Jordan fears loss of US favor by BBC...'The US wants more change, it wants to see more'
Jordan fears loss of US favor
By Jon Leyne BBC News, Amman
Of all America's allies in the Arab world, Jordan must surely be one of the closest and most trusted - or so it seemed until recently. But all that has changed, and
King Abdullah's government does not seem to know what to do about it.
Things came to a head after an incident in Salt - a small town just outside the capital with a reputation for sending its sons to take part in the Iraqi insurgency. Last month the family of one of them, Raed al-Banna, held three days of mourning following his death as a suicide bomber in Iraq. It was thought, probably wrongly, that he carried out the massacre in Hilla in which 125 people died.
The event caused a rupture in Jordan's relations with Iraq and led the US to question if Jordan really was such a reliable ally.
Diplomatic isolation
That was just one of a series of black marks against Jordan's name.
In March there was its ill-fated attempt to launch a new Arab-Israel peace initiative at the Arab League summit in Algiers. The idea appeared to offer normalisation with Israel in return for practically nothing, and other Arab countries rejected it out of hand.
There were the comments by King Abdullah in Washington recently when he warned of the dangers of a Shia Crescent in the Middle East - not what the administration wanted to hear.
Then there's the almost invisibly slow pace of domestic reform.
"
I think Washington is becoming increasingly impatient with the pace of reform in Jordan," explained Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, who is based in Amman.
The US still declares its friendship with Jordan. But the signals of a change of mood are there for all to see.
Closed political system
Richard Perle, the well-connected right-wing hawk, listed Jordan recently in the same breath as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He condemned their "closed political systems" which bred "discontented young men who are easily enticed to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill us".
In Amman recently, the American Charge d'Affairs, David Hale, repeated what has become a US mantra:
"
It has become a priority... to provide our strong support for movements for reform within the region that are working to change the conditions that give rise to extremism and terror."
In Jordan, there is much talk of reform, but precious little evidence of it. The government is involved in a bitter confrontation with professional associations. With little civil society, associations of lawyers or engineers provide one of the few opposition gathering points.
They have been particularly outspoken in their opposition to the peace treaty with Israel and the US-led occupation of Iraq. In response, the government has been trying to pass a new law curtailing their political activities.
Gagging the press
King Abdullah told a meeting of editors recently that journalists should no longer be jailed for what they write or speak. But it is still against the law to write anything that might harm relations with an Arab or friendly government, and journalists have recently been jailed for doing so.
Criticising the king himself is still completely off-limits. No journalist is locked up for it, because no-one does it. And
there's no sign of the sort of electoral reform that would make Jordan's parliament truly democratic.
King Abdullah's response to this crisis has been the second major government reshuffle in a matter of months. Marwan Muasher, appointed deputy prime minister late last year to oversee the reform effort, has been moved to a job in the royal court.
The ever-loyal English-language Jordan Times now has pictures almost every day of meetings called by the King to reassure Iraqi journalists, Jordanian editors, European ambassadors.
New rules
For years, Washington's Arab allies explained how they were the least bad option. Without them, there would be radical Islamist governments hostile to the US and Israel. You can imagine King Abdullah, and President Mubarak of Egypt and America's other Arab friends, regularly putting that argument to the White House.
The old covenant used to be, support US foreign policy and Washington will leave you alone to do what you will at home. But
the rules have changed, and the word is only slowly getting around.
So what does Washington want in Jordan?
"
It wants more change, and I can only imagine that the only change possible is managed change. They just want to see more results," suggests Joost Hiltermann. "
Whether this is possible is the big question. Maybe if it proves to be impossible, Washington may decide that whatever happens is better than the status quo."
That may sound reckless, but President Bush's Middle East policies could never be described as cautious.
Jordan falls from grace in Washington.... A Very Important Article
Jordan falls from grace in Washington
By Maggie Mitchell-Salem Saturday
April 16, 2005
Is Jordan still the darling of U.S. President George W. Bush's campaign to reform, democratize and build free markets across the Middle East? From all outward appearances, the meeting between King Abdullah II and Bush last month in Washington was as warm as usual. But once the cameras were turned off, senior
American officials made clear their discomfort with the stalled or, as one Jordanian official told me, "complacent" pace of reform in the kingdom.
