Abu Aardvark

Jordan at the brink, again

King Abdullah of Jordan has just taken the remarkable step of firing his powerful head of General Intelligence in the middle of a major regional -- and potentially domestic -- crisis.   Nabil Ghishan, a Jordanian journalist, explains in al-Hayat that the reason for the firing of Mukhabarat head Mohammed al-Thahbi was his role in a controversial rapprochement with Hamas over the last few months.   Presumably his replacement, Mohammed Raqad  -- whose prior assignment was in the northern city of Irbid -- will have fewer ideas about outreach to Hamas.  But more broadly, the move suggests a panic at the heart of the Hashemite establishment over the ramifications of the spiraling Gaza crisis.  It's no accident that King Abdullah and Queen Rania have been urgently calling for Israel to "end the violence immediately", even as fellow pro-U.S. autocrats in Cairo and Riyadh hedge in anticipation of Hamas taking damage.    There is no way for Jordan to stay on the sidelines of an Israeli-Palestinian crisis - and this one may prove more dangerous than others. 

The intensity of Jordanian public opinion on Gaza should not be surprising.   Without resorting to the journalistic shorthand of assigning a percentage of the population as "Palestinian" (given decades of intermarriage and deep divides in the life-circumstances of, say, the impoverished residents of the camps and the wealthy Amman bourgeoisie), the Jordanian and Palestinian populations are deeply interconnected.  The Jordanian public has been extremely vocal, with protests in the streets and burning Israeli flags in the Parliament.  Normally level-headed commentators have been calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, the severing of ties with Israel, the "removal" of all things Israeli from the Kingdom, and more.  Unlike during the Hezbollah war of 2006, there's a consensus in Jordan spanning liberals, Islamists, and conservatives over Gaza... with even those who have written extremely hostile commentary about Hamas in the last few years now lambasting Israel and defending Gaza.   (And some bloggers are helping to organize a food drive -- good for them!)

Expect anti-Americanism in Jordan (and across the region) to spike again as the U.S. is blamed for allowing the Israeli offensive, just as during the 2002 Israeli re-occupation of the West Bank, and for moderate voices to be marginalized or radicalized.  The King is following the popular mood this time, to a point (with an ostentatious picture of him donating blood gracing the front pages of the papers).  But even as the influential columnist Samih al-Mayateh writes that the people and the Palace are united, it's clear to all that the government has offered only words and has not acted on any of the popular demands. 

The domestic context of the regional crisis is terrible.  The economic crisis has badly hurt all sectors of the Jordanian population, while rumors of corruption and official incompetence have been rife.  The Parliament is widely derided.  The relatively new Prime Minister seems generally respected, but doesn't have a great deal of independent weight.  The Muslim Brotherhood, which seemed to have lost its way in the face of intense regime pressures over the last few years, has of late seemed to have found its feet under the leadership of the pro-Hamas "hawk" recently elected as it head.  Back in October, the government had initiated a surprising, if limited, rapprochement with the Brotherhood -- and Hamas -- which now seems to be done.  I expect that the Jordanian regime will most likely ride out this round of domestic anger as it always has before -- but it seems clear that the leadership is worried about the rising wave of anger and the possibility of violence migrating across the Jordan River.  Whatever Abdullah's real feelings about Hamas, it seems likely that he's sincere about desperately wanting the crisis to be over and is trying to find ways to limit the impact at home.  Replacing his mukhabarat chief in the middle of the crisis suggests that desperation is turning to panic. 

UPDATE:  a well-informed observer adds:

Firstly, the timing is indeed strange, in particular if the King wants to calm down a domestic sphere which appears even more united around a pro-Hamas front today compared to 2006, then it is odd to fire THE figure representing a link between the regime and Hamas. From what I have heard it may instead be the outcome of pressure from Egypt which is pissed at yesterday's demonstrations in front of the Egyptian embassy with anti-Mubarak slogans. This is unprecedented and in the spring a planned demonstration in front of the Egyptian embassy was banned. ....

 Secondly, as for the decision as such – and not the timing - to fire Dhahabi, what I have heard it is a combination of a number of factors related very much to the domestic sphere and less to the current crisis – still the timing is strange. Those I talk to have for a while expected that one of the Dhahabis had to quit as two brothers in prominent positions (if the PM can be labelled as such) were one too much. At the same time it is suggested that it is a kind of payback from the King to GID and the PMs opposition to [Bassem] Awadallah, who had to leave the court back in September. And related, it is said to be the price PM Dhahabi has to pay to make the last purging of pro-Awadallah people in the upcoming re-shuffle of the government. This is probably not the whole story, but adds some further dimension to this strange story.

Why doesn't McCain just end the Jordan controversy?

I didn't expect to post on this again, but the controversy over the comments (almost certainly falsely) attributed to McCain adviser Bob Kagan that Jordan should be the Palestinian state continues to rock Jordanian politics despite his denial and has moved up into the wider Arab media.  Those reports engaged and enraged almost every actor in Jordanian politics, from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Jordanian Parliament to the King himself.   It seems virtually certain that Kagan didn't make the remarks, but the fallout continues to roil public opinion in a crucial American ally.  Why doesn't McCain just issue a strong statement denying the reports and explaining his position on the "Jordan is Palestine" question, and put an end to it? 

