A Future Jordan - نحن الأردن

Stop calling for reform BY FAHED AL FANEK..... Mr. Fanek, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

2005-12-19T03:58:00.000-08:00

Stop calling for reform
Fahed Fanek
Monday, December 19, 2005
THE JORDAN TIMES

My Comments are in Blue

It is meaningless and counterproductive to continue working overtime to advocate reform in this country. As a matter of fact, I am not aware of anybody who is against reform as such - Yes, there are so many people who are against reform, any kind of reform. These are people with vested interests that will be undermined by any change or reform whether political or economical. The problem in this respect is that we don't agree on the sort of reform we are after. A good example is the call for a modern law on elections, which can mean different things to different people.

Many observers are suspicious, for good reason, that possible hidden agendas are advanced under the guise of reform while the real purpose is to undermine the very bases of our state as we know it - For God's sake, come one and be realistic

So far, most, if not all, the reactions drawn by the output of the National Agenda were on the negative side. Only one person, its chairman, was trying hard to promote its findings and recommendations.

It is obvious that there is no consensus developing over the agenda. No majority is taking its side. Even the members of the Royal Committee, which drafted the agenda, are keeping their distance and maintaining silence, not to mention the major differences among the members who could not reconcile and only agreed on the bare minimum requirement that does not satisfy many real reformers - I am sure that he is not one of those people...

The Royal Committee came up with a set of controversial recommendations which overshadowed the good and agreed reforms - This must be a first, Mr. pessimism especially when it comes to the National Agenda, states for the first time ever that the the National Agenda came up with good reforms. Part of the recommendations were outright harmful, such as the dismantling of the Press Association, slashing the cost of government staff as a rate of the gross domestic product in half, claiming that Jordan can, in a few years, do without foreign grants and undertaking to reverse the deficit in the budget after grants into a surplus before grants. Such false and unattainable objectives may urge donor countries not to continue supporting Jordan financially if, as the committee claims, it can stand on its own without foreign aid or any kind of budget support - Mr. Economy is of the view that we should continue to beg for money from everyone instead of getting our act together....

So far, there is a lot of talk about the need to reform, but no actual reform is taking place - This is the only stance where I agree with what Mr. Economy !!!, as if the call for reform were meant only for international consumption. This gives a bad impression. The result is the belief that many things in the country are wrong and must be corrected, but no correction is happening.

Talking about reform becomes a substitute for reform.
Observers abroad were given the impression that things in Jordan are so bad that they need immediate reform, but reform is not going to happen due to lack of political will - this is also right....

Such impression made a prominent professor of politics at an American university criticise Jordan for failure to reform. He described the reform programme in the country as fake, mere talk, and said that the Jordanian press drew its knives to kill the National Agenda which, he thought, is the long-awaited instrument for reform.

He is talking here about Marc Lynch, who is an Associate Professor at the Political Science Department at Williams College. Lynch wrote a piece for the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Washington on the National Agenda, which can be viewed through the link below

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=17679&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme#knives

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/jordan/index.html

We should not allow the image of the country to be unnecessarily tarnished. We owe it to ourselves to shed light on the reforms that took place and the outstanding results achieved over the past several years. There must be a good reason why Jordan is ahead of other countries in the same class of economic development, as shown by international indices - Mr. Economy is dillusional. We have been regressing on so many fronts, primerally political and other countries are regions are ahead of us in so many ways. he should have read the latest Economist Intelligence Unit report on the dynamics of democracy in the region...

I shall dwell a little bit on the economic side.

As far as economic reform is concerned, we have a clean bill of health issued by the International Monetary Fund. IMF experts certified that Jordan completed successfully the reform programme, has graduated from the adjustment and stabilisation programme, and is no more in need of IMF guidance. As far as privatisation is concerned, almost 80 per cent of the programme has already been implemented successfully. Due to security, stability and economic reform, the economy was able to attract direct foreign investments and register a record growth rate of 7.5 per cent this year. Foreign trade is up 25 per cent, another indication of a free market economy.

Jordan scored better than Egypt and Morocco in the human development index produced by the United Nations Development Programme, in the government effectiveness, as measured by the World Bank index, in transparency, as measured by the index of Transparency International, and in competitiveness, as measured by the index of World Economic Forum.

We are reforming effectively, achieving, in the process, tangible and measurable results. Reform in Jordan is not a matter of talking. Those who talk about reform do not mean it. They are actually tarnishing the image of the country and giving the wrong impression that we need radical reforms but fail to do them - Those who talk about the need for reform are true Jordanian patriots, who have the wellbeing of teh country and it's citizens in their hearts. The country has never faced such challanges, locally, regionally and internationally and reforming our country is the only way to strengthen and solidify our identity to face the numerous challanges ahead.

People who talk about reform are reformers at heart and aren't, in any way possible, aiming to tarnish the image of the country. The Image of the country is tarnished by people like Mr. Economy, whose sole purpose is to send a message that we are living in UTOPIA and nothing needs to be changed....

Mr. Fanek, Wake up and smell the coffee ....

A Very alarming article by Dore Gold - Growing al-Qaida threat to Jordan worries Israel

2005-12-19T02:55:00.000-08:00

You can check this very alarming article from UPI on Growing al-Qaida threat to Jordan worries Israel, on my other blog http://jordanandpeaceprocess.blogspot.com/

The Article goes on to say that

"But now there is a danger of this activity becoming more widespread," Gold stresses. "Jordanian security officials have estimated that recently 500 Jordanians have been arrested for links with al-Qaida. Indeed, according to a report in the London Sunday Times, Jordanian security sources believed that the Iraqi suicide bombers who attacked in Amman received help from Jordanian soldiers. If the report is true, it means that Zarqawi's network had penetrated the Jordanian defense establishment in a manner reminiscent of al-Qaida's recruitment of members of the Saudi National Guard."

Plan delineates regions, sets representation - By Francesa Swalha on the Decentralisation plan for Jordna

2005-12-06T02:24:00.000-08:00

Plan delineates regions, sets representation
By Francesca Sawalha
04/12/2005
The Jordan Times

AMMAN — A Royal committee is proposing to divide the Kingdom into three development regions, each with an elected council, to jump-start decentralisation, enhance public participation in decision-making and ensure more efficiency in local government. The proposal, submitted to His Majesty King Abdullah 10 days ago, also conceives of a return to fully elected municipal councils, reversing a 2003 decision granting the Council of Ministers the right to appoint the mayor and half the members of each council.

Each named region is to include four existing governorates: The northern Yarmouk region will include the governorates of Irbid, Ajloun, Mafraq and Jerash, and have the city of Irbid as its capital; the central Raghadan region will include the Amman, Balqa, Zarqa and Madaba governorates — but exclude the Greater Amman Municipality — and have its capital in Salt; the southern Muta region will comprise the governorates of Karak, Maan, Tafileh and the Aqaba Special Economic Zone (ASEZ), with Karak as capital. This last region is also slated to comprise a "Petra region" with a special statute, modelled on the ASEZ.

The proposal suggests to exclude the Greater Amman Municipality and its two million inhabitants from the long awaited reform because "being the capital city, Amman is shared by all Jordanians," Royal committee member Maha Khatib told The Jordan Times. "Plus, Amman is [home to] the central government and it is quite well developed in terms of services and infrastructure. We need to drive development efforts towards the other regions," Khatib explained.

In a televised address to the nation in January, King Abdullah announced an administrative reform for the creation of "development areas, or regions," each with a "directly elected council to work hand-in-hand with elected municipal councils to set development priorities and draw up plans and programmes." The King emphasised that the ultimate goal of the reform was to reverse the top-to-bottom approach typical of liberalisation efforts so far: "Political development should start at the grassroots level, then move up to decision-making centres, and not vice-versa."

He also listed the functions of the proposed regional councils: "Affairs related to public facilities, investment priorities, capital expenditures and services, and oversee the performance of official bodies in all areas."

The committee appointed by the King a few days after his address included three former PMs (Fayez Tarawneh, Abdur-Ra'uf S. Rawabdeh and Zeid Rifai), seven former ministers (Aqel Biltaji, Marwan Hmoud, Awad Khleifat, Rajai Dajani, Nayef Qadi, Hisham Tal and Abdul Hadi Majali), MP Mamdouh Abbadi and Khatib, who is director general of the Jordan River Foundation.

The proposal, presented to the King on November 23, definitely dispels rumours of a fourth, central region supposedly intended to pave the way for a Jordanian role in the West Bank — rumours already denied by top officials over the past several months. The Royal committee appears to have put particular emphasis on the issue of representation and participation, detailing formulae for the elections of both municipal and regional councils. Municipal councils would be elected under the one-person, one-vote system. Each municipality will elect a minimum of seven and a maximum of 30 council members, ideally with one representative per 10,000 inhabitants. In addition to elected mayors, who will play a purely political role, the proposal foresees each municipal council having an appointed CEO to manage day-to-day business. "One cannot expect an appointed mayor to have the necessary expertise in terms of management, finance, or engineering to run day-to-day business," Khatib explained.

As for regional councils, they are expected to comprise 10 elected representatives for each governorate. Each governorate will comprise 10 voting districts, each electing one representative under the one-person, one-vote system. Each regional council is envisaged to elect its head, deputy head and two assistants. An appointed commissioner, with ministerial rank, would liaise between the regional councils and central government.

The Royal committee suggests that regional councils be in charge of "defining the developmental identity of each region," reviewing and approving socio-economic plans and supervising regional projects. National development projects would remain in the portfolio of the central government, but regional councils would be asked to step in to coordinate some of the efforts and ensure implementation of certain components.

Budgetary and taxation issues have been cited by experts over the past months as critical factors in the success of the regional administrative reform. Analysts have been arguing whether the proposed regions should be given substantial taxation responsibilities, and be allowed to use tax revenues for capital and development expenditures. Though seemingly fair, such a system would condemn poor regions to remain poor, or become even poorer, in a country where 60 per cent of the GDP is generated in the Greater Amman area. According to Khatib, the Royal committee solved the problem by referring to existing legislation, under which only the central government can exercise taxation functions. Each region would therefore be assigned a budget from the central state budget, subjected as all other parts of the state budget to Parliament's endorsement.

On the Edge - Threats to Jordanian Reform FROM HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

2005-12-05T05:17:00.000-08:00

On the Edge - Threats to Jordanian Reform
From the ‘Energy - Fuel for Thought’
Volume 26, Issue 4
Winter 2005
HARVARD INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Matthew Sullivan is a staff writer at the Harvard International Review.

On many levels, Jordan continues to stand among Arab-Muslim countries as the best hope for facilitating peace and genuine democratic reform in the Middle East. Ten years ago, Jordan’s King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a landmark peace treaty second only to Israel’s 1979 accord with Egypt. King Abdullah, Hussein’s successor, has overseen five years of moderate political and economic reforms and has distinguished himself among Arab leaders as the most consistent, liberal advocate of reform.

Today, committed reformers, Muslim Brotherhood members, and several women all hold seats in Jordan’s parliament. Yet in light of the stalled US-led “Road Map” and ongoing violence under the occupation of Iraq, hope for accelerated democratization in Jordan is waning. Indeed, external events and domestic pressures are encumbering Jordan’s ability to serve as the region’s leading voice for peace and model for reform.

The Jordanian monarchy’s difficult relations with the majority Palestinian population have been exacerbated by developments since 2000. The construction of a security fence in the West Bank and the Israeli plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza have produced discontent. Critics have decried Abdullah’s calls for the Palestinian Authority to complete institutional restructuring and to articulate more specific demands of Israel that could serve as a point of departure for renewed negotiations. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade issued a statement condemning Abdullah for betrayal of the Palestinian cause and many Jordanian Palestinians share this sentiment.

While King Abdullah’s marriage to a Palestinian woman with familial ties to the West Bank and his appointment of Palestinians to ministerial positions reflect a desire for inclusion, tensions are likely to remain high so long as the Israeli-Palestinian situation does not improve.

Second, Jordan’s tactical support for the war in Iraq and assistance since the fall of Baghdad have raised the possibility of a violent response from Islamic militants. In a reversal of King Hussein’s support of Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, Abdullah permitted territorial access to US Special Forces in 2003 and has helped with the training of Iraqi police and soldiers. The shift sparked a new cycle of outspoken criticism and Jordan, like other coalition members, has been the target of Islamic terrorism. Last spring, Jordanian police claimed to have disrupted a plot to employ chemical weapons against governmental and US targets in Amman. The details of the effort appear consistent with Al Qaeda operations, which use armored trucks and large quantities of explosives, and Jordanian authorities believe that Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, a militia leader in neighboring Iraq, was behind the plan.

Deviation from reform efforts reflects a need perceived by Jordanian officials to counteract such opposition and enhance security. Jordan’s most recent major governmental shakeup came in October 2003. At that time, the number of cabinet ministers was cut by a quarter, a new appointment system for municipal councils was enacted, and Feisal al-Fayez, a former royal court official with a reputation for compliance, was selected as prime minister. While the restructuring was billed as a means to infuse talent and limit tribal influence from government, many believed its primary motivation was a greater empowerment of Abdullah. The arrest of more than three dozen Islamic leaders on September 9, 2004, signaled that the Interior Ministry’s surveillance efforts would extend inside mosque walls, and one cleric spent three days in prison after refusing to sign a statement promising to temper his criticisms. It is unclear, however, whether any of the arrested leaders had ties to violent opposition groups.

The near future will hold further challenges for Abdullah and Jordanian reformers. Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza remain vulnerable to escalating conflict, and several government officials have expressed fears that Israeli policy in the West Bank will produce an influx of Palestinians into Jordan. The United States has been forced to distance itself from reform efforts so as to avoid contaminating the cause with a US label.

Indeed, the greatest challenge for Abdullah and other Jordanian leaders is to defeat its increasingly violent opponents while creating a reform process and peace initiatives with an Arab face. Speaking last May as host of the World Economic Forum, Abdullah called for democratic reform, yet added that “for reform to succeed, it must emerge from within our societies and not through external influence.”

While Abdullah’s task is great, the price of stagnation, repression, and violence is greater and demands a continuation of Jordanian initiative and knowledge.

Caught between Iraq and a hard place BY SIMON TISDALL - THE GUARDIAN

2005-12-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

Caught between Iraq and a hard place
Simon Tisdall
Tuesday November 29, 2005
THE GUARDIAN

Jordan's 9/11 - the al-Qaida suicide bomb attacks on three Amman hotels on November 9 that killed 63 people - is still sending shockwaves across the kingdom. A new cabinet charged with waging "all-out war" against terrorism was appointed at the weekend. But Jordan's pro-western King Abdullah also insisted that his controversial reform programme, known as the "national agenda", must go forward.

This is a tall order for a country struggling to keep its head above water in a sea of instability. Jordan is caught between Iraq and a hard place - Israel-Palestine. Autocratic neighbours Syria and Saudi Arabia are poor paradigms for democratic change. In addition to its large population of Palestinian origin, up to 400,000 Iraqis have flooded in since 2003. And its close alliance with the US is domestically divisive.

The new prime minister, Marouf al-Bakhit, a former military intelligence chief, said reform and stability were compatible. "My government will maintain the balance between freedom and security," he promised. But Mr Bakhit appeared cautious about the national agenda. "We will assess it ... and translate feasible recommendations into draft laws that in turn will go through the proper constitutional channels," he told Jordanian television.

Jordan's moderate Islamists, who want electoral reform and greater political freedoms, suggest a proposed anti-terror law could play into the militants' hands. "There is a need for vigilance but not for a tougher security grip that will only fuel extremism," the Islamic Action party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, said last week.

Despite revulsion at the Amman attacks and condemnation of their author, the Jordanian-born Iraqi insurgency leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, there are fears that home-grown militancy apeing al-Qaida could grow without effective action to tackle poverty, unemployment and exclusion.

The Muslim Brotherhood presented its own "comprehensive national reform" plan last month, calling for increased political pluralism and enhanced powers for parliament. But Bedouin conservatives, a key royal constituency, are wary of the democratic liberalisation that the US wants for Jordan and other Arab states. Jordan's pro-western establishment and business elites favour IMF-guided market reforms. But they too fear the rising power of non-violent, politicised Islam.

The king's efforts were in trouble long before November 9, said Professor Marc Lynch in the Carnegie Arab Reform Bulletin. "After six years in power, King Abdullah had little to show for his frequent speeches about reform. His tenure had been characterised by a steady decline in freedoms ... Opinion polls reveal widespread alienation, with 80% in one survey [saying] they did not feel safe criticising the government in public," he said.

That made action on the national agenda even more important now, said the independent International Crisis Group last week. "To minimise the risk of future terror attacks that feed on simmering public dissatisfaction, Jordan should implement long-promised political reforms ... The regime should drive a wedge between jihadi and non-jihadi Islamists by promoting a tolerant vision of Islam," it said.

"The public's lack of representation and shortage of economic opportunities has fed a romanticised notion of jihad," said the ICG's Robert Malley. "The November attacks are a preview of what's to come unless the government gets serious about reform."

While King Abdullah appears to understand all this, internal resistance remains formidable, and may have stiffened since the bombings. And the potential of supra-national threats to discourage real change was dramatically illustrated during a weekend trial of al-Qaida suspects in Amman.

"Terrorism is a badge of honour on our chests until Judgment Day," one of the defendants shouted. "We're pursuing jihad until we uproot you, exterminate your state, until the rule of the king vanishes ... Allah is our Lord. You have none. America is your God."

A very good and timely piece by Rami Khoury - I couldn't have agreed more

2005-11-27T04:20:00.000-08:00

Can Jordan fight terror, democratically?
By Rami G. Khouri
Wednesday, November 23, 2005

The lingering fallout from the November 9 terror attack against three hotels in Amman continues to be characterized by a peculiarly Jordanian combination of determination and indecision. The bold and courageous willingness by King Abdullah II and his state security capabilities to confront the criminals who kill civilians throughout the region and the world is somewhat countered by a corresponding meekness in promoting the kind of domestic political reforms that would pull the rug out from under the terrorists, both in Jordan and regionally.

Amman is swirling with political emotions, expectations and rumors, as the results of the attacks remain unclear to most people. There is also a widespread sense that things cannot stay the same - This has been on the surface for quite sometime now (AZ). Fighting terrorism with the same old methods will work to a large extent, but will not prevent determined criminals from doing their evil deeds. A qualitatively different kind of anti-terror policy is needed, and Jordan is one of the few places in the Arab world that could envisage moving down that path.

I mentioned last week that Jordan, unlike most other Arab states, has a special opportunity to make the sorts of historic, substantive changes in its society that could provide the first successful Arab example of a country that fights terror not only by military, security and intelligence means, but also by mobilizing Jordanians to forge a political culture based on inclusion and accountability that gives the terrorists and extremists no fertile ground in which to operate - This is one opportunity the leadership in Jordan can not miss (AZ).

The general threat throughout the Middle East, and increasingly globally, is the spread of an extremist political ideology that also uses violence against its own societies as well as against foreign targets. Terror by Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are symptoms of a deeper malaise, and older distortions and tensions in Arab society. These are fundamentally political in nature, along with economic and social aspects that cannot be ignored. The core pan-Arab problem that has allowed fundamentalist religious extremism to flourish and terror groups to emerge is the problem of abuse of political authority and economic resources in societies where average citizens feel increasingly alienated and powerless - Rami si so right in his analysis, terrorism directed at muslisms and non-muslims, arabs and non-arabs is the major symptom of a Sickness that has been plaguing the Arab society for years (AZ) .

Blowing up hotels and embassies gives humiliated and marginalized Arabs a sense of empowerment, resistance and self-assertion, in ways not available to them through existing political systems. This happens, and expands, primarily because of domestic indignities within Arab society, and these in turn are aggravated by the policies of Israel, the United States and other foreign powers whose troops routinely enter or sometimes occupy Arab lands for years at a time. Defeating terror requires eliminating the underlying political environment allowing it to breed. The antidote to terror is not only security measures managed by police and intelligence agencies, or tougher new laws enforced by interior ministries. The antidote is a political and economic culture in which a majority of ordinary citizens feel empowered, represented and respected as citizens with equal rights. This kind of citizenry, working closely with its security agencies, can then provide political legitimacy and police efficiency that defeats existing terror groups and prevent new ones from springing up.

Jordan has the chance to pioneer this concept, if it can muster the courage and boldness on the political front that Abdullah has already shown on the security front, and in his assertions of the moderation of Islam represented by his own Hashemite family - I honestly doubt that the leadership has what it takes, courage, boldness, forsight and wisedomm, to grab this chance as shown by the lack of commitment and progress in the last three years in the reform track (AZ). Since November 9, we have witnessed political solidarity and moral indignation in Jordan - but these alone are not effective long-term tools in the battle against extremism and terror. Practical political transformations are now needed to transform popular indignation and the leadership's moral boldness into a new phenomenon: Arab democracy, in which security agencies connect with and are empowered by their own citizenry, but also are held accountable to it.

Here are some ideas for procedures that could be instituted in Jordan to forge a closer, healthier relationship among the security services, the political institutions and the citizenry as a whole. Jordan is uniquely placed today to do this because of the rare combination of assets and conditions defining it. The country enjoys strong public support for the king and leadership. The political elite has spoken often and impressively about setting an example of democratic transition and political reforms for the Arab world - but to date without its deeds matching its words - So right. We have become frustrated with plan after plan, with cabinet reshuffle after cabinet reshuffle,... till we became a nation of ministers, none of which has an accomplishment to be proud of and even those who want to affect change aren't given the opportunity as our cabinets are changed at least once every three months (AZ). The security apparatus is efficient and respected. It is time to bring these three forces together into a more profound political culture.

Four specific areas of innovation can be explored, benefiting the security agencies and the public at large. The first is to forge a more formal, institutional link between the security system and the public through a civilian oversight body that meets regularly with the security leadership to evaluate policies and strategies, discuss complaints, evaluate budgets, make suggestions, and, most importantly, generate a sense of accountability and solidarity that is not always there now. A small group of distinguished persons could be appointed by the king as a security-sector advisory and oversight council, a modest first step toward a more institutionalized accountability mechanism that could be developed later. An even more limited trial could be done by appointing a civilian oversight committee to review the work of the anti-corruption department within the intelligence department.

A second step would be to open the security sector to greater cooperation with the media, starting with regular interviews and press briefings, including background and off-the-record briefings. If citizens knew more about the work, methods, needs and aims of the security agencies, this would have two powerful impacts: it would take away much of the sense of marginalization and powerlessness that many citizens feel in the face of their state security systems, which, they assume, can act with impunity; and it would, conversely, prompt many citizens to cooperate legitimately with the police and security sectors. More mutual trust between citizen and security agencies would benefit both.

A third possible move would be to forge a more structured relationship of mutual accountability between the security agencies and both the elected lower house of Parliament and the appointed Upper House. This sort of give-and-take could happen in public at one level - the televised discussion of the security-sector budget, for example - while other issues would need to be discussed in closed committees.

The fourth suggestion relates to the police force, which is the security agency that is in the most direct, daily contact with the public at the local neighborhood level. It is vital that police-community relations be improved and injected with a mechanism for two-way communication, feedback, complaints and problem-solving initiatives. It would be relevant now to establish some local police-community relations councils that include not just the traditional sheikhs and tribal and business leaders, but also young people, including women, who have their own security issues to raise. The police cannot ensure security alone; they can only do so with the active participation of communities.

These are four simple ideas that could be explored, among many others. Perhaps Jordanian citizens could be asked to send suggestions to the king and the government on how to forge a stronger relationship of accountability and communication between citizens and the security system. This is absolutely crucial to the three goals that Jordan seeks to achieve and that confront all Arab states: fighting terrorism; promoting a stable society that does not give rise to extremist movements; and achieving a dignified, prosperous life for all citizens through political, economic, social and educational reforms. At some point, some Arab government will have to stop talking about these goals and start taking practical measures to achieve them. Jordan has the best opportunity to do that, given its unique set of circumstances today. I hope it does so, and creates that one example of a democratic, inclusive, accountable Arab political culture in which stability emanates from the dignity and self-confidence of a satisfied citizenry, rather than from open-ended security laws and often unaccountable security agencies.

