David Schenker
American Interest
June 13, 2014
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The full extent of Salafi jihadist inroads in the kingdom will likely
remain unknown until the war in Syria ends, but the current indicators
are troubling.
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The Jordanian city of Maan is boiling. Three hours of bad road south of
the capital, Amman, this underdeveloped and economically depressed
tribal town of 60,000 has long been a locus of anti-government protest.
But lately the natives have been particularly restive. Last June, so
many locals were firing automatic weapons at the downtown police station
that a decision was made to move the headquarters out of town. More
recently, violent clashes between Maanis and the gendarmerie have become
so ubiquitous that a tank has been stationed along the highway at city
limits.
Endemic unemployment -- believed to be more than 30 percent -- is a big
part of the problem. So is criminality and hair-trigger hostility toward
the central government. Worse, the city's residents are armed to the
teeth, and misunderstandings routinely escalate to Hatfield-McCoy
proportions. Perhaps most troubling, however, has been the unprecedented
growth of the Salafi jihadist movement in Maan.
An estimated 2,500 Jordanians are currently participating in the war in
Syria, the largest contingent of Sunni foreign fighters battling Bashar
al-Assad's nominally Shi'a regime. In the three years since the war in
Syria began, about 250 Jordanians have been killed, nearly two dozen of
whom have been buried in Maan. The city's status as the leading
graveyard of Jordanian martyrs is confirmed by its large central mosque,
which is festooned with banners of the fallen heroes.
During a recent trip there, I spent some time speaking to a young man
named Farouq, whose brother Mahmoud joined the jihad this past March.
Mahmoud, I was told, was a successful industrial engineer who lived as a
bachelor in the port city of Aqaba, owned a home, and worked in
Jordan's phosphate industry. Like everyone else in the family, Mahmoud
prayed five times a day and "hated Shi'a more than Jews." Nevertheless,
he was clean shaven when he left for Aqaba and showed no outward signs
of affinity for Islamist militancy. Less than a year after his departure
from Maan, however, Mahmoud grew a beard and became multazim, or one of
"the committed," to Salafism.
Farouq said "it was a surprise" two months ago when Mahmoud called from
Syria to say he had joined the al-Qaeda-affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra
and was fighting in Deraa, not far from the Jordanian border. I asked
Farouq how his parents took the news. They were saddened by his
departure, but not angry. "If Mahmoud dies," he said, "there will be a
martyr's wedding, Allah willing." Given his enthusiasm for his brother's
martyrdom, I inquired why Farouq himself didn't enlist in the jihad. "I
thought about going," he said, "but I'm married."
While Farouq isn't fighting, others from Maan are, apparently at the
behest of local clergy who have been preaching that the jihad in Syria
is a fard 'ayn, or a Quranic injunction. Meanwhile, Farouq is hoping
that after Assad is defeated, Jabhat al-Nusra will establish an Islamic
state in Syria -- and eventually in Jordan. "Secularism," he says, "is
dangerous."
Just how many Maanis share Farouq's aspirations for Syria and Jordan is
unclear. To be sure, I met a broad range of folks in Maan who disparaged
and downplayed the Salafi jihadist phenomenon. Indeed, most people I
encountered said that the actual number of Salafi jihadists was
relatively small, and that unemployment, official corruption, and the
government's heavy-handed response to protests were more urgent
concerns.
Some Maanis even suggested that Amman was exaggerating the threat to
exact higher rents from the West. Why else, I was asked, would the
palace allow Abu Sayyaf, the Maan-based leader of Jordan's Salafi jihadi
movement, to remain at large, proselytizing unconstrained from the
city?
Of course, Maan isn't the only city in Jordan that has witnessed jihadi
funerals and popular foment in recent years; it's just the most
prominent example of the trend. And the arrival of nearly a million
refugees from Syria over the past three years is all but certain to add
to the growing list of social and economic grievances of average
Jordanians. Economic hardships and other self-inflicted wounds -- such
as the draconian new counterterrorism law and restrictions that led
Freedom House to downgrade Jordan's freedom-of-the-press ranking --
could ultimately make the kingdom an even more conducive environment for
al-Qaeda recruitment.
These days, Jordanian officials are attributing unrest in Maan to a
criminal element in an isolated and habitually recalcitrant tribal
redoubt. To be sure, Maan has long been a challenge to govern, but the
addition of Islamic radicalism to the already incendiary mix will
further complicate efforts to pacify the city. With no end in sight to
the sectarian war in Syria, an increasing number of Sunni Muslim
Jordanians -- in Maan and throughout the kingdom -- may be tempted to
join the jihad.
Last month, Western concerns about foreign fighters spiked after an
American-born suicide bomber detonated in Syria and a former French
jihadi attacked Jewish tourists in Belgium. With the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now controlling vast tracts of territory in these
states, Sunni Islamist militancy in the Middle East has become a central
concern for the West and its regional partners.
For Jordan, a regime historically targeted by al-Qaeda for its close
relations with the United States, the threat is increasingly proximate.
Still, the extent of Salafi jihadi inroads in the kingdom will likely
remain unknown until the war in Syria ends and these battle-hardened
foreign fighters return home. If the problem turns out to be as
pervasive as it now seems to be, the first sign may be an uptick in
terrorism in Jordan.
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David Schenker is the Aufzien Fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute.
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