Some Jordanian and Arab commenters have begun to focus more on the implications for the credibility of Arab media in the incident.  Why, asks al-Arabiya director Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed, were so many Jordanians inside and outside of the government ready to believe an inflammatory statement posted on a blog?  Why didn't they check with the McCain campaign or the American embassy first, before running their stories?   Batir Wardum wonders why people didn't look at the source,  which he considers hostile to Jordan, or try to find evidence that the alleged talk took place before running with the story.   For those interested in the problems of public diplomacy and strategic communication, this is a pretty rich case study... as different public spheres interact at breakneck speed, rumors spread faster than governments or campaigns can hope to respond, and  political dynamics outrace fact checking. 

But other Jordanian and Arab pundits and politicians still want to know what McCain and his advisers actually think about the substantive issue.  Regardless of what Kagan did or didn't say, does McCain agree or disagree with the argument held by some on the Israeli right that the solution to the Palestinian problem lies across the Jordan river?   If he does, he should say so and explain why.  If he doesn't, his campaign should say so, clearly and publicly, to put an end to the controversy.   I doubt this has much significance to the campaign over here, but such a statement - or the absence of such a statement - could have some real impact over there. 

Does McCain really think that Jordan is Palestine?

Jordanians are going absolutely berserk over comments attributed to Robert Kagan, John McCain's "foreign policy guru", who supposedly said that McCain thinks that Jordan is the natural homeland for the Palestinians and their permanent resettlement there the best solution to their problem.  The response to the report has been something to see.  The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Jordanian Parliament has demanded a formal clarification from the U.S. Ambassador, while a range of politicians and pundits and even cartoonists are denouncing him.  Even the King has weighed in in an interview to reassert that Jordan is Jordan and not Palestine.    Kagan has denied making the comments (and here also) but Jordanian outrage seems undiminished. 

The so-called "Jordan option" is a perennial idea floated by the Israeli right in various forms.  It conflicts directly with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which assumes negotiations towards a two state solution west of the Jordan River.  It also sharply contradicts the essential pillars of the American relationship with one of its most reliable allies in the region, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  The "Jordan option" - which Jordanians call the 'alternative homeland [al-watan al-badil] raises existential fears in Jordan across ethnic and partisan lines.  Nothing, really nothing, can generate more heat and fury among Jordanians across the board than this issue - hence the furious roiling of the Jordanian public in response to a report about a McCain adviser's remark posted on some Arabic blog. (*)

So..  is this a case of irresponsible journalism by Ammon News and other Arab media, egged on by excitable new media?  Or of the exposure by the (Arabic) blogosphere of real remarks to a sympathetic audience getting outed?  Right now, I incline towards the former.  Kagan, I repeat, reportedly told the Jordanian embassy in no uncertain terms that he did not make the alleged remarks, and had not spoken at NYU (which NYU reportedly confirmed).   If he supported those ideas, I assume he'd just say so - it would make at least some folks on the right very happy and be pretty "maverick" to boot.  As long as this isn't really his position, then McCain's campaign should just make a clear statement that this does not represent his position - that he does not think that Jordan should become the Palestinian state -  and put a quick end to the Jordanian political firestorm generated by the report. 

(*) note:  it was originally described as appearing on an Israeli website, but more relevantly it was posted on a blog which describes itself as supporting a "democratic secular state in Palestine for both Palestinian and Jews who were born in Israel before 1990" and overthrowing the Hashemites peacefully to include Jordan in Greater Palestine-  good catch by Naseem Tarawneh.  Judge for yourself whether that increases or decreases its credibility, but it's important context.   

UPDATE - if he doesn't volunteer such a statement, some journalist should just ask him and help out. Reader MV helpfully sends in a few links to demonstrate that the Jordan option is indeed once more making the rounds (like clockwork... or a broken clock, depending on your preferred metaphor):

• Eiland, Giora (2008).      "Back to the Jordanian option", Ynetnews,      April 16. (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3532489,00.html).     
• Karsh, Efraim, Asher Susser,      Robert Satloff & Shmuel Bar (2008). "Jordanian Option", Middle East Strategy at Harvard-blog, April 23.      (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/04/jordanian_option/).     
• Friedman, Thomas (2008).      "Time for Radical Pragmatism", New      York Times, June 4. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/opinion/04friedman.html).     
• Garfinkle, Adam, Barry Rubin,      Walter Reich & David Schenker (2008). "Radical pragmatism’      and the Jordanian option", Middle East Strategy at Harvard-blog, June 4. (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/06/radical_pragmatism_and_the_jordanian_option/).     

So it wouldn't be a bad question to pose:  whatever Bob Kagan did or didn't say, what does John McCain think about the Jordanian option? 

Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood in tough times

One of the main items on my agenda in Amman last week was to check in with the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, which is actually more interesting right now than it has been in years. I guess trouble and turmoil builds character.   The JMB has been under great pressure for the last few years, with the tacit deals which used to govern relations with the Hashemite regime long since broken down.   The regime has been playing tough, with the November 2005 hotel bombings and the early 2006 Hamas electoral victory generally seen as the turning point.  The crackdown has been on all fronts - not just the blatant interventions in the municipal and Parliamentary elections, but also the government taking over the leadership of a key Islamic charity on thin allegations of corruption (no evidence of which I have yet seen produced) and interfering with MB social services and outreach efforts throughout the country.   

