as a method of working with the government and with political and civic forces in this country. And God is Most Great, and all praise belongs to God. THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD—JORDAN July 12th, 2006 Source: http://ammanmessage.com.

DOCUMENT 4 Address by King Abdullah to a Joint Session of Congress, March 7, 2007

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Honorable Senators and Members of Congress, My friends, Thank you for such a warm welcome. It is an honor to stand, as my father did, before this historic institution. Allow me to thank you, on behalf of all Jordanians. Jordan and the United States have had a long friendship. It is a special privilege to be here in the year that the American Congress welcomes its first woman Speaker, and its first Muslim-American member of Congress. These milestones send a message around the world about the America I know so well, a place where individuality is nurtured, a place where hard work is rewarded, a place where achievement is celebrated. The America I know so well believes that opportunity and justice belong to all. In my days in Massachusetts, I also learned something of New England virtues. There wasn’t actually a law against talking too much, but there was definitely an attitude that you didn’t speak unless you could improve on silence.

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Today, I must speak; I cannot be silent. I must speak about a cause that is urgent for your people and for mine. I must speak about peace in the Middle East. I must speak about peace replacing the division, war, and conflict that have brought such disaster for the region and for the world. This was the cause that brought my father King Hussein here in 1994. With Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin beside him, he spoke of a new vision for the Middle East. Their courageous work for peace received bipartisan support from your leaders. And there was tremendous hope for a new era. There was tremendous hope that people would be brought together. There was tremendous hope that a final and comprehensive settlement of all the issues would be achieved. Thirteen years later, that work is still not completed. And until it is, we are all at risk. We are all at risk of being victims of further violence resulting from ideologies of terror and hatred. It is our greatest and most urgent duty to prevent such dangers to our region, to your country and to the world. The choice is ours: an open world full of promise, progress and justice for all; or a closed world of divided peoples, fear, and unfulfilled dreams. Nothing impacts this choice more than the future of peace in the Middle East. I come to you today at a rare, and indeed historic, moment of opportunity, when there is a new international will to end the catastrophe. And I believe that America, with its enduring values, its moral responsibility, and yes, its unprecedented power, must play the central role. Some may say, ‘Peace is difficult, we can live with the status quo.’ But, my friends, violent killings are taking place as part of this status quo. Palestinians and Israelis are not the only victims. We saw the violence ricochet into destruction in Lebanon last summer. And people around the world have been the victims of terrorists and extremists, who use the grievances of this conflict to legitimize and encourage acts of violence. Americans and Jordanians and others have suffered and survived terrorist attacks. In this room, there are representatives of American families and Jordanian families who have lost loved ones. Thousands of people have paid the highest price, the loss of their life. Thousands more continue to pay this terrible price, for their loved ones will never return. Are we going to let these thousands of lives be taken in vain? Has it become acceptable to lose that most basic of human rights? The right to live? The status quo is also pulling the region and the world towards greater danger. As public confidence in the peace process has dropped, the cycle of crises is spinning faster, and with greater potential for destruction. Changing military doctrine and weaponry pose new dangers. Increasing numbers of external actors are intervening with their own strategic agendas, raising new dangers of proliferation

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and crisis. These are groups that seek even more division: faith against faith, nation against nation, community against community. Any further erosion in the situation would be serious for the future of moderation and coexistence, in the region and beyond. Have we all lost the will to live together in peace celebrating one another’s strengths and differences? Some may say, ‘But there are other, urgent challenges.’ How can there be anything more urgent than the restoration of a world where all people, not only some people, all people have the opportunity to live peacefully? This is not only a moral imperative, it is essential to the future of our world, because long-term, violent crisis is the enemy of all global prosperity and progress. Certainly, our era faces critical issues. There is great public concern here, just as in our region, about the conflict in Iraq. The entire international community has vital decisions to make about the path forward, and how to ensure Iraq’s security, unity, and future. But we cannot lose sight of a profound reality. The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine. There are those who say, ‘It’s not our business.’ But this Congress knows: there are no bystanders in the 21st Century, there are no curious onlookers, there is no one who is not affected by the division and hatred that is present in our world. Some will say: ‘This is not the core issue in the Middle East.’ I come here today as your friend to tell you that this is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world. The security of all nations and the stability of our global economy are directly affected by the Middle East conflict. Across oceans, the conflict has estranged societies that should be friends. I meet Muslims thousands of miles away who have a deep, personal response to the suffering of the Palestinian people. They want to know how it is, that ordinary Palestinians are still without rights and without a country. They ask whether the West really means what it says about equality and respect and universal justice. Yes, my friends, today I must speak. I cannot be silent. Sixty years of Palestinian dispossession, forty years under occupation, a stop-andgo peace process, all this has left a bitter legacy of disappointment and despair, on all sides. It is time to create a new and different legacy, one that begins right now; one that can set a positive tone for the American and Middle East relationship; one that can restore hope to our region’s people, to your people, and to the people of this precious world. Nothing can achieve that more effectively, nothing can assert America’s moral vision more clearly, nothing can reach and teach the world’s youth more directly, than your leadership in a peace process that delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year.

