A Future Jordan - نحن الأردن

Freedom's call squeezes ally Jordan by THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

The question is no longer whether governments will evolve, but how and when....... AZ

Freedom's call squeezes ally Jordan
A Question of Democracy: TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT
By Evan Osnos
Chicago Tribune
June 10, 2005

One morning last spring, two men from Jordan's Interior Ministry arrived unannounced at the headquarters of the Islamic Action Front, the country's most powerful opposition party. They said they were there because the group was neglecting an important duty: to hang a portrait of King Abdullah II on the wall. Reluctantly, party officials went to the bazaar and picked out a large, gold-framed color photo of the smiling king.

"I realized then that the distance between us and reform is very long," recalled party leader Hamza Mansour.

Jordan enjoys a reputation as an oasis in the Middle East--more peaceful, modern and stable than its neighbors. But behind its pledges of reform, Jordan is still the sort of society where political parties are told what to hang on the walls.

In this kingdom, as in much of the Middle East, entrenched elites and their fear of free expression have stalled reform. Abdullah, a close U.S. ally, calls for regional democratization yet has shown little inclination to grant his own citizens the right to change their government. As the Arab world churns with pressure for change, Jordan's halting trek toward democracy offers a model and a warning of what may be ahead for other countries.

Beginning with the invasion of Iraq and his public commitment to "freedom and democracy," President Bush is hinging his foreign policy record on a dramatic overhaul of the Middle East. Arab reformers and dissidents are seizing the moment to speak with new force. But what is the drive for democratization actually producing? A tour of the frontier of Arab reform in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Jordan found clear and unprecedented pressure for change but little evidence that today's rulers will willingly cede power.

In country after country, Arab leaders are loosening their grip as slowly as possible. The fragile drive for democracy could yet succumb to backlashes by military strongmen or, less likely, revolts by Muslim extremists. But by many measures, the Middle East appears to have entered a new phase in which the question is no longer whether governments will evolve, but how.

Like other countries, Jordan faces a reckoning point: After failing for years to deliver pledged reform, top officials are vowing to jump-start democratization, acknowledging that their failure is fueling support for alternative visions such as militant Islam.

"What I can tell you is that most, if not all people, are not happy with the present system," said a senior Jordanian official who requested anonymity. "The king has made it clear that there is no going back on this process, once it is begun--and it has begun."

That pledge holds high stakes for the White House. Bush declared in January that he would demand "free dissent and the participation of the governed" from "every ruler and every nation." Yet he has refrained from criticizing his ally, Abdullah, even after the king snubbed Bush in April 2004 by canceling a high-profile meeting in protest of the president's support for Israeli policy.

Day by day, regimes across the Middle East are challenging the depth of Bush's commitment, and they may see his handling of Jordan as a test of his resolve, said Marc Lynch, a Middle East specialist at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

"It's easy to call for democracy in Syria because they're `the enemy,' but what are you doing with a country that is almost completely dependent on you politically and economically?" Lynch said. "If you're an Egyptian or a Saudi, you could start to wonder how seriously you have to take the U.S."

A short spring
More than four months after dramatic Iraqi and Palestinian elections stirred inklings of a thaw in Arab politics, that impression is no less distinct. But the scene on the ground is far more complicated than the images of protests and ballot boxes suggest.

The pattern from Damascus to Riyadh to Cairo is a cycle of opening up and cracking down. Emboldened reformers are pushing the boundaries and embattled regimes are striking back, all of it chronicled in unprecedented detail on the Internet and satellite channels such as Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

The kings, princes and presidents are walking an increasingly difficult line, with fear of their own restive publics and an activist White House on one side, and the fear of losing power on the other.

With little fanfare on May 15, a court in the Saudi capital of Riyadh sentenced three prominent liberals to prison terms ranging from 6 to 9 years. To reformers in Saudi Arabia and across the Middle East, it was a grim coda to a spring that began with high hopes. The Saudi defendants--poet Ali al-Dimeeni and professors Abdullah al-Hamed and Matrouk al-Faleh--were arrested a year earlier after they helped circulate a petition asking the royal family for an independent judiciary, legislative elections and the creation of a constitutional monarchy with less power reserved for the king.

Ten other reformers also arrested were released after they agreed to drop their demands. The final three refused, and they were charged with sowing dissent, disobeying the king and breeding instability.

The sentence stunned Saudi scholars and reformers who had expected the men to receive only a symbolic punishment. Just weeks earlier the kingdom had seemed ripe for change as Saudi voters in February took part in the kingdom's first nationwide elections. But last month's sentence sent a chilling reminder of the penalties for speaking out.

Saudi Arabia's erratic line on democracy is not unique. In Syria, President Bashar Assad has vowed to modernize his government. On Thursday he used a key Baath Party conference to propose legal reforms that would permit some opposition parties and relax parts of Syria's strict emergency laws.

Yet Assad's regime also is cracking down on critics. On May 24, authorities rounded up eight members of a pro-democracy group called the Jamal Attasi Forum, accusing them of disseminating material from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization banned in Syria since it challenged the regime in the early 1980s. They were released after a week in custody.