The JMB has seemed divided and uncertain about how to respond to these new conditions.  I have heard and read a lot of accounts now of deep conflicts between hawks and doves over the nature of political participation, Jordanian-Palestinian tensions, class issues, and the struggles of the organization to renew itself in the face of sustained regime pressure and challenges from the salafi flank.  After the electoral disaster in 2007, tensions inside the MB and IAF seemed to boil over, with the dismissal of the Shura Council and new leadership elections - resulting most recently in the elevation of the Palestinian-origin hawk Dr Himman Said to the position of general guide.   

During my week in Amman I talked to some of the best Jordanian analysts of the movement, as well as several MB/IAF leaders.  The general consensus seems to be that the sustained regime repression has taken a real toll on the movement, strengthening hawkish, more radical voices in the JMB and weakening the hand of the doves... a dynamic we see playing out again and again, most recently in this week's reports of the rising conservative (dawa) role in the Egyptian MB's shura council. But there is a lot of disagreement about whether this has had a serious effect on the movement's popularity and about the future of the movement.  And, of course, it's important to take into account the self-interest of Jordanian MB leaders in telling an American researcher that regime repression is weakening moderates...

My friend Mohammad Abu Rumman – whose monograph on the 2007 Parliamentary elections I highly recommend – has become a prominent advocate of the position that the MB has been badly weakened by the regime's efforts.  His accounts of the internal disarray in the JMB and Islamic Action Front have provoked some clear resentment within those organizations (dropping his name didn't have quite the effect I had anticipated!), but seem accurate and well-sourced to me.  But other equally well-placed analysts argue that Abu Rumman overstates the decline of the organization and misses its real, continuing, and even growing strength.  Certainly, all point out, no other opposition movement has emerged to compete with it - if anything, the JMB's struggles have left a political void which is hardly healthy.

One example of the controversy:  Abu Rumman argues that the MB has become primarily an organization of the Palestinian middle class, losing Jordanians and the lower classes either to salafi groups or to non-Islamist trends.  But Yasir Abu Hilala, the al-Jazeera correspondent and al-Ghad columnist, argues that the "Palestinianization" of the MB is actually a regime strategy - as in the co-opting of prominent Jordanian members with government portfolios and the equation of the JMB with Hamas -  which is doomed to fail.  Which is right?

So on my last day in Amman I had long conversations with two senior leaders from the IAF, Ali Abu Sukkar and Ruhayl al-Ghuraybeh, and chatted with the party director and half a dozen people hanging around the office (including Shaykh Hamza Mansour, who I’ve interviewed before).

They were all surprisingly frank about the internal debates within the movement.  Everyone I spoke with argued that the regime’s repression is hurting those voices favoring political participation.  Abu Sukkar argued that the repression had tipped the balance of opinion between those in favor of political opposition and those opposed.  Prior to the 2007 elections, opinion had been evenly split, but the regime’s interventions had weakened the voice of the moderates and strengthened that of the critics. If an internal vote were held today, he suggested, it would likely go against participation.  Hence the election as general guide of Hammam Said, who would likely produce sharper rhetoric and allow fewer consultations with the regime than in the past.   He hastened to add that the debate was not over violence – all the MB, by consensus, rejected the use of violence against Muslim governments while supporting it as resistance to foreign occupation – but over the narrower question of the value of political participation.

I asked them both blunt questions about Qutbism, violence, and trends within the movement. Their answers seemed fairly frank.  Both acknowledged multiple trends within the movement. Ghuraybah argued that in the 1990s, the youth were more liberal than their elders because their experience was of democracy and participation.  But now, the youth are more radical than their elders because their experience is of repression and regime manipulation.  Abu Sukkar talked about members of the MB leaving in frustration over the movement’s perceived failures, and moving on to more radical movements – a clear example of the crumbling firewall I've discussed before.  Again, they have a clear interest in making this argument.. but at the same time, that doesn't mean that it isn't right.

Both leaders talked at length about how the regime’s crackdown was interfering with their ability to be a force for moderation among the Islamic community.  The government ban on Muslim Brothers preaching in mosques had simply removed moderate voices and replaced them with – more often than not – uneducated salafis who preached a far more radical doctrine (or with dullards who the people did not respect).  The crackdown on charities meant that the MB was unable to provide the social services which the state neglected, intensifying the struggles at the popular level and again weakening voices for moderation and participation.  And the political repression discredited the voices of participation and moderation, tipping the balance towards the more radical voices.

I also talked to both of them about issues surrounding Iraq, but I'll save that for later.

The lines within the MB seem starker here than in Egypt, as does the directness of the salafi challenge (the Hamas issue and Iraq both weigh much more directly here, of course).  Just walking across the street from one MB-linked bookshop to another is revealing:  one featured a fair amount of jihadist-leaning literature, with a display of Sayid Qutb and some fairly rough Jerusalem pamphlets;  the other featured walls of carefully-groomed "Islam lite" media preachers, lots of dawa instructional pamphlets, a large display of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and not a jihad text or Qutb book in sight.  Interestingly, Amr Khaled was the most prominent cross-store common feature, with large displays in both.

I came away with more questions than answers.  I'll need to look much more closely at all of this next time - and would love to hear from those working on Jordanian MB issues these days.   