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How do we get there? Not by a solution imposed by one side. A lasting peace can only be built on understanding, agreement and compromise. It begins with courage and vision. We, all of us, must take risks for peace. The Arab states recognized that reality in 2002, when we unanimously approved the Arab Peace Initiative. It puts forward a path for both sides, to achieve what people want and need: a collective peace treaty with Israel and normal relations with every Arab state, collective security guarantees for all the countries of the region, including Israel, an end to the conflict, a dream every Israeli citizen has longed for since the creation of Israel, and an agreed solution to the refugee problem, a withdrawal from Arab territories occupied since 1967, and a sovereign, viable, and independent Palestine. The commitment we made in the Arab Peace Initiative is real. And our states are involved in ongoing efforts to advance a fair, just, and comprehensive peace. His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia initiated the 2002 proposal; today, he continues to rally international support. Momentum is also building among Muslim countries outside the Arab world. Ten days ago, in Islamabad, the foreign ministers of key Muslim states met. They came together to assure Palestinians and Israelis that they are not alone, that we back their effort to make and build peace. The goal must be a peace in which all sides gain. It must be anchored in security and opportunity for all. It must be a peace that will free young Palestinians to focus on a future of progress and prosperity. It must be a peace that makes Israel a part of the neighborhood, a neighborhood that extends from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, across the breadth of the southern Mediterranean, to the coast of the Indian Ocean. It must be a peace that enables the entire region to look forward with excitement and hope, putting its resources into productive growth, partnering across borders to advance development, finding opportunities, and solving common challenges. This goal is visionary, but my friends, it is attainable. History shows that longtime adversaries can define new relationships of peace and cooperation. The groundwork for a comprehensive, final settlement is already in place. At Taba, as in the Geneva Accords, the parties have outlined the parameters of the solution. But we need all hands on deck. The international community, especially the United States, must be engaged in moving the process forward to achieve real results. Above all, we must make our process serve our purpose. We must achieve an agreed solution to the conflict.

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Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Honorable Members, Your responsibility today is paramount. Your potential to help Palestinians and Israelis find peace is unrivalled. This is because the people of the region still regard the United States as the key to peace, the one country most capable of bringing the two sides closer together, holding them accountable, and making a just settlement reality. Time after time, there has been progress towards peace when Americans have actively engaged. Camp David, Madrid, Wye River: nearly every breakthrough was accomplished when America was determined to help the parties succeed. On behalf of all those who seek and strive for peace in my part of the world, I ask you now to exert that leadership once again. We ask you to join with us in an historic effort of courage and vision. We ask you to hear our call, to honor the spirit of King Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin, and help fulfill the aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace today. Let me reaffirm that Jordan is committed to playing a positive role in the peace process. It is part of our larger commitment to global co-existence and progress. Ours is an Islamic country with a proud record of diversity, moderation, and shared respect. Allow me to say, we thank the Congress and the Administration for supporting Jordan’s progress and development. I deeply value the partnership between our peoples, and the contributions of so many Americans to the future of our country. My friends, “A decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small.” That’s how President Roosevelt—the great F.D.R.—described the basis of American foreign policy. He pledged American support for the four freedoms, freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, everywhere in the world. The Four Freedoms speech was given right here, before Congress. And that’s entirely fitting. Because it is here in the People’s House, that the voices and values of America have made hope real for so many people. Today, the people of the Middle East are searching for these four freedoms. Today, the people of the Middle East are searching for new hope, hope for a future of prosperity and peace. We have seen the danger and destruction of violence, hatred, and injustice. But we have also seen what people can achieve when they are empowered, when they break down walls, when they commit to the future. And we know that Middle East peace can be a global beginning, creating new possibilities for our region and the entire world. We look to you to play an historic role. Eleven American presidents and thirty American congresses have already faced this ongoing crisis. For not the future