Jordan's day of reckoning was long overdue. Questionably justifiable arrests, restrictions on the opposition-dominated trade unions, a less-than-free press, and heavy-handed secret police interference in daily life could no longer be excused. The
bargain that Amman, like Cairo or even Damascus, hoped to maintain was regional good deeds in exchange for Washington's turning a blind eye to poor domestic performance. After all, no one really expected Bush to live up to his democracy-touting rhetoric, particularly when stability and security were at risk.
That proved wrong: Bush defied all expectations and walked the democratic walk. Worse still, the American threshold for defining Arab leaders as "reform-minded" is moving lower, like a limbo stick. Within days of the Abdullah-Bush meeting, public pressure mounted on the king for him to clear the stick.
On March 28, speaking at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, the former Pentagon official Richard Perle, a Don Corleone among the Bush administration's unofficial political advisors, set off minor shockwaves by mentioning Jordan in the same breath as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, all described as "closed political systems ... [breeding] discontented young men who are easily enticed to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill us."
Most Americans have no idea that the man believed to be responsible for many of the terrorist attacks in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is a Jordanian, or that another less notorious Jordanian was behind a suicide bombing last month, also in Iraq. In the United States, the archetypal terrorist is usually thought to be a Saudi or an Egyptian, so that Perle's mention of Jordan was hardly accidental.
Nor was Perle alone in identifying Jordan as a problem. A day before his statement, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland began his commentary with a pop quiz: Which Arab ruler, he asked, is to George W. Bush what Yasser Arafat was to Bill Clinton? Answer: King Abdullah of Jordan. Somewhat mitigating the full impact of this comparison was the fact that Hoagland has championed Ahmed Chalabi, taking issue with those, including the Jordanian government, who accuse the Iraqi of criminal acts such as embezzlement and bank fraud.
Equally disturbing to Jordan must have been the more general remarks made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a March 25 meeting with editors of The Washington Post: "It isn't as if the status quo was stable the way that it was ... The only thing the United States can do is to speak out for the values that have been absent there, liberty and freedom, and it will have to take its own course." She continued, saying, "Do I think there's a strong certainty that the Middle East was not going to stay stable anyway? Yes. And when you know that the status quo is no longer defensible, then you have to be willing to move in another direction."
If stability and the energy security it provides are no longer cornerstones of U.S. regional policy, then Jordan's position is even more precarious. After all, the kingdom is in an unenviable geopolitical position, which the king has only half-jokingly described as "between Iraq and a hard place." Even worse, Jordan is stuck reconciling its own regional policies - opposition to the war in Iraq, nervousness about the increasing power of Shiites in Iraq and Lebanon, and continued angst over the Israeli-Palestinian morass - with the need to continue securing $1 billion in U.S. aid, particularly if it hopes to maintain or exceed last year's 6 percent GDP growth.
Many analysts interpreted Jordan's behavior at the recent Algiers Arab League summit as a brazen attempt to curry favor with Washington. By outlining a precipitous push for Arab normalization with Israel, Abdullah may have calculated that if Amman boldly defined just who was in favor of comprehensive peace with America's closest regional ally, that would make clear how truly indispensable Jordan was. Predictably, his initiative, because it sought no prior commitment from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw to the 1967 borders, fell flat.
Nor did Washington bite.
The king seemed to have missed the point that Washington has changed the rules of the souk in which it normally trades aid and favors for support on regional policies. Now, being on the side of the U.S. has become a precondition for any sort of bargaining with the Bush administration, not something that is itself negotiable--just ask Syrian President Bashar Assad.
For example, the White House had rarely, if ever, chided Saudi Arabia in its more than half-century relationship. Bush broke that taboo a few months ago, and Amman should have taken notice. What's the Jordanian leadership to do? Can it withstand the pressure cooker of rampant anti-American sentiment at home while maintaining a pro-Western facade abroad? On April 5, Abdullah changed his government, replacing the prime minister and shifting key reformers - some of whom had already quit the government - to new positions. The new prime minister, Adnan Badran, is widely respected for his previous government service and academic pedigree.