Amman 2008: General impressions

I've just returned from a week in Amman, Jordan where I participated in a Jordanian- American youth dialogue conference organized by POMED and AID.  My Friday morning panel dealt with cyber-activism and political blogging. It was a very entertaining and informative panel, with Ahmed Humaid (the internet entrepreneur and all-around nice guy who blogs at 360east, who I had met previously), Nick Seeley (editor of JO magazine, and - to my delight - Spider Jerusalem incarnate), and Esraa Shafe'i (a Bahraini blogger who directs Mideast Youth Network).  I was thrilled to meet Lina Ejailat, one of my favorite Jordanian bloggers who recently started up a citizen-journalism site with Naseem Tarawneh (who unfortunately didn't make it).   The organizers did a great job, and many thanks to Liana and Mohammed for including me in the proceedings.   

I had expected to take part in the whole three day conference, but as it happened the focus was more (and quite appropriately) on the youth participants themselves networking and working together.  That gave me the chance to spend most of the week walking the streets of Amman, scrounging through a lot of regular and Islamist bookstores, and meeting with about two dozen old friends, political analysts and journalists, UN and NGO workers dealing with Iraqi refugees, and Muslim Brotherhood leaders.  I'm going to write up some of those topics in follow-up posts, but for now just some general reflections on the mood in Amman. 

I had braced myself for the dramatic transformation of the face of West Amman.  They were just as advertised, with all those new tunnels and bypass roads and malls and restaurants and Starbucks and... yeah. The new bypass roads and tunnels probably help traffic flow, but they make it very difficult for pedestrians to go anywhere - which, according to a recent talk by Jillian Schwedler, may not have been incidental to the political planning behind them (Hey Jillian, doesn't that merit a guest post?).   I kind of like the renovation of Rainbow Street, with its new cobblestone and a bunch of new restaurants to go with the old stalwart Books@cafe (which I will always love despite the abominable service) and a tourist trap “flea market” and garish orange street signs. Clothes in such areas are skimpier than ever, and internet and mobile phones ubiquitous.  Overall, it’s easy to see why so many tourists and short-term travellers come away impressed with the “new Jordan”.

I was struggling to figure out what seemed so odd when I was out past Fourth Circle (as little as possible), when it finally struck me that I don’t recall hearing a single call to prayer in the time I spent in those areas - even with a renowned salafi mosque practically across the street from my hotel.  It can‘t be right that they’ve silenced (or turned down the volume on) the muezzins out there, can it?  Almost certainly not.  Ammanis, what say you?

The city center looks much the same, on the other hand, and what I saw of East Amman worse.  The infrastructure in those areas appears to the naked eye to be crumbling, with little visible evidence of the West Amman boom other than some massive construction sites in the Abdali area, which I gather are somewhat politically controversial (people kept feeding me all kinds of allegations of corruption associated with these and other projects).  I noticed more visibly salafi men in the downtown area and a lot more “Islamic dress” shops than I remember from a few years back.  The second-hand market in Abdali looks three times as big as it used to be.  The old stalwart downtown tourist shops I sought out to pick up some treasures for the kids seem to have disappeared.  There were a lot of Iraqis out in the central and eastern parts, as Jordanians happly - and often somewhat unpleasantly - pointed out (though there may be fewer Iraqis in the country as a whole than there used to be - more on that soon).  There are more bookstores downtown but I was relieved to see that the old bookshop run by Sami and his brother is still there and going strong.

The most common topic of conversation:  costs of everything – especially food, rent, and gas - are going through the roof, and it's clearly getting to people.  A bunch of those proverbial taxi drivers complained bitterly about how fares have not gone up despite skyrocketing gas prices.  It isn't just the gap between rich and poor which is growing. Even those who used to be quite comfortable are struggling.  For instance, I heard from people working with Iraqi refugee youth issues that one of their problems is that an astonishing number of Jordanian families have had to take their kids out of private schools because of the economic situation, which has contributed to the overcrowding of an already struggling public school system.   That's a sign of an aspirational middle class being wiped out.  These problems are compounded by the government’s crackdown on the charitable activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, which chokes off one of the main sources of relief usually available to Jordanians.

Political life appears deader than a dead dog that’s dead.  A wide range of journalists and activists from a variety of political trends described the current Parliament as the worst since political life reopened in 1989.  Everybody believes that Parliamentary elections were flagrantly fixed, not just against the Muslim Brotherhood but against all potentially bothersome candidates.  The crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has been comprehensive, while protests of almost all kinds are being routinely banned – not just the Nakba commemoration that made the papers, but according to IAF leaders even a rally in Zarqa on inflation.  The press has really declined:  al-Rai has become unreadable, even al-Ghad is less interesting, and most of the weeklies seem worthless.  I was impressed with some of the reporting of local politics in my old friend Mustafa Hamarneh’s six-month old weekly al-Sijil, and with his editorial team, but its circulation is very small and its enemies growing.

As one would expect in a country where political life is stagnant, the press moribund, and economic conditions deteriorating, there's a lot of grumbling and rumours spread like wildfire.  I heard a lot about the growing mukhabarat (intelligence) presence in all areas of life, while Jordanian-Palestinian relations seem rawer and worse than ever.   It almost feels like the days before the 1989 opening up of political life, or at least the way those days have been described to me (my first visit to Jordan was in 1992).  I wouldn't go as far as did Bourzou Daraghai a few months ago, describing Jordan as Iran 1977, but things definitely are not good.

There are a lot of big pictures of King Abdullah up now. In my experience, there is an inverse relationship between the numbers of pictures of an Arab leader hanging in the capital city and said leader’s legitimacy.  And I’m sure I shouldn’t read anything in to the fact that I heard “Don’t cry for me Argentina” playing at the Jabri restaurant on Garden Street -  certainly not that anyone might draw any inferences between Eva Peron and anyone currently to do with Jordan. 