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generation, but the generation alive today, let us say together: No more! Let us say together: Let’s solve this! Let us say together: Yes, we will achieve this! No Palestinian father should be helpless to feed his family and build a future for his sons and daughters. No Israeli mother should fear when her child boards a bus. Not one more generation should grow up thinking that violence and conflict are the norm. As Roosevelt also said, “the justice of morality must and will win in the end.” But he knew that it was up to responsible nations to stand up for justice when injustice threatens. This is our challenge as well. And we must not leave it to another generation to meet this challenge. Thirteen years ago, my father was here to talk about his hopes for peace. Today, we are talking about a promise that is within our reach. We can wait no longer and that is why I am here before you. We must work together to restore Palestine, a nation in despair and without hope. We must work together to restore peace, hope and opportunity to the Palestinian people. And in so doing, we will begin a process of building peace, not only throughout the region, but throughout the world. How much more bloodshed and how many more lives will it cost for this grave situation to be resolved? I say: No more bloodshed and no more lives pointlessly taken! The young boy, traveling to school with his brother in Palestine, let him have a life of peace. The mother, watching with fear as her children board a bus in Israel, let her have a life of peace. The father in Lebanon, working hard to provide an education for his children, let him have a life of peace. The little girl, born in Iraq, with her wide eyes full of wonder, let her have a life of peace. The family, together eating their evening meal, in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, let them all have a life of peace. Today my friends, we must speak; we cannot be silent. The next time a Jordanian, a Palestinian, or an Israeli comes before you, let it be to say: Thank you for helping peace become a reality. Thank you very much. Source: Official Website of King Abdullah II of Jordan, http://www.kingab dullah.jo/press_room/speech page.php?ki_serial=440.

Glossary Alternative Homeland approach — This is the political line favored by some leaders of the Israeli right that says that Jordan is an alternative home for the Palestinians or that “Jordan is Palestine.” These assertions are terrifying to most Jordanians because they associate such statements with potential mass expulsions of Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan, leading to the possible collapse of the Jordanian economy and demographic balance. Support for this approach declined dramatically following the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. Arab Legion — A Jordanian police and paramilitary organization created with British aid to provide security within the state of Transjordan (later Jordan). This force later gave up its police function and focused more directly on military missions. It was renamed the Jordanian Arab Army in 1956. Arab Cold War — The political conflict of the 1950s and 1960s that was dominated by hostility between Arab revolutionary republics such as Nasser’s Egypt and conservative, pro-Western monarchies such as Jordan. Arab League (League of Arab States) — A regional organization that was established in 1945 to coordinate collaboration between the Arab states and advance the interests of Arab countries. The 2002 Arab League peace plan is strongly endorsed by Jordan as a potential solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arab Revolt (or Great Arab Revolt) — The Arab uprising against the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Arab Revolt was declared by Sharif Hussein of Mecca, the patriarch of the Hashemite family at that time. Ba’athism — An Arab ideology that serves as the basis for the current government in Syria and the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein. Ba’athism is secular, pro-socialist, and strongly embraces the concept of

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Arab nationalism. Jordan has a small, legal Ba’ath party with no representation in Parliament and about 500 members. Balfour Declaration — A British government declaration in 1917 that stated that the United Kingdom looked with favor on a national homeland for the Jews being established in Palestine. It also stated that Jewish national rights were not to be advanced in ways that undermined the rights of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. Black September — The name that some Palestinian supporters use to describe the Jordanian civil war of September 1970. A Palestinian terrorist organization seeking revenge against Jordan for the 1970 conflict also called itself Black September and committed serious acts of terrorism against both Jordanian and Israeli targets, including the assassination of a Jordanian prime minister. Camp David process — The peace effort that began in the late 1970s and eventually led to a 1978 summit meeting at Camp David that included Egyptian President Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The summit laid the groundwork for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, but failed to produce a region wide set of peace agreements as the parties had hope to achieve. No Arab countries supported the Camp David process except for Egypt, although there was a strong effort to bring Jordan into these talks. East Bank — The area of Jordan that was once known as Transjordan and comprised the original territory of the state. The East Bank, which was originally dominated by Tranjordanian tribes, is often contrasted to the Palestinian West Bank. East Bankers who trace their heritage to this area of Jordan are often considered especially loyal to the Hashemite monarchy. Fatah — The largest secular Palestinian political movement. Originally a guerrilla organization, it now considers itself to be a political party and provides the leadership of the Palestinian Authority created by the Oslo Process in 1993. Gaza Strip — The small (139 square mile) strip of Palestinian territory adjacent to southwest Israel which is now the stronghold for the Islamist organization Hamas. Despite its small size, over 1.5 million Palestinians live in this area. General Intelligence Directorate (GID) — The most important of the Jordanian intelligence services. It was created in 1964 and has primary responsibility for Jordanian external and internal security. Hamas — A militant Palestinian organization that was founded by the leaders of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood during the first intifada. It is regarded with distrust by the Jordanian authorities. Hashemites — The family of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. In modern times, they have provided the leadership of the monarchies in Jordan and Iraq. After the 1958 Iraqi Revolution, Jordan was the only remaining Arab state to be ruled by a Hashemite dynasty.