FOR GOD'S SAKE, NOT ANOTHER CABINET RESHUFFLE.... Jordan's government quits, monarch appoints new PM

2005-11-27T03:59:00.000-08:00

Jordan's government quits, monarch appoints new PM
Thu Nov 24, 2005 9:51 AM ET

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan's King Abdullah appointed national security chief as prime minister on Thursday, two weeks after triple suicide bombings killed 60 people, a senior official said.

The official said the monarch asked acting national security head, Marouf Bakheet, who had also been serving as the king's office chief of staff, to form a new government following the resignation of Adnan Badran, 69, a U.S.-educated academic appointed last April, and his government. The choice of Bakheet, 58, a former ambassador to Israel with a long career in military intelligence, underscores the king's desire to give security forces a bigger role in decision making, a senior official told Reuters.

Although the changes had long been expected, security concerns have become a priority after the November 9 bombings at three luxury hotels, claimed by Al Qaeda wing in Iraq, headed by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Bakheet's appointment also signals the monarch wants to give more influence to old-guard military figures with a reputation for integrity and untainted by corruption, senior officials say.

Officials say the monarch will count on Bakheet to win support for his much touted economic and political reforms among the powerful conservative establishment -- the backbone of the monarch's power base -- which fears accelerated reforms could lead to an erosion of its grip on power."He (Bakheet) will balance security concerns with the need to push forward His Majesty's reform agenda to move the country toward greater political liberties," said one senior official. Bakheet is expected to form his government in the next few days.

WIDER CHANGES

The government change was part of a wider reshuffle that had been planned for months, including a shakeup of the royal court to bring in new advisors and the appointment of a new upper house with seasoned politicians to redress an imbalance against tribal politicians.King Abdullah surprised many when he appointed Badran to succeed Faisal al-Fayez, blamed by politicians for several policy blunders, including mismanagement of government finances.Tough parliamentary criticism of Badran's performance has been viewed as the most direct challenge to Abdullah since he assumed the throne in 1999.In the summer, Badran had to succumb to tribal pressure and accept the resignation of Bassem Awadallah, the king's favorite moderniser, and the driving force behind accelerated reforms.

Conservative deputies accused Badran of promoting a pro-Western reform agenda and ignoring tribal sensitivities. Political insiders say the king had been very frustrated with conservative politicians wielding extensive powers, who had tried to put the brakes on democratic reforms fearing they may dilute the influence of their Bedouin power base. They fear the king would promote changes in the electoral law which reformers say could give Palestinians bigger representation in parliament, now dominated by tribal politicians long seen as the backbone of the king's support. Most powers rest with the king, who appoints governments, approves legislation and can dissolve parliament.

Al- Qaeda Strikes Jordan: Dimensions and Repercussions

2005-11-27T03:43:00.001-08:00

Al- Qaeda Strikes Jordan: Dimensions and Repercussions
The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research

Three important conclusions can be drawn from the attacks launched by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, against three hotels in the Jordanian's capital Amman on Wednesday evening, November 9th, 2005. Firstly, the group has its own agenda and not necessary that of the main group led by Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahri; secondly, it lacks clear strategic vision of its objectives and plans; and thirdly it has a "surplus of force" in terms of men, equipment and logistical capability.

In addition to what has been said regarding "power struggle" within Al-Qaeda and the reported message sent by Al-Zawahri to Al-Zarqawi, which reveals a conflict in their points of view; it is clear that Al-Zarqawi's attacks, especially in his main battlefield (Iraq), are carried out without any coordination or agreement with "Al-Qaeda of Bin Laden and Al-Zawahri".

Despite the historical "status" of Bin Laden as the world's most wanted after 9/11 attacks, nobody denies that Al-Zarqawi gained a higher status among those who are called "princes of terrorism " due to the semi daily mass killing attacks against Iraqi civilians, policemen, and army men, especially the Shiites, in addition to the continuous kidnapping and killing operations against civilians and diplomats in Iraq.

In this context, the actual status of Al-Zarqawi and his group have been elevated to the extent that one can't categorize them as a mere branch of a larger group. There is no doubt that the state of Al-Qaeda's fragmentation is due to the severe and relentless blows it has suffered and the tight siege on its prominent leaders. This situation gave rise to Zarqawi's leadership and his agenda, which differs from that of bin Laden's.

While the main group of Al-Qaeda tries to launch attacks against Western targets, especially in the Western capitals and cities and accelerate a shameful American withdrawal from Iraq, most of Al-Zarqawi's efforts are directed towards the Shiites and civilians in Iraq, and the guests of hotels and wedding celebrations in Amman.

Currently, Bin Laden seeks to carry out attacks against Anglo-Saxon targets or against countries participating in what he calls "the crusaders' campaign against Islam." This is clear in the operations launched against the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, aimed at embarrassing the Western governments and influencing their peoples and media to force changes in their governments' policies towards the region and speed up the dismantling of the Western coalition on "war on terrorism." But it seems the abovementioned motives are not priorities on Al-Zarqawi's agenda.

We cannot endorse any assessment that lessens the impact of the atrocities committed by Al-Qaida against Islam and Muslims in particular and humanity in general, but comparing what is done by this group, founded in the late 1980s, with what is apparent from Al-Zarqawi's agenda after Iraq's occupation shows how these terrorist groups have evolved in their savage and appalling acts.

An essential question arises about the objectives of the planners of the Amman attacks that killed 57 and injured around 100 persons. Despite the dozens of articles and analyses that filled the media about these attacks, many people have not figured out yet the precise objectives of Al-Zarqawi group. There doesn't seem to be a lack of analyses; instead, it is clear that the officials' assessments and monitors' analyses failed to identify logical pretexts for the crime due to the absence of such pretexts in the first place.

The immediate results of the attacks have been clear on the Jordanian, Arab, Islamic and international levels, which widely rejected and condemned the attacks. It seems that these attacks increased the solidarity of the Jordanian society and enhanced the ties between the Jordanian leadership and its people. Thus, Al-Qaeda group (in Iraq) lost a lot of the sympathy that was gaining from the Jordanian street, which considered the group's activities in Iraq as fighting the occupation.

On the other hand, the Jordanian security services have become more vigilant and more prepared to face future operations and to control the Iraqi borders. King Abdullah declared that he is fully and relentlessly determined to combat terrorism. He added also that his country "will no longer tolerate those adopting deviating thoughts of Takfeer (charging others of being infidels)." Jordan now is receiving offers of help for coordination and security from many countries and great powers in the region and international community.

In a simple review, it is clear that until now these attacks didn't yield their perpetrators any fruits. And the statement that Al-Zarqawi group was forced to issue after declaring its responsibility of the attacks, which seems to justify the attacks rather than to explain them, may support this suggestion. The statement, which came after huge protests arranged by Jordanians against terrorism, stated that the attacks "targeted anti Islamic centers and favorite sites for the USA and Israeli intelligence members." Undoubtedly, this statement cannot improve the image of the group in view of its huge blunder and lack of logic.

Referring back to the third conclusion of the Amman attacks regarding the "Al-Zarqawi group's surplus of power," it is definitely not a positive one since that power can be used to harm soft civilian targets in many countries. And "surplus of power" here means what the group has in terms of suicide persons, arms, and logistical capability as embodied in training, transportation, accommodation, preparations, coordination, and communications. All these were available outside the Iraqi borders (the main battlefield that needs all the available abilities) and were used in attacks that one cannot imagine having rational objectives behind them, even from the view of Al-Zarqawi's greatest sympathizers or the extreme opponents of the Jordanian policies.

In fact, the November attacks in Amman represent, in many ways, a point of departure. The attacks are the severest that have hit the Jordanian capital in history, and they will surely be highly effective in rallying the public and governmental efforts against terrorism in Jordan. These attacks will certainly enhance the international and regional coordination efforts against terrorism and reduce the emphasis on the international and regional factors that feed that sympathy, especially those related to the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories and the Israeli practices against the Palestinians.

Whether the Amman blasts came as a result of "surplus of power" in Al-Zarqawi's group, or to achieve certain goals inside Jordan, or due to strategic mistake, or tactical error, it is clear that recruiting Iraqi suicide attackers, directing them to carry out operations in a capital known for its high security measures, and launching attacks leading to many victims, are factors that should increase caution and hasten the efforts to develop regional and international strategies and mechanisms to combat the terrorist attacks in their different phases.

Al- Qaeda Strikes Jordan: Dimensions and Repercussions

2005-11-27T03:43:00.000-08:00

Jordan's 9/11: Dealing With Jihadi Islamism - A New report by The International Crisis Group...

2005-11-24T00:31:00.000-08:00

A good reading for the weekend...

Jordan's 9/11: Dealing With Jihadi Islamism
Middle East Report N°47 23
November 2005
INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP

For access to the full report (23 PAGES)
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3801

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The horrifying 9 November 2005 suicide attacks against three hotels in Amman -- with a toll of 60 dead and over 100 wounded -- drove home two important messages. No security apparatus, however efficient, can prevent each and every attack by a person prepared to die as they kill others. And any security response must be complemented by a genuine opening of the political system and more equally shared economic opportunity if Jordan is to minimise the risk of further attacks and instability.

In the identity of their perpetrators and the background of their apparent mastermind, the attacks spoke volumes about Jordan's predicament. They were carried out by Iraqis, who were angered by events in their country, had arrived in the Kingdom only days earlier and chose America's close ally in the region as the target for their revenge. And they reportedly were masterminded by Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadi commander fighting in Iraq who elicits a measure of domestic sympathy insofar as he gives voice to popular hostility toward U.S. policy and alienation toward the country's Westernised elite.

Feeding on disaffection with a government that has failed to address basic needs and maintains an unpopular alliance with the U.S., violent Islamist militants have flourished of late. As in most other Middle East and North African countries, the victorious return of those who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan led to the creation of a domestic jihadi Salafi movement in the early 1990s. Having encouraged the spread of traditional, peaceful Salafism to balance an increasingly Palestine-oriented Muslim Brotherhood, the regime was ill-prepared to deal with the arrival of these radicalised young men who turned Salafism on its head by giving it a violent bent.

The security services at first kept jihadis in check. But over time, their elastic reach and the introduction of more repressive laws generated new frustrations and renewed interest in radical agendas. The last few years in particular have seen growing public criticism of a leadership that allied itself with the West at a time of intense anti-Americanism and failed both to deliver anticipated economic dividends to anyone but the elites and to implement promised political reforms. Lack of representation and participation, combined with a shortage of economic opportunities, fed into a romanticised notion of jihad that has sent a steady trickle of young men across the border to join the fight against the U.S. and its perceived proxies in Iraq. Others, it appears from recent events, remain in Jordan, where they can lay the groundwork for suicide attacks carried out by non-Jordanians who slip across the border and reach their targets before the security services get wind of them.

The hotel attacks produced strong but likely temporary revulsion against jihadi terrorism, and the regime has understandably reacted by announcing tougher security measures, but these cannot suffice and, without other, more proactive steps, may well backfire. Besides anger at U.S. regional policies and the monarchy's acquiescence in them, sympathy for the jihadis has its roots in an overly constricted political system, growing economic inequality, shrinking opportunities and anger at widespread corruption. For years, the regime has promised an ambitious reform program. The time has come for it to implement this at home with the same ardour with which it advertises it abroad. A three-pronged strategy is needed, addressing political, economic and cultural challenges.

RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Political measures. The regime should take advantage of its current popular support resulting from outrage at the bombings to:

(a) review laws and decisions that curtail political freedoms and, where necessary amend or -- as in the specific case of the draft professional associations law -- abandon them;

(b) draft a new electoral law providing a more accurate popular representation; and

(c) form a broader, more inclusive government coalition incorporating opposition tendencies in order to carry out these political reforms and implement the proposed National Agenda, including the long-awaited new electoral law.

2. Economic measures. The regime should expand opportunities for the poor and unemployed to share more fairly and fully in Jordan's real growth by taking urgent steps to:

(a) remove obstacles to job creation and provide job training and skill building programs;

(b) cushion hardships for the least fortunate;

(c) provide start-up financing and low-cost administrative support for small entrepreneurial efforts; and

(d) attack corruption more strongly.

3. Cultural measures. The regime should seek to drive a wedge between jihadi and non-jihadi Islamists, by acting to:

(a) promote a tolerant version of Islam in all educational institutions;

(b) launch an ideological campaign against fitna (discord) among Muslims; and

(c) provide genuine space for credible, competent, independent preachers and religious teachers who denounce violence -- including those who are critical of government policy -- to debate Salafi ideologues.

Very depressing news... Extremists 'hijack Islam's image'

2005-11-22T05:17:00.000-08:00

For more information, you can check their website at
http://www.islamperceptions.org/

Extremists 'hijack Islam's image'
By Peter Feuilherade BBC Monitoring, in Amsterdam

The West's image of Islam has been hijacked by extremists, delegates at the recent News Xchange broadcasting conference in Amsterdam heard.

Debate was prompted by the results of a Kuwaiti government survey that found the depiction of Muslims in the US and European media was "typically stereotypical and negative".

Several speakers concluded that the role of the media should be to understand and illustrate the complexity of the Islamic world, rather than dealing in such generalisations.

'Widespread ignorance'
The session began with Chris Yalonis of Communique Partners presenting the findings of a new international survey, "Western perceptions about Islam and Muslims", which he carried out on behalf of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Awqaf (Endowments) and Islamic Affairs.

Things are being done in the name of religion, but it's not good enough for the media to describe them simply as Islamic Phil Harding, BBC World Service

He said there was a paradox between the perception by many Europeans of their Muslim neighbours and colleagues as "good people", while Muslims they see on television are often depicted as "terrorists".

Between March and August 2005 the survey team carried out more than 2,400 online interviews in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the US. Their findings included:

- Muslims rated lowest in overall favourability among various religious groups.
- Ignorance of and lack of empathy with Islam is widespread.
- The portrayal of Arabs and Muslims varies according to the type of media, "but it is typically stereotypical and negative, although improving especially in certain prestigious news organisations".
- TV documentaries and news are the most influential media in influencing feelings about Arab Muslims, followed by newspapers.
- Nearly three-quarters of respondents believe that the media depicts Arab Muslims and Islam accurately only half the time, not often or never.

Trevor Mostyn, an analyst of European media interviewed by the survey team, said:
"Television loves the image of the ugly, ferocious blood-curdling Muslims." Articulate, "mainstream" Muslims are rarely seen on TV in Britain, Mostyn asserted.

Heated debate
The News Xchange session on "Reporting Islam" saw a passionate debate during which some Arab journalists complained that Muslims were frequently demonised in the Western media, while many European broadcasters stressed the need to avoid using inflammatory terms and to give airtime to moderate voices as well as extremists.

Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based paper al-Quds al-Arabi, complained of the West's coverage of the Muslim world, saying that when radical groups "hijacked" Islam, Western media simplistically depicted this as "Muslim terrorism".

He added: "Whatever we do, we are still rejected by the West... As a Muslim in Europe, which is supposed to be the continent of human rights, I am really frightened."

Wadah Khanfar, managing director of al-Jazeera, said many media and correspondents failed to differentiate between the Muslim religion and cultural tradition. He too agreed: "We should abandon simplistic coverage."

Feelings ran high when Ayan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch MP whose criticism of Islam sent her into hiding after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, spoke. She accused Arab journalists of seeing all problems as caused by some outside force, and said they should engage in more self-reflection.

Her remarks that "there is a total lack of freedom in the Arab and Islamic world", as well as "a lack of equality for and a culture of violence towards women", provoked angry denials and denunciations from many Arab and other journalists in the hall.

"Things are being done in the name of religion, but it's not good enough for the media to describe them simply as Islamic," concluded Phil Harding of BBC World Service, summing up what emerged as the majority consensus after a very heated discussion.

Index ranks Middle East freedom... We still score low and we are behind Palestine and Iraq - Two states under occupation... WALLA HARAM

2005-11-22T00:51:00.000-08:00

Index ranks Middle East freedom
BBC ONLINE

There is a wide range of democratisation across the Middle East, a survey by a leading research and advisory firm has found.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked 20 countries on 15 indicators of political and civil liberty. The Index of Political Freedom lists Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories as the most democratic parts of the region.

Libya received the lowest rating, below Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Reform resisted
The EIU scored each country on a 10-point scale, awarding one point for the least political freedom and 10 for the most.

INDEX OF POLITICAL FREEDOM
Israel: 8.20
Lebanon: 6.55
Morocco: 5.20
Iraq: 5.05
Palestine: 5.05
Kuwait: 4.90
Tunisia: 4.60
Jordan: 4.45 (We can say that we are in the same league with Egypt, Sudan & Yemen)
Qatar: 4.45
Egypt: 4.30
Sudan: 4.30
Yemen: 4.30
Algeria: 4.15
Oman: 4.00
Bahrain: 3.85
Iran: 3.85
UAE: 3.70
Saudi Arabia: 2.80
Syria: 2.80
Libya: 2.05
Source: EIU

The analysts found little evidence of democratisation in some countries. Sitting at the bottom of the table, Libya has long had a reputation as one of the world's worst violators of human rights.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's government has also long restricted freedom of expression and independent political activity.

Saudi Arabia held its first ever exercise in democracy in February 2005 when it held municipal elections, but remains an absolute monarchy that has resisted pressure for reform.

Syria, meanwhile, is renowned for its authoritarian rule even though there has been a degree of liberalisation under President Bashar al-Assad.

Progress
Though there are few surprises at the bottom of the table, the top five may raise eyebrows.

It contains three of the most volatile parts of the region: Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq.

FREEDOM INDICATORS
Election of head of government
Election of parliament
Fairness of electoral laws
Right to organise political parties
Power of elected representatives
Presence of an opposition
Transparency
Minority participation
Level of corruption
Freedom of assembly
Independence of the judiciary
Press freedom
Religious freedom
Rule of law
Property rights
Source: EIU

BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy says there is unquestionably a new mood in the region, but progress has been uneven.

Lebanon is free in a very particular sense: it is no longer under military occupation. Most Palestinians do not enjoy that freedom, and yet they have just had local elections and are preparing for parliamentary ones in January, our correspondent says.

As for Iraq, its high score is a bit surprising, given the level of violence there, our correspondent says.

Iraqis no long live under a dictatorship and now have plenty of publications and political parties to choose from. But their freedom of movement is constrained by the bombings and kidnappings, and that is a big limitation.

King has more friends in West than at home by ROBERT FISK...

2005-11-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

A Very critical article by Fisk in the Independent...I never thought that Fisk had such strong feelings and opinions against the jordanian monarchy, any comments?!

King has more friends in West than at home
By Robert Fisk
THE INDEPENDENT
Friday, 11th November 2005

It was a bloody, cruel message to the Plucky Little King Mark II. Help the Americans, train their Iraqi policemen, entertain their special forces officers and you will be a new target of al-Qa’ida. Not that new, of course. A US embassy employee, Laurence Foley, the softest of targets because he loved the Middle East and lived at home in Amman, was killed three years ago. But 56 dead, most of them Jordanians, is a devastating blow to the man who once ran the supposedly "elite" Jordanian special forces and who is King of that little sandpit Winston Churchill created and called "Jordan".

And who was to blame? Why Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of course. The same tiresome, odd, ruthless, nebulous Zarqawi who the Americans seem as little able to capture or kill as they do Osama bin Laden, or Mullah Omar, or, for that matter, Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic, the war criminals who butchered the Muslims of Srebrenica and other cities in Bosnia.
The suicide bombings that killed 56 innocents in Amman bore in that cliche beloved of all journalists, "all the hallmarks" , of al-Qa’ida and Zarqawi. Why do we keep gifting these creatures with the attributes of silver?

If, that is, Zarqawi is alive. A petty criminal from the Jordanian city of Zarqa, he certainly existed in 2003 when the illegal invasion of Iraq was undertaken by the United States and Britain. But many in Iraq believe he died in the initial air attacks of that war. In Zarqa, his wife, of whom he was very possessive, has gone out to work to support her family. When his mother died last year, the family had no messages of condolence from Zarqawi, an odd omission from a man who has supposedly embraced so strict an interpretation of Islam.

Repeatedly, American intelligence officers have "identified" Zarqawi from videotapes depicting the murder of Western hostages. But the killers were always cowled in scarves, their voices distorted. How did the Americans know this was Zarqawi? There are many unanswered questions about al-Qaida’s role in Iraq - and now in Jordan - which we journalists now prefer to leave alone. Why Jordan? Why now?

Well, partly because King Abdullah is so loyal a servant of President George Bush. Partly because his forces are training Iraqi soldiers. Partly because he is allowing US special forces to train those soldiers on his soil. Partly because Jordan has also become a rear echelon air base for US fighter-bombers, which are attacking cities in Iraq. And partly because Jordan, with its unconstitutional monarchy and its growing slums of Islamists in its largest cities, is the soft underbelly of "the West" in the Middle East. Since the death of his father, Jordanians and other Arabs have been asking whether the King can justify his existence in what was once called Transjordan.

"What is the King for?" I was asked not long ago in Jordan. A dangerous question, and every act of violence against his kingdom makes the question more ominous. Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is as unpopular as ever inside the country. The Radisson Hotel, one of the targets of Wednesday night’s attacks, was often used by Israeli visitors to Jordan.

Because he is so popular in the West, because he speaks English better than he speaks Arabic, because he is the son of the Plucky Little King Mark I, King Hussein, because he was a graduate of Sandhurst, King Abdullah is a popular figure in Europe and America, welcome in Downing Street and the White House. But there are those in Jordan who do not wish him so well.

Wednesday night’s attacks were a warning that the King might be safer in London than he is in Amman.

IT'S UP TO HUSSEIN'S SON TO SAVE KINGDOM BY URI DAN - THE NEW YORK POST

2005-11-14T07:42:00.000-08:00

IT'S UP TO HUSSEIN'S SON TO SAVE KINGDOM
By URI DAN
THE NEW YORK POST, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2005

SUDDENLY, Jordan is in the eye of the terrorist storm — and it's up to King Abdullah to save the kingdom.

The king, who inherited the best security service of the Arab world from his father, King Hussein, is ready to wage a gloves-off war on al Qaeda. Those close to him expect a bloody battle.

"I knew King Hussein, and I know King Abdullah," ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said. "When the king was on his way to die, he chose Abdullah to succeed him not because he was more intelligent than the other princes but because he knew Prince Abdullah would be the toughest of them all if the moment arrived when the Hashemite Kingdom was in danger."

That danger comes from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda chieftain from Zarga, Jordan, who orchestrated Wed- nesday night's synchronized attacks on three Amman hotels. In the past, Abdullah's security service had managed to uncover such plots, including one to attack Western tourists during the 2000 millennium celebrations at Christian holy places along the Jordan River. But some observers see laxity plaguing the secret service of late, allowing an al Qaeda support network in Jordan to help Zarqawi carry out the hotel bombings.

Abdullah has refrained — so far — from fighting Zarqawi with the brutal methods of his dad, who in 1970 crushed the Black September uprising of Palestinians hellbent on overthrowing him.

"Jordan is a controlled democracy now," an Israeli intelligence officer said yesterday. "But if the king wants to strike against terrorists with what democracies call 'police state methods,' he would absolutely do it to save his throne." [ ]

Caught in the middle, as usual by THE ECONOMIST

2005-11-14T07:18:00.000-08:00

Caught in the middle, as usual
Nov 11th 2005
The Economist

A co-ordinated terrorist attack on three hotels in Amman shows that Jordan is not the oasis of calm it claims to be

THE vaunted tranquillity of Jordan amid the seemingly permanent instability afflicting its neighbours was bloodily interrupted on Wednesday November 9th by three bombs, probably set off suicidally, in posh hotels frequented by westerners, Israelis and the Jordanian elite in the capital, Amman. First reports said that the blasts, in the Grand Hyatt, the Radisson and the Days Inn hotels, killed at least 57 people and wounded around 100. The Jordanian assumption—bolstered by a claim on the internet—was that al-Qaeda was responsible.

But it is easy to guess. Jordan is a vital regional ally of the United States, which promotes and bolsters the country and its 43-year-old king, Abdullah, who succeeded his late father, Hussein, six years ago, as a showpiece of economic and political progress and globalisation. With only 5m people and wedged between Israel, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia ("the neighbours from hell", as the king has privately called them), Jordan is now the world's fourth-biggest recipient of American aid.