Marwan Muasher was moved from the post of deputy prime minister to the Royal Court, from where he will direct domestic political reform. Rania Atallah, Queen Rania's longtime chief-of-staff and a close ally of Muasher from their days at the Jordan Information Bureau in Washington, has joined the king's communications team. Bassem Awadallah, the former planning minister who resigned in frustration at the sluggish pace of reform, is back as finance minister.
However, even dynamic reformers will face near-impossible challenges, first among them delivering enough tangible economic results - jobs, an improved standard of living, more tourism - to assuage widespread displeasure with U.S. policies. Yet that tradeoff is what Washington is counting on. If Bush can win Arab hearts and minds with economic goodies, then the neoconservatives were right all along. They never believed that the Palestinian conflict was the root cause of Arab anger. To paraphrase Bill Clinton back in the early 1990s: "It's the economy, stupid."
Whether it is or not, Jordan may soon find it far more difficult to gain sympathy in Washington, for which it is no longer business as usual in the Middle East.
Maggie Mitchell Salem was a U.S. Foreign Service officer and from 1998-2000 served as special assistant to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She is currently a public policy and communications consultant in Washington. She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.
The current debacle between the newly formed Cabinet and the so called – Parliament of the People
This is the first of a serious of comments – personal reflections – on issues and events of Importance to the reform and development of our country…I will be awaiting all of your comments so PLEASE do share your views The members of the current parliament, like their predecessors, don’t represent us nor do they represent the majority of Jordan. How can someone from Kerak, who got 820 votes in the last elections, claim to represent me or even represent his governorate. They only represent personal and tribal interests.
All previous parliamentary elections in Jordan showed, as expected, an overwhelming victory for independent pro-government candidates, with most of them elected on the basis of their tribal and regional affiliations. The turnout in the large urban areas, which constitute more than two thirds of Jordan’s 5.6 million inhabitants, was always much lower than rural areas, reflecting the widespread apathy surrounding the elections campaign’s because of the absence of true opposition groups. The turnout was much higher in rural and Bedouin areas, especially given the tribal and regional character of the election.
In short, these GUYS can’t go on in claiming that they represent Jordanians, as they only represent micro interests and not the overall interest of the country. This also leads us to conclude that a lot remains to be done in our country’s democratization programme.
Jordan: No Room For Error
8 April 2005
OXFORD BUSINESS GROUPEnding a long period of speculation, the Jordanian government resigned this week, ending a short and at times troubled stint in office. Yet while changes at the ministerial level had been expected, there was still some surprise that Prime Minister Faisel el-Fayez stepped down on April 5, instead of trying to fix the current structure once again. However, the move is being widely read as evidence that King Abdullah is serious about change and will act decisively to implement it. It was a rather inauspicious ending to
the el-Fayez government, which toiled throughout a year of heightened expectations without ever really living up to them. When the cabinet was formed in late 2003, the king charged its members first and foremost with pursuing political, not economic, reforms. Yet although there were inklings of progress throughout 2004, the pace of change was deemed not fast enough for the reform-minded king.
Summing up the departing government, King Abdullah said that aspirations exceeded achievements.The disappointment in this government is even more marked given how promising it had seemed at the outset. It featured one of the highest-yet ratios of Jordanians of Palestinian descent and gave portfolios to the most women ever. Having more of the country's variety represented in the cabinet was a tenet of the king's reform programme - and the makeup of the cabinet looked poised to satisfy this.
The new prime minister, 69 year-old Adnan Badran, the US-educated former president of Philadelphia University, will now see if he can deliver these elusive achievements. Although the possibility of a new government had been circulated widely in the last few weeks, Badran being named to the top position certainly wasn't expected, as many didn't think the King would name an academic. His 25-member cabinet includes four women and 12 ministers from the former government. Badran has also taken the defence minister portfolio for himself, while the new foreign minister is Farouq Qasrawi, a former ambassador to Japan and advocate of the King's policy of close ties to the US. Bassem Awadallah is the new minister of finance, while the Interior Ministry goes to Awni Yirfas, a tough intelligence general who was head of the Passport Department.
Badran will inherit the task of righting the government ship and will have to tackle a number of looming challenges. In addition to bringing eventual political reform, Badran will face the immediate difficulty of selecting a cabinet. For all the diversity of the previous government, there were reports that inter-cabinet squabbling had begun to be an obstacle to progress.