That’s all for now.  Over the next day or two I'm planning to post some specifics about my conversations with and about the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and about the situation of Iraqi refugees in the Kingdom, along with anything else which comes to mind. 

Escalations in Jordan

The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and government are raising the rhetorical pitch to really unprecedented levels since the MB's last-minute boycott of the municipal elections.

Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit accused the Brotherhood of planning in advance to wreck the elections, and issued a blunt warning to the leadership of the Brotherhood that it had a very brief period in which to reclaim the organization from an extremist leadership which had hijacked it and departed from the traditional Brotherhood discourse. 

For its part, the Muslim Brotherhood has met every escalation with one of its own.  IAF leader Zaki Bani Irshid described the government's conduct during the elections as not just a massacre of democracy but as an existential threat to Jordan and as the product of a conspiracy led by the American ambassador against the Islamist movement.  Most controversial has been a strongly worded editorial analysis on the Jordanian MB site, "Why we boycott", which violated a whole slew of the "red lines" governing Jordanian political discourse (I'd link to it but the Jordanian Ikhwan's website appears to be down, for reasons which are unclear it's back up now). As an analysis in Islam Today points out, this confrontational article came out on the MB's website, not the IAF's website, shattering the carefully maintained distance between party and organization as well as the conventional wisdom of MB 'moderates' (i.e. oldtimers able to work with the regime) vs IAF 'radicals' (or Hamasis).      

Threats of violence, overt or implied, are distressingly common on both sides.  When the former General in charge of the government starts invoking Nahr al-Barid, it's probably time to get a vest, and invest in something to protect your head and neck.  Jamil al-Nimri, a liberal al-Ghad columnist not known for his MB sympathies, also seemed shocked by Bakhit's Nahr al-Barad reference.  It's an absurd and inflammatory comparison from Bakhit;  Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood has nothing in common with Fath al-Islam, and the implied threat of violence is deeply irresponsible. 

So are some of the wilder statements being made by IAF leader Zaki Bani Irshid and other MB spokesmen.   Yasir Abu Hilala, writing in al-Ghad, says that he saw with his own eyes the intense fury of ordinary people over the flagrant electoral transgressions in Irbid, and has since heard the anger in tribal diwans across the country.  Such popular anger will only help the Brotherhood, he predicts, while stripping the legitimacy of future elections in which it doesn't perform well.  He quotes Fahd al-Khitan, a leftist writer for al-Arab al-Yawm, saying that his friends and family in Madaba voted for the IAF candidate and support him even more strongly after what happened.  Better for the government to postpone elections if it deems the situation so dangerous than to blatantly falsify them and drive this popular rage.  Neither Bakhit nor the opposition wants that rage to take a destructive or violent turn... do they?

Short of unleashing the military (against what?), Nabil Ghishan, writing in al-Hayat, suggests that Bakhit's language implies a threat to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood, or define it as a charitable organization banned from political activity.   This interpretation is supported by Saleh al-Qullab's piece in al-Rai, which goes on at some length about the absurdity of the MB's existence as neither fully a political party or a charitable society, and Fahd al-Khitan's more critical reading of the Bakhit interview.   Both would be massively controversial and destabilizing, but are not out of the question right now.

Even Jordanians who don't like the MB worry that Bakhit's escalation signals a deep threat to democratic reform.  The liberal al-Ghad editor Ayman Safadi bluntly describes Bakhit's speech as the beginning of the era of "broken bones" (one of the commenters on the internet version responds "which side are you on?"). As the liberal al-Ghad columnist Jamil al-Nimri puts it, the lesson of the municipal elections is that Bakhit's method for avoiding the "Gaza experience" will not be to cancel elections but instead to manipulate them using all available means to prevent the MB from competing fairly without any shame or fear of exposure of state bias.  The rather illiberal Jordanain nationalist  Nahid Hattar proclaims last rites for political reform in the Kingdom and worries about a return to internal crisis not seen since 1996.  Not everyone takes this side, of course:   Al-Rai demonstrated its independence by running an editorial praising Bakhit's wisdom, clarity and directness in his confrontation with the culture of conspiracy.   

Where will this lead?  Nobody seems to know.  Safadi sees no way out of the current crisis, with neither side showing any inclination to back down. Nimri complains that the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have learned nothing from its experience in forming a political party, and has failed every test put before it in recent years.  He suspects that the Brotherhood will back down, but worries that it won't do so in time to avoid further escalation.   Abu Hilala worries that the collapse of the rules of engagement between the MB and the regime might lead to explosions of popular rage.   Khitan thinks that Bakhit's escalation reflects a consensus inside the ruling circles in favor of confrontation, but speculates that Bakhit might prove the loser and replay the fate of the Faisal al-Fayez government.  The Brotherhood called on Bakhit to act like a statesman:  apologize to the Jordanian people and resign.  That seems unlikely.  It also called on the King to step in to resolve the conflict, but I'm guessing that the King is totally on board with Bakhit's current line, as - I'd guess, given its general line these days - is the Bush administration.

(update:  veteran muckraking journalist Fahd Rimawi reports that the Muslim Brotherhood's Shura Council is going to meet to vote on Zaki Bani Irshid's leadership of the Islamic Action Front.  If a more moderate leader replaces Bani Irshid, this could go a long way towards meeting Bakhit's demand that the MB regain control over the 'new and extremist' leadership.  But it could also infuriate the Brotherhood's rank and file and make it difficult for the MB to have any credibility in future conflicts.  Stay tuned.)