It has also become a hub for western diplomats, businessmen, aid agencies and military people going in and out of Iraq. Moreover, Amman is the main meeting-point for expatriate Iraqis, some 400,000 of whom are reckoned to live there, some connected to the old regime and the insurgency, others to the new order struggling to assert itself. Several hundred Jordanians, including the arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who claims the al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq, are probably fighting against the Americans across the border.

The Jordanian king took a gamble in 2003 by deciding to back the Americans in their invasion of Iraq—unlike his father, who remained neutral during the first Gulf war against Iraq in 1991, to Saddam Hussein's delight and the Americans' intense displeasure. But, despite the consequent increase in American largesse, King Abdullah's decision was generally disliked by his citizens, over half of whom are of Palestinian origin: they loathe what they see as America's bias towards Israel. Most of Jordan's so-called East Bankers (ie, those who are not Palestinian) are equally hostile to American policy, sympathising strongly with the "resistance" by their Sunni co-religionists against the new Shia-dominated order in Iraq. The most popular political party in Jordan according to opinion polls, though far from being the choice of the majority, is the Islamic Action Front, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and an admirer of the Islamists of Hamas in Israel.

However, the bombings in Amman have been greeted by widespread anger in Jordan and the wider Arab world. Rallies against them were held on Friday in the Jordanian capital, and a number of groups, including the Islamic Action Front, called on their followers to hold further marches. Apparently taken aback by this hostile response, the group that had claimed responsibility for the attack issued a further (unverified) statement justifying the atrocity on the grounds that the hotels had been used as bases for waging war on Islam.

Tribal troubles
Even if most of his countrymen stand behind him in condemning the bombs, King Abdullah has other problems. He has been backing a strongly liberal economic policy, which has annoyed the old tribal conservatives on whom the Hashemite monarchy has depended since it was installed by the British 80-plus years ago. Seeming to answer the Americans' appeal for more democratisation in the Middle East, he launched an ambitious "national agenda" earlier this year which, he said, would "lead the country into a new age where there is more press freedom, health insurance for all, an independent judiciary, a more politically active public, political pluralism, active and powerful parties with clear-cut platforms, and empowered women and youth."

One recommendation expected to be made by the committees which have been elaborating the national agenda is for a new electoral law that would give Palestinians fairer representation in parliament. That would annoy the old guard too.

As a former senior minister puts it, "he's trying to take Jordan out of the region's mentality." But the king has met resistance across the spectrum. "We cannot afford shocks," says the former minister. In the summer, the king's favourite moderniser, Bassam Aawadallah, an ardent liberal economist, was forced out as finance minister, partly for being too abrasive.

For all the talk of modernisation and political pluralism, Jordan is still a politely authoritarian state run by a king whose near-absolute power is underpinned by a ruthless and watchful security service. His reforms are being imposed from the top down. The press, though it breathes a bit more freely, is co-opted and still occasionally muzzled. A recent poll by the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan found that 77% of respondents felt they could not "criticise the government without fearing punishment", against only 16% who thought they could."

The perpetrators of this week's bombs will be hunted down without mercy; dozens have been arrested already, including some Iraqis. All the same, the young king knows he must be careful. Too fierce a bout of repression could backfire. Beneath its amiable surface, Jordan hosts many dangerously competing tensions.

The Terrorist attacks on our beloved country, AL Urdun…

2005-11-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

The Terrorist attacks on our beloved country, AL Urdun…

I, as most people of our beloved country Jordan, is still in shock by the cowardly and barbaric acts of terrorism which clearly demonstrated the terrible cruelty of the terrorists and the great toll they take on civilised society.

I am of the firm belief that there can be no justification for this pointless destruction….Jordan will not be deterred by the devastation that terrorist madness has provoked... among innocent people. We all will stand together in this battle against the scourge of terrorism.

My thoughts go to the families and friends of the many who have been murdered or injured in such indiscriminate attacks.

…I have decided to refrain from posting pics of the attacks or the demonstrations, which has been covered exclusively by my fellow Jordanian bloggers, and decided to post articles and op-eds from the international press that concerns the events of the past couple of days…

Plans for reform in Jordan must overcome scepticism BY SHARMILA DEVI - The financial Times

2005-11-07T05:45:00.000-08:00

Plans for reform in Jordan must overcome scepticism
By Sharmila Devi
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
November 3 2005 16:51

Amman is bustling with the human overspill from neighbouring Iraq, with burly western security contractors, aid workers and Iraqi exiles filling the hotels and shopping malls.
Gulf investors with oil money to burn, and other Arabs seeking a safe haven out of troubled Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the region are rushing to capitalise on cheap property prices and a booming stock market. Jordan is again making the most out of its historic role as a safe buffer state in a bad neighbourhood.

Beneath the glitz and impressive growth figures lie long-simmering problems for the energy-scarce country of less than 6m people – a worrisome budget deficit, high poverty levels, widespread dissatisfaction over close relations with Washington and popular empathy with the neighbouring Palestinians.

The government is soon due to reveal its “National Agenda” – a 10-year plan of ambitious political and economic reforms that have been talked about since King Abdullah came to the throne in 1999. Compiled by officials from both the private and public sectors and civil society, many Jordanians are already cynical about the exercise, given the opposition to change by many in the rich, ruling elite.

Marwan Muasher, deputy prime minister who headed the agenda’s steering committee, acknowledges the challenge. “Most of the public started being sceptical about this, not because they’re not with reform but because they’re not sure the government means what it says and they’re not sure there’s a policy commitment to this programme,” he said.

“The National Agenda is an effort that will show people that yes, we will pass through two very difficult years but that we have a well-thought out, measurable programme that would not just get rid of the chronic problems that we have in our budget but result in a doubling of people’s incomes in 10 years.”

He said that for the first time in the Arab world, reform would be tied to performance indicators, a timeframe and budgetary allocations. Reports would be published on the reforms, which make an impressive list. They include a long-discussed electoral law to introduce party lists as part of an effort to lessen tribalism and patronage in political life, remove all legal discrimination against women, bring in universal health insurance and cut the unemployment rate by about half to 6.8 per cent in the next 10 years. Singapore and Ireland have been studied as role models, said Mr Muasher.

But critics say parliament retains the power to dilute any changes, even if the king continues regulary to postpone its sessions. They say the intelligence services provide a safe and secure environment, but at the expense of stifling outspokenness in a country where much of the press imposes self-censorship on issues such as the royal family, the ruling classes or corruption.

“The king is trying to bring new blood into the government and that’s to be welcomed but the old guard is a real monster and it’s hard to get rid of it,” said one analyst. “All this talk of reform is very positive but it’s going to take a lot of time.”

On the economic front, Jordanians do speak of a sense of optimism after having weathered regional shocks such as the Palestinian intifada and the 2003 Iraq war. Gross domestic product is set to grow by more than 7 per cent again this year after registering growth of 7.5 per cent in 2004, up from only 4 per cent the previous year.

But high oil prices, coupled with the receipt of only around half the fuel subsidies forecast from rich Gulf states, has forced the government to raise fuel prices twice this year. The budget deficit risks overshooting the target 3.3 per cent of GDP to more than 8 per cent, say analysts.

Umayya Toukan, governor of the Central Bank of Jordan, said he was confident that the deficit would be controlled through a combination of measures. These include a phasing out of fuel subsidies by 2007, fiscal reforms and rising revenue collection and accelerated privatisation efforts.

For this year, he spoke of an inflation rate of between 3 and 4 per cent after having managed to keep it between 2 and 3 per cent for the past two years.

Mr Toukan said reforms would help to bring down the jobless rate.

Agenda proposals unrelated to gov't change — King

2005-10-10T05:18:00.000-07:00

Agenda proposals unrelated to gov't change — King
Monday, October 10, 2005

AMMAN (JT) — His Majesty King Abdullah on Sunday said the release of the National Agenda proposals is unrelated to any government change, emphasising that talk of a Cabinet reshuffle or change was nothing but speculation.

In an interview with Al Rai daily, the King said a referendum on the National Agenda was unnecessary and was also unconstitutional.

He said the next step is for the government to study the recommendations, principles and ideas agreed to by the members of the National Agenda Steering Committee, and on issues such as the Elections Law, the government may find a need for additional dialogue.

In response to a question about the Kingdom's glut of political parties, King Abdullah said the fact that Jordan has more than 30 parties is a hindrance to political reform. He said he hoped that in the future three to four parties would emerge as representing the principles and ideologies of the country with programmes tackling national, political, social and economic issues.
The Steering Committee for National Agenda was formed in February to set the Kingdom's socio-economic and political reform policies for the next 10 years.

King Abdullah told Al Rai that the path of the National Agenda would take it through the evaluation of recommendations, and the translation of those proposals into programmes and laws that would go through the constitutional process.

Asked about the formation in January of the Royal Commission on administrative divisions, the Monarch said the goals involved planning, economic and development dimensions.

“We felt we needed to involve citizens in development and economic decision making to increase economic growth in the governorates and reduce poverty and unemployment.”

The commission is tasked with instituting a decentralisation plan that would divide the country into three administrative regions and grant citizens the right to elect their municipal councils.

Once again, he said, the findings of this committee will be put before the government for study and assessment, and the necessary procedures of programme and legislation drafting.

The King dismissed as baseless rumours that the administrative division concept was intended to pave the way for a Jordanian role in the West Bank, as a fourth region.

The King said he was certain that the Anti-Corruption Commission, which he formed in June, would be able to carry out its mandate.

In a public opinion poll released by the Centre for Strategic Studies in September 2005, citizens ranked fighting corruption second among their priorities, after reducing poverty and unemployment.

On pressing bread and butter issues such as the recent hikes in oil prices and the elimination of oil subsidies, King Abdullah listed several initiatives by the Royal Court and public institutions to provide in-kind and cash assistance to the underprivileged via a revamped method of identifying families and individuals who legitimately qualify for such assistance. He also said that plans were in motion to provide housing facilities for the needy.

But the King emphasised that reduction of poverty and unemployment required increased private-public sector partnerships to create more job opportunities.

King Abdullah said the oil price increases do pose a burden, particularly on the poor, but he added that the step was necessary now to avoid becoming dependent.

“Either we face this problem ourselves or be victims of external economic effects,” the King said.
On Sunday, King Abdullah visited the Jordan Press Foundation (JPF), which publishes Al Rai, The Jordan Times and Hatem, a children's magazine.

He said local media outlets play a key role in spelling out Jordan's achievements and programmes.

The Monarch stressed that journalists should be committed to high professional standards, transparency and credibility.

During the visit, the King met with Chairman of JPF's Board of Directors Khalid Wazani, JPF Director General Nader Horani and Editor-in-Chief of Al Rai Abdul Wahab Zgheilat, who briefed the Monarch on the newspaper's achievements and future plans.

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

2005-10-04T04:58:00.000-07:00

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.

Interesting articles/studies from the Arab Studies Quarterly....

2005-10-02T03:56:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

I received the following articles about Jordan which have been published in the Arab Studies Quarterly. Please send me an email if you wish to receive an electronic copy of any of these very valuable articles…..

The 1993 elections in Jordan
Abla M. Amawi
SUMMER 1994

State strength, permeability, and foreign policy behavior: Jordan in theoretical perspective
Bassel F. Salloukh
SPRING 1996

Jordan: a study of attitudes toward democratic changes
Maher J. Massis
SUMMER 1998

Islamists, The State, And Cooperation In Jordan
Quintan Wiktorowicz
FALL 1999

Dynastic Modernism And Its Contradictions: Testing The Limits Of Pluralism, Tribalism, And King Hussein's Example In Hashemite Jordan
Andrew Shryock
SUMMER 2000

"Jordan first": Jordan's inter-Arab relations and foreign policy under King Abdullah II
Curtis R. Ryan
SUMMER 2004

Analysis: Jordan's balancing act by UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

2005-10-02T01:59:00.000-07:00

Analysis: Jordan's balancing act
By Leigh Baldwin
United Press International
September 29, 2005

Jordan, considered among the most stable countries in the Arab world, has not escaped the current of change running through the region.

The new climate emerged after a shift in American policy in the Middle East. Where previously the United States was content to strike pragmatic bargains with the region's autocrats, post-9/11 political opinion sees democratic development as the best defense against extremism. Jordan's King Abdullah, whose government depends on American economic support, has come under increasing pressure from his closest ally to accelerate reform.

East and west of the desert kingdom, change is afoot. Both the Palestinian Territories and Iraq have held democratic elections while further afield, Egypt and Lebanon are also making faltering steps toward more popular government.

External pressure is not the only imperative. Jordan, barren in natural resources, once enjoyed guaranteed cheap oil from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Since the invasion, pipelines have not been operating and crude is instead shipped from the Saudi port of Yanbu to Aqaba, where it is transferred to trucks. This is costly and inefficient. Gas prices are rising, as is popular discontent.

And behind any social unease in the Arab world lurks the specter of Islamist extremism. While Jordan's most notorious export, al-Qaida leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, wreaks destruction in Iraq, ways are being sought to forestall radicalism by including potential dissidents in the political process.

The result of all this has been the National Agenda, a consultative process launched by the king last February, according to which a royally appointed 26-man council is due to announce its recommendations for reform by the end of September.

Is the process credible? "People are very skeptical," says Joost Hintermann of the International Crisis Group in Amman. The council is comprised entirely of loyalists to the regime -- former ministers, tribal leaders, businessmen, academics. Technocrats and young reformists are unrepresented.

Yet Hintermann sees no cause for excessive pessimism. "This process involves more than high-falutin' language," he says. In contrast with previous attempts at change, "all proposals will be linked directly to the national budget." This time, reform may be structural as well as rhetorical.

At the center of the reform debate is controversy over the electoral system. Under current electoral laws, towns such as Zarqa, home of Zarqawi and inhabited mostly by Jordanians of Palestinian origin, are underrepresented politically. They elect far fewer parliamentary delegates than many smaller towns where inhabitants are of Bedouin tribal origin and loyal to the regime. These towns have proved fertile ground for radical Islam.

The existing electoral system of 'one man, one vote' is skewed in favor of the tribes, opposition movements claim. Given only one ballot, those in Bedouin areas vote largely according to tribal loyalty, often for a relative. Changes to the law currently under consideration would allow a supplementary vote for parties or candidates on a national list.

The regime fears that such an amendment would transfer power away from loyalists to more hostile Islamist and Palestinian factions.

But the government need not necessarily be wary of a cautious broadening of popular political involvement, says Samer Abu Libdeh, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"A new electoral law would enable certain movements to appear," he says. "Liberal and social democratic movements are not well organized because of the party law that hinders their formation. The Islamist movement will, of course, benefit. They are better organized. But they care less about being in power than about the Shariah (Islamic law.) Political and economic concerns are not of interest to them."

How much change can the government permit if it is to retain power? Is there a red line that even the modernizing king will not cross?

"I assume there is," says Hintermann. "With changes to the parliamentary system, you'd be giving power to people who directly oppose the foreign policy of the regime."

"Abdullah is performing a balancing act," he explains. Jordan's close relationship with the United States is widely unpopular. In this respect, Abdullah finds himself in the opposite position to that in which his father, King Hussein, found himself during the first Gulf War. Hussein opposed the invasion of Iraq, gaining approval at home but antagonizing the United States and damaging Jordan economically in the process.

"Abdullah is facing an economic crunch. He must stay close to the U.S. to gain economic benefits and hope that these trickle down to the masses."

But unlike Hintermann, Marwan Dudin, a former minister and advisor to the king, sees no reason why reforms should not succeed. Jordan is reaping the benefit of its position as a stable country in turbulent surroundings, he says. "We are a safe haven for money in the region. Kuwaitis and Saudis are investing heavily."

Nor should lack oil cause irreparable damage, he adds, explaining that a new deal with Egypt to pipe cheap natural gas to Jordan is meeting 50 percent of the country's electricity needs. Furthermore, improvements to the east in the next few years would provide oil for Jordan's new refinery, due to open in 2007 -- a timely event, given the global shortage in refining capacity. "If things settle down in Iraq, things will improve."

Questioned on voting reform, Dudin rebuts suggestions that intransigence could be dangerous. " 'One man, one vote' is, after all, what they have in the U.K," he laughs. "This is the model for our democracy. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for us."

Glossing Jordan - Now we need to bring democracy to our friends by Matthew Yglesias - THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

2005-09-27T03:31:00.000-07:00

The Article is a bit outdated but I cam across it yesterday and I felt it was important to share with all of you....

Glossing Jordan
We’ve shown we can introduce democracy to our enemies, if barely. Now we need to bring democracy to our friends.
By Matthew Yglesias
Web Exclusive: 02.01.05
THE AMERICAN PROSPECT

In his second inaugural address, President George W. Bush put to rest rumors of a realpolitik retrenchment in his second term by recommitting the United States to the spread of liberty around the world in the strongest terms since his early 2003 address to the National Endowment for Democracy. As is typically the case with inaugural speeches, it was heavy on lofty sentiment but light on policy details. Fortunately, his new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, a woman known to have his ear, was able to go into more detail during her confirmation hearings that same week.

"The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the 'town-square test,'" she told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. "If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society." As Israel's minister for diaspora and Jerusalem affairs, Sharansky is not an extraordinarily influential government official. His background as an anti-Soviet dissident, however, gives him a certain global fame and importance beyond his formal authority. And no less a figure than the president of the United States has reportedly been impressed by his recent book, The Case for Democracy, which Bush has recommended to several visitors.

In December, Ali Hatar strode into the metaphorical town square in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and delivered his lecture "Why We Boycott America." For his trouble, Hatar got arrested under Section 191 of the Jordanian penal code for slander of government officials. Jordan, in other words, flunked the town-square test.

Jordan is perhaps America's closest ally in the Arab world. Lacking in oil reserves or a large military, it is, moreover, extraordinarily dependent on the United States for aid, military defense, and for a special trade agreement we reached with the Jordanian government to reward then-King Hussein's helpful diplomatic activity during the period of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Jordanian state's decision to make peace with Israel and, more broadly, its generally pro-American foreign policy is not widely admired by Jordan's population. Indeed, the most recent Pew survey indicated that only 5 percent of Jordanians have a favorable view of the United States. And Jordanians have other complaints: persistently poor economic performance and persistent tensions between descendant's of Jordan's large Palestinian-born population and those whose families originated east of the Jordan River.

These latter problems are not, of course, strictly the fault of the United States. We would very much like for Jordan to be more prosperous, all else being equal. Nevertheless, we are blamed for them. Jordanians understand that their government lacks valuable natural resources. They understand that this means it finds external support extremely helpful in bolstering its grip on power. They also understand that unlike in the case of, say, Saudi Arabia, the United States does not get any tangible goods of value in exchange for its support of the Jordanian government. Instead, we get an ally among the Arab states, a government that will cooperate with our initiatives in Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, etc. They understand, in other words, that the Hashemite regime's ability to survive is intimately linked to its willingness to pursue an unpopular pro-American regional policy.

Naturally enough, Jordanians are less than thrilled by this situation, so now and again they venture into the town square to complain. And then they get arrested. The government of the United States, newly recommitted to freedom, had nothing whatsoever to say about this until an intrepid White House reporter asked the president about it on January 26. Bush punted, pleading ignorance of the facts and noting that "His Majesty is making progress" toward democracy. In fact, His Majesty is doing no such thing. Recent years have seen cosmetic proposals put forward while, in practice, Jordan moves backward -- gerrymandering an unrepresentative but compliant parliament; cracking down on the press, professional associations, and other civil-society groups; restricting public assembly; and relying on ad hoc decrees promulgated while the parliament is out of session. There's no indication that Bush decided to familiarize himself with the facts of the case -- or even with the general political situation in Jordan -- as neither he nor any of his subordinates has mentioned it since. Nor has he been asked about it again.

The trouble here is not especially that the president's policies are hypocritical, or at odds with his rhetoric. The rhetorical dissonance makes things worse, but the basic problem is that the policy is a bad one. Paradoxically, it is anti-American speakers in pro-American countries whose liberty is crucial to American security. Ali Hatar and others should be free to speak their minds and, if they desire, to elect a government that is less charitable toward the United States. This might be inconvenient. It is, however, far preferable to the alternative trajectory, which is well known to us from observing the biographies of the intellectual and organizational leaders of al-Qaeda and related movements. Down this other path, Arabs angered by their governments' policies realize that in order to change the policies, they must change the government. By force. But they can't overpower local governments backed by the many resources of the United States. So they decide to take the fight straight to the far enemy -- us.

Anti-American dictatorships, the ones Bush is willing to actually criticize and that Rice has labeled "outposts of tyranny," don't give us much trouble in this regard. The governments of Syria and Iran have both been more willing to cooperate with us against al-Qaeda than we've been willing to cooperate with them. These governments' bad policies don't spawn hatred and resentment of America, because everyone knows we're not propping them up. And, perhaps most important of all, in the wake of the Iraq War, there isn't really anything we can do about these countries' internal politics except wait patiently and hope for the best. It's our friends that give us trouble, and it's our friends that we might be able to do something about. A president who understood the implications of his own words could see that.

Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

Previewing Jordan’s National Agenda: Strategies for Reform

2005-09-27T02:27:00.000-07:00

Previewing Jordan’s National Agenda: Strategies for Reform
By Samer Abu LibdehSeptember 16, 2005
PolicyWatch #1032
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/

King Abdullah II’s latest domestic reform initiative for Jordan—the National Agenda Committee—will soon release a series of major political recommendations. These proposals will provide the Jordanian government with a detailed framework to guide the reform process in coming years.

Background
The National Agenda initiative was launched in February 2005 after reasonably free and fair elections were held in Iraq and the Palestinian Authority, Jordan’s eastern and western neighbors. The fact that elections could proceed in such insecure and politically troubled areas raised both international and domestic pressure on the Jordanian regime to quicken its own pace of reform, especially given its relative security and stability. The idea of the National Agenda is to set guidelines, programs, and strategies to reform Jordan’s political, educational, social welfare, and state financial systems over the next decade, outlining policies to which successive governments would be committed. Abdullah told a number of parliamentarians at a Royal Court meeting shortly after the launch of the program that “future laws to regulate political and social life will be based on the recommendations and guidelines of [the National Agenda’s] subcommittees.”

The National Agenda is being drafted by a twenty-six–member panel (TWENTY SEVEN- az) consisting of elite (?!?!) segments of Jordanian society, such as former ministers, loyal politicians, heads of tribes, academics, and businesspeople. All members hail from wealthy families that have had close ties with the palace and historically benefited from its loyalty to the regime. Abdullah’s plan, evidently, is to strike a balance between the reform-oriented segments of the core elite and the conservative tribal and security apparatus, which is widely represented among the current parliament and has stymied other attempts at structural change. No technocrats, opposition figures, or middle class leaders are represented on the panel - (How about Taher Al Masri, Theib Marji, Nawal Fa'aouri and last but not least, Abdel Latif Arabiyat?!?!?! - az)

The committee, which was established by royal decree without parliamentary consultation or approval - (There was no need for parliamentary approval nor consultation yet, the Steering Committee has 8 members from the upper and lower house of the Parliament, 30% of the committee) has devised work plans for its subcommittees that address the eight aspects of its mission. These subcommittees are expected to produce not only general ideas for change but to offer specific suggestions for which government agencies should be directed to implement programs, timetables for implementation, and estimated costs of implementation. Despite the secrecy surrounding its discussions, the panel’s chairman, deputy prime minister Marwan Muasher, said earlier that the National Agenda, unlike previous nationwide reform schemes from Abdullah’s first half-decade on the throne, “will avoid loose slogans and rhetoric to embrace down-to-earth, feasible solutions for problems impeding the kingdom’s attempts to socioeconomic reform and democratization.” After a nationwide address in August, during which the king showed his disgruntlement with the slow pace of reform by refusing to shake hands with ministers and parliamentarians in attendance, he insisted, “The National Agenda will lead the country into a new age where there is more press freedom, health insurance for all, an independent judiciary, a more politically active public, political pluralism, active and powerful parties with clear-cut platforms, and empowered women and youth.”