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Hejaz — The territory within what is now Saudi Arabia that includes the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Prior to World War I, it was a center of Hashemite power. Intifada (first) — An Arabic word meaning “shaking off ” which was used to describe the Palestinian uprising against Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from 1987 until 1993. During this conflict, Palestinians made extensive use of rock-throwing, slingshots, and other means of resistance that were usually below the threshold of deadly force. Intifada (second) — Also called the al-Aqsa Intifada. A much more violent uprising characterized by extensive Palestinian use of suicide bombings. The second intifada is generally considered to have ended in 2006, although violence between the two sides has continued sporadically. Islamic Action Front (IAF) — Jordan’s most important political party, which is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Knesset — Israel’s parliament. Madrid Conference — A multilateral peace conference that took place in October 1991 in the aftermath of the Iraq war earlier that year. Mossad — The most important of Israel’s intelligence agencies. It is primarily responsible for information-gathering and operations beyond Israel’s borders. Muslim Brotherhood — A political, social, and cultural organization originally founded in Egypt in 1928 and having branches in a variety of Arab states including Jordan, where it is an important political force. Ottoman Empire — The Turkish-led, multinational empire that ruled most of the Arab World for centuries prior to World War I. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I and was succeeded by the Turkish Republic. The Arab areas of the Empire became separate political entities with many, such as Transjordan, being placed under the jurisdiction of a League of Nations mandate administered by a European power (in this case the United Kingdom) prior to independence. Palestinian Authority — The administrative structure set up by the Oslo Accords for the Palestinians to govern portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — The umbrella organization for a number of Palestinian organizations, the most important of which is Fatah. In 1974 the PLO was recognized by all Arab states including Jordan as the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Takfir (takfirism) — The extremist doctrine embraced by al-Qaeda that asserts that moderate Muslims are infidels and must be rejected and even killed if they fail to accept the takfiri vision. The word takfir derives from the Arabic term kufr (impiety). The Jordanian leadership has waged an active campaign against takfiri thinking, which is explicitly denounced in the Amman Message. Transjordanian — This is the term often applied to Jordanians whose family roots are in the East Bank and are not of Palestinian heritage.

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United Arab Republic — The 1958–61 political union between Egypt and Syria which took place at the height of the Arab Cold War. West Bank — The territory of the former mandate of Palestine that was captured by the Jordanians in the first Arab-Israeli war and then seized by the Israelis in the 1967 war. Zionism — The political movement calling for a Jewish state in Palestine that culminated in the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. Contemporary Zionists continue to support the legitimacy of Israel and favor policies to support Israeli security and well-being.

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NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, AND WEBSITES Al-Arab al-Yawm (Amman) The Amman Message, http://ammanmessage.com British Broadcasting Corporation, http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Bibliography Christian Science Monitor (United States) Daily Star (Beirut) Defense News (United States) Gulf Daily News (Qatar) Ha’aretz (Israel) Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, http://www.kingabdullah.jo International Defense Review (United Kingdom).* International Herald Tribune (United Kingdom).* Iranian News Agency, http://www.iran.ir/en Jane’s Defense Weekly (United Kingdom)* Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor (United Kingdom)* Jane’s Terrorism Watch Report-Daily Update (United Kingdom)* Jane’s Intelligence Digest (United Kingdom)* Jane’s World Armies (United Kingdom)* Jordan Times (Amman) Kuwait Times Los Angeles Times The Middle East (London) Middle East Insight (United States; out of print) Middle East International (United Kingdom /United States; out of print) National Defense (United States) New York Times Newsweek (United States) Time (United States) The Times of London, http://timesonline.com.uk Transparency International, http://www.transparancy.org U.S. Army, http://www.army.mil U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2009 U.S. News and World Report (United States) Washington Post (United States) Wall Street Journal (United States)

*Available by subscription from Jane’s Information Group.

181


Index Abbas, Mahmoud, 67–68, 71, 130 Abdullah I, first king of Jordan: and first Arab-Israeli war, 5–7, and grandson Hussein, 8, 26; and Israelis, 5, 7; and Jerusalem, 6–7; and other Arab leaders, 5–6; and United Kingdom, 2–4; as leader of Transjordan, 2–5, 7; assassination of, 8, 123; role in Arab Revolt, 2–3, 26 Abdullah II, fourth king of Jordan: and Israel and Palestine, 51, 59–60, 62–63, 68–69, 70–71; and Jordanian economy, 36–37; and Jordan’s Arab neighbors, 84, 92, 101, 103, 105, 109–11, 116–18; and SOFEX, 137; and United States, 58–59, 75, 81–83, 86–88, 92, 105, 118, 125; concerns about Iran, 116–17; early career, 19–20, 24, 26–28, 29, 41, 136; policies and style as king, 25–30, 33, 43, 66, 82, 110, 126, 131, 144; struggle against al-Qaeda, 45, 123, 125, 129–31, 134; views on United Kingdom, 28 Abizaid, John, 136 Abu Ghraib prison, 86 Abu Nidal Organization, 44, 79 Afghanistan, 42, 44–45, 82, 92, 125–27, 132 Akkad, Moustapha, 129 al-Maliki, Nuri, 87 al-Maqdisi, Abu Mohammad, 126

