A Future Jordan - نحن الأردن

Jordan's Baathist Boom; The economy is humming, thanks to Iraqi cash - check the last two paragraphs

Jordan's Baathist Boom;
The economy is humming, thanks to Iraqi cash.
Lee Smith
The Weekly Standard
September 5, 2005 - September 12, 2005

Amman, Jordan - A GROUP AFFILIATED with Jordan's own Abu Musab al Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for the August 19 missile attack in Aqaba that targeted two U.S. Navy ships and killed one Jordanian soldier and injured a taxi driver in the neighboring Israeli resort of Eilat. Other Zarqawi plots have been interrupted, including a major chemical attack on Amman last spring, making this the first successful terrorist operation in Jordan--one of the Arab world's most security-conscious states--since the beginning of the Iraq war. Though it exposed a level of cooperation between Jordan and the United States many Jordanians were apparently unaware of, reactions here have been surprisingly blasé.

The night of the attack, I was dining with a group of Jordanians in one of Amman's fashionable night-life areas, and people seemed more concerned about the imminent return of Abu Qatada, a Jordanian-born fundamentalist sheikh whom the Blair government is only too happy to disgorge after the July bombings in London. "I really thought Jordanians would be freaked out when we finally got hit," says Rana Sweis, a 25-year-old Jordanian journalist. "And if it had happened two or three years ago, people would've been shocked and afraid. Things are very stable here, and Jordanians are very cautious. But look around you, everyone's out tonight."

Perhaps the relative calm is due to the fact that everyone else in the region has been hit considerably harder. Or maybe, as Fares Braizat, a researcher at the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies, explains, it's because "Jordan was definitely not the target. If it was," he told me in his Amman office, "they would've gone after the capital here."

It's true that the missile attack, like the last successful terrorist operation in Jordan, which claimed the life of American diplomat Laurence Foley in October 2002, targeted Americans. However, as we saw when Western employees in the Saudi oil industry were killed, attacks in Muslim countries are often intended to bring attention to a government's relationship with Western concerns in order to embarrass the regime. As a recent Pew poll showed that 70 percent of Jordanians support attacks against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq, it's likely that much of that majority had not previously known that their government is a stalwart, albeit quiet, ally in the U.S.-led coalition's war. Now they know, and maybe the Royal Hashemite Court has some explaining to do.

However, targeting Aqaba suggests that the attack wasn't just a shot at the United States and its regional policies. It was also aimed at the Hashemite monarchy.

Aqaba is Jordan's only port and also its one Red Sea resort town. Throughout the region this summer the tourist industry has been repeatedly attacked, most spectacularly at Sharm al Sheikh, Egypt's Red Sea resort, where 88 people, mostly Egyptians, died. And in Lebanon, the series of bombs and assassinations that began with the February murder of a former Lebanese prime minister has virtually destroyed the summer tourism season, long a staple of the Lebanese economy. Perhaps Aqaba isn't yet as strong a tourist draw as Beirut or Egypt's numerous Sinai resorts, but the Jordanians are hoping to make good on the large investment they've poured into what they call the Red Sea Riviera, encompassing Taba in Egypt and Eilat in Israel.

Moreover, Aqaba is one of King Abdullah's pet projects, inherited from his late father, and he's provided the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority with some of the government's most progressive and talented officials. ASEZA is a duty-free zone built along the lines of Dubai's free zones and meant to encourage free trade. According to the much-publicized, perhaps overstated, plans for ASEZA, Aqaba's free-trade ethos and transparent management is meant to serve as a model for the rest of the country. If the Hashemites see Aqaba as their outlet onto the world, the operation there may have been meant to remind Jordan to watch its back.

In the meantime, Jordan's economy really has been transformed--thanks largely to Washington's political, diplomatic, and military engagement in the region. That is, if the Bush administration unleashed a lot of forces it didn't anticipate and can't control, some of those furies are working for the good.

In the last two years, Amman has grown exponentially, with new luxury hotels, malls, and restaurants that seem to be positioning this once undistinguished Arab capital as a second Beirut. Indeed, some of the cash coming in is a direct result of Syria's forced withdrawal from Lebanon. "Lots of Syrian money came after it left Beirut," says Braizat. "The Syrians are investing to escape Bashar [al-Assad's] regime."

So, what does it mean that Syria's merchant class is putting money into the coffers of the country's long-time regional rival? "If the private sector in Syria is connected to the private sector here," Braizat argues, "then this is cementing its relationship with the government here, and they don't see the [Syrian] regime surviving."

Others aren't so sure that Syrian investment means Bashar's reign is in trouble. "These are businessmen, and they like to have their bases covered," says Fateh Mansour, managing editor of Al Hadath. "Jordan's a good investment for them because we have a trade agreement with the United States, and they get access to Iraq."

The Syrians may want access to Iraq, but the real engine in the Jordanian economy right now is Iraqi cash, which arrived here with the fall of Baghdad. "Real estate prices have surged some 30 percent in the last year," says Braizat. One friend told me how an Iraqi offered him $50,000 more than what he paid for his apartment two years ago. "That's more than I've made my whole working life," the 35 year-old said.

And yet, there have been problems accompanying the Iraqi exodus into Jordan. The Iraqi government recently accused the kingdom of allowing members of Saddam Hussein's family and former regime in Jordan to finance insurgent groups in Iraq. Perhaps a more lingering concern is that the influx of Iraqis may throw off the country's delicate social structure, which balances a roughly equal number of citizens of Jordanian origin and those who are of Palestinian descent.

Mansour says there are already frictions with the Iraqis. "There's a joke going around that after all these years it's the Iraqis who are going to unify us--Palestinians and Jordanians are going to put aside our differences because of the Iraqis."

But what most seems to worry Amman residents is that the Jordanian economy will suffer if things get better in Iraq. Given that Jordan and Iraq are natural trading partners, such zero-sum math might seem strange, but there's not much free-market thinking in the region. After all, in a part of the world where riches have primarily come from oil, it's easy to think that there's only one chest of gold in the world, and if someone else has the key to it--Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United States, Iraq--then you and your family will starve.

It's true that Jordan hasn't exactly created all of its wealth out of thin air and owes much of its recent boom to what's happening next door in Iraq. Still, its economy shows results more persuasive than any amount of preaching by U.S. officials. "I've heard some talk lately among Palestinians about Jordan," says Braizat. "These are very nationalistic, totally Palestinian elements who talk about [wanting] Jordan back in control of the West Bank. Of course it's not going to happen. King Abdullah is not expansionist and is very determined to see Jordan, as it is now, succeed. The point is that some Palestinians don't see the Palestinian Authority experience as successful. But the Jordanian example, based on human capital and with limited resources, they see as very successful."

This estimation is a far cry from the decades-long belief shared by many, including Palestinian nationalists, that the Hashemite kingdom's days are numbered. The question is whether Zarqawi is in a position to do something about it, or whether he's the last vestige of a futile cause.

Lee Smith is writing a book on Arab culture.

posted by Ashraf Zeitoon @ 4:58 AM