A Future Jordan - نحن الأردن

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.

posted by Ashraf Zeitoon @ 12:28 AM