The appointing of Marwan Mouasher, the former foreign minister, as deputy prime minister was supposed to encourage more inter-ministerial co-operation. Yet the surprise resignation of Bassem Awadallah as the minister of planning in February 2005 was an omen that the internal problems were yet unsolved. Awadallah, one of the King's closest allies, stepped down under unclear circumstances. Some speculated that he disagreed with the awarding of certain infrastructure contracts, but others cite his consistent inability to work within the el-Fayez cabinet. Since he has long been known to stand very close to the King on issues of reform, his leaving could not have pleased the palace.
In addition, there were a number of recent political issues that were not handled well by the government. First was Jordan's performance at the Arab Summit in Algiers. The Jordanians proposed a track that was perceived to endorse normalising relations with Israel - building on a 2002 Saudi Arabian initiative. Jordan was rebuked for the proposal, and the track was rejected outright by most Arab countries. Jordan's image was further clouded when reports surfaced of a misunderstanding between the Jordanian delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Hani Mulki, and the Saudis. The government came under even more fire for its reaction to a report that a Jordanian had been responsible for the February 28 bombing in the Iraqi city of Hilla, which had killed 118 people. The Jordanian paper al-Ghad published the story, and there were wide anti-Jordanian protests across Iraq. The Iraqis accused the Jordanians of being too lenient with those responsible for attacks and letting insurgents filter across the Iraqi border. The Jordanian government eventually denied the charges, but the King was critical of the speed of the response. The resulting row led to the withdrawal of the Jordanian charge d'affaires in Iraq, as the protests escalated. Iraq retaliated by recalling its ambassador as well. The diplomats have since returned, but the King expressed displeasure with the way the issue was handled.
The new government will have the chance to start afresh and try to erase some of the negative attention the previous government was attracting. The new cabinet has also been charged with dealing with the growing rift between the government and the professional associations. In the past year, certain associations have been criticised for being too political - especially on the issues of Iraq and Israel. The government wants to clamp down on the political rhetoric of the associations, but they claim the government is violating their rights to free speech. The ongoing dispute has been widely covered by the media since the blocking of a professional association meeting earlier this year, which was reported to be encouraging the insurgency in Iraq. After being charged over a year ago with reforming the rules governing political activity in the kingdom, a new political parties law was only approved a few weeks ago, underlining the fact that despite a lot of government attention, very little political legislation has been passed since el-Fayez took power.
The new government will also have to keep pace with the accelerating pace of economic reform. This is an area that has seen good progress in the past, and there will be no slacking of expectations here, regardless of how the new administration tackles the political issues. Jordan has endeared itself to the West by being the one of the most transparent countries in the Middle East. Its efforts at economic reform earned it a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US (the only one in the region besides Morocco and Israel) and the establishment of the qualified industrial zones (QIZs) (the only ones in the world until Egypt established their own in 2005).
Jordan continues to be a haven of security and stability in a region traditionally stricken with strife.
Also important is the improvement of social issues in the rural areas, which will be the primary source of an impending population explosion. These areas are the most vulnerable when it comes to being left behind by general economic reform programmes. The King stressed the eradication of poverty and unemployment, improving living standards, and raising incomes in his new government designation letter. These social areas, where the King and Queen Rania have been quite active, represent a formidable challenge - and tackling these issues will be key to the future prosperity and stability of Jordan.
The King's expectations are extremely high, and meeting these is going to be a challenge for any government. The disbanding of the previous administration around a year after its inception shows that the King is not going to waste any time with ineffectual cabinets, either. The clock is ticking for the Badran government - and they should know there is not much room for error.
On the mend - Jordan Times Editorial on the New Cabinet
On the mend
Editorial
Friday-Saturday, April 8-9, 2005
One strength of the make-up of the Cabinet of new Prime Minister Adnan Badran is that the beefed-up private sector presence brings new key players to the halls of policy making in the most critical arenas that are at once diverse and similar. Two new members to watch will be Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Suhair Al-Ali and Minister of Industry and Trade Sharif Zu'bi. Al-Ali brings years of experience in commercial banking with one of the world's largest financial institutions, Citigroup. But her interests in community and women's affairs, and her participation on various national committees and panels, adds the much needed element of appreciation of the country's development needs at the grassroots. Sharif Zu'bi comes with nearly 20 years of experience in civil and commercial law with specialization in government contracts, international trade, joint ventures, construction, foreign investment, privatization, banking and telecommunications. His extra-professional engagements include member of boards/directors at the Central Bank, Royal Jordanian Airlines PLC, and Jordan Micro Credit Company.