Economic Growth Is Job One
At the top of the list of Jordan’s challenges is economic growth. In order to boost domestic revenues, create more jobs and reach economic self-reliance, Jordan needs to achieve and maintain an annual growth rate of 9-10 percent over the next decade. Indeed, Muasher has warned that merely maintaining the existing relatively high 7 percent growth rate will produce nearly a 50 percent increase in the official rate of unemployment over the next ten years, from 14 percent to 20 percent.

With the support of two hundred experts, the panel members and its subcommittees have reportedly come up with an array of specific economic recommendations. They urge greater focus on small and medium-sized projects, which currently employ only a third of the workforce. By contrast, the report will point out, in advanced countries small- and medium-sized enterprises employ two-thirds of the workforce.

There are several longterm obstacles to achieving this level of growth. These include rising budget deficits. According to recent reports, the deficit will rise to $600 million by the end of 2005, due to a 19.7 percent increase in government expenditures. The high current spending was attributed to a surge in fuel subsidies as a result of increased oil prices, as well as to high wages and officials’ travel expenses. At the same time, foreign assistances dropped by 40 percent during the first seven months of 2005 compared to the same period the previous year. Despite all the grants and loans that floated the Jordanian economy, between 15 and 30 percent of Jordanians live below a poverty line of $439 per capita. While large chunks of foreign aid flowed to huge infrastructure projects (e.g., water resource management, social sector development, and public-sector reform), little was directed to bolstering small and medium enterprises, which traditionally are the backbone of the Jordanian economy. In addition, a considerable slice of foreign aid went to finance the budget deficit, rather than supporting job-creating initiatives.

While Jordan has registered important good news in terms of the explosive growth in exports from the Qualifying Industrial Zones—which were $930 million in 2004 and are expected to reach nearly $1.2 billion in 2005—many see little impact on Jordanians’ standard of living. Many of these projects rely on highly skilled labor from East Asia instead of native Jordanians, while the manufacturing is based in remote areas where the benefits of local growth extend to relatively few people. Also, revenues from these exports are limited to a small circle of Jordanian businessmen who early on established contacts with Israeli counterparts before the eruption of current Palestinian intifada. Neither Jordanian officials nor the chamber of commerce have encouraged attempts to build more cooperative relations with Israelis. Moreover, very few entrepreneurs have reinvested the revenues of their textile business in the underprivileged areas surrounding the zones.

Key Components of Political Reform
The National Agenda Committee is expected to recommend comprehensive structural modifications to Jordan’s current election law and political parties law, which previously hindered attempts at mass political participation. The longterm success of these initiatives is related to number of domestic indications:

An increased level of participation in political life. The vast majority of Jordanians play little role in the nation’s political life. With the exception of the Islamic Action Front party, Jordan’s political parties were founded by the state bureaucratic elite. Some represented efforts to build parties of the regime, which would be used to strengthen existing state institutions under the guise of democracy. However, neither these parties nor leftist or Arab nationalist parties ever succeeded in attracting significant popular support. A new initiative that somehow triggers increased participation from the grassroots and inhabitants of high-density urban areas—commonly called “the silent majority”—would represent a major boost for the kingdom’s political life before upcoming parliamentary elections.

Practical steps in strengthening free media and freedom of expression. Jordan’s official news agency, Petra, currently holds a monopoly on official news and information emanating from the palace. The current press law places limits on journalistic investigation and reporting. Additionally, a 2005 poll by the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies revealed that the vast majority of Jordanians still fear retribution against themselves, their families, and their livelihoods should they offer any criticism of the government, let alone the monarchy. While the conservative old guard is still in control of the influential state mass media, an in-house debate about future editorial policies and existing practices of self-censorship would be a major step forward.

Amendments to the election law. While the king is expected to dissolve the current parliament, elected in 2003, and call for early elections, the system of elections is a major issue of concern. Many Jordanians do not like the current “single non-transferable vote” system, widely known as “one person, one vote.” Some contend that the electoral districts are unfairly drawn and fail to provide representation in proportion to population. Others urge the return to a mixed electoral system, giving voters multiple representatives in parliament. This could mean the introduction of a two-tier system in which voters cast ballots for representatives for their territorial district as well as for a nationwide political party list.

Conclusion
Jordan still has a long way to go before it develops into a Moroccan-style constitutional monarchy, let alone one in the European mode. Nevertheless, it has adopted a substantial set of national reforms, especially in economic, legal, and administrative matters, and has embarked on a significant democratization process, particularly when viewed in the regional context. The National Agenda initiative appears to reflect a recognition that the regime needs to find a way to overcome opposition to further reform from among its traditional allies—tribal elements and Islamists. The depth of the changes the National Agenda Committee proposes—and the regime’s persistence in carrying them out—will determine whether Jordan continues down the path of hopeful reform or whether the forces of reaction succeed in stymieing further progress.

Samer Abu Libdeh, a Jordanian scholar, is a Fulbright visiting research fellow at The Washington Institute.

Freedom's call squeezes ally Jordan by THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

2005-09-25T03:27:00.000-07:00

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."

Arab democracts are denied the democracy they crave by RAMI KHOURY

2005-09-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

Arab democracts are denied the democracy they crave
By Rami G. Khouri
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
THE DAILY STAR

For too long, self-interested and often hollow-headed politicians in the Arab countries, Israel and the United States (slightly less so in Europe) have ignored the sentiments and aspirations of the Arab majority. They have focused instead on the violent excesses of a small minority of estranged radicals and criminal terrorists who have hijacked the global debate on the Middle East.

Ultimately, neither charismatic killer demagogues like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, nor cosmic-grade cheerleaders for liberty's apocalypse like U.S. President George W. Bush, will define the collective history of the people of the Middle East. Instead, the path to a stable, productive future for the region lies in understanding more carefully the sentiments of the middle class majorities that inevitably must define their own political cultures, ideologies and policies. Presumably, that is what democracy and majority rule are all about.

One of the truly historic recent developments in the Arab world in the past decade or so has been the ability to conduct public opinion polling in many countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and a few others, providing crucial insights into what our populations feel, fear and desire.

A new public opinion poll released this week in Jordan confirms two significant points that most of the mediocre leaders in this region and abroad have preferred to ignore: ordinary Arabs (mostly Muslims) are strongly committed to democratic values and principles, but they are also deeply concerned and fearful about how they are treated in their own countries.

The nationwide random sample poll of adults by the independent Jordan Center for Social Research, conducted at the end of July, showed huge majorities in favor of electing local officials, keeping and expanding the quota for women in Parliament, keeping the one-person, one-vote system, ensuring equal work opportunities for men and women, and using peaceful political participation and protest (rather than violence) as the way of changing the government.

Jordanians identified the most important problems facing their country as the rising cost of living, unemployment, corruption, worsening economic conditions and poverty, along with the widening gap between rich and poor.

The most striking result of this poll was the nearly schizophrenic attitude of ordinary Jordanians to political values and to their real life conditions. While they aspire to democratic practices and have a very strong sense of justice, they also feel mistreated and subjugated in their own society. Only 39 percent of respondents said they would be treated fairly and justly in a court of law, 12 percent in a university entrance exam, 9 percent in a police investigation, 6 percent in a job allocation and 1 percent in a tax office. Good morning, anyone home?

This is yet another confirmation that Arabs and Muslims love freedom, democracy, equality and justice, but are angry because they do not feel they are enjoying these values in their own societies. This helps to explain the sense of resentment that often translates into political extremism, or people turning to their religion for comfort and hope. In the most extreme consequence, enter Osama bin Laden and angry young men become suicide bombers. More routinely, citizens turn to peaceful Islamist groups to express their anger and indignity; the poll found that the most popular political group in Jordan was the Islamic Action Front, for whom 37 percent of citizens would vote, against 27 percent for Jordanian nationalist parties.

There is more that also confirms the contradictory sentiments that define ordinary Arabs, in this case Jordanians; but I am certain, from my own travels and extensive research and readings, that this situation pertains throughout all the Arab states. Citizens emphatically trust some national institutions: 93 percent trust the police and army "fully or to a large degree"; 84 percent trust religious leaders; 76 percent trust the government; 56 percent trust municipalities; but only 36 percent trust political parties. The media comes in at 63 percent.

What to conclude? Good Arabs and Muslims with fine, egalitarian, law-abiding values have found themselves living in societies that do not reflect those values in practice. This is also what I heard when I phoned the director of the survey, sociologist Musa Shteiwi, for his own interpretation of the results. He was quite categorical: "The people of Jordan seem very committed to democratic ideals, both at the value and procedural levels, but they are also a troubled people who are very concerned about the degree of fairness in their society."

They are also not sure about whether the country is heading in the right direction politically and economically, he said, noting that 48 percent of respondents think things are moving in the right direction; while 44 percent think they are moving in the wrong direction. He senses that many Jordanians are alienated from their civil and government institutions, such as political parties and Parliament, and are not sure that these institutions are working for their best interests. He also detects a gap between elite and popular sentiments on key political issues, also suggesting alienation.

Good morning? Any takers for the simple idea that Arabs and Muslims love freedom and justice, but hate being denied it in their own societies?

Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for THE DAILY STAR. To get a copy of the poll results, readers can email mjcsr@go.com.jo.

Yesterday, 35 days ago…. Civil War Breaks out in Jordan

2005-09-19T01:53:00.000-07:00

1970: Civil war breaks out in Jordan
BBC ONLINE

I have come across a very interesting paper on 'AMMAN 1970, A MEMOIR' by Colonel (US Army retired) Norvell De Atkine, which is the first in a series of memoirs on the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s. Norvell de Atkine was one of the first Middle East experts trained by the U.S. military. He attended the American University in Beirut, became a U.S. military attache in Jordan, and spent many years working in the Arab world - PLEASE EMAIL IF YOU WANT A PDF COPY

The Jordanian army has launched a full-scale attack on Palestinian guerrillas in towns all over Jordan following weeks of sporadic fighting between the two sides. King Hussein's generals ordered tanks into the capital Amman at dawn using artillery and rockets against mortar fire.
The strategic town of Zerka, that controls supply routes to the north of the country, was also the scene of heavy fighting.

There have been claims and counterclaims of victory. Amman Radio said the Jordanian army controlled three-quarters of the capital while Palestinian sources said they controlled the whole city, where Palestinians make up 70% of the population.

Amman airport and the country's borders are closed, and telecommunications lines are down.

New military government
King Hussein's troops are reported to have stormed the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. But the whereabouts of PLO leader Yasser Arafat are as yet unknown, although he is believed to be in Syria which has supported the Palestinian cause.

Following the 1967 war with Israel, Jordan lost the West Bank of the Jordan River. Thousands of Palestinians fled into Jordan, swelling the refugee population to two million. From their new base, the PLO launched military operations against Israel and drew bloody reprisals that killed and injured Jordanians.

The recent multiple hijacking of western airliners forced to land in Jordan by Palestinian militants has made the king even more determined to crack down on the guerrillas. King Hussein condemned the hijackers as "the shame of the Arab world" in an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro earlier this week. He also warned that if the PLO guerrillas did not respect recent ceasefire agreements "they would suffer the consequences".

He added: "Every day Jordan sinks a little more. There must be peace - or war."

Yesterday he formed a new government of military hardliners led by Brigadier Mohammed Daoud in a move described by Mr Arafat as a "fascist military coup".

For their part, Palestinians are angered by King Hussein's recent involvement in Middle East peace moves with Israel initiated by the United States.

The US Defence Secretary, Melvin Laird, has said that if necessary all 300 US citizens in Jordan will be airlifted out. He also suggested America may provide military support to King Hussein's government if the situation worsened and said some units of the Sixth Fleet had moved closer to the area in the last 24 hours.

2005-09-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

How the World perceives us.....

Jordan's constitutional monarchy on holds

2005-08-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

Jordan's constitutional monarchy on holds
JAMAL HALABY
Associated Press
Posted on Fri, Aug. 26, 2005

AMMAN, Jordan - Jordan's reform-minded, U.S.-educated monarch, King Abdullah II, follows two separate lines when discussing the idea of surrendering some powers and moving his kingdom toward a European-style constitutional monarchy. On American talk shows, Abdullah has sounded at ease with fundamental change. But back home, he says the time is not yet ripe as Jordan faces new extremist pressures and attacks.

The 43-year-old monarch enjoys broad support in his country - a rarity among Mideast leaders - and is seen in Washington as a bulwark against terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, as was his late father, King Hussein.

During a U.S. visit earlier this year, Abdullah told a television interviewer in his British-accented English that he was "absolutely" open to moving Jordan toward a constitutional monarchy. Upon emerging from a White House meeting he was even more specific, saying the "crown can take a step back and the people can take a step forward."

That's the answer when he's abroad. But it's a different story at home, where Abdullah is also battling an underground militancy bent on killing him.

In a June debate in the nation's newspapers over amending Jordan's constitution to accommodate proposed changes in legal code, Abdullah put his foot down. "There's no justification for amending the constitution at this stage. Any talk of constitutional amendment is a red line," the king said.

There is little question that Abdullah rules in a dangerous political neighborhood, where easing political and security controls could be fatal. Last Friday, militants allegedly linked to al-Qaida fired three rockets, one that barely missed U.S. warships anchored in the Red Sea port of Aqaba.

At least one of four other unfired missiles allegedly smuggled in from Iraq are believed to have targeted Abdullah's beachfront palace just west of the port.

A lot would be at stake were a Jordanian monarch to relinquish some powers. Under the Jordanian system, Hashemite rulers have reigned until death, were immune from prosecution, appointed the government leadership, could abolish laws at will, could dismiss the parliament and could rule by decree.

The newspaper debate on the constitution was not about basic reform of the Jordanian system, and government officials quickly suggested that Abdullah had not meant to signal a reversal of his desire to share power. They said he merely sought to put things in order before he steers his nation towards change.

One of the main challenges is Jordan's 30 splintered political parties, some based on tribal affiliations. Abdullah has said he wants those 30 merged into two or three so that lawmakers and, possibly Cabinet officials, could be elected on party banner instead of tribal links. Social, cultural and political legislation inherited from the days of martial law must also be revamped.

Toujan Faisal, a former lawmaker who was jailed for 100 days three years ago for accusing a former Cabinet of financial wrongdoing, said electing prime ministers is a good start for constitutional change.

"It will help consolidate the king's popularity, considering the democratic changes around us and the looming threat of militants in the region," she said.

However, political intrigue in neighboring Iraq and in Israel and the Palestinian territories - plus terror plots against Jordan - may have slowed down domestic reforms. Currently, there are at least 18 trials in the military court involving scores of militants - some linked to al-Qaida - who have plotted to kill Americans, Israelis or other foreigners, topple the king or destabilize his kingdom.

Nevertheless, Abdullah has pledged to press ahead with reforms introduced under his father in 1989. Those included the revival of a multiparty system, banned since a 1956 leftist coup attempt, and the ending of martial law, imposed since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Since he took the throne in 1999, the king has allowed a relatively freer media, under laws that also advocate more freedom for women. In January, he unveiled plans to form elected councils that will oversee development across the desert kingdom, a move meant to give wider autonomy to outlying communities.

He also has promised a 10-year "national agenda" that the Jordanian government says will overhaul all sectors, including political - a plan that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed in a June visit as strengthening "grass-roots democracy here in Jordan."

A new Cabinet of reformists was formed in April and has since allowed public protests banned by its predecessor. Still, critics say the moves have been barely enough.

"The government may have eased off toward certain public activities, but it has failed to make any tangible steps to reflect its good intentions - especially with regards to the elections law," said lawmaker Ali Abu-Sukar.

A very Good article on a panel discussion with two of the clearest thinking, most articulate analysts in the Arab world

2005-08-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

A sensible path to Arab modernity and freedoms
By Rami G. Khouri
Saturday, August 20, 2005

What's wrong with the Arabs? Why do so many Islamic societies spawn terrorists? Why are our societies so violent and unstable? What is needed to transform the societies of the Middle East, North Africa and west-central Asia into stable, prosperous countries?

These are the sorts of sweeping questions that many people within the Middle East ask every day, looking simultaneously at internal factors as well as external causes of our many excesses. It was heartening and instructive for me earlier this week to have the privilege of sharing in a panel discussion with two of the clearest thinking, most articulate analysts in the Arab world - George Corm and Clovis Maksoud, both Lebanese - as we discussed the impact of the last three Arab Human Development Reports published by the UN Development Program (UNDP).

The issues they raised and the analytical suggestions they made deserve a wider hearing beyond the students and staff participating in a summer course on conflict-resolution organized in Lebanon by UNDP and Lebanese American University. I suspect their way of thinking correctly identifies the key challenges facing the Arab world, reflects the views of the vast majority of Arabs, and offers a practical, realistic route out of the Arab world's current dilemma of stagnation, frustration and confrontation.

Corm, a professor of economics at St Joseph University in Beirut and a former Lebanese Cabinet minister, makes the point that the Arab region undoubtedly needs real reform, but there is no consensus on the reasons for this. Is current and historical foreign interference the main problem, he asks? Domestic power distortions? Patriarchal social culture? Polarized societies fragmenting into smaller and smaller units based on ethnicity, religion and ideology? Hostility among Arab states and leaderships?

A combination of these and other reasons explains the burdensome, humiliating fact that the Arab region is the only part of the world where foreign armies today still regularly invade, occupy, and try to remake societies. More troubling is his observation that Arabs today face virtually the same challenge that confronted our societies around 150 years ago, in the late Ottoman period: why are Arab societies underdeveloped, and dominated by foreign influences, interests and forces?

Among the answers to his questions, Corm mentions the devastating impact of the Arab rent economies that are not productive or creative, but live off "rent" derived from foreign payments or protection, or from oil and gas production. Rent economies make it impossible to develop liberal, democratic regimes, he says, and so must be replaced with job-creating, productive economies.

Arab nationalists never sufficiently focused on the economic dimension of nationalism, independence and statehood, he says, and Arab intellectuals today spend too much time responding to Western accusations and focus too much on day-to-day politics. Instead, our intellectuals and activists should ignore Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis and others of their ilk, and spend more time building our culture and society. We should especially draw on the rich but neglected Arab tradition of thinkers who have sought in the past century to prod reform, modernity, prosperity and genuine national sovereignty anchored in dignity.

The Arab people need and deserve a "second Nahda of Arab freedoms," he says, referring to the broad intellectual, cultural, political and religious movement in parts of the Arab world around 1880-1920 that has been called the Arab Awakening or Renaissance, al-Nahda in Arabic. Our own continuous quest for modernity and liberalism can be compatible with key religious and cultural values. He defined modernity as that which allows you to promote prosperity, compete globally, defend yourself militarily, and defend the overall integrity of your society from foreign domination.

Maksoud, university professor, columnist, former Arab League ambassador and current director of the Center for the Study of the Global South at American University in Washington, DC, approaches the same challenge through the eyes of the team that wrote the Arab Human Development Reports, of which he is a member.

"The Arabs are a wealthy nation of poor people," he notes, who recklessly engage in either confrontation with the West or submission to it, with both options leading to self-destruction. We need to find a way to reconcile the legality of the modern Arab state system with the legitimacy of the wider Arab national idea, he says. The Arab Human Development Report offers an action-oriented analysis that aims to spark a dialogue between the Arab citizen, civil society and the state authorities.

One of our common weaknesses - very evident in Lebanon, he says - is that the individual Arab citizen does not have a direct relationship with his or her state except through the intermediation of ethnic, religious or tribal groups. The narrow identities and interests of sovereign states have come to dominate the two other important dimensions of people's lives in the Arab region - their rights as citizens of a state, and their sense of belonging to a larger Arab national identity of some sort.

He says that "the weakness of patrimonial Arab consciousness has given way to the strength of legal state sovereignty." Consequently, Arab countries wave their flags vigorously, advocating "Jordan first," "Lebanon first," "Syria first" and "Egypt first;" yet their citizens become increasingly angry with life conditions at home and the international double standards they suffer from Israel and the West. "Anger is an invitation to dialogue," he suggests, and one of the aims of the Arab Human Development Reports is to spark dialogue that can also plant the seeds of an Arab Renaissance.

George Corm brings the argument back to the historical legacy of an Arab region that wants to change, reform and modernize, but has always resisted doing so under foreign pressure or threat. Totally adopting or rejecting Western reform agendas is not useful, he says, and instead we need to spur a genuine Arab reform agenda for modernity and freedoms that primarily builds on our own values, analyses, and priority goals.

These are sensible and timely ideas, doubly significant because they are not unique or unusual; they reflect the richness of the debates that take place every day in homes, schools, coffee shops and offices throughout the Arab world. They also provide a powerful, appropriate antidote to the prevailing nonsense that we hear from some quarters in the West, especially the U.S., about clashes of civilization, the need for Islamic reformation, hatred of the West, the madrasa problem, or the inherent violence of Arab and Islamic culture.

The matter is much simpler, and should not be muddled by tangential intellectual fantasies or the silliness of confused, angry small-town politicians from abroad: In the past century or so, citizenship and statehood in the Arab world have become mutually dysfunctional enterprises, due to a combination of local and foreign factors that must be treated simultaneously.

Rami G. Khouri writes a regular commentary for The Daily Star.

2005-08-21T00:53:00.000-07:00

Great Cartoon by hajjaj on teh Aqaba Attacks - The Cartoon is unpublished....

Analysis / Another Al-Qaida base of operations... JORDAN

2005-08-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

Analysis / Another Al-Qaida base of operations
By Zvi Bar'el
HA’ARETZ DAILY

Although a group calling itself Abdullah Azzam Brigades, apparently linked to Al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for Friday's rocket attack in Aqaba, the Jordanians believe the organization may be of a different ilk."The firing of Katyusha rockets is not characteristic of what we know of Al-Qaida activity," a Jordanian government official told Haaretz.

"Their attacks choose an exact target and use accurate weapons that ensure success and a display," said the official. "Look at the attacks in Taba in October 2004 and the attack in Sharm el-Sheikh last month. The attack on the USS Cole off the shore of Yemen in October 2000 was also carried out with great accuracy and show, with a dinghy loaded with explosives. "The group of terrorists arrested this month in Jordan was going to carry out an attack using gas canisters and chemicals, that is, an accurate and large-scale attack.

The use of Katyushas might actually be characteristic of unorganized cells, with only minimal planning capability and irregular logistic ability."Behind this description lurks the concern that the attack on Aqaba was carried out by a local Jordanian underground, and not necessarily by Al-Qaida. However, the Jordanian report that Egyptian and Iraqi nationals, along with a Syrian, were arrested undermines the Jordanian official's evaluation and raises concerns that Jordan, in spite of the excellent record of its intelligence forces, is becoming an arena for Al-Qaida operations.

From Jordan's perspective, the difference between these two terrorist elements impacts primarily on the means of combating them. Al-Qaida's goals in attacks like these are mainly anti-American, as opposed to local organizations, which want to harm the regime and threaten the stability, or at least the economy, of the country, its tourism or its foreign investments. To stop the latter, Jordan has to enlist local forces - tribal and religious.

This is not the first time local and foreign terrorists have operated in Jordan. In 2000, Jordan arrested terrorists from Syria seeking to operate against Israel from its territory. In the city of Ma'an, in southern Jordan, a few dozen religious activists have been arrested over the past three years, suspected of links to Al-Qaida or of smuggling weapons from Saudi Arabia. The murder of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley was also attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian citizen whose family still lives in Jordan. But apparently Jordan's main concern is over the increase in the influence of terrorists operating in Iraq, because of the relative porousness of Jordan's borders.

The official crossings between Jordan and Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are closely monitored by the Jordanians, but the kingdom's long borders do not allow it to really stop illegal infiltration.

Among its problems are tribal relations between the citizens of northern Saudi Arabia and Jordanians in the Ma'an area, which facilitate smuggling. In addition, groups of Syrians smuggling mainly drugs or Syrian laborers into Jordan apparently now have new "clients."The main problem, which is not only Jordan's, is Iraq. Since the end of the war, Iraq has become the chief supplier of weapons and explosives to every gang. Large quantities of weapons and ammunition are smuggled from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, and thus Iraq has replaced the previous "exporter," Yemen. These weapons then make their way to other countries in the region, including Jordan and Egypt, thus solving an important logistics problem for the terror organizations.

