The legacy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Jordan

The New York Times has a story about how the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was killed last summer, has become a breeding ground for jihadists, eager to become suicide bombers in Iraq.

The Times profiles a man using the pseudonym of Abu Ibrahim, 24, and his five friends - all of whom left the Jordan town of Zarqa in the hopes of becoming "martyrs" for the cause of Allah in Iraq.

As the Times reports:

Interviews with Abu Ibrahim and relatives of the other men show that rather than
having been individually recruited by an organization like Mr. Zarqawi’s, they gradually radicalized one another, the more strident leading the way. Local imams led them further toward Iraq, citing verses from the Koran to justify killing civilians. The men watched videos depicting tortured and slain Muslims that are copied from Internet sites.

“The sheik, he was a hero,” Abu Ibrahim said of Mr. Zarqawi. But, he added, “I decided to go when my friends went.” For the final step, getting the phone number of a smuggler and address of a safe house in Iraq, the men used facilitators who act more like travel agents than militant leaders.

“Most of the young people here in Zarqa are very religious,” an Islamist community leader said. “And when they see the news and what is going on in the Islamic countries, they themselves feel that they have to go to fight jihad. Today, you don’t need anyone to tell the young men that they should go to jihad. They themselves want to be martyrs.”

Americans are not the prime targets, incidentally. Iraqi Shiites generate even more antipathy according to the Times' sources:

"They have traditions that are un-Islamic and they hate the Sunnis,” said Ahmad Khalil Abdelaziz Salah, an imam whose mosque in Zarqa was attended by some of
Zarqa’s bombers.

Asked to name his targets, Abu Ibrahim said: “First, the Shiites. Second, the Americans. Third, anywhere in the world where Islam is threatened."

When word reached Zarqa that one of the young men, a nineteen-year-old, became a suicide bomber, his brother sang praises at his crowded funeral. As the Times reports: “They are the best youths and good persons,” [his brother] said. “He was successful in life, but decided to fight the Americans in Iraq.”

Not all family members are thrilled about these youthful aspirations. As the Times writes:

The mother of another of the young men, a 20-year-old engineering student, still believes that her son went to Iraq looking for a job. At the family’s home recently, she sank to her knees, weeping and clutching his physics book.

...His family was large and poor, with 17 children. Going to college gave him a glimpse of opportunities, but he failed to win a scholarship to study medicine in England, the sister said.

“Rich people go to his university,” she said. “He wanted to be somebody and he couldn’t.”

At the same time, he adopted a strict adherence to Islam. “I noticed the change two years ago,” his sister said. “He stopped listening to music. He isolated himself from us. At family gatherings, he sat by himself, thinking.”

And not all imams, incidentally, push these young men to kill themselves in suicide bombings. Mr. Salah, the imam, characterized the moral dilemma for the Times: “If you do a suicide operation, the Muslims are mixed up with non-Muslims and maybe you kill Muslims,” the imam said, suggesting that Muslims can shed non-Muslim blood without compunction.

Zarqa wasn't always such a hotbed of radical Islam, as the Times reports. It was only after the Iraq war got going that the shift took place. As one young woman who only recently started wearing a face veil or niqab told the Times: “Religion was something we just got from our parents. But after the war started, we decided we have to show the world we are Muslims. I started wearing the niqab to show the world I am Muslim.”

It seems the elders are less than thrilled by the youthful intrepretation of piety. As Abu Ibrahim was quoted as saying: “[When] I started to tell [my parents] that God wants us to give up our lives for jihad. They didn’t like it. They told me, ‘You’re still too young, wait.’ You know how mothers and fathers are. They didn’t want to hear such things.”

Even now, after having gone to Iraq where instead of earning martydom by carrying out a suicide bombing, he was imprisoned, he told the Times that his parents are even more insistent that he give up this jihad business.

“Enough, Abu Ibrahim. You tried to go and God doesn’t want you to go. So sit down and get married,” he recalls them telling him. But as the Times goes on to report, Abu Ibrahim remains firm in his commitment: "If we don’t defend our religion who should do it? The old people or the children?”

