By Sami Moubayed
Aug 27, 2005
SourceDAMASCUS - Iraq may not be able to export "democracy" to Jordan, but it already exports jihadis to the US's strongest ally in the Middle East.
More than 10,000 soldiers and 300 surveillance towers are positioned along the Syrian-Iraqi border. Yet there's none of this on the Jordanian-Iraqi border, and battle-hardened veterans in the Iraqi theater are streaming back, especially to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Kuwait, their home countries. Some estimates suggest that there might be about 5,000 jihadis from the Gulf in Iraq.
The Iraq-Jordan link was vividly illustrated when three Katyusha rockets were fired at a US Navy ship in the Jordanian Red Sea
port of Aqaba on August 19. All of them missed - one landed on a warehouse, killing a Jordanian soldier, another near a public hospital and the third in the resort of Eilat, nine miles from Aqaba.
Created by the Soviets in the 1930s, Katyusha rockets have no history of precision, but they were enough to inflict damage on Jordan's reputation.
This was the most serous attack on US targets in Jordan since the killing of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman in 2002. Authorities announced that the architects of the Aqaba attack were linked to Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who has been accused and convicted in absentia for Foley's murder in Jordan in 2002.
Jordanian officials identified the culprits of the Aqaba bombing as Mohammad Hamid Hassan, an Iraqi known by the code name Abu Mukhtar, and Mohammad Hassan Abdullah al-Sahli, a Syrian from the conservative town of Hama in the Syrian heartland. He had fought the Americans in Iraq, been wounded and came to Jordan in December 2004. Sahli, who had been part of a dormant al-Qaeda cell in Amman, was arrested. He entered Jordan on a forged Iraqi passport, under guidance of Zarqawi.
Although the al-Qaeda attack did not result in serious damage, it did, however, inflict a heavy blow to Jordan, which since September 11 has been effective in combating terrorism and containing violence - which is why al-Qaeda would want to target it as an ally of the US.
Despite its reputation of efficiency, the terrorists found loopholes in Jordanian security and were able to smuggle arms into the country, and further attacks can be expected, which would be a setback for the country, which has already tightened security. Further trouble could transform the kingdom into a semi-police state, and ruin tourism.
The attack also confirms that terrorism is on the rise in Jordan. A recent poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center shows that out of six surveyed Muslim countries, Jordan was the one with the highest degree of support for terrorism. Only 10% of Jordanians saw terrorism as a threat to Jordan, while a staggering 87% were not opposed to it.
In Pakistan, for example, support for terrorism had dropped to 25% in 2005 from 41% in 2004. In Morocco, it was 40% in 2004, and now it is only 13%. In Lebanon, it was 73% and has dropped to 26%. In Turkey, it has remained at a low 14%. Probably, there is a margin of error in the results, but they show that if not combated immediately, fundamentalism and militancy will become dangerous for Jordan.
The Iraqi nexus
Until the end of 2003 there were three major Salafi jihadi outfits in Iraq: Ansar al-Islam in the north, Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna (operating between Mosul and Baghdad) and Zarqawi's network, Jamaa al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. Zarqawi's crucial and deadly business expansion in 2003-2004 happened because more than 200 Jordanian jihadis - mostly from Zarqa and al-Salt and some of them members of traditional Jordanian clans - joined him in the Sunni triangle and proclaimed him their emir.
The key cleric legitimizing their operations was also a Jordanian - Omar Yussef Joumoua, also known as Abu Anas al-Shami. This led to the now-notorious move of Zarqawi pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda in October 2004, when Zarqawi's network adopted its current denomination, al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Tanzim al-Qaeda fi Bilad al-Rafidayn), and Osama bin Laden recognized Zarqawi as the jihadi-in-chief in Iraq in a December 2004 audiotape.