al-Qaeda: and Amman Message, 135; and Hamas, 130; and Palestinian Authority, 130; and United States, 82, 88, 125, 136–37, 145; attack in Aqaba, 128; hotel bombings in Amman, 43, 128–29, 131; ideology, 124–25, 133–35, 143; in Afghanistan, 45, 125–26; in Iraq, 125, 127, 129–32, 148; King Abdullah’s hostility toward, 88, 123, 137–38; unsuccessful plot to attack Jordanian government offices, 127 al-Zarqawi, Abu Musab, 138; activities in Iraq, 125, 132–33; death of, 125, 131, 138; early life, 25, 125–26; funeral of, 39; hatred of Hashemites, 123, 125, 129; operations against Jordanian targets, 127–31 al-Zawahari, Ayman, 124, 138 Amman Message, 89, 133–35 Arab-Israeli Wars: 1948–49 War, 5–7; 1956 Suez War, 10, 13; 1967 War, 14, 57, 61, 63, 77–78, 87–88, 90, 103, 124; 1973 War, 17–18, 52, 78, 103, 106 Arab League, 5, 7, 11, 107, 104; peace plan, 61–63, 70–71, 87, 106, 110, 115; recognizes Jordan and Egypt as chief Arab diplomatic links to Israel, 62, 106; summit in Rabat, Morocco, 52–53, 80

184

Index Arab Legion, 4, 6–8. See also Jordanian Arab Army Arab Revolt, 2–3, 26, 124 Arafat, Yassir, 12, 15, 82, 99, 112; and King Abdullah II, 67–68; and King Hussein, 52; death of, 67 Assad, Bashar, 109–10 Assad, Hafez, 107–9

104; and peace treaty with Israel, 18, 53, 58, 79, 104; and United States, 18, 31, 56, 79–80, 82, 88, 91–92, 104; post-treaty Relations with Israel, 62, 106; relations with Jordan, 13–14, 17–18, 38, 52, 98, 103–6, 115, 118, 143 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 76–77 Elections in Jordan, 31–33, 35, 38–39, 83

Bahrain, 91, 115 Baker, James, 56 Bakhit, Marouf, 130, 137 Balfour Declaration, 2 Barak, Ehud, 62, 68 Barghouthi, Marwan, 67 Battikhi, Sami, 127 Begin, Menachem, 53, 55, 79, 80, 111 Bin Laden, Osama, 123–25, 127, 138, 143 Black September terrorist organization, 123 Bremer, L. Paul, 85–86, 101 Bush, George H. W., 80, 92 Bush, George W., 109–10, 118; and democracy, 82–83, 86–87, 105; and Hamas, 70; and Iraq, 83–84, 86, 116, 137; and Jordan, 82–83, 86–87, 125; “plot” to assassinate, 131

Faisal, Prince of Jordan, 41 Faisal I, first king of Iraq, 2–3 Faisal II, third king of Iraq, 10 Fatah: and Battle of Karameh, 15–16; and Hamas, 63, 66–70, 106; formation and early activities, 12, 15–16, 147 Foley, Lawrence, 127 France, 2–3, 10, 25, 91 Franks, Tommy, 85–86

Camp David Summit and Accords (1978), 18, 52–53, 78–79, 91, 98, 103–4, 111 Camp David II Summit (2000), 19, 60, 64 Carter, Jimmy, 78–79, 81, 91–92, 103 Central Intelligence Agency, 15, 44–45, 76 Chalabi, Ahmad, 84–85 China, 76 Churchill, Winston, 2 Clinton, William, 19, 32, 57, 81 Constitution, Jordanian, 8, 26, 29, 31, 33, 66 Dayan, Moshe, 53 Dulles, John Foster, 76 Economy of Jordan, 18, 30, 34–37, 54, 81, 113–14, 126, 143 Egypt, 10–12, 18, 31, 38, 52, 56, 62, 77–78; and Arab-Israeli wars, 6–7, 10, 13–14, 17; and Camp David Process and Accords, 18; and Gulf War (1991), 80,

