Jordan

Before ascending to the throne in 1999, Prince Abdullah had a reputation as a bit of a lightweight, a Prince Hal with a vaguely Falstaffian cast of friends who drove fast cars and enjoyed the company of women.

His ascension to the throne came as a surprise. His father, King Hussein — who ruled Jordan for 46 years and enjoyed near adoration of his people — named Abdullah as his successor only two weeks before his death. The next king was supposed to be Crown Prince Hassan, the youngest brother of King Hussein.

2011: A Country On Edge

Buffeted by the forces at play across the region — rising prices, a bulging underemployed youth population, the rapid spread of information and resentment, an unaccountable autocracy — Jordan was a country on edge. What was most striking was that the very system of the monarchy seemed open to question.

In January 2011, thousands took to the streets in the capital, Amman, as well as several other cities, in demonstrations that were the first serious challenge to the rule of King Abdullah. Because direct criticism of the king is banned, the focus was on his government. Demonstrators protested against economic hardship, a common refrain across the region, with banners decrying high food and fuel prices. They attacked corruption, restrictions on freedom of political expression and reductions in government subsidies; they also demanded the right to elect the prime minister, who is currently appointed by the king. The protests were led by the Islamic Action Front, but included leftists and trade unions. 

In a bid to tamp down some of the frustration, the king announced $125 million in subsidies for basic goods and fuel and an increase in civil servant pay.

In early February, King Abdullah dismissed his cabinet and prime minister in a surprise move meant to calm street protests that had been fueled by the economic crisis.

Demonstrations remained peaceful until March 24, when at least one man died when government supporters attacked a tent camp that pro-democracy protesters had set up in the center of Amman, the Jordanian capital, in conscious imitation of Tahrir Square in Cairo. The violence stopped when security forces intervened, and a week later a new round of demonstrations went off peacefully.

In June 2011, King Abdullah announced that the government would in the future be elected, not appointed, responding to a demand of protesters calling for democratic change. But the statement failed to specify any timetable for the change.

In October 2011, under growing pressure to accelerate political reform and anticorruption measures, King Abdullah fired his government again. Changing cabinets was not new for King Abdullah. In his 12 years on the throne, he had done so eight times.

Jordan’s new prime minister was Awn Khasawneh, who was a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague since 2000. He was also a former chief of the royal court and a legal adviser to Jordan when it negotiated its peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

2012: Protests Appear in Tribal Areas

King Abdullah has long faced critics among urban liberals and Islamist fundamentalists who have called for change in the country’s political and economic systems. But  public protests have been occurring outside of cities in tribal areas, which are part of the monarchy’s most supportive base.

In late January, a crowd of 150 protesters unfurled banners and began chanting protests against the country’s leadership in its palaces and government offices far below the precipices of the ancient fortress town of Karak.

“We want social justice,” the crowd chanted after Friday prayers, reading from a handwritten list of political, economic and social grievances. “Real elections,” they shouted. “I’m a citizen, not a beggar.”

Such public criticism of Jordan’s monarchy would have been unthinkable just a year previously among these tribesmen of the heartland.

But the protest in Karak was not intended to topple the monarchy. Unlike in Cairo or Tunis, the demonstrators called for overhauling the system, not bringing it down. No one appeared scared, or deterred, as the secret police recorded the protesters, who belonged to the same families from which the nation’s security officers have long been recruited.

“Until this moment, we believe all the authority in the country is with the king and the people have no will,” said a former member of Parliament who was in the crowd. “Our main purpose is to return authority to the people and to have a monarchy similar to that in Britain, a constitutional monarchy.”

Attempting to Revive Peace Talks

In early January 2012, Jordan was host to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, who were meeting for the first time in more than a year in an effort to revive moribund peace talks. However, none of the sides involved suggested any reason to view the meeting as a sign of significant progress. Palestinian officials reported little or no progress in the meetings and, on Jan. 25, Mr. Abbas said that discussions had ended.

King Abdullah had been taking an unusually active role in the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the months leading up to the talks. In November 2011, he made a rare visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah to see Mr. Abbas. A week later, he invited President Shimon Peres of Israel to Amman for a meeting.

The higher profile was partly an effort to fill a vacuum left by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Mr. Mubarak, who was a central backer of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and had good relations with Israel, often acted as a mediator to spur the two sides to improve their relations.

The king has an interest in a moderate Palestinian state being established in the West Bank and Gaza. He has tensions with Islamists in his own country and he does not want to encourage any thoughts of a Palestinian state being established in Jordan instead, as some on the Israeli right advocate.

‘Between Iraq and a Hard Place’

With Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite tension to its east and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the western border, Jordan is situated precariously — or, as King Abdullah likes to say, “Between Iraq and a hard place.” There are also tensions between East Bankers, the country’s original residents, who take their name from the nation’s location along the River Jordan, and the millions of Palestinians who have arrived in successive waves and are now a majority of the population.

Fear is also one of the main reasons that Jordan has remained calm, analysts said. The bloodshed in Syria dominates the television coverage in Jordan, where many families share tribal bonds with Syrians.

“It doesn’t suit any party in Jordan — East Bankers, West Bankers, right-wingers, left-wingers, anybody — to have the regime fall,” said one analyst. “Especially with what we have seen in our neighborhood as a result of the chaos that started with the Iraq war and that continued with the Arab Spring.”

There is another factor unique to Jordan: the deep-seated fear among both East Bankers and Jordanian Palestinians that if Jordan disintegrates, outsiders may try to turn it into a Palestinian state.

Maintaining the delicate balance between the East Bankers and those Palestinians is a matter of utmost importance to many Jordanians, and anything perceived to be a threat to that balance draws strong reaction across the political spectrum.

Jordan Struggles to Absorb Refugees From Syria

Estimates by the United Nations in September 2012 put the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan at more than 85,000. A majority of the refugees are under 18 years old.

The flood of refugees is straining the limited resources of both the Jordanian government and aid agencies. Jordan has witnessed waves of refugees in the past, but this one is particularly dire.

Many of the refugees are at the Zaatari camp in northern Jordan, which was set up in summer 2012. Run by the United Nations, the Zaatari camp accommodates more than 30,000 people.

Located in a remote desert, it is a vast city of white tents turned yellow by lashing sand that quickly coats clothes, faces and young lungs with a thick layer of fine dust. Gales and cyclones of sand blow through the endless avenues of tents, and the provision of water, electricity, bathrooms and other amenities still trails the soaring population.

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