The strategy of al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers is not Jordanian, though: it is dictated by the Saudi branch of al-Qaeda. The strategy is spelled out in a series of documents supervised by Sheikh Yussef al-Ayeeri. The most strategic of these documents is called "Iraq al-jihad, awal wa akhtar" (The jihad in Iraq, hopes and dangers). It's all there: centralized resistance in Sunni Arab cities and villages; close collaboration with Saddam Hussein's former Mukhabarat (intelligence) officers; attacks against other members of the coalition to isolate the Americans and the new Iraqi defense forces; keeping an atmosphere of chaos at all costs; and, crucially, disrupting by all means the flow of oil. Another point of the document is now becoming clear: the setting up of jihadi networks in the Shi'ite south capable of protecting Sunni minorities in case of civil war - a de facto situation considering the escalation of sectarian killings.
Political Islam in Jordan
The roots of political Islam in Jordan date to the establishment of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, which was created on November 19, 1945 by Abdulatif Abu Qura, as a branch of the mother organization created in Egypt by the spiritual leader Hasan al-Banna in 1928.
Apart from believing in political Islam, however, the similarity between the Jordanian Brotherhood and al-Qaeda ends there. The organization's founding document read: "Jordan is an inseparable part of the Muslim World. Government in accordance with the Sharia of Allah is the objective and aspiration of the Brotherhood in this life."
The Jordanian Brotherhood was a political party, with no military agenda - very different from al-Qaeda and Zarqawi. Over the years, however, Jordanians enchanted by political Islam began to lose faith in the Brotherhood's peaceful agenda, and turn to more radical organizations for salvation. These radicals remained minimal, unlike other neighboring Islamic countries, because the Jordanian government courted, talked with and appeased them at various stages over the past 50 years, always defusing their anger and preventing it from becoming aggressive and violent.
The Brotherhood engaged peacefully in political life, but becoming more radical in their demands and aspirations after Jordan's defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Arab nationalism, they claimed, as well as existing Arab regimes, were unable to save the Arab and Muslim world from defeat and occupation. The time was ripe for an overthrow of the existing order and its replacement with Muslim leaders who respected Islam and would follow a holy war (jihad) for the emancipation of Palestine.
The victory of the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979, the murder of president Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1981 by fanatical Muslims after signing a peace treaty with Israel and the jihad in Afghanistan against the invading Soviet Army in 1979 all raised the moral of Islamic parties in the Arab world.
Even then, however, Jordanian Islamists knew that revolution in Amman was unlikely and the most they could aspire to was parliamentary seats from which they could market their political program. After the war of 1967, Jordan's late King Hussein suspended parliament, ruling Jordan on his own until re-convening it, after matters had settled, in 1984.
In the 1980s, the Islamists tested their popularity on a municipal level, scoring a huge victory in such elections in the town of Madaba, (35 kilometers from Amman). This alarmed Jordanian authorities, who began a purge of Islamic elements from the government and the private sector. Influential people who were members in Islamic societies, or affiliated with them, were dismissed from office. Most of those to suffer from the witchhunt were university professors, school teachers and engineers.
Rising tension led to the outbreak of widespread disturbances in April 1989, fueled by the Brotherhood. By the summer of 1989, the king decided to control matters through the ballots. Giving the Islamists their private dose of democracy and making them partners in government, would defuse their aggression, as in the case of Egypt and Syria, where the Brotherhood had turned violent - very violent - against the government.
King Hussein's plan worked. The Brotherhood won 22 out of the 27 seats for which they were competing. They had expected to win 10, while the authorities estimated that they would get no more than six. They joined the cabinet of prime minister Mudar Badran, and once in power, began to quarrel among themselves and with the authorities, especially during the Gulf War of 1991 and when Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994.
Also, democratic as they had been, the Islamists were unable to advance their promised agenda once in government and parliament, and as a result their seats in the chamber dropped from 22 to 16 in 1993. In 1989, they had won with 70% of parliament. In 1993, it became no more than 35%. By 1997, the Brotherhood had been voted out of parliament.
By courting them and making them partners in government, King Hussein was giving them a sense of responsibility, and making them shoulder failure with the government. Since then, the Brotherhood has remained active in the political life of Jordan, competing and at times harmonizing with authorities. On the whole, however, they have been outflanked by more attractive, younger, radical Islamic movements since their voting out of office in the 1990s. Their popularity has been reduced greatly and instead Islamic allegiance has gone to new, unofficial parties led by a younger generation of Muslim leaders, from Jordan and the Arab world. It is this generation that carried out the Aqaba attack on August 19.