What Al-Ali and Zu'bi are able to accomplish will have a direct impact on the advancement of the Kingdom's socio-economic climate, provided they can alleviate poverty, reduce unemployment and create sustainable jobs. They will be greatly helped if education and women's empowerment stop running into anti-reformist obstacles.
The claim is that the Badran Cabinet is top heavy in reformists with the addition of pro-reform individuals and the return of like-minded ministers. Whether this Cabinet will be able to push through the necessary political, judicial, economic, social and public reforms is still to be seen. Bassem Awadallah, who bowed out two months ago from the previous government has reemerged to take the influential post of minister of finance. His return is as confounding as was his departure, with the lack of transparency leading to the usual speculation. If the facts behind Awadallah's round-trip are ever made public, the episode still will have left an unsettling feeling.
The anticipated September launch of the National Agenda, which is to serve as the Kingdom's mission statement for the next decade, is still five months away. In the meantime, Jordan's neighbourhood fence-mending will be a priority.
The selection of the mild-mannered head of the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, Farouq Qasrawi, as foreign affairs minister will serve that purpose in familiar, more accommodating Arab circles. On the fiercer international stage, where interests in the Middle East often clash, the pressure mounts — and that is where Qasrawi's experience in Germany and Japan may help.
Another mild-mannered choice, that of Awni Yarvas as interior minister, should work to assuage, if only temporarily, the associations which collided head-on with former Minister Samir Habashneh for several months over the permissible scope of their activities. With the controversial draft associations law now relegated to Parliament's Legal Committee, the parties to the issue will be given a respite in which they may hopefully reach a compromise.
On the home front, Parliament is in recess and a long hot summer lies ahead.
In the five months leading up to the revealing of the National Agenda, citizens will expect some sort of tangible evidence that will demonstrate the intent of this new government to produce results.
King swears in new Cabinet - Jordan
King swears in new Cabinet - Jordan
Jordan Times08/04/2005
AMMAN — Prime Minister Adnan Badran on Thursday announced the formation of a 25-member Cabinet, including 12 ministers who served in the former Cabinet as well as prominent personalities from the private sector and civil service.
Key appointments indicate that the government's first order of business will be to smooth troubled waters both at home and in the region, while the appointment of five members, one from each of the Jordan First committees, reflects a clear understanding of the required reforms.
According to informed sources, the new government, which included four women, is a reformist Cabinet that will push forth with highly desired and belated social and political reforms. The return of nearly half of the former Cabinet supports the theory that the previous government was a house-divided. According to an informed source, the return of the 12 ministers reflects the discord that existed within the previous Cabinet on crucial political reform.
"
The reformists of the previous government have been carried over," the source said. "
The new government is more comprehensively reformist and has many members who are oriented towards the private sector," which reflects His Majesty King Abdullah's emphasis on the complementarity of political and economic reforms.
Political observers cited the appointments of Awni Yarvas as interior minister and Farouq Qasrawi as foreign minister as among the most significant appointments to the Cabinet. They replace Samir Habashneh and Hani Mulki, respectively, whose performance was highly controversial.
For the past several months, Habashneh has championed a new law to govern the country's 14 professional associations, the seat of Jordan's political opposition for decades. Since the beginning of the peace process more than a decade ago, the government and the associations have tangled over the legitimacy of the union's political activities. The tension between the two has escalated since last December, and culminated in the introduction of a highly restrictive law governing the associations that was introduced to Parliament in March. The introduction of the draft not only antagonised the associations, but Parliament as well, as it fell under pressure to expedite the debate and passage of the legislation. The Lower House referred the draft to its Legal Committee instead of giving it priority.
Yarvas was a General Intelligence Department major general before becoming director general of the Civil Status and Passports Department in 1996.