Several Arrested in Jordan Rocket Attacks

2005-08-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

Several Arrested in Jordan Rocket Attacks
By SHAFIKA MATTAR
Associated Press
Saturday August 20, 2005 9:16 PM

AQABA, Jordan (AP) - Police detained several suspects on Saturday as the hunt widened for the attackers who fired and supplied the rockets that narrowly missed a U.S. Navy ship anchored in the bay of this Red Sea port best known for beach vacations and Mideast summits. Those arrested included Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians, according to a Jordanian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. He would not give the number of detainees.

Interior Minister Awni Yirfas told The Associated Press that security forces had found the launcher used to fire the three Katyusha rockets.

Police found four more rockets when they seized the launcher in a warehouse in an industrial zone on a hillside overlooking Aqaba, state TV reported Saturday. The four rockets were defused, the report said. The newscast did not say whether anyone had been detained for Friday's attack.

The Gulf of Aqaba, a narrow northern extension of the Red Sea, is bordered by Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia with the frontiers of the four countries touching or within view of one another.

A further outbreak of terrorism in the region would be particularly worrisome not only because of U.S. Navy targets in the area but also because Muslim extremists want to topple governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - all longtime American allies. Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades - an al-Qaida-linked group that claimed responsibility for the bombings which killed at least 64 people at Sharm el-Sheik in July and 34 people at two other Egyptian resorts last October - said in an Internet statement that its fighters had fired the Katyushas, bolstering concerns that Islamic extremists had opened a new front in the region.

Authorities said the warehouse used to launch the notoriously inaccurate rockets had been rented days beforehand by four men carrying Iraqi and Egyptian identity papers.

The security official who disclosed Saturday's arrests said an Iraqi detainee was suspected of taking part in the attack, but he cautioned against assuming the others arrested were equally involved.

A Jordanian soldier was killed and another wounded when one Katyusha flew across the bow of the USS Ashland and hit a warehouse used by the Americans to store goods headed to Iraq.

Two more rockets were fired toward Israel. One fell short and hit the wall of a Jordanian military hospital. The other landed close to Israel's Eilat airport, lightly wounding a taxi driver.

Police said Saturday they were searching for as many as six people - including one Syrian, Egyptians and Iraqis - who escaped in a vehicle with Kuwaiti license plates.

Security was tightened nationwide, including in the capital Amman, which has been the target of several failed al-Qaida terrorist plots - including one using chemicals in April 2004. Police at road blocks were stopping cars and checking identity papers. Pictures of suspects were distributed to border checkpoints.

Although the rockets missed the USS Ashland, the Navy decided to sail both of its ships out of Aqaba bay as a precaution. They had arrived earlier in the week for a military exercise with the Jordanian navy.

Jordan is trying to determine the source of the rockets, and how they were smuggled into the country, which has tight border security.

Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has thousands of Katyushas.

Doug Richardson, of the London-based Jane's Defense Review, said the rockets have been widely copied from their original Russian design and modified by many countries, including those in eastern Europe and China. Iran and Hezbollah would be ``potential sources'' of the weapon, he said in a telephone interview.

In Lebanon, a Hezbollah official declined to comment when asked about the group's involvement.

In Syria, Elias Murad, chief editor of Al-Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of the country's ruling Baath Party, said attempts to involve Damascus were ``ridiculous because Katyusha rockets exist in two-thirds of the world.''

Hezbollah pounded Israel's north with Katyusha rockets for two decades in a guerrilla war that ended with Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000.

In Iraq, insurgents have used Katyusha rockets against U.S. military installations.

The Terrorist Attack in Aqaba.....

2005-08-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

Analysis: Terrorist fool Jordan's security
By Sana Abdallah
United Press International Published August 19, 2005

AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordan's security measures and impressive record in aborting possible terrorism attacks in the kingdom were cracked Friday when three mortar rockets were fired from Jordan's Red Sea port of Aqaba.

A Jordanian soldier was killed and another was injured when one rocket landed at a Jordanian military warehouse in the port, another missile fell near a military hospital in Aqaba and a third hit the nearby Israeli resort of Eilat.

Officials said the attackers may have missed their intended target of two U.S. navy vessels docked at the port of Aqaba, both of which apparently left the area shortly after the rockets were fired Friday morning.

The authorities said the mortars were fired from a warehouse in an industrial zone that had been leased to a group of four Egyptians and Iraqis a few days ago and they were combing Aqaba and its surroundings for the four men.

A statement signed by the Abdullah al-Azzam Brigades of al-Qaida Organization in the Levant and Egypt, which claimed responsibility for the nearby Sharm el-Sheikh blasts last month, said on an Islamic website that they carried out the Aqaba attacks.

The statement, which could not be authenticated, vowed that Friday's attack, the first of their kind in the country, was "our debut operation in Jordan," saying that a group of its fighters targeted U.S. vessels with three Katyusha rockets. It warned the Americans, "who are spreading their corruption throughout the world and who have stolen the wealth of the Muslim nation, to expect even more stinging attacks."

"As we have begun to destroy the throne of the Egyptian tyrant, we warn the Jordanian tyrant to release our jailed brothers and voluntarily abdicate before we force you to go," the group threatened.

Jordan, a close U.S. ally, was the second Arab country after Egypt to have signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 -- an unpopular move that had sharply increased security measures in the country in the past 11 years.

Jordan's King Abdullah, currently on an official visit to Russia, strongly condemned the attack and swore that it would not stop him from fighting terrorism and to chase down "all those who fiddle with Jordan's security and stability."

Palace sources said the king was in constant contact with the authorities and following up on investigations after his favorite Jordanian getaway spot, Aqaba, was hit. Abdullah frequents his palace on the shores of the resort town on weekends.

Although security in Aqaba was beefed up following the massive attacks on the Egyptian tourist resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last month, in which about 90 people were killed, Friday's rocket attack seemed to have shocked the monarch, who has prided in his country's reputation for stopping the terrorists, or suspected terrorists, from carrying out their plans.

Friday's events seriously cracked the country's security system, especially that mortar rockets and a launcher or more managed to be smuggled into what was believed to be an airtight security area. The attacks, while not targeting the mainly local tourists, came despite the fact that the State Security Court is currently hearing close to a dozen terror-related cases that include dozens of suspects - all who were arrested before carrying out their alleged attacks - and despite the high security presence around the country.

Jordan was perhaps the leading country in the world to have cracked down on "potential terrorists" who were trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and who returned to the kingdom in the mid-1990s.

The country's security services have earned the reputation of frightening "potential terrorists" from even thinking or plotting to use violence against any target on its territories and have not hesitated in putting advocates of violence behind bars.

In the past ten years, before the names of al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, became known worldwide, Jordan has put on trial dozens of suspects it said were linked to the terrorist group for planning to carry out attacks. Even bin Laden himself was tried and sentenced in absentia a few years before he became a notorious household name around the world before the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

One former top intelligence officer told United Press International that the "advanced" Jordanian intelligence services had been the main supplier of credible information on al-Qaida and its affiliates to U.S. counterparts and had greatly contributed to the American investigations into the network.

Although the country prides itself on foiling terrorist attacks before they are carried out, the process has not been without complaints that innocent men -- Islamists to be specific -- have been thrown in jail and sometimes coerced into making false confessions if they appear to have a tendency towards resorting to violence. But these complaints in recent years have dwindled with the growing trend of violence being carried out in the name of Islam around the world, even among critics of human rights violations who now reluctantly admit "it is better to live in a police state than to risk living with terror."

Whoever was responsible for the Aqaba attacks - and al-Qaida group seems the likely candidate - clearly sent a message Friday that Jordan is not immune from the explosions that have been getting louder and more frequent by the day in the region and most of the rest of the world.

2005-08-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Hajjaj's Cartoon on HM King Abdullah's ROCKING SPEECH

Jordan's king warns deputies not to block reforms by REUTERS

2005-08-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

Jordan's king warns deputies not to block reforms
16 Aug 2005 17:48:49 GMT
By Suleiman al-Khalidi
REUTERS

AMMAN, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Jordan's King Abdullah told conservative tribal deputies on Tuesday to put national interests above petty squabbling, comments officials said were a warning not to block Western-style reforms.

Officials said the king's rare attack on the group that has traditionally been the monarchy's staunchest supporter was meant to head off growing opposition to a programme of accelerated reforms planned by Prime Minister Adnan Badran's cabinet.

"It's not in the interest of the country to transform parliament to a battleground between blocs or political centres of power," the monarch told conservative loyalists who dominate the country's 110-member assembly, which is largely tribal.

"The challenges we face are much bigger than squabbling over who wants to be a minister or prime minister," Abdullah said in an address from the palace.

Badran, a 69-year-old U.S.-educated academic appointed last April, is trying to tackle corruption, push through major state asset sales and streamline a bloated public sector. His efforts have brought mounting criticism. Conservative deputies accuse him of promoting a pro-Western reform agenda and ignoring tribal sensitivities, and many also fear electoral reforms may dilute the influence of their Bedouin power base.

Tough parliamentary criticism of Badran's performance has been viewed as the most direct challenge to Abdullah's reform agenda since he assumed the throne in 1999, officials say.

Badran survived a vote of confidence to stay on last month only after he succumbed to tribal pressure to accept the resignation of Bassem Awadallah, a leading reformer of Palestinian origin, who was Abdullah's main economic advisor.

"If we want to strengthen Jordan, we should all be working together as a team, and we should continue along the path of reform, modernization and development," the monarch said.

"This endeavour requires new legislation, the delay of which will obstruct our progress. We are at the threshold of a new stage of modernization and development, so I ask all of you to work with the highest sense of responsibility."

The conservative establishment fears free market reforms will erode its grip on power and privileges, and has accused Badran's team of bowing to a U.S. reform agenda.

Although Washington has praised Jordan as a regional ally and model of pro-Western moderation, critics of the government say poverty and corruption among officials are on the rise.

Most powers rest with the king, who appoints governments, approves legislation and dissolves parliament.

2005-08-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hajjaj's Cartoon in today's issue of Al Ghad on the Withdrawal from Gaza

2005-08-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

In a break-up from the usual coverage of local related news, I wanted to signal today and the coming week as a historic day of Freedom for our Palestinian brethern in the Gaza Strip...

2005-08-14T01:17:00.000-07:00

Inshallah this will happen in our lifetime....

Jordan Moving Forward by Kenneth Katzman

2005-08-07T06:49:00.001-07:00

Jordan Moving Forward
by Kenneth Katzman
The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research
14 Jun 2005

Eleven years after its peace treaty with Israel, and five years after the accession of King Abdullah II, Jordan has been infused with new energy on both the political and economic fronts, led by a new cabinet appointed in April 2005. The new cabinet, under leadership of Prime Minister Adnan Badran, has been specifically mandated to jump-start long-stalled reform.

On the political front, these officials and the rest of King Abdullah II's team are attempting to build on Jordan's longstanding and largely successful strategy of political tolerance. The strategy of inclusiveness and tolerance has thus far kept the Islamic fundamentalist Islamic Action Front (IAF), the largest of Jordan's 31 legal parties, non-violent and committed to working within the legitimate political process. Although there has been some political violence in the kingdom, Jordan has been mostly spared the waves of Islamist uprisings seen in nearby Egypt. Jordanian nationals have not, for the most part, been eager recruits for al-Qaeda. On the other hand, it should be noted that Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentor, Dr. Abdullah al-Azzam, was a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, as is the pro-al- Qaeda militant leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The king's new team is, first and foremost, pushing a concept of decentralization—empowering localities at the expense of the Amman-based center. The team notes that only about half of Jordan's local mayors are now elected, and the government wants to institute elections for all mayors and municipal councils in Jordan's estimated 100 municipalities. The team also plans to institute a version of federalism by dividing the country into three administrative regions, each presumably more attuned to the needs of their region and better positioned than Amman to focus economic development.

The government has also appointed 200 mostly young Jordanians to work on a 'national agenda'. According to the country's leadership, the agenda will focus on how to reform eleven different political and economic sectors. In addition, the government is wrestling with new laws on political parties, as well as on the licensing of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs are watching the drafting process closely to ensure that the law on NGOs is not too restrictive, although the government wants to ensure that NGOs in Jordan cannot become a tool for regional extremist organizations. Similarly, the law over political parties will be intended to try to strengthen secular parties to enable them to compete with the IAF, which virtually dwarfs all other parties in terms of membership. A new election law is likely to expand Jordan's elected Chamber of Deputies beyond its current 110 members. However, to move forward faster, the mindset of Jordan's parliamentarians might have to change somewhat. Even though they have that formal power, parliamentarians are still hesitant to draft legislation themselves, preferring instead to react to government draft bills.

The thrust of the new cabinet's economic programs is to increase the size of the private sector relative to the government economic sector. The team has also set a highly ambitious goal of 7.5% growth per year through the end of the decade. Helping the new team is a real estate boom fueled by the relocation of Iraqis fleeing instability in their homeland, as well as the location and relocation of US and other programs intended to assist Iraq and train Iraqi security and government personnel. The end of UN sanctions against Iraq has ensured a steady stream of goods offloaded at Aqaba port and trucked into Iraq, providing employment and fees for Jordan.
Jordan has unveiled major plans to attract more vacationers and holiday home-buyers to Aqaba. Jordan's exports are benefiting greatly from Jordan's free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States and production from the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ's), created in the context of peace with Israel.

The reformist government acknowledges that it is up against entrenched and determined resistance. Jordan's traditional power structure recognizes that a merit and rule-based private sector-driven economy is a threat. The traditional power structure, especially the still strong tribal leaders throughout Jordan, has viewed the government as a source of employment and patronage for their constituents. A public sector that is no longer growing and hiring therefore denies tribal leaders the ability to provide constituent service. The new government team says it will find alternative means to satisfy the traditional power structure, such as by granting tribal leaders more control over local development projects that will employ Jordanians. Tribal leaders, however, remain skeptical and continue to form a major core of opposition to reform.

Another obstacle in the way of progress is the recent rapid rise in oil prices. Jordan subsidizes gasoline prices for its citizens by buying crude oil and providing it to refineries. Therefore, when oil prices rise, the budgetary demand on the government for that subsidy also rises.With the Saudi grant now expired amid the possibility of non-renewal or finding no alternatives, and with oil prices rising over $50 per barrel, Jordan faces an oil bill of over US$500 million per year, a very large commitment. Eliminating the oil subsidy, on the other hand, would likely spark unrest, and Jordan is unwilling to run that risk.

Jordan's new government faces several hurdles. Some are particularly connected with the possibility of a partial change of the guard as dictated by geographic considerations, specifically related to representation in the southern region. However, the government appears determined to catapult Jordan forward.

Jordan is reaping the benefit of the perception that it is an island of stability amid turmoil to its east and its west. Its extensive cooperation with US policy toward Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process virtually ensures that it will not receive major criticism from the Bush administration even if political reform moves forward only slowly. The new government team, however, remains up against traditional attitudes and approaches in an essentially conservative society, and even the most optimistic members of the new government team believe that they need to improve their communication of the benefits of reform to the large segments of the population that remain skeptical.

2005-08-07T00:30:00.000-07:00

The Arab Isla'ah - Reform

2005-07-26T03:44:00.000-07:00

God Help the Arab People......

Jordan's Great Leap Nowhere BY NIBRAS KAZIMI .... any comments from anyone?

2005-07-26T03:25:00.001-07:00

Jordan's Great Leap Nowhere
Nibras Kazimi
July 21, 2005 Thursday
The New York Sun

There is a child born every three minutes in Jordan. Someone also dies every 11th minute due to an automobile accident.

Last week, the Jordanian government decided to increase the prices of gasoline and other oil products that are still heavily state-subsidized. In previous years, Saddam Hussein used to supply the Jordanians with almost free oil, even under a U.N.-mandated oil embargo. Every cab driver in Amman, now paying more for gas, is lamenting the demise of Saddam.

Maybe inhibitive gas prices will lead to fewer car crashes, but that is not how the oil hikes are being marketed by the new government. They are part of an all-out plan for economic reform; getting free Iraqi oil is a thing of the past, and the new Jordanian economy must reflect the global realities of a free market. In fact, Jordan is billing itself to the world and specifically to American investors as a model for economic reform in the Middle East.

There is indeed good news in this respect: Jordan has developed its manpower resources by educating a generation toward the fields of technology and services. Things go awry when one realizes that most of this generation expects to find employment in oil-rich Dubai, and not in their own resource-poor country. Apparently, while Jordan is making great strides in getting ready for a globalized free market, its bureaucracy remains typically Middle Eastern, that is to say, ossified and extremely reluctant to make the sacrifices that go with all-out reform. Under such circumstances, foreign investors are staying out.

Jordan, far from being a model, is a case study that economic reform must go hand in hand with political reform.

But for now, it's all the fault of the Belgians. For some bizarre reason, those who consider themselves "true" Jordanians, that is those who were living within its borders and their descendants before the influx of Palestinian refugees since 1948, have taken to the habit of referring to Jordanians of Palestinian origin as "Belajkeh," or Belgians. There are about 10 different rationalizations for this label and all are equally ridiculous.

One such "Belgian" is Bassem Awadallah, who is the 42-year-old "golden boy" of economic reform. He was born in Jerusalem, and now considers himself a true Jordanian. However, he has been the lightning rod of non-Belgian Jordanians as the evil-mastermind who is trying to create a Palestinian homeland in Jordan. His reforms, articulated since he was planning minister several years ago, were seen to cater to the more affluent, yet not influential, Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who have the cash to gobble up whatever gets privatized by the government.

His true enemies seem to be the 300 families that run Jordan, and who have been making money, and lots of money, from how things used to be run in the past. They include both "true" Jordanians and those of Palestinian origin. They, and their sons and daughters, are the ones recklessly driving all those plentiful luxury cars in Amman, and responsible for quite a number of road tragedies.

Apparently, Mr. Awadallah was dropped from the new Cabinet, where he had been poised to take on the finance portfolio, in order to get the minimal objective of gasoline price hikes done. Jordan's much-hyped great leap forward has been dwindled down by the political and financial elite into incrementally making the consumer pay for gas that is no longer free.

For now, the Jordanian economy is saved from meltdown because of its other marketable commodity: security. With oil prices beyond their wildest imagination and Swiss bank accounts more scrutinized due to worldwide terror, the wealthy of the Gulf states are pouring their petrodollars into grand real estate development projects in Amman. The Jordanian capital is also overrun by Iraq's moneyed classes, who are waiting out the turmoil back home. It is also enjoying the fruits of instability in increasingly bomb-ridden Lebanon by attracting Middle Eastern vacationers. This is yet another lucky wave in a series that has kept Jordan afloat. By the way, security is courtesy of the American taxpayer, arriving in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in military and intelligence aid every year.

But what happens when all these palliating factors diminish over the near future, and Middle Eastern capital finds more lucrative nearby markets to invest in.

Mr. Awadallah, in a recent chat, says that Jordan needs to speed up economic reform or it will be left behind. However, political reform of the system that brought him personally down cannot be touched, he says, until the larger issue of the Israeli-Arab conflict is resolved and the right of return for Palestinians is tabled. He and most Jordanians of Palestinian origin are likely to stay put, but they will never be accepted by "true" Jordanians as fellow citizens as long as the option of returning to a place called Palestine is not given to them and they can demonstrate, by staying put, that Jordan is their final homeland.

But that is a total cop out. Instead of being at the helm of Jordan's much-needed reform, Mr. Awadallah now holds the grand title of vice chairman of the Abdullah II Fund for Development, which is a skeletally staffed think tank housed in a sleepy Amman side street. The corrupt elite used the outdated politics of xenophobia to divert public attention from his ideas to his "Belgian" background. It was only an excuse to thwart reform, and they are quite adept at finding other excuses along the way. In the final tally, without a paradigm shift into a new way of handling both political and economic change in Jordan, nothing will get done, and the country will simply ride out one lucky wave onto the next, until the waters settle or a big wave brings everything crashing down.

Jordan has stability and creativity, yet it does not have mobility. Its much-touted economic reform is being peddled by a political class that refuses to reform itself, and in the end it all adds up to nothing really changing, which suits them just fine. The reality, however, is that more Jordanians are being born into a political and economic system that is monopolized by the few and that cannot absorb them, and if change does not come gradually, then it will come at an even heavier price of turmoil. Maybe America's financial aid should be tied to mobility in the only right direction, forward.

2005-07-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

The latest Unpublished Cartoon by Hajjaj - The Jordanian Govt teaches the Yemani Govt on raising prices...

Jordan: Shuffling Forwards BY OXFORD BUSINESS GROUP

2005-07-06T03:44:00.000-07:00

Jordan: Shuffling Forwards
OXFORD BUSINESS GROUP
4 July 2005

After several weeks of waiting and speculation, Jordan's new cabinet was finally unveiled on July 3, with eight new ministers appointed. Once again, the fresh line-up is aimed at winning support for economic and political reform, but this time in the face of an increasingly disgruntled parliament. Public opinion, however, appears divided on the new team's chances of delivering.

The reshuffle followed the resignation of the unpopular finance minister, Bassem Awadallah, on June 15. Prime Minister Adnan Badran had also been under attack in parliament, where, according to AFP, a group of some 53 MPs in the 110-seat assembly had mobilised for a no-confidence vote if the government's economic team were not revamped. Awadallah, who had been close to both King Abdullah II and the US, was thus forced out - a move greeted positively by many ordinary Jordanians, given the rises in oil prices his proposed policy of slashing oil subsidies would have produced - (As if Dr. BAsem wanted to raise the oil prices for no reasons. As if the previous govts haven't been SCREWING all Jordanians by Levying these subsidies and now all of us will pay for it, PAY ALOT.) Faced with unpopular decisions such as plans to raise oil products by 5-12%, the Badran government had to get rid of controversial ministers in order to win public sympathy, a Jordanian official told AFP on July 4.

This was necessary in order to contain the public moaning expected when oil prices will rise. The decision to slash subsidies was given by the prime minister at the end of June, when he told a meeting of private-sector executives in Amman that these would have to go as part of plans to privatise the energy sector by 2008. The figure widely quoted is that $600m of subsidies will be cut over a three-year period. The announcement was also not helped by earlier statements from the government that water bills too would see a hike by the end of the year. Handling such a move requires major political and social consensus, particularly given violent popular responses to similar moves back in 1989 and 1996. A hike in prices of oil and other goods in 2004 did not produce such a backlash, with most analysts seeing the difference as being that in 2004 the move was conducted with parliament onside.

As a result, Badran's new cabinet has been put together with the development of a similar consensus in mind. Two key players in this will be Adel Kodah, the former head of the Privatisation Commission, who takes over Awadallah's post at the Finance Ministry, and Marwan Moasher, a former diplomat, who becomes deputy prime minister and official government spokesman in charge of explaining the reforms to the nation.

Elsewhere, the minister of parliamentary affairs, previously Hisham Tal, is now former Amman governor Abdul Karim Malahmeh. Tal retains his previous second portfolio as deputy prime minister for political development. At the Justice Ministry, the former minister of state for legal affairs, Abed Shakhanbeh, takes over, replacing Mohammed Alawneh. Rowaida Maaitah, a former minister of social development, takes over as minister of government performance, replacing Salah Bashir. Amin Mahmoud becomes minister of culture, while Munther Shara, previously minister of political development, now takes the water and irrigation portfolio, replacing Raed abu Saud - (Amazing Choice, A Political Science professor to head the Min of Water.)

Mohammad Odeh Njadat, a former minister of state in Abdul Karim Kabariti's government until 1997, returns to the same post. Finally, the former minister of labour and public works, Muzahim Muhaisin, takes over as minister of agriculture, replacing Yousef Shreiqi.

Therefore, the new faces are, with the exception of Malahmeh, not so new. All have served in at least one previous government, which while reassuring in terms of creating an experienced team, does also beg a few questions.

I believe that the deputies will calm down now, local analyst Jamil Nimri told the Jordan Times, but I don't think that the reshuffle was based on the qualifications of those brought in or on the belief that they could carry out the task ahead. Many see the new appointments as cautious, with the team selected specifically on the basis that they would not upset anyone. They do, however, partly redress a regional disparity that had existed, being largely drawn from the southern and northern regions.

