Jordanian army troops and armored vehicles deployed at the Karameh Border Crossing between Jordan and Iraq, some 199 miles (320 kilometers) south of Jordan's capital Amman, on June 25, 2014. (Salah Malkawi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)[/caption]
Not often does an organizational re-branding impact on the political dynamics of an entire region. But when (ISIS) declared its new identity on June 29 and called on factions to declare their allegiance to it, fears of an expanding caliphate, with ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi as caliph, shook the region. In Baghdad, the residents have been battening down the hatches, waiting with a sense of dread to hear the latest news of ISIS’s sweep through northern Iraq and fearing the arrival of the #JihadiSpring at their gates.
Fears are rising outside Iraq, too; countries such as Jordan and Lebanon are waiting uncomfortably as ISIS continues to attempt to redraw the map of the Middle East. “We will go to Jordan and Lebanon, with no problems, wherever our sheikh wants to send us,” said one of the British jihadists featured in an ISIS recruitment video released recently.
The explosion of ISIS across northern Iraq was astonishing. The international community stunned by the rapid pace at which cities came under the group’s control. With reports of 500,000 people or more fleeing the group’s path and heading towards the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, mass executions of security personnel, the imposition of rigid Shari’a law in areas it controls and its use of online terror tactics to scare all who may oppose it, the group has snatched Al-Qaeda’s position as the epitome of evil overnight. ISIS may have been inspired by Al-Qaeda, but even global Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has disavowed the group over its excessive brutality. “It has a reputation as the worst on the block,” says Usama Butt, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Strategic Affairs (IISA). “Disowned by Zawahiri? Right now, you don’t get much more radical than that.”
The terrifying success of ISIS in Syria in the past year and its recent land grab in Iraq, has put it in the headlines, but the group has also made frequent references to its intentions towards the other countries of the Levant region—including famously stable Jordan. ISIS members have been filmed tearing up Jordanian passports while threatening the Jordanian government. Such rhetoric and actions, coupled with the group’s military advance, has led some to fear for Jordan’s security.
Concerns regarding the potential for ISIS to wreak havoc in Jordan are certainly understandable. The country is very much part of the Levant, and thus lies in ISIS’s path. “ISIS wants to reach Jerusalem, crossing through Damascus and Amman,” says Jordanian political commentator Marwan Shehadeh. Moreover, a spillover of militancy from Jordan’s neighboring countries is worryingly possible, as the 2005 Amman bombings by Iraqi militants who snuck in with the flow of Iraqi refugees so aptly demonstrated.
But Jordan is most concerned with the risk that home-grown ISIS supporters will destabilize the country, which despite its current situation is not immune to radical Islamism. Indeed, the founder of ISIS’s predecessor Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, hailed from Jordan—a native of Zarqa, as his name suggests—and his time there saw him develop and foster the extremism he had encountered in Afghanistan. “Even though he spent a considerable period in jail, Zarqawi was not exactly isolated,” says Shehadeh. “He had a large following—inside and outside prison—l;communicating his messages and building his ideology within areas of the Jordanian community.”
Moreover, with estimates of Jordanians fighting in Syria running as high as 2,400—many with ISIS or the official Al-Qaeda franchise, Jabhat Al-Nusra—the risk of them slipping back into the Kingdom, bringing radical ideologies with them, is constantly on the authorities’ minds.
In the past few weeks, Ma’an—a relatively impoverished city south of Amman, known as a hotbed of Salafism and now as a key jihadist recruiting ground—has seen the black flag of ISIS appear on numerous occasions. Local residents have called for an end to the ‘occupation of Ma’an,’ referring to their city as “Ma’an, the Fallujah of Jordan!” If it were only a reaction to the dramatic events across the border, it might be hoped that the Ma’an protests would calm down as quickly as they began. But what is of crucial importance is that this type of demonstration has been seen before in the city back in April, when clashes saw the ISIS flag emerge. Around the same time, the formation of an armed Salafist group calling itself the Martyrs of Ma’an was announced, and it pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Unreceptive conditions, but too soon to be complacent
ISIS’s advance and the situation in Ma’an may be a worrying testament to the group’s global mindedness, but experts agree that unreceptive conditions will challenge their chance to gain any real momentum in Jordan. For the Hashemite Kingdom is not like Syria and Iraq: it is not a state plagued by internal divisions and instability, and it possesses highly trained, competent and efficient security forces who are unlikely to melt away in the way their Iraqi counterparts did. While ISIS has advanced west towards Jordan and supposedly taken control of Iraqi posts at the border, the Kingdom has stepped up its security, doubling its armed forces presence at the border and closing its border posts with Iraq. Journalists have even been taken on tours of the area, so convinced is the government of the impermeability of the border.
Moreover, the government amended its anti-terror law in late April, issuing new legislation which deems recruiting for or joining armed groups an act of terror. “The government’s policy is strict,” says Shehadeh. “Anyone suspected of belonging to a militant group who arrives overland or through airports is arrested and imprisoned. ISIS members seem to face the toughest treatment—I’ve noticed that they get the longest jail terms.” Cities such as Ma’an are thus being closely monitored, and authorities have already launched a security campaign in that city.
But it is more than simply strict policing that produces an unreceptive environment. Crucially, there is a lack of popular support. Not only are Jordanians extremely wary of any activity that could plunge them into chaos resembling that in Syria or Iraq, but also, as senior research fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre of Islamic Studies Dr. Khaled Hroub says, “there are no sectarian divisions in Jordan and no system of minority rule where true or imagined grievances could be exploited by extremist groups.”
Raed Omari, a Jordanian political commentator, says: “ISIS has succeeded in Iraq because the Maliki government has consistently marginalized the Sunni community, alienating them and pushing them into the hands of extremist groups. That’s just not happening here in Jordan.”
With its neighbors on all sides becoming increasingly chaotic—whether through militant takeover, protracted conflict, political turbulence or bloody civil war&38212;Jordan’s identity as a bastion of stability has never been more appropriate, and never more feared for. In a region changing so quickly, nothing can be taken for granted. “I don’t think that ISIS will cause a major problem for Jordan right now,” says Shehadeh. “But perhaps in the future it will. Everything could be different. If the Al-Assad regime [in Syria] collapses and ISIS takes control of the country, everything would be different. But right now, that’s not the case.”
As it stands today, the position of ISIS in Iraq and the emergence of ISIS-affiliated groups in Ma’an should not cause panic, but neither should we be complacent, blindly trusting in stable Jordan’s seeming immunity. The deterrents to extremism rest in the constant maintenance of organized security and in the Jordanian public’s general fear of their society starting to experience events that are currently only happening elsewhere. As dramatic events continue to play out in Syria and Iraq, we must not forget Jordan: the country is still part of the “Greater Syria” project, and its future is woven into that of the states surrounding it.