Hey, you know what would calm things down and take people's minds off of this impending government- Brotherhood crisis?  How about Jordan moving back in to the West Bank?  That should do the trick!

MB and elections: Egypt vs Jordan

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood faced an impossible situation in last month's Shura Council elections.  Highly controversial Constitutional revisions designed to prevent its legitimate political participation had come into effect, large numbers of Brothers including some of the most senior leaders were in prison, and the government was fairly explicit in its plans to fix the elections against whatever Brotherhood candidates ran.  Despite all that, the Brotherhood contested the elections, putting out a quite liberal 72 page platform and attempting to run in multiple districts.  When the results were announced, not a single Brotherhood candidate was declared the winner - leading even the fiercely anti-MB former intelligence chief Fouad Allam to pronounce the results highly implausible.   

While the decision to participate in a fixed game was internally controversial, Essam el-Erian argued that participation carried benefits well beyond winning or losing.  The MB's participation forced the judiciary into greater role interpreting the constitution, put the higher council for elections on the spot, and cast a sharp spotlight on regime contradictions and hypocrisies.  What's more, argued Erian, it revived the general sense of importance of participation, forced movement inside the NDP, brought new MB figures from the third and fourth ranks into the public eye and trained them in new forms of outreach, and denied the regime a monopoly on the public sphere.   I would add that the MB's decision to contest the Shura Council elections  spoke volumes about the organization's real commitment to democratic participation - if there were ever a time when a boycott would have been understood, it was now (and indeed other opposition parties called for one). But they didn't.   In the end, I think they were vindicated, as they came out looking like determined democrats while the regime came across as a blundering, anti-democratic behemoth... not that this will evidently cost them any US military aid.

What made me think about last month's Egyptian elections right now was the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood's decision to withdraw its candidates from today's municipal elections.   Fears of an "Islamist victory" in these elections were always exaggerated - the Jordanian MB had put forward only 33 candidates, out of almost 3000 total, so couldn't exactly have swept the board.  But then at the last minute  the MB pulled its candidates from the contest. It claimed that the signs of impending electoral fraud were overwhelming and insurmountable:  blocking of voting booths, stuffing of the electoral rolls, harrassment and arrests of MB candidates and journalists...  the usual.  But all of that is standard procedure and could hardly have come as a surprise.   In a statement explaining its withdrawal, it claimed that the last straw was "secret information" it had received that members of the armed forces had been ordered to vote against the MB's candidates and been bused in to make sure that they voted.  Maybe.   More likely, it anticipated a weak showing and panicked, figuring that pulling out would delegitimize the election (it is calling the municipal elections an insult to Jordanians and damaging to the nation).  But the decision to pull out at the very last minute has allowed the government to seize the high ground, with Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit declaring that such a last-minute boycott is unprecedented and illegal.

Boycott decisions are always a tricky thing.   By not participating, the Jordanian MB cedes any role in the municipalities, and allows its enemies to challenge its commitment to democracy.  On the other hand, participating in a rigged game would legitimize the process, and would allow its enemies to claim that its poor showing proved its declining influence and popular appeal.  The contrast with the Egyptian MB is quite telling, though.   The Egyptian MB scored a real moral victory by participating and losing, demonstrating its democratic credentials and making the regime and the NDP look absurd.  By pulling out at the last minute like this, the Jordanian MB is likely to have hurt itself more than the regime, and will likely feed the public questioning of its real attitudes.  I suppose they will claim credit for the low turnout, which has forced the polls to stay open for several more hours in order to get to the legal threshold of 50.1% (despite the declaration of a national holiday to facilitate voting), but somehow I don't think that you need a Brotherhood boycott to explain low turnout for a municipal election...

Beyond the municipal elections (which are only of limited importance, really, and the MB also boycotted them outside of Amman in 2003), most analysts will be looking at the likely implications for the Parliamentary elections scheduled for November.   Most have doubted that that the MB would boycott the Parliamentary elections (if they are actually held), given the negative experience of their 1997 boycott and the region-wide wave of Islamist electoral victories.   Now the odds of a MB boycott of the Parliamentary elections have probably gone up.  The Jordanian government would probably be thrilled if the MB decided to boycott those elections.  Its greatest fear is Islamist electoral success, which is unlikely under the current electoral law but not impossible, and it would probably prefer to pay the legitimacy costs of an MB boycott than risk the political costs of either an MB victory or having to resort to overly obvious electoral fraud.  Bakhit's government, which admits no wrongdoing, will likely do things the exact same way in November, especially since it now knows which buttons to push.   The Jordanian MB, for its part, may not be up to an electoral test and may prefer to not contest them.  The Brotherhood is by many accounts really struggling with internal divisions over the Hamas takeover of Gaza, and its reputation has taken a beating over the last year or two (the Zarqawi funeral affair, poor Parliamentary performance, and more).  Perhaps it would prefer to sit the election out for fear of exposing its weakness, particularly since it now looks likely that those elections will be held under the much-criticized old electoral law despite all efforts at reform. 