A political observer described him as a "most important" nomination. "He is a very logical and articulate man, and a conciliatory guy. He won't antagonise the unions. And given his experience and background, he'll be able to find another way to implement a new professional associations law that is to everyone's satisfaction," said the observer.
As the drama of the professional associations was unfolding, Jordan found itself the target of Arab criticism for its proposal to the Algeria summit that was meant to revive the Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed in Beirut in 2002. It was also caught up in a diplomatic row with neighbouring Iraq over news reports claiming that a Jordanian carried out a deadly attack against civilians in the city of Hilla. The row escalated when the Foreign Ministry withdrew its envoy to Baghdad for consultations. The impasse with Iraq as well as the misconception of Jordan's position on regional issues by Arab countries during the Algeria summit,
illustrated the need for a more coherent spin on Jordanian foreign policy.
A colleague of new Foreign Minister Qasrawi told The Jordan Times that the diplomat is likely to be a non-controversial figure. "He is a very responsible person and an experienced diplomat." Qasrawi, who headed the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, served as Jordan's ambassador to Japan and Germany — key donor states.
Most notable among the "returnees" is Bassem Awadallah, former minister of planning and international cooperation, and a highly controversial figure on the political scene. Many observers were confused over the immediate return of Awadallah to the government — three months after he resigned and to again another highly influential post as finance minister.
Although the reasons behind what some described as a "surprise" resignation were not stated, others hinted at the wave of criticism by Lower House deputies and the media over the minister's handling of aid projects to the Kingdom. Some said it was due to differences with former Prime Minister Faisal Fayez over economic policies. But others criticised Awadallah, saying the 40-year-old minister, who was chairman of the government's economic policy, was acting alone on many issues. Lower House deputies criticised his ministry for exceeding its authority and not cooperating with the Ministry of Finance, especially on foreign grants, saying "there was a government within the government."
The Planning and International Cooperation Ministry will become the responsibility of Suhair Al-Ali, who was Citigroup country officer.
The Badran government replaces that of Fayez's Cabinet, which resigned on Tuesday. It is the fourth government to serve since King Abdullah ascended the Throne in 1999. While its constitution seems to reflect the cohesiveness urged by King Abdullah in his Letter of Designation, maintaining unity and efficiency will depend on the leadership of the new premier, said a political analyst. "
It's a question of whether or not Badran can articulate a vision for the next year or so. A strong prime minister is intellectual and capable of creating the conditions to implement his vision," the analyst said. "Is he that kind of premier?"
An informed source believes Badran has those qualities. "The choice of the prime minister was done to bring an open mind and experience to the government. Badran is experienced and open-minded, and the whole government will reflect a mixture of these qualities."
Cleaning up Jordan's musty politics - IT IS TIME FOR CHANGE IN JORDAN
Cleaning up Jordan's musty politics
By Rana Sabbagh-Gargour Saturday, April 09, 2005
Half-hearted measures, and hesitant policies of the past, might have helped Jordan buy time and win Western support, but it did not consolidate the pioneering process of political reform, begun in 1989, when the rest of the Arab region was under despot rulers.
Now, Jordan needs to ensure domestic peace against rising poverty and unemployment, and brace for Washington's new approach that seems to promote rapid social and political change across the Arab world, without regard for internal stability.
The latest speed and direction of change, has left many in a state of shock and awe. In less than four days, the king re-organized the government, and staged a mini revolution at the Royal Court, his own backyard.
And he set
a clear agenda for where he wants Jordan to go: accelerate bold comprehensive reform, to complement economic modernization that has already taken firm hold in the kingdom, ever since he took over in 1999. Jordan needs to regain its comparative advantages in a transforming region. The choice of new faces and names to lead the change, was unconventional, and daring. Adnan Badran, 69, a centrist U.S.-educated university academic, who knows no fear, and hails from a prominent family of East Bank politicians, was named prime minister.
The overall line-up is dominated by young and old reformist figures, even though some of the names have failed to convince some Jordanians that the government will deliver.
Marwan Moasher, a daring 48-year-old liberal politician, and former deputy prime minister and ambassador to Washington, became Royal Court minister, the first member of the minority Arab Christian community to ever fill such a sensitive seat in the modern history of Jordan.