Gaza Strip, 7, 54, 63, 66–69; and Israeli 2009 intervention, 42, 66, 88, 110 Gemayel, Bashir, 79 General Intelligence Directorate (GID), 130; and al-Qaeda, 132; and Hamas, 70; and human rights, 45; and Iraq, 133; and Jordanian internal security, 126; and Mossad, 43–45; and Zarqawi, 126–27, 138; anti-corruption role, 36; as Jordan’s principal intelligence agency, 43; cooperation with United States, 126, 137–38, 145; director, 43–44; in Afghanistan, 45 Glubb, Sir John, 4, 6, 9–10 Habash, George, 124 Halevy, Efraim, 45–46, 55–56, 112 Hamas: and al-Qaeda, 130, 147; and Israel, 59–60, 66; relations with Jordanian government, 68–71, 105, 147; relations with Jordanian Islamists, 39, 65, 70; struggle with Fatah, 62–63, 66–70, 106 Hamza, Prince, 29 Hariri, Rafiq, 110, 128 Hashemite family, 6, 10, 23–26, 29, 39, 79, 81, 111, 118, 144; and Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, 2–3, 4, 26; and Israel, 56, 58; and Muslim Brotherhood,

185

Index 37, 39; and Shi’ite Islam, 117; criticized by al Qaeda, 124–125. See also individual family members Hassan, former crown prince of Jordan, 20, 27, 29 Heikal, Mohammed, 77 Hezbollah, 61, 105 Hussein, King of Jordan, 90; and Arab-Israeli wars, 14, 17–18; and Iraq, 18–19, 42, 80, 107, 112; and Islamists, 38, 83; and Israel, 9, 13, 25, 43, 51, 53, 57–60, 64–65, 64, 78; and Nasser, 10–11, 13–14, 17; and Palestinians, 9–14, 29, 32, 51, 68, 78, 80; and the West Bank, 32, 51–52, 54, 63, 78; and United Kingdom, 8–10; and United States, 9, 57, 75–81; anticommunism of, 76–77; attempts to assassinate, 8, 11, 16, 29, 124; becomes king, 8; criticized by other Arab leaders, 10–11, 13; death of, 19, 43, 60, 108, 113; early years, 8; foreign policy principles and style, 62, 90, 97, 115, 117; style of domestic rule, 24–27, 29 Hussein II, former crown prince of Jordan, 30 Hussein, Saddam, 107; and Israel, 56, 100; daughters, 86; execution, 87; Gulf Crisis and War, 18–19; hostility to Syrian government, 107; relations with Jordan, 24, 37, 40, 107; views on Jordan, 37, 98 Hussein, Sharif of Mecca, king of the Hijaz, 3, 111 Husseini, Haj Amin, 6 Ibn Saud, Abdul Azziz, 3 International Monetary Fund, 35 Iran, 66, 69–70, 109, 110, 111; and Hamas, 66, 69, 105; and last shah, 98, 107, 115; nuclear program, 118; relations with Jordan, 18, 105, 115–18 Iran-Iraq War, 18, 97–99, 104, 107–8, 115 Iraq, 3, 4; 1941 coup, 6; 1958 Revolution, 10–11, 76, 98; 2003 war, 40, 83, 85–87, 92, 105, 110, 115–16, 118, 125, 136; aid to Jordan, 18, 19, 83; and al-Qaeda, 129; Arab-Israeli wars, 14, 17, 19, 55–56, 80–81, 108; intelligence sharing with Jordan, 133; Iraqi refugees in

Jordan, 37, 66, 101; King Abdullah visit, 101; military aid from Jordan, 42, 102; political relations with Jordan, 9, 11, 24, 32, 37, 55–56, 68, 80–81, 84–85, 92, 98–103, 105, 107–9, 114–15, 117; postSaddam unrest, 82, 84, 86, 88, 100–103, 116–17, 125, 127–28, 130–33, 137–38, 144, 147–48; trade with Jordan, 18, 83, 99, 102, 115; under Hashemite government, 6, 10, 26, 145 Islamic Action Front (IAF): and Zarqawi, 39, 131; anti-normalization with Israel campaign, 58, 65; as opposition party 32–33, 37–39, 70, 87 Israel, 10; and 1991 Gulf War, 55–56; and al-Qaeda, 124, 126, 130; and antinormalization, 64–66; and Iraq, 100; and nuclear weapons, 58; and Palestinians, 9, 12, 13, 41, 44, 52, 55, 59–66, 68, 77–78; and Syria, 56, 109; and the West Bank, 17, 32, 51–55, 63, 77–79, 85–86; and United States, 70, 77–81, 87–91, 103, 110; Battle of Karameh, 15–16; border with Jordan, 9, 41; formation of state, 7; invasion of Lebanon, 79; Jordanian Civil War, 16–17; Knesset, 58; peace treaty with Jordan, 19, 25, 32, 38, 40, 43, 51, 57–58, 60, 62, 65, 65–66, 68, 70, 81, 88–89, 91–92, 105, 108, 144, 146; posttreaty relations with Jordan, 37–39, 44–46, 57–66, 68, 70, 82–85, 88, 106, 110, 124, 126, 143–44, 146; pre-1994 relations with Jordan, 10–15, 17–18, 51–57, 76–81, 108; wars with Jordan, 12–14, 17, 40, 50, 103 Jerusalem, 6, 11, 14, 51, 53, 54, 60, 78–80, 106, 111; and al-Qaeda, 125; and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 57, 105; and King Abdullah I, 6–7; and King Abdullah II, 63–64 Jewish Community in Palestine, (preIsrael), 2, 5–6 Jordan Center for Strategic Studies, 69 Jordanian Air Force, 41–42, 43, 90 Jordanian Arab Army 4, 12, 28, 40–43, 68; and King Abdullah II, 20, 28; in 1967