Parliamentary elections without the MB, however tempting this looks to the Jordanian regime or to the US, would not be a good thing for Jordanian democracy or politics. For all its problems, the MB remains Jordan's largest political party, in a system otherwise dominated by tribes, personalities, and regime patronage. While I'm not particularly impressed with the Jordanian MB, given the trends across the region and Jordan's very real political, economic, and social problems I'm skeptical of the many reports of the MB's decline.  Better by far to have the MB engaged in the political realm than losing support to more radical competitors, and better to have a Parliament which at least somewhat approximates the real distribution of opinion in the Kingdom.   In Jordan as in Egypt, you can't have anything meaningfully democratic when the primary political opposition is shut out of the game.  We'll see how this all plays out for November.   As of today, though, the Egyptian MB is looking rather better than the Jordanian MB in terms of sticking to the democratic game despite the obstacles.   

Talking about Jordan

I had a great time last night drinking adult beverages with a collection of Jordanian academics and journalists, whose identities don't need to be divulged here but who certainly do not agree on all things political.  Every one of them thought that a Jordanian return to the West Bank would spell doom for King Abdullah. One thought that the security services and mukhabarat would be enough to keep control, but by the end even this one was angrily saying that Jordanians should be out in the streets right now protesting against a confederation before it's too late.  This is consistent with almost all of the comments and emails I received from Jordanians the last time I wrote warning against the reappearance of the "Jordan option".  It also is consistent with the overwhelming consensus of Jordanian journalists, intellectuals and politicians, and almost all published op-eds over the last month.  It's also consistent with the recently, very forcefully restated rejection of the idea by King Abdullah.  And don't even get me started on the Islamists...

The Transjordanian nationalist Nahid Hattar complained the other day that Jordan's political consensus against confederation with the West Bank was its best defense against plans to solve the Palestinian issue at Jordan's expense, but that this consensus wasn't enough because nobody really takes Jordanian public opinion seriously. It really is quite astonishing the extent to which discussion of this Jordanian option continues in American and Israeli circles.  Even some Palestinians seem open to the idea - not just the aging remnants of the pre-67 era... I have it on some authority that Mahmoud Abbas is increasingly open to the idea because he fears that Fatah will soon lose the West Bank to Hamas without a Jordanian liferaft.  And so trial balloons keep going up, despite a virtually unanimous Jordanian consensus against it.

Batir Wardum, a very smart Jordanian writer who often takes (thoughtful, polite, and very welcome) issue with my pessimism about Jordanian politics, commented in the course of defending Jordan's stability that "The only fear for Jordan is for the USA to exert pressure on the King to act as Israel's gate keeper in the west bank which will polarize the Jordanian populations."   I basically agree with that.  If the US is stupid enough to force the West Bank onto Abdullah - who probably would not be able to say no to his primary constituency, should it come to that - then I think Jordan is probably doomed.  It's really up to the United States to make sure that it does not come to that - folks, this is not the time to try and play a longshot.

Oh, by the way, here's a question which came up, which honestly hadn't even occurred to me despite all my famous Jordan pessimism.  A few years ago, King Abdullah removed Hussein's son Hamza from the line of succession (despite what were supposed to have been promises to the contrary).  To the best of my knowledge (and that of my Jordanian friends last night), he has not since announced any formal successor.  So what happens if Abdullah takes a bullet, or chokes on a chicken bone, or has a heart attack, or has his plane shot down as he visits Amman?   Why is there no Crown Prince - or is there?  Who exactly would navigate Jordan through the succession crisis which would follow?  Abdullah's thirteen year old son?  Rania?  Mohamed Dahabi?  Ambassador Hale?

a swell idea whose time always comes

Ian Bremmer the other day heralded the latest bout of "Jordan Option" trial balloons which always float when the going gets tough in Palestine:

Debate has begun in Palestinian and Jordanian newspapers - and in official circles on both sides of the Jordan river - over a plan to incorporate West Bank Palestinians into a confederation with Jordan, creating a kind of bi-national state with two governing assemblies.

Since I've been arguing for many years now that there is "no Jordan option," I might be expected to say the same thing now.  But... here's the thing.  The non-existence of a Jordan option rested on the argument that a national consensus in Jordan had been achieved on the severing of ties between Jordan and the West Bank - achieved in the 1991 National Pact, and then consolidated in the 1994 peace treaty with Israel.  This consensus extended from powerful East Bank nationalists through the main Palestinian movements.  Even Hamas, which never officially recognized the severing of ties, in practice honored it - with containing the Hamas trend being one of the main services Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood provided to the regime.  It was one of the main domestic selling points of Jordan's peace treaty with Israel that it supposedly offered a final Israeli recognition that "Jordan is Jordan and not Palestine."   

That consensus is as strong as ever, in some ways.  The Jordanian public debate which Bremmer referenced has actually not been much of a debate - from what I've seen, it has been lots of columnists and politicians lining up to warn against any return to Palestine or confederation schemes (al-Ghad editor Ayman Safadi's piece yesterday, for instance, which labeled confederation a defeat for Jordan and for Palestinians and a victory for Israel).  The difference now, however, is that King Abdullah simply doesn't care in the slightest about Jordanian public opinion.  Unlike King Hussein, who for all his political flaws carefully monitored opinion in his kingdom and kept in close touch with trends, Abdullah doesn't seem to care much about the opinion of anyone other than his small team of Western-oriented advisors (the PowerPoint team) and his constituency in Washington.  Since he put an end to the political crisis of 2004-2005, he has overseen a steady de-liberalization of the Kingdom, cracking down on public freedoms and going after the Islamist movement aggressively, with nary a peep from the Bush administration.  Public opposition to the so-called Jordan option is as strong as ever, but the ability of public opinion to constrain Jordanian policy has dramatically shrunk.