Yet the tactic of non-offence does not seem to have worked entirely, as the resignation of Lower House Deputy Khalil Atiyyeh just before the new government was announced illustrated. One of those deputies who had been a key member of the no-confidence group, Atiyyeh was very popular in his constituency, which is mainly Palestinian refugees in Amman, whom, he said, were being marginalised despite representing a wide section of the Jordanian population.

Other deputies also criticised the new cabinet, with MP Mamdouh Abbadi telling reporters that the prime minister had made his appointments without consulting parliamentarians and that the cabinet lacks the cohesion or makeup of a reformist body. Another worry is the cabinet's stability, as it was only back in April that the last reshuffle took place. The pressing need for continuity in the application of public policy must be respected, editorialised the Jordan Times on July 4. The country cannot afford a transient government in view of the heavy workload ahead. Most would agree with that - and hope that Prime Minister Badran's team will be up to the challenge.

2005-07-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Wa-zeroanium, The Jordanian Uranium

2005-07-04T00:19:00.000-07:00

Ahla Cabinet Reshuffle... Former Min of Political Development is appointed Min of Water... Ahla Hokoma'a

Jordanian PM unveils new Cabinet to gain Parliament's support for reform

2005-07-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

Jordanian PM unveils new Cabinet to gain Parliament's support for reform
By Agence France Presse
Monday, July 04, 2005

Jordan Prime Minister Adnan Badran named eight new ministers in a major Cabinet reshuffle aimed at winning a parliamentary vote of confidence - and to gain a mandate for imposing reform and slashing oil subsidies.

In an unprecedented move, Badran was forced to change his line-up only three months after he formed his government in April, as the Cabinet came under attack from a group of 53 MPs in the 110-member Parliament. The deputies threatened a no-confidence vote unless the economic team was changed - in other words the deeply unpopular Finance Minister Bassem Awadallah.

Awadallah, a controversial figure close to King Abdullah II and the U.S. administration, stepped down on June 15, paving the way for the government reshuffle.

"Faced with unpopular decisions such as plans to raise oil products by five to 12 percent, the Badran government had to get rid of controversial ministers in order to win public sympathy," a Jordanian official said.

"This was necessary in order to contain the public moaning expected when oil prices will rise," the official said.

Badran, a respected academic-turned-politician, coordinated the reshuffle with Parliament in a bid to win a vote of confidence as well as the support of MPs to forge ahead with economic reform, including plans to slash oil subsidies.

Jordan's King Abdullah II has also met separately with the various political factions to underscore his determination to push for reform and eradicate corruption.

Last week Badran told private sector executives that his government would announce plans to cut oil subsidies as part of a scheme to privatize the energy sector by 2008. Jordan must cut $600 million in subsidies over three years, officials have said.

Price increases for oil products in 1989 and bread in 1996 triggered riots in Jordan, but increases of oil products and other goods in 2004 - which were arranged in close consultation with Parliament - did not fuel any violent discontent in the country.

The newcomers include veteran diplomat Marwan Moasher, who was appointed deputy prime minister, Adel Qudaa, who was named finance minister, and Munzer Shareh, who was handed the Water Ministry. The line-up also includes Muzahem Muhayssen as agriculture minister, Amin Mahmoud for culture, Abdel-Karim Malahmeh as minister of state for parliamentary affairs and Minister of State Mohammad al-Najadat.

A woman, Ruwaida Maayteh, was appointed minister of government performance, joining three other women in the reshuffled Badran government. But the most important measure taken by Badran was to bring back the veteran diplomat Moasher, who was appointed deputy prime minister, a position he held in the former government of Faisal al-Fayez.

Moasher, who has been heading a national committee for reform for several months and served as royal court minister since April, will also act as official government spokesman whose mission will be to explain reform to the nation.

Adel Qudaa, who headed the Privatization Commission since 1996, replaces Awadallah as finance minister in the new government.

The reshuffle, meanwhile, caused its first casualty in Parliament when popular Amman MP Khalil Attiyeh, whose district includes a large Palestinian refugee camp, tendered his resignation, charging that the line-up was not representative.

Attiyeh, who quit Parliament hours before Badran announced the reshuffle, said that a "large faction of the Jordanian society is being marginalized."

2005-06-29T00:45:00.000-07:00

Abu Mahjoob Wants to come up with a Reform Plan to reform all the previous Reform attempts....

2005-06-27T03:10:00.000-07:00

Islah Al Musleih Al Salahat - The Right Name for a Jordanian...

2005-06-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

Islah.com (????? ???? ??)......

The Jordanian experience (in Media and reform) - by Amy Henderson

2005-05-28T03:52:00.000-07:00

The Jordanian experience by Amy Henderson
bitterlemons-international.org - Middle East roundtable Media and reform
May 26, 2005, 2005 Volume 3 Edition 19

Jordan's "new era" has been filled with ambiguities and inconsistent policies toward the media that find their roots in Jordan's political structure. Historically, the media interests of the monarchy and those of a conservative establishment that supported it were, for the most part, one and the same. Now they no longer necessarily coincide.

Since King Abdullah II ascended to the throne, inconsistencies in media policy have derived from a battle of wills between the country's liberal reformers, who want to see a reorganization of the social bases of power and a deepening of economic reform, and status quo conservatives.

The king and a small coterie of advisors and officials seem frequently torn between the impulses of both. For the sake of the country's long-term stability, the regime advocates reform. At the same time, there is a prevailing concern that too much reform--especially during times of crisis--could facilitate destabilization. Consequently, Abdullah at times has led the charge toward greater openness only to be blocked by the establishment, and at other moments retreated, appearing in lock step with conservatives.

The first four years of the king's reign were replete with instances in which establishment conservatives successfully blocked media reform initiatives. Abdullah urged the government to open the country to media investments, apparently to attract some of the Europe-based Arab satellite business to Jordan. Advocates of the idea cited three possible advantages: to draw high-tech, capital intensive industry to the country, to absorb excess human resources, and to create competition for local media, raising the standards of national journalism.

The government and parliament colluded to derail the project, however: issues as diverse as national security and pornography were drawn into the debate. A draft law written by an unenthusiastic government was shelved, and was anyway nothing to write home about. It delineated a media investment "zone": media based there would be free.

The Jordanian media, however, was not entitled to invest there, and consequently would remain subject to Jordan's restrictive press and publication law and the penal code. Parliament did not accept the government's distinction between Jordanian and foreign media, and expressed its anxiety about the pending loosening of social and moral codes should such a zone ever materialize. The project was shelved. A few months later, Dubai seized the idea as a component of its own high-tech drive. Media privatization has also been demonstrative of the regime's perplexity over how best to deal with the media.

In 2000, Abdullah recommended that the government divest from major newspapers. Several proposals were advanced and by May 2001 the "privatization" was complete. It involved the Jordan Press Foundation, in which the state relinquished 6.7 percent of its equity. Prior to the sale, the ownership structure was as follows: the government owned 15 percent of its shares through the Jordan Investment Corporation, JIC (the investment arm of the government), and 47 percent through the Social Security Corporation, SSC. The majority of JIC shares were purchased by the SSC, in effect a sale from the left hand to the right. Government ownership in the other major papers (30 percent of Al Dustour and 22 percent of Al Arab Al Yawm) has not changed and the equity of the fully government-owned Jordan Radio and Television and the Jordan News Agency, Petra, is not likely to see the auction block any time soon.

Efforts to reform the media sector have not only met resistance from establishment conservatives, but also from the media itself. Conservatives have traditionally benefited from state ownership of media. Appointments and positions in the media have been distributed as patronage: top appointments are often politically motivated, and less senior positions were often filled through the establishment network. This has facilitated the deterioration of professional journalism and an acceptance of mediocrity at some of the largest media institutions. Across-the-board reorganization and restructuring of the media threaten to reveal the weaknesses of unqualified personnel in the face of competition, as well as curb the establishment's ability to dominate public discourse and distribute patronage.

There are several independent weekly newspapers in circulation, mostly opposition papers, and one independent daily, Al Ghad, established in 2004. However, the plethora of independent publications has not facilitated the media's mobilization. On the contrary, the Jordanian media is a house divided, and consequently, it cannot stand up to state pressure. The mainstream media frequently accuses the tabloid press of compromising professional credibility, while the opposition accuses the mainstream media of complicity with the regime.

Media reform has anyway been something of a moot point since September 11, an event that revealed the extent to which the regime still grapples with the national security conundrum. Temporary amendments to the penal code, subject to no parliamentary oversight, were swift and expanded the already vague limits on free expression delineated in the press and publications law. The amendments allowed courts to temporarily or permanently ban publications for publishing false information or rumors, aggravating social norms, inciting violence or hatred, or harming the honor or reputation of individuals. Offenders were threatened with three-year prison sentences, fines of some $7,000, or both.

The new amendments also expanded an article that criminalizes insulting the dignity of the king, and made such offenses eligible for trial in the state security court. Similar restrictions were already included in the law, which further prohibits the publication of any information or image that jeopardizes relations with friendly states, insults the head of friendly states, degrades religion or undermines the country's economic and fiscal stability.

In light of continuing Palestinian-Israeli violence and the US-led war on Iraq and continuing instability there, these restrictions were kept in place. The effects have been dramatic and have included the arrest and imprisonment of several journalists and the closure of media offices in Amman. The local media has since complained of a lack of access to information and harassment from the authorities (including being summoned by the security services for questioning, unofficial threats, direct interference in work, official threats, and denial of entry into public activities). Last year, the government proposed amendments to the press and publications law that would forbid the arrest or imprisonment of journalists for press offenses and began drafting an access to information law, while journalists also cited a noticeable decline in interference by the authorities in their work and a drop in the detainment of journalists. But while overt repression has abated, there have been as yet no substantial changes to the difficult legal environment in which the media has always operated.

Compounding matters, the only institution that represents the media, the Jordan Press Association, has typically been an extension of the state's repressive media policy, not a shield against it. A journalist not a member in good standing of the JPA can be legally barred from working. However, it is often the JPA, not the government, that endeavors to apply this rule to the media. In fact, the government has in the past urged the JPA to curb its enthusiasm for harassing journalists: the JPA tried to take the government to court to force it to apply the law.

The liberal-conservative competition within and for the media is likely to re-ignite if Abdullah moves ahead with political reforms as he has promised to do later this year. Nevertheless, the media may prove to be one of the most difficult sectors to reform. There is resistance from within, and, added to the fact that many Jordanians genuinely fear retaliation for speaking their minds openly, the media enjoys little credibility among the population. Few voices have been raised in opposition to frequent government crackdowns on the press in the last decade.

Consequently, the reformers within may have difficulty in finding allies in civil society to take up the cudgels for a fully free and independent Jordanian press.

Amy Henderson is a Middle East-based freelance journalist and the former national news editor of the Jordan Times.

Analysis: Jordan in crisis over power BY SANA ABDALLAH - Jordanian East Bankers Vs. Jordanians of Palestinian origion

2005-05-28T03:40:00.000-07:00

Analysis: Jordan in crisis over power
By Sana Abdallah
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Amman, Jordan, May. 25 (UPI) -- As Jordan marks its 59th independence day Wednesday, it faces a deep crisis between the government of Prime Minister Adnan Badran and a large minority in parliament that has threatened to withhold confidence.

The formation of Badran's government last month did not so much divide the country as it resurfaced the unspoken sensitivities between East Bank Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin, with the first group using the so-called threat of absorbing or settling the Palestinians as an excuse for what it sees as the second gaining too much power.

At issue is that Badran, a veteran academic, brought an unprecedented number of Jordanians of Palestinian origin into his Cabinet, while ignoring representatives from major tribes in southern Jordan. Around 12 of the 26-member government are Palestinians.

When he formed the government after King Abdullah designated him in early April, the new prime minister insisted he wanted a team that was capable of carrying out the monarch's instructions in speeding up administrative, political and economic reforms. Regional considerations were not on his agenda, as they clearly were not in the king's.

That was hard to swallow for around 48 parliamentarians, mostly pro-establishment, so-called "centrists," in the 110-seat lower house. These "new opposition" legislators, mostly elected on tribal basis and who have traditionally endorsed government laws and policies, quickly said they might not give Badran's government a vote of confidence.

In a memorandum, they specified opposition to the form, rather than the agenda, of the Cabinet, based on the fact that it had ignored representatives from certain areas in Jordan. They also objected to the economic team, most of whose members were ministers in the previous government of former Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez.

They complained the economic team, which the king believes would speed up reforms, had failed not only in improving the standard of living in the country, but increased taxation and hiked prices of commodities. The legislators also accused these ministers of not responding to parliament demands on a fair distribution of funds from foreign assistance.

The legislators have been mostly protesting against renaming Bassem Awadallah as finance minister after he had resigned as planning minister two months earlier following a series of complaints and accusations that he was too "autonomous" in his decisions on where foreign assistance was going.

Others saw the campaign against Awadallah, 41, as being motivated by the fact that he does not hail from a prominent Jordanian tribe, but from a Palestinian family.

The "new opposition" made no mention of what appears to be really bothering them: The inclusion of so many Palestinians, who continue to make up more than half of Jordan's 5.4 million population, in the economic and political decision-making hierarchy. As one commentator put it in the independent al-Ghad daily this week, these very same parliamentarians had no problem with al-Fayez's former Cabinet when it excluded some of the regions in Jordan, mainly because it had a "tribal" base. The writer explained that these parliamentarians were opposed to the individuals in this new government, rather than policies that interest the general public.

While these MP's never came right out to complain about the number of Palestinians in Badran's government, they have privately complained in their so-called political salons the issue of "absorbing" or "settling" the Palestinians. In other words, giving the Palestinians more political power at the expense of the "tribes," who have traditionally been the players in the executive branch while the Palestinians have constituted the business and private sector community.

The parliamentary uproar stems from the view that the new government team is set to "absorb" the Palestinians, thus giving up their right to return to homes they were forced to flee in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war when the Jewish state was established. The legislators see this being done as a result of pressure from Washington, a close Jordanian ally and main donor.

Analysts privately say that by bringing in so many Palestinians in positions of power, these pro-establishment MP's are very nervous about changing the status quo, citing the right-wing Israeli threat of making Jordan the "alternative Palestinian homeland."

What added to their worries that this scheme was being implemented is an interior ministry decision that removed travel restrictions on Palestinians coming to Jordan from the West Bank as of Wednesday. The ministry decided that West Bank Palestinians no longer had to obtain the "no-objection" paper to enter the country, which was imposed at the start of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000 for fear the people would leave their towns for safety and livelihood in Jordan; thus, leaving their property for the Israelis to confiscate.

King Abdullah has made clear his support for his government team. He told the London-based al-Hayat daily last week that he gave no importance to the origins of the ministers, something he might not have realized shakes the very foundations of the socio-political status quo in his kingdom.

"When they were chosen, I don't believe their origins were not taken into consideration," the king said. "It is not right to look at individuals as having come at the expense of others."

Abdullah, whose wife Queen Rania is of Palestinian origin, insisted it was the government's program, not the individuals that should be judged and stressed that "all in Jordan should benefit" from reforms that he said was a "choice not linked to individuals." He also said that reform and "political and economic participation" of all in the country would not divide the kingdom and saw no link between reform and "settlement" (of Palestinians).

While King Abdullah's firm and clear declared support to his new government may embarrass the traditional legislators into accepting Badran's team and not withhold confidence if there is a vote, they might not make the executive branch's work easy if they are not given something else in return to silence them.

Although parliament is in recess and expected to convene in an extraordinary session in September, the king, who sets date and agenda for extraordinary sessions, is unlikely to include a confidence vote in the agenda to avoid spending too much time on the issue and to deal with legislation.

But Badran recently told the independent al-Arab al-Yawm local daily he intended to seek a vote of confidence in an apparent attempt to obtain legitimacy for reform programs he has in store.

Analysts say the parliamentary uproar has highlighted a defective and controversial general elections law that brought a conservative, tribal majority that is hindering the king's vision for deep-rooted reforms. Such reforms necessarily mean a significant shift in the way the country has been run in the past 50-plus years, giving Jordanians of Palestinian origin political power in the decision-making process that could be at the expense of the traditional East Bankers losing that political grip.

Achieving reforms that include such a shift has not been an easy task in the past six years since King Abdullah assumed the Hashemite throne. It is not likely to be a smooth ride now.

Democratic Jordan: enticing, but still not a done deal By Rami G. Khouri

2005-05-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

A Brilliant Artciel by Rami Khoury that puts the onus on the Jordanian Leadership 'King Abdullah has again set a high bar of expectations against which his people and his friends abroad will judge him in the months and years ahead'

Democratic Jordan: enticing, but still not a done deal
By Rami G. Khouri
TEH DAILY STAR
Wednesday, May 25, 2005

When Jordan's King Abdullah II closed the three-day World Economic Forum on Sunday at a new convention center along the Dead Sea coast, he urged regional leaders to respond to popular demand for economic and political reforms, saying: "People want to move forward, they want meaningful reform, they want to see a tangible difference in their lives."

What he did not say, but seems to have felt, as evidenced by his words and some recent actions, was that ordinary Arab people also wanted their leaders to match their rhetoric with action.

King Abdullah to some extent has brought on himself some of the pressures he has felt recently. A string of recent newspaper articles around the world, coupled with increasingly frank private criticisms from foreign officials, diplomats, academics, journalists, and other genuine friends, shocked but also caught the attention of the Jordanian leadership, especially that many of the critics were loyal sons and daughters of the country.

The main thrust of the criticism has been that Jordanian political realities do not match the king's boastful depictions of his own realm as a democratic model for other Arabs. Had Jordan not marketed itself as an exemplary Arab state, it could probably have avoided the cross examination and merrily went on its way in the tradition of cruise-control one-party autocracies, like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

The main criticisms at home and abroad have focused on several fronts.
First has been the government's attempts to legislate an end to the political role of perhaps the most genuine political institutions in the country - the professional associations of lawyers, doctors, engineers and others. Critics have also bemoaned the intelligence department's interference in fields that seem to have little if anything to do with genuine security, such as the mass media, education, or bureaucratic appointments. Fighting corruption has been a problematic area, given that the anti-corruption unit is inside the intelligence department, which recently has been linked with, or accused of, corruption and influence peddling.

Another problem is the pattern of general mediocrity in governance, with recent senior officials often talking like modern democrats but acting like Early Bronze Age patriarchs.

The gap between Jordan's lofty democratic rhetoric and its erratically democratic record had grown wide in recent years, and King Abdullah felt he had to act because the criticisms were clearly gnawing at his personal credibility, not to mention the country's overall image. He moved decisively recently on three fronts. He appointed a new government headed by Prime Minister Adnan Badran that was mandated to push forward the reform process. He replaced his intelligence department director, who had expressed displeasure with the reform push. And he revamped the royal palace senior staff, bringing in a team of proven reformers whose task is to drive and monitor the democratization process throughout the entire government.

Diplomatic sources in Amman say privately that "this is crunch time for the king, who has to prove if his rhetoric of democracy and reform will be matched by the conduct of the government and its agencies." Official sources deeply involved in the changes under way explain this as something of a relaunch of the reform and democratization process, which initially took off in 1989 and has included five general elections for Parliament since that year. Jordan's liberalization in the period 1989-93 was indeed pioneering for the Arab world, in elections, integrating Islamists into the power structure, and opening up the media and civil society. The process slowed down in 1994 when Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, and it has stagnated or regressed slightly in recent years.

Officials at the highest level privately complain of two reasons for the slow pace of change: a skeptical public, and the tendency of vested interests in Parliament and the bureaucracy to oppose deep changes. One sign of resistance to change has been a spirited public and private attack against the new government by parliamentarians, some political and press personalities and even some former security officers. Public apathy is also a home-grown problem: a system that liberalized to give its citizens greater rights of speech and assembly, without giving them real power to check government and security excesses, naturally bred widespread complacency and doubt.

King Abdullah has again set a high bar of expectations against which his people and his friends abroad will judge him in the months and years ahead.

When he says, as he did Sunday, that "people want meaningful reform, they want to see a tangible difference in their lives," he is right. But will his actions match his words more closely this time around?

His most urgent priority now is to start making those changes in governance that will foster genuine equality, accountability, transparency, rule of law, and participatory democracy. Perhaps he has started, with the changes at the top of the government, the intelligence department and the palace. There are many other changes that can be made quickly, and that would "make tangible differences in people's lives," including: fostering greater transparency in all state and government financial accounts, creating credible mechanisms for citizen complaints, establishing civilian-government joint councils for oversight and coordination of police-and-security-related activities, consulting Parliament earlier on policy changes, enhancing the independence of the judiciary from executive branch influence, opening the field for private-sector electronic media, fostering opportunities for private think tanks and research institutions, studying how to create a more representative Parliament, and leaving the business of human rights compliance to the courts and civil society organizations.

Jordan as a democratic model for the Arab world remains an enticing prospect, and a very realizable possibility, but it is not yet a done deal. A lot of people, including its own, are cheering for it to succeed, so that there may indeed be a home-grown Arab reform strategy that breeds a credible democracy.

Rami G. Khouri writes a weekly commentary for The Daily Star.

Jordan: Democracy at a Dead End by Shadi Hamid

2005-05-12T00:47:00.000-07:00

Jordan: Democracy at a Dead End
Shadi Hamid
Arab Reform Bulletin
Published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Translated by Dar Al-Watan for Journalism, Printing and Publishing.
May 2005, Volume 3, Issue 4

In a March 15th interview, ABC news anchor Peter Jennings asked King Abdullah II if Jordan would ever become a constitutional monarchy. “Absolutely,” the king said. When Abdullah came to power in 1999, there was widespread speculation that this young, charismatic Sandhurst and Georgetown-educated leader—and other young monarchs in the region—would be willing to embark on reforms and gradually share power. Yet, as of late, it has been non-monarchical systems such as Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt that have begun to experience democratic openings. Jordan, on the other hand, has witnessed a disturbing wave of de-liberalization.

First, there was the recent professional associations debacle, another manifestation of the struggle for the soul of a nation caught between its growing Palestinian majority and its close relationship with the United States. In a country with notoriously impotent political parties, a civil society with little grassroots reach, and a parliament dominated by pro-regime tribalism, the 120,000 professional associations have become the primary venue for opposition to Jordan's controversial foreign policies—and apparently an intolerable annoyance to a government eager to demonstrate its usefulness to Washington.

Enter Interior Minister Samir Habashneh. Catching civil society off guard with a series of harsh statements in January 2005, he demanded that the associations “completely halt” all political activities. Demonstrations and sit-ins were banned, while the Professional Associations Council was ordered to remove political banners from its premises. Amman governor Abdul Karim Malahmeh announced that “any kind of event, gathering or meeting, save for weddings, should obtain prior approval.”

In early March, the government presented a draft professional associations law to parliament, requesting it be acted upon urgently. Most observers believe this 26-article bill would constitute a debilitating setback for democratization. It authorizes the Audit Bureau, for example, to monitor associations' funds to ensure they are spent only on internal activities. The draft law also changes voting procedures so that the professional councils are elected indirectly through “intermediary commissions.” To eliminate any doubt about the government's intentions, Habashneh stated openly that the law aimed to eliminate the “prevalence of one current”—meaning Islamists—within the associations.

The opposition launched a vigorous response, calling on parliament to fight the bill. Fifty-nine Members of Parliament (MPs) signed a memo asking that the government withdraw the draft, although nearly 20 withdrew their signatures, apparently due to government pressure. Several journalists went on record as saying that the government pressed newspapers to refrain from publishing news about the crisis.

Adding yet more tension to an already volatile situation, the government also proposed a new political parties law. The law prohibits the use of mosques, clubs, professional associations, or sports clubs for political party activities, bans recruiting and campaigning at educational institutions, and bars activities that could harm Jordan's relations with other countries.

With its knack for offending friends and foes alike, Prime Minister Fayez's government fell in April and Habashneh lost his job. At least temporarily, the brakes were put on Jordan's frightening skid toward full-blown authoritarianism. The king reaffirmed his country's commitment to political reform and promised that the new cabinet's policies would be in line with Jordan's ambitious 10-year national agenda. Yet there remains reason to be skeptical. Newly appointed Prime Minister Adnan Badran has used a less confrontational tone than his predecessor, but has not yet withdrawn either the professional associations law or the political parties law. Moreover, while his cabinet is filled with Western-educated technocrats and private-sector reformers, few are known for their love of democracy.