From there, he will continue to head a committee drafting the National Agenda: a road map that will set the course for the country's development on all domestic fronts for the next 10 years. Goals will have timetables, and will be tied to future budgets, to ensure execution.Both top men are well respected abroad, and share a record of conviction, diligence and integrity that speaks for itself.
These characteristics are alarming for the country's powerful, tribal-dominated, and conservative power structure: a cocktail of influential politicians, an entrenched bureaucracy, and a strong security apparatus.Beneath the surface, the latest pre-emptive strikes reflect growing anxiety and concern. The King, a pragmatist who belongs to the younger generation of Arab rulers who took over in the past five years, wants to ensure Jordan's survival in a turbulent U.S.-led world.
After a working visit to Washington ten days ago, the king, the United States' staunchest Arab ally, was alarmed by what he heard from President George W. Bush, his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others.
Even Arab reformists share the king's worry, now that Washington has made it clear that U.S. policy in the Middle East, that has traditionally given priority to the stability of cooperative regimes such as those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, while turning a blind eye to the way those governments treat their peoples, will no longer work. The status quo they have enjoyed for decades, was quickly changing.
U.S. decision makers are now arguing that political violence, and hostility to Washington in the region, are the result of internal repression and corruption, rather than U.S. policies in the Arab-Israeli conflict, in Iraq and the global "war on terror," all main cause for Arab grievances. Iraq and Afghanistan, are being touted as models for change, at a time when many Arabs see such rapid and unchecked transformation in the region's closed societies as a recipe for chaos, for collapse of state and society, and for inviting religious extremists to come to power since they remain the only organized structure in their political cultures.
It looks like "arc of instability," or "constructive instability," may now actually be the goal of U.S. policy in the region, rather than its diagnosis of an existing problem.
Jordan's teetering process of political reform also got negative reviews during the visit, embarrassing many royal advisers, especially those who insisted that Jordan could afford to pursue double language, and contrasting policies: one for local consumption, and one for the foreign audience. At one point, the king had to ask Moasher to take the first flight out of Amman and come to Washington, to give Rice a full briefing on Jordan's national agenda.
Several administration officials, congressmen, journalists and leading human rights watchdogs, who once hailed Jordan's pioneering political moves, were critical over the spate of regressing freedoms. They signaled out the crackdown on the Muslim-led opposition, the muzzling of the media, and plans to curb the power of professional associations - the only active opposition toward U.S. policies, and Jordan's controversial 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
They urged him to make sure that democracy continues to advance in Jordan, which they had long praised as a role model for the region. And to his credit, several human rights groups praised him for being the only Arab leader to visit them, and to listen to their critical views.
Back home, popular displeasure was also growing over the slow pace of political change, started by past governments, amid rising complaints over increasing corruption and nepotism, and lack of a solid system of checks and balances. The security was becoming more powerful, and the government was getting weaker and weaker.For now, the latest changes, have generated a note of optimism.
But the new government has to move fast to live up to the expectations of both king and nation, and to re-orient Jordan's foreign policy, seen as heavily titled in favor of Washington and Israel, at the expense of the Arab world. Badran also needs to tackle a thorny issue left behind by the past government - a draft law to regulate professional associations that has triggered outrage in Jordan and abroad. And he needs to come up with a viable electoral law, and a legislation on political parties.
But
a window of opportunity exists, and the time for gradual change has never been so opportune.Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is a columnist, journalist, and former editor in chief of The Jordan Times. She wrote this commentary for The Daily Star.
"We are determined in the coming phase to accelerate the pace of reform," HM The King in a letter to Badran
Jordan's Abdullah picks new premier and demands fresh CabinetKing wants 'new blood' to push reform
THE DAILY STAR
Jordan's King Abdullah II has tasked academic Adnan Badran with forming a new government to push for faster political reforms after criticism of the two-year-old Cabinet of Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez. "
We are determined in the coming phase to accelerate the pace of reform," the monarch said in a letter to Badran.
The nomination follows criticism of the Fayez government by Abdullah over its performance at an Arab summit last month, and comes as Jordan faces pressure from Western allies, namely the United States, for failing to carry out satisfactory reforms.