In years past, arrests like those would have gone all but unnoticed outside of Syria. Not anymore.

The evolution is televised
Midway through a recent Al Jazeera talk show about Syria, a woman identifying herself as Umm Al-Tahir called in to tell the world her story. Syria, she said, had recently permitted some political exiles to return. Her husband, an Islamist named Yasin Ibrahim al-Sheikh, had returned to Damascus in April from exile in Qatar. After two days he was told to report to an intelligence office, and that, she said, was the last she had heard from him.

Hearing her story, the Al Jazeera host turned to his guest, a senior Syrian Baath Party official, and declared: "You heard what the lady said. How long will the persecution of Syrian citizens continue?"

That exchange, televised live to Al Jazeera's estimated 50 million viewers worldwide, vividly illustrated how technology is amplifying the democratic rumblings in today's Middle East. That show was one of a series of spirited Al Jazeera debates that week about Syria's political future, debates that were impossible before the explosion of Arab satellite channels a decade ago.

Syria is not the only regime in the spotlight. Any given day, Al Jazeera or Dubai-based Al-Arabiya will showcase anti-regime protests on the streets of Cairo, sit-ins in Beirut or voters going to the polls in local Palestinian elections.

After months of jousting with Washington over their coverage of Iraq, Arab channels have emerged as the improbable midwives of Bush's pro-democracy initiative, with greater popularity than any U.S. initiative. High-tempo talk shows such as "Opposite Direction" and "Without Limits" feature unflinching debates on issues as diverse as the failures of Arab economies to keep pace with the world and the legitimacy of protest movements in Egypt, Kuwait and Bahrain.

"Events in Jordan can't be isolated from what's happening in Egypt or elsewhere," said Lynch, the Williams College expert, "because Al Jazeera covers events throughout the Arab world as a single Arab story."

Al Jazeera correspondents have been banned from a growing number of Arab autocracies, including Algeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Al Jazeera's newest focus, it seems, is Egypt, where it is chronicling the government's growing standoff with groups calling for democratic change. In May an Al Jazeera crew was detained when it tried to cover a public meeting of Egypt's judges, who have vowed to boycott elections unless they receive greater independence. Weeks later, cameras were on hand May 25 when pro-government demonstrators attacked critics of President Hosni Mubarak in downtown Cairo. The episode prompted a rebuke from Bush.

Jordan has made no moves to ban Al Jazeera, though it recognizes the channel's power. On March 7, Al Jazeera reported that Jordanian police had barred a network cameraman from covering a protest staged by the government's most vocal critic, its powerful network of trade unions.

The man behind that protest is Wael Saqqa, an intense 48-year-old architect who heads 14 professional syndicates, equivalent to labor unions, with 150,000 members. His cell phone rarely stops ringing. His bulletin board lists a packed schedule of upcoming speeches and meetings. His office suite, with two secretaries and a constant stream of visitors, has the crisp bustle of a legislator's headquarters.

He holds no public office, yet he is overtly political: an Islamist opposed to relations with Israel and correctly confident that he holds more power than anyone in Jordan's feeble parliament.
"The syndicates," he said, "are the people's only channel for democracy."

For that reason Saqqa poses a dilemma for Jordan's reformers, who want to get unofficial politicians such as Saqqa out of politics in order to build a real legislature rooted in law and accountability.Yet as they struggle to rein in Saqqa and others, Jordanian leaders have repeatedly curbed free expression and sparked criticism at home and abroad.

Law aimed at unions
When the unions tried to convene a meeting in January to discuss Iraq's elections, authorities ordered them to suspend all political activities and police dispersed their attempt at a protest.

Then the government proposed a tough union law that would bar them from discussing "non-professional issues" without government permission, and would alter their structure to reduce the power of Islamists. Opposition parties and rights advocates were alarmed. In April, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the proposed law "calls into question the government's willingness to fulfill its commitments" to democratization.

The regime already was facing criticism over another free-speech issue. In December, Jordanian engineer and activist Ali Hattar gave a fiery lecture calling for a boycott of U.S. goods to protest American policies in Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Hattar was arrested the next day and later sentenced to 3 months in jail for "slandering" the government by saying Jordan uses American weapons against its own people.

The cases can seem out of place in Jordan, a country that by all appearances is a prime candidate for liberalization. Clean and efficient, Amman is a modern capital comfortable with the West, and Jordan is a member of the World Trade Organization.

Yet the kingdom has had a rocky relationship with democracy. After ascending to the throne in 1999 following his late father, King Hussein, Abdullah suspended parliament, saying turmoil in the Palestinian territories and Iraq made it unwise to hold elections. By the time he reconvened lawmakers in June 2003, he had issued more than 130 new laws by decree.

Though Jordan's rights record is better than that of most Arab states, the regime still silences critics, such as Toujan Faisal, a former lawmaker who was imprisoned for four months in 2002 after accusing the prime minister of corruption. The U.S. State Department, in its annual human-rights report in February, highlighted allegations of torture and arbitrary arrests by Jordan's vast security structure, and noted strict media laws that can land a journalist in jail for up to three years.