Badran's cabinet has come under unprecedented attack. MPs are angry that they were not consulted before its formation, and even regime loyalists accused Badran of neglecting the country's southern regions in his appointments. Thus far, 45 out of 110 MPs have said they will withhold confidence from the government; 17 from the Islamic bloc are expected to join them when it comes to a vote.

In response to the growing criticism, both the king and Badran have recited vague platitudes about Jordan's ambitious plans for reform. But while the king appears well intentioned, his focus on improving government performance and efficiency misses the mark. The real impediments to democracy lie in Jordan's political structure and anachronistic constitution which, among other things, ensures that the king is “immune from any liability and responsibility.” With his vast powers, the king also appoints the prime minister and all 40 members of the Senate, whose approval is needed for any proposed bill to become law.

By any standard, Jordan is nowhere close to joining the ranks of the world's democracies and remains, in form and function, an absolute monarchy—a fact emphasized by the latest political crises. In his interview with Peter Jennings, King Abdullah claimed that Jordan was on its way to becoming a constitutional monarchy. The heavy-handed government actions of recent months, however, give ample reason for doubt.

Shadi Hamid is a Fulbright Fellow in Amman, Jordan, conducting research on democratization and political Islam in the Arab world.

Democratizing Jordan by Rami Abdelrahman and Serene Al-Ahmad - JORDAN BUSINESS MONTHLY

2005-05-09T06:43:00.000-07:00

The article below is a very good article on indicative basis although the two authors evidently lack expertise in writing political content but still a good first effort.

The following quotes/paragraph from the piece draw my attention especially emad Hajjaj's statement and I wanted to share their contents with all of you guys....

… Commenting on why he seems to have more freedom of expression than others, Mr. Hajjaj said, “I draw caricatures; I have a unique way of expressing myself. I argue for my level of freedom, before I argue for my salary. But it happened gradually. It is a grave mistake for us to allow others to set limits on the freedom of our expression and creativity. This is a war and we have to fight it.”

… Although too extreme, this student echoes, to an extent, a general sentiment of political apathy in the Jordanian street. The lack of interest in politics could very well be a product of a lack of awareness. This is where political reform can play a critical role in educating people about the value of democracy and the importance of political participation.

… As it stands today, the street is alienated yet aching for change and that is why the government should act fast. Allowing greater freedom of _expression and press, the most basic rights and freedoms guaranteed by democracy, would not only seriously advance the democratization process in Jordan, but also enhance the government’s performance by bettering the monitoring process, and more importantly, actively engaging Jordanians in shaping their future.

… Talk of democratic reform is abound in the Middle East, and Jordan is no exception. The country is indeed viewed as the region’s pioneer in reform. And if that is to remain the case, Jordan should too walk the walk.

Democratizing Jordan
By Rami Abdelrahman and Serene Al-Ahmad
JORDAN BUSINESS MONTHLY
MAY 2005

As the momentum of reform in the region continues to press forward, the path towards democracy in Jordan is still not clear-cut. It is ironic that more than 2,000 years ago, Amman, then known as Philadelphia, was one of the ten Greco-Roman Decapolis cities, where Athenian direct democracy was practiced.

Amman witnessed different forms of democracy through thousands of years and survived many tyrannies and dictatorships. Political reform, not just economic reform, was declared a top priority for the government, back in 2003, in His Majesty King Abdullah’s letter of designation to Prime Minister Faisal Al Fayez.

But can Jordan live up to its “role model” status in the region with its piecemeal reforms? And more importantly, what does democracy mean to the average Jordanian?

“Democracy is saying what you want to say, when you want to say it without fearing those in leather jackets and dark shades,” said a 20-year-old female student.

An overwhelming majority of Jordanians, when having to define democracy in their own words, say it is “freedom of expression”, rather than a form of government guaranteeing civil and political rights and freedoms. This is what Jordan Business Monthly (JBM) concluded after randomly surveying 200 people in Amman aged between 18 and 45.

The United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2004 takes the concept of democracy further, stating that ensuring civil and political rights and freedoms alone does not constitute a democratic system. A democracy, the report states, ensures a broader freedom that “incorporates not only civil and political freedoms, including freedom from oppression, but also the liberation of the individual from all factors that are inconsistent with human dignity, such as hunger, disease, ignorance, poverty, and fear.”

Despite their unclear understanding of democracy, 41% of Jordanians see Jordan as “democratic to some extent” (see Chart 1), but the majority seem to understand its value. According to our study, 38% of respondents think democracy is “very important” to the Jordanian society, 46% think it is “important”, 9% think it is “important to an extent”, 4% think it is “not important”, and 3% think it is “not important at all”.

When asked to evaluate the democratization process in Jordan, 41% see it as “average” (see Chart 2), a finding which is consistent with a public opinion poll about democracy conducted by the Center of Strategic Studies (CSS) in 2004, which concluded that Jordanians think democracy in the Kingdom is “in the middle of the road”.

The absence of freedom of expression and the absence of free press are the main obstacles to democracy in Jordan, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for the Middle East and North Africa, told JBM in a telephone interview. (JBM approached Deputy Prime Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Minister of Political Development Hisham Tal for an interview, but he declined.) Freedom of expression, including freedom of press, is the most basic of rights guaranteed by democracy.

“There are unseen barriers to democracy such as the role of security forces in allowing freedom of expression, the biased role of media, and the shortage of true monitoring of the legislative, executive, and judiciary authorities,” stated Mr. Taleb Saqqaf, assistant commissioner general of the National Center for Human Rights (NCHR).

Poverty, fear, ignorance, nepotism, tribalism, the governmental structure, and foreign interference, were frequently mentioned as obstacles to democracy by JBM’s respondents. In fact, only 16 people out of the 200 who filled JBM’s questionnaire did not fear providing their names. In 2004, the poll found, 81% of Jordanians believed that they could not publicly criticize the government or disagree with it without fearing governmental reprisal, a marginal decrease from 83% in 2003. The percentage was 70% in 1999.

The new government: Will we see a change?
Apart from its slow pace of reforms and diplomatic mess-ups, the previous government left hard feelings growing in the parliament, professional associations, political parties, media, and civil society institutions. On April 5, 2005, King Abdullah commissioned the president of a private university, Dr. Adnan Badran, to form a new government, replacing one that spent more time talking about political development than actually working to achieve it.

“Aspirations exceed achievements,” the King said in his letter of designation to Dr. Badran, whose government’s main task is to institutionalize and accelerate reforms.

Fortunately, the aspirations of the people are in accordance with the King’s directives to “open channels of communication between all political powers, and focus on participation and effective contribution of all segments of society to face its political, economic, and social challenges.”

Allowing freedom of expression, improving living standards, and engaging Jordanian citizens in the decision making process were cited by JBM’s respondents as the most important steps the government should take in order to better achieve democracy. Dr. Badran’s government was quick to show its seriousness about political development by saying it is intending to withdraw the Professional Associations’ Draft Law, which has caused much controversy and garnered international reproach.

The law, which sought to silence the political voice of the professional associations, was described by HRW as “a major setback to Jordan’s earlier commitments to reform and to guaranteeing the rights of Jordanian activists and civil society to assemble and express their views freely,” according to a letter sent by the international watchdog to former Prime Minister Faisal Al Fayez. (HRW received no response to the letter from the government “so far”, as Ms. Whitson told JBM.) A government that presents such a law is “a government of political failure, not a government of political development,” said deputy Abdel-Karim Dughmi during a hot parliamentary debate over the law. The session ended with Parliament refusing to endorse the law and refusing to give it urgency status, as suggested by the government. As this issue goes to press, the Professional Associations Draft Law has been sidelined and no developments have taken place.

On another front, Dr. Badran has been trying to smooth over discontent in the Lower House by meeting deputies from the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the National Democratic Block, and the Badia, in his bid for a vote of confidence. 43 deputies have threatened vetoing the new government if it does not comply with their seven conditions, which include a “better” geographic representation (more ministers from the Southern Badia) and the dismissal of the ministers who contributed to the tension between deputies and the previous government. At press time, no vote of confidence has been granted to Dr. Badran’s government. But ultimately, the government is expected to win its vote of confidence, as is the case almost always. But recently, the IAF, considered the main opposition party, demanded that dialogue with political powers should precede the formation of any new government, and not the other way around, according to the party’s secretary general Hamza Mansour.

Article 35 of the Jordanian constitution states, “The King appoints the Prime Minister and may dismiss him or accept his resignation. He appoints the Ministers; he also dismissed them or accepts their resignation, upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister.”

The government’s spokesperson and Minister of Culture Asma Khader said the government in Jordan is “elected by the people, because the parliament has the right to give it or deny it a vote of confidence.” Commenting on Ms. Khader’s statement, Mr. Mansour said, “The parliament itself is not truly representative of the people.”

I Vote Therefore I Care Not
The last parliamentary elections were held in June, 2003, under a 2001 temporary elections law that was passed by the previous parliament. The law reduced the eligible voting age from 19 to 18, gave every citizen the right to vote for only one candidate in his/her electoral district, raised the number of parliamentary seats from 80 to 110, and allocated a quota for women made up of six parliamentary seats.

The 2003 election results saw a decisive victory for tribal candidates and non-liberals who won 84 parliamentary seats. Within this bracket, the IAF won 20 seats only, the poorest achievement in its political history. Leftist and nationalist political parties failed to win any seat in parliament, and none of the female candidates were able to win any seat beyond their allotted quota (the 54 female candidates had to compete among themselves for the 6-seat female quota). Out of the six women, one representing the IAF was elected, while the other five were independents.

The number of eligible voters for the last parliamentary elections was 2.3 million, but the rate of participation in the elections was only 59%. The JBM study revealed that more than half of respondents did not vote in the last parliamentary elections, due to lack of qualified or trustworthy candidates. A more likely scenario could be not knowing enough about what candidates actually stand for. Out of the total sample of JBM respondents, almost half (47%) see parliamentary discussions as irrelevant to their interests, 38% said that they are relevant “sometimes”, while the remaining 15% they are relevant (see Chart 3). A mere 26% of those who voted in the last elections actually observe parliamentary discussions, 37% of them do not, while the remaining 37% said they follow the debates “sometimes”. Out of the 26% who voted and said they do follow parliamentary discussions, 36% said parliament topics are relevant to their interests, 21% said they are not, and 43% said they are relevant “sometimes”.

Lower House Speaker’s assistant, Deputy Mohammad Arsalan (Liberal Democrat) attributed the growing loss of interest to two reasons: “First, it could be said that the performance of the current parliament is not up to the people’s aspirations. Second, the Lower House has been attacked unfairly in the media by people who have personal interests in marginalizing its role.”

“There is a need to amend the laws of elections, political parties, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to allow them to expand their work to include larger segments of the society and to protect the rights of citizens in dealing with these institutions… currently there are many restrictions enforced by law,” states Mr. Saqqaf. He pointed out that raising awareness on democratic values, human rights, and development through educational curricula and allowing NGOs to cooperate in organizing campaigns is key to providing training on democracy to all citizens.

Emad Hajjaj, social and political caricature artist, stated, “Our parliament is not democratic. It makes a lot of noise, but it is easy to contain. The biggest proof of that is what we saw in their discussions with the government over the budget this year. They [deputies] made a lot of noise, but eventually, they approved the budget.”

Is parliament democratic?
According to political analyst Dr. Fares Braizat “the current electoral system infringes the principle of equality before the law enshrined in the constitution”, although according to his poll, 56% of Jordanians believe the law was fair in representing all sectors of the population.

“In the 2003 General Elections, Amman had 887.478 registered voters who had 23 seats in the Lower House of Parliament, while Al-Karak had 10 seats for 102.610 registered voters. This means a citizen’s vote in Al-Karak has three times the weight of its counterpart in the capital.

The implication of this distribution is that the engineering of the electoral system has favored the periphery over the center,” Dr. Braizat said. Amman represents a little less than half of the total population yet holds only 23 out of the 110 Lower House seats.

This extends to representation of women. Out of the 85 women surveyed by JBM, a relatively high 58% participated in the election. (One woman said that she did not vote because her husband wouldn’t allow it.) Women represent 49% of the population, according to the Department of Statistics, but have six seats in parliament. Yet 71% of citizens, when surveryed in 2004, believed that the electoral system under which the current parliamentary elections were held was fair to women.

Whether it is gender or geographic representation, there seems to be imbalances in the parliament that must be addressed. Mr. Arsalan suggested that the best way of representation can be achieved by applying a “one man, one vote, one constituency” formula, i.e. giving each citizen the right to vote for only one candidate, whereby only one candidate can win in each electoral district. The current “one-man, one-vote” formula has been criticized by government opposition as undermining the principle of equality and reinforcing voting based on tribal and personal affiliations, rather than the candidate’s eligibility, and his/her economic, political, and ideological stand.

“In light of the absence of serious programs by political parties, which should seek true rotation of authority, the majority of candidates win their parliament seats independently by gathering tribal votes,” Mr. Arsalan commented.

Voting the clan way According to JBM’s results, 53% of the respondents who voted in the last parliamentary elections voted on an ideological basis, 25% voted on a tribal/family basis, 12% on a religious basis, and 10% for other reasons (see Chart 4). Many of those who vote on a tribal basis paradoxically state that their reason for participating in the election is their duty and loyalty to Jordan. “Those parliamentarians [who win on a tribal basis] focus on servicing their personal relationships and therefore disregard their legislative, monitoring, and political role,” added Mr. Arsalan, noting that this weakens the House in fulfilling its duties in general.

According to the AHDR 2004, “Tribalism in Arab countries provides a threat to freedoms, as tradition and tribalism, sometimes under the cover of religion, contribute to curtailing freedoms and fundamental rights and have weakened the good citizen’s strength and ability to advance.” The report also suggests that, “Tribal allegiances develop when the judiciary is ineffective or the executive authority is reluctant to implement its rulings, circumstances that make citizens unsure of their ability to realize their rights without the allegiances of the clan.”

Are political parties an alternative?
“Though there are over 20 political parties in Jordan of different political persuasions, they lack a solid base of support and a viable platform, with the notable exception of the IAF,” King Abdullah was quoted as saying on his website.

Mr. Saqqaf of the NCHR said political parties and NGOs alike face financial obstacles that prevent them from fulfilling their roles. “The law enforces restrictions on NGOs and political parties finances, as it doesn’t allow space for much donations, which keeps the NGOs’ and political parties’ scope of work limited,” he said, adding that the government itself is not supporting these institutions financially, and if it did, it would force control over their scope of work.

Current political parties do not present a good alternative for the political, social, and economic aspirations of Jordanians. JBM found that people have little affinity to political parties. One of the respondents to the JBM questionnaire went as far as saying that political parties should “not exist” in order to enhance democracy in Jordan, another said that political parties are the main obstacle to democracy! Many, it seems, know little of what political parties represent, or how essential they are to democracy. 32% of JBM respondents did not know how to answer the question: “How could political parties contribute to political development in Jordan?” Those who did answer the question saw that the best way for political parties to take a more active role in political development is by merging. If they did not, some respondents said, nobody would be interested in joining them.

According to the IAF, the fear of government retribution is the reason people are losing interest in political parties, adding that political parties do still think about boycotting elections if freedoms were not guaranteed, but choose not to, because they do not want the situation to become any worse.

The AHDR 2004 suggests that, “There is an acute sectarian split in the political community between the Islamic parties on the one hand and the liberal and nationalist secular parties on the other (as well as other sectarian divisions along doctrinal, ethnic, tribal, and regional lines). As a result of this sectarian fragmentation, some parties and political forces have preferred to co-operate with undemocratic governments rather than work with their rivals to lay the groundwork for a democratic rule open to all.”

Can the media do more?
“There are integral pillars to building a democracy: a free and elected parliament, an independent judiciary, contemporary legislation, a free and independent press, and an active civil society. We cannot speak about a democratic society without the existence of free press and free _expression, which are both inseparable and interrelated,” stated Nidal Mansour, founder of the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ) and Editor-in-Chief of Al Hadath weekly newspaper.

Although press freedom varies from one Arab country to the other, the AHDR 2003 states that most Arab countries “place the media under the dominant political authorities and institutions, and employ media channels for political propaganda and entertainment, at the expense of other functions and services.”

In Jordan, the most-read Arabic daily newspaper and the only English daily have about a 55% government stake. The government also had shares in the country’s second most-read newspaper, until the establishment of a private newspaper that became Jordan’s number two paper. There are six daily newspapers in Jordan, which amounts to 0.001 newspapers per 1,000 citizens (almost one newspaper per 916,000 Jordanians). This is a remarkably low figure when contrasted with 285 papers per 1,000 people in developed nations, according to the AHDR 2003. The small number of Jordanian dailies is also indicative of the lack of diversity in their political views. Most daily newspapers generally tend to speak on behalf of, or in agreement with the government on most, if not all, issues.

The media hardly satisfies the role of a watchdog, let alone that of a fourth authority. “The media needs to go down to the street and mingle with the people and not the officials,” a 28-year-old telecom engineer said, summing up the general expectations of JBM’s respondents of local media. Some respondents complained of hearing news about Jordan, which are never mentioned in local press, from non-Jordanian media. “News of interest to the majority of the population and which relates to their daily concerns or which could enrich their scientific and cultural knowledge is scarce.

News about certain aspects of Arab politics, society, and religion is often simply not disclosed,” the AHDR 2003 maintains.

The NCHR said that both press organizations and journalists are also to blame when it comes to the ineffectiveness of spreading democracy.

“The space used in any newspaper focusing on supporting marginalized sectors of the society and pushing for more human rights and democracy is very little vis-à-vis the space used for public and private institutions’ public relations,” said Mr. Saqqaf.

In order to better achieve democracy, JBM respondents demanded that the media tell the whole story and the two sides of the story. One of them went as far as saying that we should learn from the Lebanese media. Known for pushing the envelope and being the voice of the people, Mr. Hajjaj commented, “Jordanian media has to fight for its rights, which are obvious and guaranteed by international laws. The most basic of those is freedom of opinion and self _expression. The Press and Publication Law is rife with general expressions that keep journalists apprehensive.”

In 1993, Jordan’s Parliament enacted the Press and Publication Law. Instead of providing liberal protections to journalists, this law contained a number of restrictive provisions, including a limited definition of “journalist” and a list of 14 restrictions on the press. Also, out of the 211 temporary laws passed between 2001 and 2003, a controversial amendment to the penal code was made. “It [the amendment] stipulated harsh penalties for journalists and editors publishing news that undermines national unity, spreads hatred, harms the reputation of the state, officials, and citizens, and jeopardizes stability by spreading rumors or false information,” according to Oxford Business Group. These offences are often used as pretexts for censorship, and are vague and open to arbitrary interpretation.

However, in a welcomed development, King Abdullah recently met with the editors-in-chief of Jordanian dailies and said he directed the government to support the freedom of the press, guarantee reporters’ access to information, and enact a legislation to prohibit jailing journalists on charges related to their jobs.

Both the government and the media got the rating of “average” with regards to their role in political development. Scoring five more points in its performance average, the government came first and media second for their roles in political development. (See Charts A, B, C, D, E)

The main obstacles to Jordanian media, according to Mr. Mansour are: the absence of a clear political will to support freedom of press, the lack of a strategic vision for freedom of press, and the lack of independence and professionalism. “If there was no clear commitment, then all talk of free press is a mere attempt at beautifying the image of Jordan. We want directives to be translated into practice,” stated Mr. Mansour, who was expelled from his position as secretary general of the Jordan Press Association for establishing the CDFJ.

“Until now, all we see are steps that show that we do not have a strategic vision; there is a constant change in legislations. We have scrapped the Ministry of Information and established six other institutions instead,” he added.

Commenting on why he seems to have more freedom of expression than others, Mr. Hajjaj said, “I draw caricatures; I have a unique way of expressing myself. I argue for my level of freedom, before I argue for my salary. But it happened gradually. It is a grave mistake for us to allow others to set limits on the freedom of our expression and creativity. This is a war and we have to fight it.”

There is no doubt that the media has a crucial role to play in enhancing democracy, however other factors are at play.

Can Islam and democracy c-oexist?
Islam is arguably one of the main victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Terrorists and Islamists became interchangeable words in the international media; they both were viewed as enemies of U.S. President George Bush’s drive of spreading democracy around the world, particularly in the Middle East.

“Our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil,” said Mr. Bush in one of many attempts to clarify the difference between Islam and terrorism. So is Islam compatible with democracy? 69% of JBM’s respondents, most of whom are Muslims, said yes, 12% said “to some extent”, 15% said no, while the remaining 4% said they didn’t know. (see Chart 5)

When asked whether they think religion and state should be separated in order to better achieve democracy, 77% said no, reasoning that Islam encompasses democracy and not the other way around. Out of the 69% who said that Islam and democracy are compatible, only 18% said religion and state should still be separated.

In the Sharia (Islamic Law), Shura is believed to be an equivalent to democracy, as it is a process of consultation, demanding that a ruler engages followers in decision-making. The word Shura also refers to an assembly that meets to solve the problems of a group of individuals, starting from a family and continuing to the political affairs of a country. Islamic historians argue that over history, the Muslim empire, which extended from India to Spain, was able to absorb people of a wide-spectrum of religious, ideological, and political orientations under the rule of Shura.

“The fundamental principles in Islam, which dictate good governance, include the realization of justice and equality, the assurance of public freedoms, the right of the nation to appoint and dismiss rulers, and guarantees of all public and private rights for non-Muslims and Muslims alike,” states the AHDR 2004.

Democracy and faith in the political process “I do not want to vote, because what the government wants is what is going to happen,” said a 23-year-old student. This student said that Jordan is “not democratic at all” and that the democratization process of Jordan has been “very bad”. Asked what the government could do to better achieve democracy he suggested, “Dismantling the parliament because it is useless. We need a parliament that is truly elected by the people and not the government, which, of course, is impossible.” Although too extreme, this student echoes, to an extent, a general sentiment of political apathy in the Jordanian street. The lack of interest in politics could very well be a product of a lack of awareness. This is where political reform can play a critical role in educating people about the value of democracy and the importance of political participation.

As it stands, a recent study conducted by Ipsos-Stat and Al-Ghad newspaper found that political reform was the last of priorities for Jordanians, with a mere 8% rating it as their number one priority. Economic reform topped their priorities with 63%, followed by social reform with 29%. Yet “economic corruption is the natural result of political corruption,” maintains the AHDR 2004.

The same study also found that the degree to which Jordanians are “convinced that the new government is capable of reform and positive change” drops when income and educational levels rise. “The failure of consecutive governments in creating an atmosphere of freedom and political participation made Jordanians lose faith in the possibility of engaging in political life,” states Mr. Mansour.

Local political analysts recently referred to a “confidence crisis”, after a new CSS poll published on April 19 found that public trust in the ability of the government to shoulder its responsibilities and succeed in accomplishing the tasks at hand is declining. Jordanians have seen five governments (Rawabdeh, Abu Al Ragheb, Abu Al Ragheb, Fayez, and Badran) since King Abdullah’s accession to the throne on February 7, 1999. Each prime minister promised to take reform one level up, but none were able to shake up the mood on the street. “He is just like any other prime minister,” was a typical answer JBM respondents gave when asked whether they are optimistic about the new premier’s government.

People’s expectations of Dr. Badran’s government turned out below their expectations of the last six governments, the new poll found. In 1996, 82% of respondents said they believed Kabariti would be successful in shouldering his responsibility, while now, 62% believe that Dr. Badran would be successful. “People are gradually losing confidence in successive government because they cannot see that these governments are delivering, especially on major economic issue,” said Dr. Braizat.

However, the poll indicated that 54% of respondents believe that the government could surge ahead with political development, and 57% believe it could strengthen free _expression. It is this kind of positive thinking that the government should capitalize on.