"
We have selected you on account of your wisdom and maturity, experience and knowledge, and particularly due to your sincere belief in reform," the king said in his letter after the resignation of the 27-member Fayez government.
"We live in a turbulent region and surrounded by global conflicts," he said, but adding that "the fruits of reform will take time before they are ripe."
U.S. officials expressed their displeasure with the lack of political progress during talks last month in Washington with Abdullah, a senior official said, noting that the U.S. is one of Jordan's main financial backers.
"Jordan was a pioneer among Arab countries in the field of reform but it has been lagging behind over the past few years," a former Cabinet minister who declined to be identified told AFP.
King Abdullah appoints new PM
King Abdullah appoints new PMTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
APRIL 5, 2005
Jordan's King Abdullah II appointed a leading academic as his country's new prime minister and ordered him to form a new Cabinet replacing one that resigned Tuesday amid claims of royal disapproval over the performance of some ministers, top government officials said.
Adnan Badran, a university president and former Prime Ministry advisor, met with several Cabinet aspirants after being designated prime minister in a closed-door meeting with Abdullah earlier Tuesday, the officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
They said the prime minister-designate was expected to present his Cabinet list to Abdullah for approval soon. The Cabinet is likely to be sworn in Wednesday or Thursday, the officials added.
Badran replaces Faisal al-Fayez, whose resignation was confirmed by the state radio and news agency.
Government officials have said the king wanted "new blood" to press ahead with political and economic reforms, saying the outgoing Cabinet of Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez has been slow doing so.
Al-Fayez took office on Oct. 25, 2003. He has reshuffled his Cabinet twice since.
Speculation surfaced recently that al-Fayez may reshuffle his 29-member Cabinet again. But the government officials said Abdullah has sought a complete change because of disappointment over the government's handling of several issues.
These included the February resignation of confidant, Planning Minister Bassem Awadallah; the failure of a Jordanian peace initiative presented to last month's Arab summit; and the fallout over claims a Jordanian suicide bomber was responsible for Feb. 28 terrorist attack in Hillah, Iraq, that killed 125.
Awadallah, an enthusiast for Abdullah's reforms, is said to have quit over personal differences with al-Fayez, mainly over the way the premier was running state affairs, including economic policy. Top government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that Awadallah is likely to be given the finance portfolio in the new Cabinet.
The officials said Abdullah also held his foreign minister, Hani al-Mulqi, responsible for what the king described in a recent newspaper interview as a "misunderstanding" with Saudi Arabia over a Jordanian peace initiative presented to last month's Arab League summit in Algiers.
The summit, led by hardline states such as Syria, rejected Jordan's proposal, which called for peace negotiations with Israel without requiring the Jewish state to relinquish all Arab territory lost in the 1967 Six Day War. The proposal was widely seen as trying to prompt Israel to make concessions.
The king was also frustrated by the Cabinet's handling of incorrect claims a Jordanian carried out the Hillah attack, the biggest bombing to take place in postwar Iraq. The claims sparked a diplomatic crisis with neighboring Iraq, culminating in Jordan recalling its top diplomat to Baghdad. Iraq followed suit in a tit-for-tat move.
Abdullah is said to have felt that the Cabinet reacted too slowly to deny Jordanian involvement in the attack and bungled the recall of its envoy to Iraq, who returned to his post later.
Since ascending to the throne in 1999, Abdullah has sought to invigorate reforms introduced by his late father, King Hussein. Hussein's reforms focused on political liberalization, mainly reviving a multiparty system banned since a 1956 leftist coup attempt and restoring parliamentary elections after a 22-year hiatus caused by Jordan's loss of the West Bank to Israel in 1967.
But Abdullah's plan is mainly economy-oriented, aimed at building on political achievements since 1989. A computer and Internet enthusiast, Abdullah wants to make Jordan a regional information technology hub. He also wants to see his nation geared toward open-market economy and globalization and has introduced relevant legislation in recent years.
His early target was for Jordanians to have access to computers, improved education and health care. But such efforts have often stumbled over bureaucracy in this predominantly conservative Muslim society, which considers such bold goals as alien or imported from the West.
Abdullah's reform calls came long before the United States unveiled early in 2004 its Greater Middle East Initiative, which envisions more democracy in the largely totalitarian Arab world.