As the Times goes on to report:

He spends his days now in Zarqa at work with his brothers, then evenings with friends who share his convictions. They visit Islamic Web sites, discuss the news from Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.

“I still have the same aim, fulfilling the rules of God,” he said. “I wouldn’t do the same mistakes the next time and hope that God would open the way.”

How does Jordan manage with the huge influx of Iraqi refugees it is said to have accomodated?

Every time I hear statistics on the number of Iraqi refugees in Jordan - estimated to be 700,000 compared with Jordan's population of 5.6-5.9 million, I wonder how this could be possible. After all, Jordan is not rich. This is how the CIA's World Factbook describes the country:

Jordan is a small Arab country with insufficient supplies of water, oil, and other natural resources. Poverty, unemployment, and inflation are fundamental problems....

According to the World Bank, Jordan (using 2005 statistics) is a lower-middle-income country with a GNI per capita of $2,500.

So how did Jordan absorb an increase in population equal to more than ten percent in less than four years?

The London Guardian, in January reported on the situation in Jordan and quoted one Yusif Agoub, an Iraqi refugee who moved to the capitol, Amman, in 2004 to open the "elegant" Zad al-Kheir: "I am succeeding with the help of our Jordanian brothers, led by His Majesty the King, who make things easy for us. We have a good life here. I would like to go home tomorrow, but it's hard to be optimistic," he was quoted as saying.

According to the Guardian:

The nearby streets in Amman's Umm Udhaina district are a glittering showcase of the wealth that Iraqi exiles like him have brought. The smart new villas and apartment blocks have shady balconies and Filipina maids at work inside.

The few empty plots are for sale or being built on. Iraqi accents dominate in the local mall. Saddam Hussein's daughters and other former Ba'athists keep a low profile. Abdoun, another posh Amman neighbourhood, is now jokingly referred to as Adhamiya - a Sunni area of Baghdad.

"There are some very rich people who stole from Iraq after the war and invested in Jordan," says Rita, who fled Baghdad two years ago with just a small suitcase and counts herself lucky to have a Jordanian residency permit and a job.

According to the Guardian, the Iraqi refugees have driven up housing costs and added to Jordan's already high average unemployment of 14 percent.

Jordanians, not surprisingly, are often resentful. As the Guardian reports:

One Amman taxi driver cursed as a new SUV with Iraqi plates glided past "I'd like to see him drive that in Baghdad." For Ms Aqari[, another Iraqi living in Jordan,] such attitudes are another depressing sign of terribly changed times for Iraqis. "In Saddam's day the Jordanians used to treat us with respect. Now, they are humiliating us too."

Robert Breen, the head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jordan, told the Guardian:

"The impression of many Jordanians is that the Iraqis here are all wealthy ... and that they are the cause of the inflation and the rising cost of prices in Jordan."

While the figure 700,000 is generally accepted by the media and human rights organizations as the official number of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, as Breen goes on to say, nobody really knows what the exact numbers are:

"The [Iraqi] population here ... is not easy to define. Those that are here illegally maintain a very shadowy existence," explains Mr. Breen. The UNHCR has officially given refugee status to 700 Iraqis and another 20,000 Iraqis are seeking asylum through UNHCR, but there are no official records on how many Iraqis have entered Jordan - let alone remained there - since 2003.

And so it is (to use a Kurt Vonnegut expression): when it comes to Iraq, we can never seem to get precise information.

One does have to wonder whether there is a hidden agenda here in not having gotten at the actual statistics by now.

Israeli fears on what will happen if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq

Israeli daily Haaretz reports:

Israel is worried a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq could topple the Hashemite regime in Jordan, one of the reasons why Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others publicly oppose such a move.

..."Those who are concerned for Israel's security, for the security of the Gulf states and for the stability of the entire Middle East should recognize the need for American success in Iraq, and a responsible exit," Olmert told the AIPAC conference.

One day earlier, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told AIPAC that "in a region where impressions are important, countries must be careful not to demonstrate weakness and surrender to extremists ... It is [also] true for Iraq."