186

Index war, 14, 91; in Battle of Karameh, 15–16; in Jordanian Civil War, 16–17; Special Operations Command, 41, 135–36. See also Arab Legion Jordanian Civil War (1970), 16, 38, 44, 52, 97, 124 Jordanian International Police Training Center (JIPTC), 68, 101 Jordanian National Defense University, 42 Jordanian peace treaty with Israel, 19, 25, 32, 38, 40, 43, 51, 57–58, 60, 62, 65, 65–66, 68, 70, 81, 88–89, 91–92, 105, 108, 144, 146 Jordanian public opinion, 69, 83–84, 100 Karameh Battle, 15–16, 124 Khatami, Mohammed, 116 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 107, 115 King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center, 136 Kissinger, Henry, 17, 78 Kuwait, 91, 101, 107; aid to Jordan, 18, 40, 81; invasion by Iraq, 18–19, 80, 99, 104–5, 108, 112; Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, 114; political relations with Jordan, 112–14 League of Nations, 1, 4 Lebanon, 7, 10, 17, 43, 61, 106, 110, 116; invaded by Israel, 79–80 Libya, 99 Livni, Tzipi, 62 Lynch, Marc, 18 Madrid Summit (1991), 19, 38, 56, 105 Meir, Golda, 5 Millennium plot, 126–27 Mishal, Khalid, 59–60, 69 Morocco, 17, 52 Mossad, 45–46, 55, 59–60, 112 Muasher, Marwan, 110 Mubarak, Hosni, 62, 104–5 Muslim Brotherhood (Egyptian), 37–38, 106 Muslim Brotherhood (Jordanian), 26, 37–39, 65–66, 83, 108, 112, 129, 130, 134, 146–47; relations with Jordanian government, 114, 131. See also Islamic Action Front

Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 10–14, 17, 38, 68, 77–78, 90, 104 Netanyahu, Binjamin, 59–61, 63–64, 66, 68, 87 Nixon, Richard, 77–78, 81 Noor (Noor al-Hussein), queen of Jordan, 59, 115, 117 Obama, Barack, 39, 70, 87, 118 Olmert, Ehud, 61 Oslo Process and Accords, 19, 57–59, 64 Ottoman Empire, 1, 3, 124 Palestine Liberation Army, 12, 68 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 56, 80; and intifada, 54, and the West Bank, 56, 147; and United States, 79–80; as “sole representative” of Palestinian people, 52–54, 79–80; creation of, 11–12; relations with Israel, 19, 52, 56–57, 79–80; relations with Jordan, 12, 13, 16–17, 52, 56, 68, 79–80, 147 Palestinians, 3–4, 13–16, 51–53, 111; alternative homeland theory, 55–56, 58, 62, 144; and Iraq, 56; and Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, 58; and “separation wall,” 61; and the West Bank, 9–10, 12–13, 51–54, 61; as Jordanian citizens (West Bankers), 7, 12, 18, 24, 33, 36, 44, 52–55, 65, 113; first intifada, 54, 68; in Kuwait, 112–13, negotiations with Israel, 56–58, 63; Palestinian Authority, 61, 63, 67, 129–30; second intifada, 60–61; suicide bombings, 61, 110, 115 Palestinian State, 5, 7, 54–55, 59, 61–62, 64, 66, 70, 106, 147 Parliament (Jordanian), 7, 27, 30–35, 38–39, 58, 81, 83, 118–19, 131, 146 Peacekeeping by Jordanian military, 42–43 Peres, Shimon, 59 Petraeus, David, 136 Political Parties in Jordan, 31, 33–34, 38–39. See also Islamic Action Party Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 16, 124 Qassim, Abdul Karim, 10, 117 Qatar, 84, 88, 113, 124