On the Palestinian side, Mahmoud Abass may find himself with so few options, and so desperate to save his own (and Fatah's) skin that he's willing to do anything - even confederation with Jordan.  No, this wouldn't be popular with Palestinians, but what does public opinion have to do with it?   Fatah isn't popular either - don't believe the idea that Hamas rules Gaza while Fatah dominates the West Bank.  Memories of Fatah's corrupt and ineffective rule of the Palestinian Authority haven't faded, and its open and close relations with the US and Israel won't endear Fatah to many Palestinians.  Pushed to the wall, Abass might even go along with this out of a lack of options. 

Hamas, for its part, might see less reason to honor its side of the old bargain under current conditions - hence the importance of Khaled Mishal's conversation with radical Jordanian nationalist Nahid Hattar, in which he tried to reassure Jordanians that it would.  There is a lively debate in the Jordanian press about the future relations between a Hamas which controls Gaza and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, even if there isn't really one about confederation.

Finally, in Israel there's always been a Likud interest in pushing the Jordan option, which could return with Netanyah, and the Bush administration has never been shy of figures aligned with the Likud. 

It wouldn't work, of course.  It wouldn't solve Palestinian aspirations, and wouldn't solve Palestinian problems.  Quite the contrary - it would remove what little buffer remains protecting Jordan from Palestine's problems.   It quite probably would be the straw which finally breaks the Hashemite back. I know that everyone's been predicting Jordan's collapse for so many decades that everyone stops paying attention, but things are changing fast across the region. The country's already reeling with the effects of the Iraq crisis, which has transformed large chunks of the country (extending into Amman) into an extension of Iraq.  The Palestinian crisis has been tearing up Jordanian politics, and right now most Jordanians just want to keep their country out of the way.  If Abdullah's dumb enough to pursue this option - which, in effect, means that if American officials are dumb enough to push him to pursue it -  that won't be an option.   But after years and years of the Bush administration seizing every opportunity to make stupid mistakes which make things worse in the region, how confident can we be that it won't?

Jordan's MB: Amb Hale, press law, and the Shia

Last week, the minor Jordanian newspaper al-Diyar published a story attributing several interesting remarks to Ambassador David Hale during a meeting with tribal leaders:  that the Jordanian tribes should confront Islamists in the upcoming Parliamentary elections, and that Jordan's Islamists had been insufficiently tough on Iran and the Shia menace.   Salem al-Falahat, head of the Muslim Brotherhood of Jordan, blasted Hale on both counts:  first, Jordan's tribes are deeply connected to the Islamist movement, making his call both absurd and a deeply offensive intervention in Jordan's internal affairs; and second, Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood had been plenty tough on Iran, pointing to its statement denouncing Iran last month.  The story escalated, with various Islamist figures and newspapers piling on, an IAF Member of Parliament raising the issue in session, and a prominent tribal leader sending a rare letter of complaint to the US Embassy ( "the tribes of Hashemite Jordan do not need American advice").  The Embassy denied the report, saying that the meeting in question never even happened.    Was this a case of a very clumsy, downright stupid, American intervention in Jordanian politics, or a case of a Jordanian paper distorting events and causing a minor Jordanian-American political crisis out of nothing?  Or a little of both?   Or part of a MB electoral strategy?  I'm trying to find out.

Whatever it is, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood lost a lot of potential political allies in Jordan with its pathetic role in the recent  press and publications law struggle, where it bitterly disappointed reformists by siding with the government's repressive version.   Evidently they decided that punishing offenses against religion was more important than protecting freedom of the press.  I guess that leaves it free to fight to force Jordanian officials to "speak in the language of the Quran" and stop using English in the schools... the really important issues facing the Kingdom.   Pathetic.  It led Batir Wardum to revisit the IAF's seemingly impressive political reform document issued a while back:  what happened to those fine sentiments, he asks?   Because to Wardum, it now looks like the MB wants to reserve freedom of expression to itself and to deny it to others.

One other note.  I saw this report on Salem al-Falahat on al-Arabiya about the Shia in Jordan.  Falahat denied specific allegations of "Shia-ization" among the ranks of the MB in the Baqaa refugee camp, but then confirmed that there was political Shia-ization going on.  He warned against exaggeration, saying that there were no Shia conversions going on in Jordan because of the strength of Sunni conviction, but that there was "political Shi'ism" inspired by Hezbollah's success.  The al-Arabiya reporter asked about press reports of Shia'ization in Irbid and Ramtha and on and on - to which Falahat responded that there were half a million or more Iraqis now refugees in Jordan and nobody asked whether they were Sunni or Shia.  He blamed the United States for stirring up the Sunni-Shia tensions, and said directly that "the Sunni are not converting to Shi'ism."  And all of this ran under a headline "Guide of Jordan's Ikhwan: reality of Shia-ization of Ikwhan ranks and Shia penetration.. confirms the existence of political Shi'aization."  At first I thought that the Jordanian MB was out of step with the Egyptian MB, which has been trying to dampen down Sunni-Shia tensions. But after reading the whole piece, it became clear that it was really al-Arabiya trying to stir up those tensions, not the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood.  Which fits right in what I've been saying all along - that most of this alleged Sunni-Shia tension is coming from the top down, driven by the Saudi, Egyptian, and Jordanian regimes and not by a genuine popular upsurge of sectarianism.