As it stands today, the street is alienated yet aching for change and that is why the government should act fast. Allowing greater freedom of _expression and press, the most basic rights and freedoms guaranteed by democracy, would not only seriously advance the democratization process in Jordan, but also enhance the government’s performance by bettering the monitoring process, and more importantly, actively engaging Jordanians in shaping their future.

Talk of democratic reform is abound in the Middle East, and Jordan is no exception. The country is indeed viewed as the region’s pioneer in reform. And if that is to remain the case, Jordan should too walk the walk.

The Arab democracy debate intensifies in Washington

2005-05-09T05:05:00.000-07:00

The Arab democracy debate intensifies in Washington
By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star
Wednesday, May 04, 2005

One of the important and still evolving new developments in Washington's Middle East policy has been the recent proliferation in American efforts to study and to promote democratic reform throughout the Arab world. Several aspects of this seem significant, are very visible here in Washington, and need to be more widely appreciated throughout the Middle East.

The extent, depth and quality of work being done in the United States on Arab democratization, along with economic, education, security and other reform issues, is impressive. It will also be consequential in due course, because this is an arena where Arabs and Americans are slowly finding it mutually beneficial to work together for a change, rather than opposing, resisting, resenting or fighting each other.

The bulk of the work on Arab democratic reforms is being done by civil society institutions, mostly think tanks and universities. It is refreshing to have so much American energy devoted to exploring the best paths to Arab democracy, and to have American scholars, activists, institutions and officials finally joining and supporting those small numbers of Arabs who have been working for democratic reforms for decades.

One change already visible is that the initial American focus on simply advocating democratic change in the Middle East has now been replaced by a more subtle and useful analysis of three related issues: how to bring about democratic change on the ground, how to anticipate and accept the consequences of this (e.g., Islamists and groups critical of the U.S. and Israel are sure to gain power in many countries), and how to align the democratization policy and trend with the other pressing issues in the region.

One consequence of this trend has been that public discussion of the Middle East in Washington and the U.S. as a whole has slightly shifted away from the traditional intense focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the more recent focus on Iraq and the "war on terror." There is also much debate and disagreement on the real motives for the American government's recent shift toward a greater focus on promoting Arab democracy, and whether Washington has either the commitment or seriousness needed to pursue this policy over the long term.

Critics or skeptics of the U.S. see its policy as driven only by its understandably angry reaction to the attack of September 11, 2001, with Arab democracy being the antidote to dysfunctional political systems and environments that ultimately spawned a global terror industry. They point to the continued sharp discrepancies - or hypocritical inconsistencies - between Washington's democracy promotion efforts in different parts of the region. Iraq and Lebanon, for example, get a great deal of American attention, but promoting democracy seems infinitely less urgent for the U.S. in Libya and Tunisia, to mention only two of the most glaring examples of Arab autocracies and dictatorships that seem to elicit indifference from the American leadership.

These and other issues will sort themselves out over time, presumably, if this trend continues, because these matters are now being subjected to a great deal of very serious analysis and discussion. One of the striking facets of this dynamic that should be grasped more widely in the Arab world is the critical, in fact the leading, role played by civil society institutions. The most serious policy-related research that both drives the debate and provides the American and Arab governments with useful options to consider is being conducted by organizations such as the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a handful of others.

Equally significant is that the research under way in most cases is managed jointly by American and Arab scholars, providing a combination of relevance, accuracy and realism that was largely missing from both the unilateral American government's exhortations and small-scale democracy programs of recent years and the pleas by Arab democrats for action on the ground.

The debate today is in the mainstream, whereas in the last decade or so the idea of changing Arab regimes and their political culture was more the private domain of slightly fringe groups that often seemed as interested in Israeli national security needs as they were in American or Arab needs - (Quite A Significant Change)

The debate has moved quickly in the last few years, from the arena of emotional exhortations and unilateral threats to the more productive level of exploring a range of more subtle, interlinked practical realities: realistic options for changing political environments in the Middle East, how the U.S., Europe and others abroad can be involved usefully and credibly, whether democratization and regime change via unilateral military force can both remain elements of American policy in the region, the best combination of positive inducements and sanctions or threats that could be used to prod change, and whether the focus for democratic reforms should be on Arab governments or civil society.

When I discussed these issues recently with J. Scott Carpenter, the deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, it was clear that Washington itself was evolving in terms how it could most effectively work to promote Arab democracy. He thought a more collaborative and less confrontational era was in the making, noting that "we want to turn the page and see together how we can face the challenge of helping these societies and governments reform over time. We want this to be seen as more of a joint project than something of an American project."

He also reflects what may be a slightly more humble American official posture that tries to respond to and work with Arab democratic activists, rather than lead or create them.

"The focus on the Middle East is becoming multipolar, looking at Arab-Israel issues as well as the regimes themselves. The difference now over two years ago is a willingness to engage on real issues confronting societies in the region, and a real clear understanding by governments in the region of the need to change We also see people all over the region asking themselves, 'why not here?' Egyptians see events in Lebanon, Tunisians see Abu Mazen getting grilled by Palestinian journalists on Al-Jazeera television, and all this creates ferment in the region. The U.S. is not responsible for it, but we have a role to play, and we want to see how best to support and channel the ferment in a positive way."

One of the reasons why the discussion and debate on Arab democratization are moving ahead so strongly in both the U.S. and the Middle East is that credible civil society activists and institutions are working together to drive the agenda. This has enriched the policy options available for all concerned governments, and has also provided an important new impetus that prods governments to behave more intelligently and urgently.

Rami G. Khouri writes a weekly column for The Daily Star.

Political crisis in Jordan: Jordanian parliament, Prime Minister’s new government lock horns over economic team - meaning Bassem Awadallah

2005-05-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

Political crisis in Jordan: Jordanian parliament, Prime Minister’s new government lock horns over economic team.
MIDDLE EAST ONLINE

AMMAN - The government of Jordan's new Prime Minister Adnan Badran is locked in a dispute with parliament, which has come out in open revolt against members of his cabinet and threatened a no confidence vote.

"Most MPs in the loyalist camp have clearly stated they will not vote for a confidence motion in the Badran government so long as it includes the ministerial economic team which is considered suspect," deputy speaker Mamduh Abbadi said.

The team is led by Finance Minister Bassem Awadallah, who was ousted from the previous cabinet but made a comeback less than two months later in the Badran government formed last month.

"The deputies think these ministers are foreign to Jordan, have no credibility and do not understand Jordan's people or society, or the situation of the poor in this country," Abbadi said.

At a rowdy meeting between deputies and the prime minister on Tuesday, MPs urged Badran to drop Awadallah and his supporters from the government or risk losing a confidence vote.

A petition has been presented to the premier to demand the lineup be modified, leading a political analyst in Amman to comment that the crisis has "transformed the loyalists into the opposition for the first time in Jordan".

Badran, a respected 69-year-old academic, on April 7 formed a 25-minister cabinet and kept in his line-up 12 members of the former administration of Faisal al-Fayez. His appointment was seen as a sign that a democratic reform process would be speeded up.

But a former minister, the Islamist independent MP Abdullah Akayleh, said the new economic team were "a clique of 'new liberals' with a foreign agenda who do not know Jordan, its priorities and its concerns".

They "take their orders from abroad" and many of them "represent foreign companies", he charged - (In my humble opinion, this is a big pile of rubbish. Dr. Basem in specific, is cleaner than anyone of these insignificant so called representatives of the people. He has done more to the country than all of them put together.)

Jordan fears loss of US favor by BBC...'The US wants more change, it wants to see more'

2005-04-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-04-10T00:54:00.000-07:00

Jordan: No Room For Error
8 April 2005
OXFORD BUSINESS GROUP

Ending 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

2005-04-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-09T23:49:00.000-07:00

King swears in new Cabinet - Jordan
Jordan Times
08/04/2005

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

2005-04-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

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

2005-04-06T03:25:00.000-07:00

Jordan's Abdullah picks new premier and demands fresh Cabinet
King 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

2005-04-06T03:18:00.000-07:00

King Abdullah appoints new PM
THE 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.

A Must read.... Jordan must democratize to be spared U.S. wrath by Rana Sabbagh

2005-03-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

Jordan must democratize to be spared U.S. wrath
By Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
Monday, March 28, 2005

Jordan must today make a clear choice to initiate bold political reform, or lose face at home and invite interference from abroad. For now it has managed to deflect close foreign scrutiny of its teetering political reform efforts, mostly on the strength of its backing for Washington's policies, the war on terror, and its diplomatic ties with Israel. However, these issues remain deeply unpopular in a country where the majority of the population is anti-American.

But time is no longer on the Jordanian government's side. A breeze of democracy is blowing across the Middle East, whether in Palestine and Iraq, both of which remain under foreign occupation, in autocratic Egypt and Saudi Arabia, or in Lebanon. Jordan realizes it has to move fast, now that U.S. President George W. Bush is waging a fierce battle to spread democracy and economic reform throughout the region. Hesitant policies during the past decade, which have turned Jordan into a "liberalized autocracy" overseeing a corporate economy rather than a constitutional monarchy with elected governments, do not work any longer.

This shady strategy has raised concern among the Jordanian business and political elite alike: soon the kingdom may no longer be the darling of the West. Other emerging pro-Western democracies could surpass Jordan as a genuine political model. Those in the elite feel that it is inevitable that the U.S. will eventually turn its attention to Amman, and will not tolerate further clampdowns by the intelligence services on activists and opposition groups, while keeping a tight
grip on the country as in other states in the Middle East.

A case at point is the recent arrest of a union activist, Ali Hattar, and what appears to be an imminent crackdown against the country's influential professional associations, long-time bastions of opposition to the regime's policies. Bush was surprised by a question about Hattar's arrest during a news conference in January. Hattar, who hails from Jordan's Christian minority, was briefly detained several times in the past and faces a two-year prison term for slandering the government. Bush said he was unaware of the case, but urged Jordan's King Abdullah II "to make sure that democracy continues to advance in Jordan." The message was again reiterated during talks between the U.S. president and the king in Washington last Tuesday.

Abusive behavior by the Jordanian authorities will continue to come under scrutiny in Washington. The kingdom's faltering political reforms and lack of democracy may eventually embarrass the U.S. and test Bush's credibility in a region where many accuse his administration of promoting democracy only among enemies, while turning a blind eye to abuses by allies. Many fear that Washington really only seeks to block accession to power of anti-American and anti-Israeli forces.

In the eyes of many Jordanians, King Abdullah has wholeheartedly adopted the rules of economic globalization since he took over the throne in 1999, turning Jordan into a model for the region. But they also believe he has shown less enthusiasm for consolidating Jordan's march toward democracy, a process which his father launched in 1989, when most Arab countries were opposed to this idea. Democratic half-measures, often shaped by external political considerations and domestic challenges, have reduced Jordan's competitive advantage as a model for emerging democracy.

There are more limits on political activity now than there were a decade ago. The reversal began shortly before the peace treaty with Israel was signed. Liberalization moves received a death knell when the regime used the war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks to justify a crackdown against the Islamist-led opposition at home. All laws dealing with the media, public gatherings and parliamentary elections were tightened, more so during the past three years. Civil society has remained weak and ineffective, as have the 33 political parties operating since a ban was lifted in 1990. Mosque preachers are selected by the government, and their sermons for Friday noon prayers are censored.

All the media, including independent newspapers, are forced to toe the official line and to carry photos of the king's daily functions on their front pages. They take their cue from palace, government and security officials. The government is also pushing a law in Parliament that would dilute Islamic power, at the expense of strengthening the tribes that are normally loyal to the monarchy. Human rights watchdog organizations say the draft law violates free speech.

At the same time, nepotism, favoritism, a weak system of checks and balances, all problems that the king once sought to curb after he took over power, are making a strong comeback. And so are those traditional old-guard politicians who still enjoy the perks and cash handouts that have long been used to buy loyalty. More specifically, charges of corruption and of conflicts of interest have become a cause of widespread concern after a series of multi-million dollar contracts were awarded recently, without competitive bids, to a local businessman with strong links to the circles of power.

Despite this bleak outlook, Jordan's salvation can only come from implementation of new structural democratic reforms promoted by the king - reforms that must not remain ink on paper. Two royal commissions have been formed over the past month or so to lay down a plan of action for reforms. One of the two is drafting a national agenda, a road map for Jordan during the next 10 years. The other is looking into government decentralization, by creating three regional councils. However, the scope of power and prerogatives of these councils have yet to be determined.

Their agendas, which are being supervised by Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher, an icon for political liberalism, will have a specified time framework to ensure full implementation, with target policies reflected in budget allocations. The process could help generate a badly-needed national consensus on building a new and modern Jordanian system based on equality, merit, the rule of law and good governance.

Such a system could engage the entire Jordanian population and give King Abdullah a chance to name a new reformist government, with a clear mission to forge ahead with reforms allowing the kingdom to escape Washington's wrath.

Rana Sabbagh-Gargour is an Amman-based journalist and columnist, and the former chief editor of The Jordan Times. This commentary was written for THE DAILY STAR.

Restrictive Jordanian Bill on Professional Associations.... Any Comments?!!!!

2005-03-27T05:17:00.000-08:00

Restrictive Jordanian Bill on Professional Associations
THE ARAB REFORM BULLETIN

A new draft law barring professional associations from engaging in politics has pitted the Jordanian government against association members and political activists. According to Minister of Interior Samir Habashneh, the legislation would expand the scope of participation in associations, achieve a fair distribution of funds, and ensure decentralization in decision making. Detractors, however, accuse the government of attempting to undermine its critics, as professional unions tend to be dominated by Islamists and opponents of the peace treaty with Israel and U.S. policies in the region. The draft law changes electoral procedures for associations in a way that would dilute the influence of Islamist candidates and prohibit ties to association branches in the Palestinian territories. It would also create a disciplinary council to judge offenses. The Jordanian cabinet approved the draft law on March 6 and referred it to the Lower House requesting it receive urgent attention. Jordan Bar Association President Hussein Mjalli resigned in protest and a number of parliamentarians petitioned the government to withdraw the bill. The government banned a planned demonstration of professional unions against the law on March 7, deploying security forces to prevent the protest.

Democracy promotion in the middle east: view from the street

2005-03-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

Democracy promotion in the middle east: view from the street
Middle East Institute
February 16, 2005

Speaker:
Dr. Radwan A. Masmoudi
President, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy

Brief:
Democracy and Islam can be integrated, argues Dr. Masmoudi, and may successfully complement one another. Masmoudi and Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy define democracy as free and fair elections, representative government, separate and independent branches of government, respect for basic freedoms, and the protection of minority rights.

The current status of the Arab and Muslim world reflects an environment of despair, corruption, violence and poverty. The lack of dignity, freedom, accountability and legal outlets for protest fuels extremism. It is the desperation of this environment of oppression that prompts Dr. Masmoudi to predict a period of rapid change in the Middle East within the next 5-10 years.

Dr. Masmoudi reports that 90 percent of Arabs view democracy as the best form of governance. Support for democracy, however, is frequently constrained by negative associations with secularism in the region. Secularism, in part because it is associated with communism, is perceived as anti-religion. Achieving democratic reform, however, does not exclusively require popular support. One of Dr. Masmoudi’s primary contentions is that democracy promotion in the Middle East requires external pressure, either from the United States or Europe.

Pressure for political reform in the Middle East by the United States serves both the interests of those seeking political representation in the region, as well as U.S. foreign policy objectives. Dr. Masmoudi rejects the argument that U.S. support for authoritarian, yet friendly, regimes serves U.S. interests and highlights the growing suspicion among Arab populations of U.S. claims to support democracy. Democracy can make significant inroads in the Middle East, in Dr. Masmoudi’s opinion, by encouraging freedom of the press, free market economies, freedom of religion, judicial systems that respect the rule of law, and freedom of association.

Dr. Masmoudi concluded his presentation with a personal account of the current situation in four Middle Eastern states. In Iran, the youth is progressively more secular and nationalistic. Many of them view the Islamic Revolution to have largely failed in meeting its goals, and reject the idea that they live in an “Islamic democracy.” Over the last five years, Bahrain has greatly eased repression and although the parliament is weak, the press enjoys great freedom. Jordan, along with Morocco, is considered one of the most open and democratic states in the Arab world. Jordan’s economy is relatively weak and its civil society is strong, but ineffective. Tunisia, according to Dr. Masmoudi, has the greatest potential for democratic reform as defined by CSID due to the existence of a strong middle class and a relatively strong economy. The reality, however, is that political parties remain weak.

In closing, Dr. Masmoudi advocated that the United States stop supporting repressive authoritarian regimes in the Arab and Muslim world. The U.S. should treat political reform as it does economic reform and require timetables. In addition to encouraging reform, the U.S. should support the political participation of moderate Islamic parties, as it has done in Iraq, in order to provide a legal outlet for grievances and refrain from radicalization of these parties through exclusion.

Speaker: Radwan A. Masmoudi is the founder and current president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID). CSID is a non-profit organization, based in Washington DC, dedicated to studying Islamic and democratic political thought and merging them into a modern Islamic democratic discourse. The organization was founded in March 1999.

2005-03-16T02:15:00.000-08:00

A very important interview by His Majesty King Abdullah II to ABC News Network

A must read for everyone... Jordan's King Abdullah Open to Constitutional Monarchy

2005-03-16T02:12:00.000-08:00

Jordan's King Abdullah Open to Constitutional Monarchy
King Says Bush Deserves Credit for Sparking Democracy in Middle East

(The Full text of the interview is A MUST read for everyone)
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=583538

Mar. 15, 2005 - President Bush hosted Jordan's King Abdullah II in an Oval Office meeting today. The two men are publicly enthusiastic about some of the recent changes in the Middle East -- among them, the elections in Iraq, a sliver of democracy emerging in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and massive protests in Lebanon calling for the Syrian military to withdraw. After the White House meeting, King Abdullah spoke with ABC News' Peter Jennings. Following is a transcript of the interview:

… JENNINGS: Would you be happy to be the head of a constitutional monarchy, as well ...
ABDULLAH: Well, eventually ... (Overlap)

JENNINGS: ... than an absolute monarchy?
ABDULLAH: ... eventually that's what we're trying to do, and by creating, decentralization, by trying to get these three regions, with their own elected parliaments, that will be the end game.

JENNINGS: So the end game could be a constitutional monarchy, not an absolute monarchy?
ABDULLAH: Absolutely. Because that -- I mean, we have to modernize, I think monarchy plays a vital role in countries such as Jordan. I think there's a lot of positive aspects, but monarchies have to modernize, and a way of modernizing is to do these political reform issues that will give people a much larger say in the way their countries go.

2005-03-16T01:19:00.000-08:00

One of Hajjaj's classics, Reform in the Arab World, according to the ruling regimes, only come from the inside.....

2005-03-14T04:58:00.000-08:00

Emad Hajjaj excel's in this cartoon which illustrates, unequivocally, the true FACES and Characters that meet Jordan's quests upon their arrival to the Airport....

2005-03-13T04:13:00.000-08:00

Democracy in Jordan... Al Dameir Al Nateiq

King Abdullah II on Political Reform in Jordan

2005-03-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

King Abdullah II: "Iraq is the Battleground - the West against Iran"
SPRING 2005 • VOLUME XII: NUMBER 2

King Abdullah II bin Al Hussein, descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, is the fourth ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the great-grandson of his namesake, the kingdom's founder. Born on January 30, 1962, to King Hussein's second wife, the British-born Princess Muna, he is the eldest of Hussein's sons and was proclaimed crown prince at birth. When Abdullah was three years old, however, Hussein transferred that title to his own younger brother, Hassan. After his early schooling in Amman, Abdullah was educated in private schools in England and the United States and then, in 1980, embarked on a military career, attending Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. For the next nineteen years, he rose through the ranks of the Jordanian army, eventually serving as commander of the Royal Jordanian Special Forces and as special operations commander. Along the way, he took classes at Oxford and Georgetown universities and further military training at Fort Knox and the Royal Staff College at Camberley, United Kingdom. In 1998, he assumed the rank of major general, which he held when he was proclaimed crown prince by his father on January 24, 1999. Abdullah assumed the throne when his father died on February 7, 1999. Abdullah and his wife, Queen Rania, have two sons and two daughters. On January 11, 2005, Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, interviewed King Abdullah II at his private office in a secluded compound outside of Amman.

…. Jordanian Political Reform
MEQ: When you first took office six years ago, you highlighted a policy of non-interference in the affairs of others. But over the last year, you have spoken out about developments inside Iraq and advised Arafat that he should look in the mirror and see if he is helping his people. Why the change?

Abdullah: Not getting involved in the internal affairs of others means that we are not committing ourselves to get into the West Bank. We've been very careful about doing that, and using the Iraq example, this is one of the arguments I'm using. I have been very opposed to the idea of the Hashemite family getting involved in Iraq. Sheikh Ali, the Hashemite prince, keeps pounding on our door to come and visit us, but I refuse and have said so to everyone, including Prince Hassan. Whenever the subject came up, I have disagreed with members of my cabinet about getting involved in Iraq. I don't think that there is a role for the Hashemites. If there is a role for the Hashemites, that comes many years down the line if the Iraqis want it. But it's a non-starter for me. It's the same argument that I use when I'm talking about the moral high ground of the Iranians and others who wish certain involvement in Iraq when I say that I don't believe that Amman should get involved in Baghdad.

We don't play those sort of Cold War games, with my people inside the West Bank trying to foment against the other side. So yes, I call things as I see them, whether on Iran and Iraq or Arafat and Palestinians.

My statement on Arafat was calculated to have an impact. I didn't know that he was that ill. But I just saw what was going on with him and had to speak out. The problem with the Palestinians is they spend most of their time blaming the Arab street and the Arab leaders. And that's what I was saying—Stop blaming us, because we're ready to help you, but you've got to help yourself first. If you look at Al-Jazeera, it's always saying, "Where are the Arab leaders; where's the Arab street, and they're letting us down." No. You're letting yourselves down. We want to help you, but every time I sat down with Arafat and asked, where's your plan, where's your strategy, there was nothing there.

MEQ: Six years ago the economy was your top priority, and you said it a 100 times. What is your top priority now?

Abdullah: When we change priorities, it doesn't mean that we lessen any of the other ones. So I think socioeconomic issues are something that we still have to move on full speed, and we can't take any prisoners on that. But a year ago I announced that we're now ready for political reform. Then, in a speech in parliament, I said political reform is important, but the flavor of the next couple of months is administration reform. Some people here said, "Ah, we're backing down on political reform." But it's not one thing and not the other. We start on a layered level of attacking different problems in Jordan, and all these programs are going to continue. But we're now in a position to really tackle political reform.

We will have a major proposal coming out on political reform.[5] The problem is I have tried to deal with political reform from the top down, and it's not working. I've been trying to engage with this parliament on creating, instead of our current thirty or so political parties, just two or three or four that represent left, right, and center. I've been begging the parliamentarians.

There are 110 parliamentarians who are better educated and younger than their predecessors, and I said, "What do you stand for? We know what the older generation stands for, but you, as a young parliamentarian, where do you stand on health? Where do you stand on education? Where do you stand on social services?" I was hoping that we'd be able to tackle the issues of giving enough bite to young parliamentarians so that we could start creating these blocs. If we do this, we said to them, then in the next parliamentary elections, you'll be elected because of your party's political platform and not because you're from this tribe or this village or this particular group. Unfortunately, we're not going to get there, not in this round. So I'm now going to work from the bottom up. We're going to do something in Jordan that has not been done before in the Middle East. And it's serious. I had my first meeting with a very small group, and I said, "You all understand when we start the process, we're talking about true democratic political reform. Once we start this, there's no going back, and it's comprehensive, and it's long term."

You'll notice when we talk about political reform, there's reform also for the security services. I think they're beginning to get the message that you can't have political reform and have the archaic way of doing things.

[1] "Final Communiqué of the Seventh Meeting of the Neighboring Countries of Iraq," Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amman, Jan. 6, 2005.
[2] Interview on Chris Matthews Show, MSNBC, Dec. 12, 2004.
[3] White House news release, Jan. 9, 2005.
[4] White House news conference, Jan. 10, 2005.
[5] On Jan. 26, 2005, King Abdullah announced an initiative to decentralize Jordanian political life, creating directly elected regional assemblies with control over local expenditures.