187

Index Rabin, Leah, 59 Rabin, Yitzhak, 57–59; assassination, 59, 108; friendship with King Hussein, 57, 59, 89 Rifai, Samir, 30 Rania, queen of Jordan, 30 Reagan Peace Plan, 80 Reagan, Ronald, 79 Sadat, Anwar, 77, 103–4 Samu raid, 12–13 Saudi Arabia, 3, 11, 103; and 2002 Arab League Peace Plan, 61–62; and Iran, 107, 110; and Syria, 107, 110; and United States, 31, 77–80, 82, 108, 112; differences with Jordan over Iraq, 18, 81, 98, 100, 112; relations with Jordan, 10, 18, 40, 107, 111–15, 119, 133 Schultz, George, 79 Shamir, Yitzhak, 55 Sharon, Ariel, 55, 58, 60–61, 79–80, 83 Shlaim, Avi, 13, 77 Soviet Union, 10, 13, 44, 76, 78, 90, 103, 125–26 Special Operations Forces Exhibit (SOFEX), 137 Syria, 2–3, 11, 52, 77, 99, 104; and ArabIsraeli wars, 6, 13–14; and Saudi Arabia, 110; and Transjordan, 4, 6–7; and United States, 37, 70, 78, 80, 109–10; during Jordanian civil war (1970), 16–17, 78, 107; negotiations with Israel, 18, 56–57, 108, 110; relations with Iraq, 37, 107–8; relations with Jordan, 11, 13, 52, 77, 98–99, 106–11, 118, 123, 128, 144; ties with Iran, 110 Takfiri doctrine, 124, 132–34 Talal, second king of Jordan, 8 Taliban, 92, 125 Tenet, George, 126–27 Turkey, 90, 110. See also Ottoman Empire United Arab Emirates, 113 United Kingdom, 85; 1956 Suez War, 10; and 1973 war, 78; and Jordan, 75–76, 110; and Jordanian military, 41, 90–92; and King Abdullah II, 28; and King

Hussein, 8–9, 10–11; and Transjordan, 2–4, 6–7, 75 United Nations: and 1973 War, 17; and Jordanian peacekeeping troops, 42–43; and partition of Palestine, 5–7; resolutions on Iraq, 99; sanctions on Iraq, 105; United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), 13; United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 37; United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), 9 United States, 10, 17, 24, 35, 39, 103, 114, 124; and al-Qaeda, 45, 88, 124–27, 129, 125, 137–38; and Egypt, 103–5; and Gulf Crisis and War (1990–91), 18–19; and Iraq, 37, 56, 84–87, 98–103, 118; and Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty, 19, 57, 81; and King Abdullah II, 28, 59, 75, 88; and Middle Eastern democracy, 115; and Palestinians, 82; and peace process, 18, 62, 68; and Syria, 109–10; designates Jordan a major non-NATO ally, 40; Free Trade Agreement with Jordan, 81; military and development aid to Jordan, 35, 57, 75, 88–89, 90–91; relations with Jordan, 9, 18–19, 24, 28, 40, 44–45, 52–53, 70–71, 75–93, 99–100, 112, 143–47; State Department, 84, 134, 135 U. S. Congress, 88–90; addressed by King Abdullah, 88; aid to Jordan, 57, 81, arms sales to Jordan, 79–80; Friends of Jordan Caucuses, 89–90 Weizman, Ezer, 104 West Bank, 17, 41–42, 71, 80; and alQaeda, 125; and Arab-Israeli wars, 6–7, 71; and intifada, 54–55; and Israeli views and actions, 55, 61, 66, 78–80, 87, 104, 144–45; and Jordan, 14, 51–53, 61–63, 67, 104; and PLO, 12, 80; and Transjordan, 6–7; captured by Israel, 14, 51 Wilson, Mary, 3 World War I, 1–4, 26, 111, 124 World War II, 4 Yassin, Sheikh Ahmad, 60 Yemen, 11, 111, 114 Zain, queen of Jordan, 8


About the Author W. ANDREW TERRILL, Ph.D., has been a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute since 2002. Prior to his appointment to SSI, he served as a Middle East nonproliferation analyst for the International Assessments Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In 1998–99, Dr. Terrill also served as a Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air War College on assignment from LLNL. He is a former faculty member at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and has taught adjunct at a variety of other colleges and universities. He is a retired U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and Foreign Area Officer (Middle East). Dr. Terrill has published in numerous academic journals on topics including nuclear proliferation, the IranIraq War, Operation Desert Storm, Middle Eastern chemical weapons, and ballistic missile proliferation, terrorism, and commando operations. Since 1994, at the invitation of the U.S. State Department, Dr. Terrill has participated in the Middle Eastern Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) Track 2 talks, which are part of the Middle East peace process. He has also served as a member of the military and security working group of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group throughout its existence in 2006. Dr. Terrill holds a B.A. from California State Polytechnic University and an M.A. from the University of California, Riverside, both in Political Science. He also holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California.

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