Terror taking roots
One of the organizations to outflank not only the Jordanian Brotherhood but also all other traditional Islamic parties in the Middle East is Jund al-Sham, a terrorist organization originally founded by Zarqawi in Afghanistan in late 1999, reportedly, with US$200,000 as a start-up cost from bin Laden.
Its objective was to penetrate the borders of the Middle East and target not only Jordan (Zarqawi's home country, which he hated and wanted to destroy), or bin Laden's Saudi Arabia, (which he also hated and wanted to destroy).
Rather, the targets were located in Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Egypt and Palestine. Zarqawi recruited many Jordanians into his organization, as well as Syrians who had been members in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
They were trained in explosives and chemical weapons in a camp in the western Afghan city of Heart, near the border with Iran. Due to the crackdown on Islamic fundamentalism after the September 11 attacks, Jund al-Sham was disbanded, in what seemed to be a permanent move, not making its comeback until March 2004 with an attack in Doha, Qatar.
In May 2004, American Nick Berg was killed in Iraq. In the footage of his beheading, a masked Zarqawi appears on screen, identifies himself (his voice was confirmed by US Central Intelligence Agency - CIA - specialists) and murders Berg. In September 2004, Zarqawi's team kidnapped and beheaded US engineer Eugene Armstrong in Baghdad.
Zarqawi returned to Jordan from Afghanistan and was arrested in 1992, spending seven years in jail, accused of wanting to topple the monarchy and establish an Islamic state. When released in 1999, he was involved in trying to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman. He is also a prime suspect in the Madrid bombings of March 2004, which killed 191 people, and the assassination of Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah al-Hakim, in the Holy City of Najaf in Iraq.
In all, Zarqawi is accused of 700 killings in Iraq. His most infamous feat is the bombing of the Canal Hotel, which served as UN headquarters in Iraq, in August 2003, killing 22 people and UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Currently, there is a US$25 million reward on Zarqawi's head - the same amount offered by the US for bin Laden's head.
The question that arises today is: how is it that this man, remembered by those who knew him as a petty criminal, a simple and barely literate high-school drop-out, has managed to send shockwaves throughout the civilized world and cause so much horror and havoc since 2003?
It is believed that he now holds more power in al-Qaeda than bin Laden himself because of his reputation and credit as having led the insurgency in Iraq since 2003, while bin Laden's latest memorable achievement is September 11.
Zarqawi announced his allegiance to al-Qaeda in October 2004, and on December 27, 2004 bin Laden sent a tape to Doha-based al-Jazeera TV, describing Zarqawi as "the prince of al-Qaeda in Iraq". He called on his followers to listen to Zarqawi and obey his command.
Some claim that Zarqawi is dead, because no signs of him being alive have appeared since early 2004. Other speculation describes Zarqawi as "a myth". This is supported by those who argue that this myth was created from faulty US intelligence reports. Although false, these reports well suited the political agenda of President George W Bush. He needed a new enemy in Iraq to justify his army being there, and with Saddam behind bars since 2003 and bin Laden on the loose since 2001, there was no better enemy than Zarqawi.
It is unlikely that Zarqawi does not exist. It is also strange to believe that he could have been dead for more than a year, since all CIA reports claimed that his death would be a severe blow to the insurgency. Nothing in Iraq shows that the insurgency has suffered a blow over the past 12 months. In fact, it is getting stronger.
If anything, however, the Zarqawi case and the Aqaba bombings show that the terrorist threat is not only based in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as has been the case since 2003, but in traditionally peaceful and secure countries like Jordan.
This was also made clear earlier this summer when Syria, another country famed for its tight security and effective measures in combating Islamic fundamentalism, suffered several terrorist attacks in the capital Damascus and its vicinity.
Political Islam is on the rise. Whether the seculars and moderates like it or not, in Jordan, Syria or elsewhere, the Islamic movement is still around, and in pure democracies would gain a strong hand in many Arab countries.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
(Additional reporting by Pepe Escobar in Amman, Jordan.)
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