When a Jordanian business magazine polled 200 randomly selected citizens about democracy last year, 81 percent said they believed they could not publicly criticize the regime without fearing government reprisal.

Most reform-minded Jordanians don't argue for an abrupt shift to full democracy, which would probably hand power only to well-organized parties such as the Islamic Action Front. But after years of unfulfilled hopes, many believe that the fear of moving too fast has stalled even modest changes.

"I don't think we're progressing," said Fares Braizat, polling director at the Center for Strategic Studies in Amman. "We have faced stagnation since '93, and all the talk we hear from the king about [political] development and liberalization--at the end of the day, it has not been delivered."

Urgent reform
Today, Jordan's leaders are straining to make a break from the past. Stung by criticism of his handling of the Hattar case and trade unions, Abdullah this spring tossed out his prime minister, Cabinet and intelligence chief and named a new lineup.

The king is now pinning hope on a 10-year reform plan, a "national agenda" crafted with citizens' input, to be unveiled in September. In particular, it is likely to bring changes to Jordan's controversial election laws, which political rivals say favor supporters of the Hashemite royal family while dampening the influence of urban voters of Palestinian origin, who are said to make up more than half of Jordan's 5.8 million people.

"We are not looking for a rhetorical document," said the senior official. "We are looking for initiatives that have clear timelines and performance indicators associated with that so we convince people we are serious."

Even compared with its neighbors, Jordan feels particular pressure to open up. Sandwiched between the turmoil in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, Jordanians are increasingly disenchanted with their leaders' ties to the U.S. and Israel and are hungry for a way to express it.

"Since 2003 there has been a recognition that if you don't open up you will feel the wrath of public indignation about Palestine and Iraq," said Joost Hiltermann, an Amman-based analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Jordanians have joined Iraq's insurgency, most notably Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who spent time in Jordanian prisons and Afghanistan before emerging as a leader of a militant faction affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Sixteen suspected Islamic militants are on trial on charges they plotted to attack the U.S. and Israeli Embassies in Amman. To keep the number of such militants from growing, mainstream Islamists such as the union leader Saqqa say the only solution is give today's angry young Muslims a legal, democratic channel to express themselves. And in a measure of deepening public frustration, that idea is even drawing supporters from those who do not back Islamists or the unions they control.

"The only way for Jordan to survive is to democratize and empower its people and have true public participation in decision-making," said Ayman Safadi, editor of the liberal Al-Ghad newspaper. "The king needs to lead that process."

With his well tailored suit and master's degree from Baylor University in Texas, Safadi could hardly be further from Amman's fundamentalists, yet he argues that Jordan cannot afford to silence them.

"In 1996, you had 13 Arabic satellite TV stations. In 2004, you had 176, and the number increases every day, so people are becoming more aware of their lives," he said. "And regimes are becoming more aware that the only way to confront the bin Laden-like ideologies is to provide people the space to express themselves. Nobody can stand in the face of this force."

An uncertain future
It is tempting to read the drama in today's Middle East as a decisive turn in history--a twilight for tyranny on par with the end of fascism or the demise of the Soviet empire. It could well prove to be. But on the ground, the story is decidedly unfinished.

Not one of the Arab world's 22 autocrats appears ready to embrace the hallmark of democracy: the people's right to change their leaders. Even in Jordan, the moderate, pro-Western king holds fast to his sweeping powers. He hires and fires the prime minister, the Cabinet and the intelligence chief. He has the right to dissolve parliament, set public policy, appoint the upper house of the legislature and name the mayors of all 99 municipalities.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. has vowed to remake the political map from Morocco to Afghanistan. So far it has tried force, money and rhetoric with mixed results. Military might deposed Saddam Hussein but unleashed a bitter insurgency. Bankrolling Arab reformers with targeted aid has given them a voice but damaged their reputation at home. Soaring speeches in Washington have put Arab leaders on edge but inspired few on the Arab street.

A consensus is emerging among analysts here and abroad that the West's greatest tool may be its moral clarity: the willingness to defend the rights of its opponents with the same fervor it has shown in standing up for democrats. The U.S. has long supported moderate Islamists who have palatable ideas if no public following. But that strategy is increasingly academic. Some of the most important players in tomorrow's Middle East are likely to be unmitigated Islamists, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

"The challenge that Islamist organizations pose to democracy cannot be met by befriending moderate but marginally important groups," writes Marina Ottaway, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "It can only be met by dealing with the mainstream, powerful organizations that will determine the future of Middle East politics."

Will they use the democratic system to advance policies at odds with the U.S. and Israel? Some will try, but Bush is betting that bringing them into the democratic system will blunt their extremism, just as it has moderated Islamist parties in Turkey, Morocco and Jordan. A growing share of the Arab world may agree with him.

"For me?" said Braizat, the Jordanian political scientist. "Give me democracy, though that means the Islamists may win for a while. For democracy, it's a gamble I'm willing to take."

posted by Ashraf Zeitoon @ 3:27 AM