Jordan survives a year amid turbulence

AMMAN, Jordan, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The small kingdom of Jordan survived another year amid the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, its eastern neighbor, and despite the continued Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed across its western border.

The biggest challenge for the pro-American regime and its government has been containing growing popular anger at the U.S. occupation of Iraq, including the American military assaults, and the general discontent with the continued Israeli attacks on Palestinians.

The government has largely succeeded in preventing such sentiments from creating an internal crisis, mostly by boosting security presence across the country and restricting mosque imams from "instigating hatred and violence."

In September, the authorities cracked down on prominent Muslim Brotherhood clerics by arresting several of them on charges of giving sermons without licenses, but the Interior Ministry said at the time that it would no longer tolerate sermons that "incite violence against Western targets and inflame anti-U.S. feelings."

The Islamists, which lead 14 opposition parties that include leftists and pan-Arab nationalists, accused the authorities of acting on U.S. instructions to curb all opposition from speaking out against the American occupation of Iraq and U.S. support for Israel.

The government, however, managed to defuse a potential crisis when it agreed to release the clerics and retracted the arrest warrants when the Islamic movement said it would to obtain prior permission from the Islamic Affairs Ministry before speaking in mosques.

Government spokeswoman Asma Khader admitted that the conditions in Iraq and the Palestinian territories had taken a toll on her country, saying that Jordan, where more than half the population is originally Palestinian, had always been affected by instability and conflicts in the region.

In an interview with United Press International in Amman, she said Jordanian society has historically been linked socially, politically and economically with the Iraqi and Palestinian societies.

She said turbulence and "any kind of suffering in the region attracts the attention of the masses (in Jordan) to take different political positions that could enflame instability due to the uncertainty people have for the future, and it could reduce confidence in the stability of Jordan and the region as a whole."

Khader said that was why Amman believed that "practical political progress (at home) cannot be achieved without political stability" in the region.

However, the worsening situation in Iraq has contributed to the Jordanian economy, which registered a 7.4 percent growth in the first three quarters in 2004, the highest in 12 years, thanks to growing Iraqi investments in the kingdom, which survives on foreign assistance.

While the government insists that its benefits would double if Iraq stabilizes, it acknowledged that the war in the country has helped Jordan's economic growth and boost in real estate values. Real estate agents say house prices have soared 35 percent, thanks to the thousands of Iraqis buying homes in Amman to escape the bloodshed and instability in their country.

But Khader insisted that economic cooperation and Iraqi investments in the country had been going on for decades since "Jordan is Iraq's passageway and serves both our societies."

She said the Iraqi input was "one of the factors that contributed to the current economic situation" in the kingdom, but added, "stability of Iraq will double this benefit and will bring more economic activity" between the two neighbors.

Unofficial estimates put the number of Iraqis in Jordan, with a 5.4 million population, at 400,000, but the government said it was difficult to estimate the real number since Iraqis were counted as "foreigners" in the latest census, and that 400,000 was an exaggerated number.

Khader said many Iraqis had come to Jordan -- some stayed legally with residence permits, others invested or used the kingdom as a transit point to travel elsewhere, and many also remained illegally.

But there are around 100,000 Iraqis legally residing in Jordan today, boosting the country's capital by being required to deposit $100,000 in a Jordanian bank to obtain full residency.

That, however, has also raised Jordanian complaints that Iraqis were taking Jordanian jobs, including academic ones. There are an estimated 400 Iraqi professors in the country's state and private universities, happy to take lower salaries that Jordanian academics would not accept.

On this issue, Khader said that while a government decision was recently taken to give priority to Jordanian holders of doctorates to teach in the country's universities and colleges, "Iraqi academic expertise has been invested in Jordan" and local higher education institutions were still in need of the "high Iraqi qualifications."

Meanwhile, although Jordan lost its generous oil grants it had received from Saddam Hussein's regime, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates did not abandon the country and continued to provide the kingdom with oil, either for free or at concessionary prices, as it had received from Saddam's Iraq.

This generosity is largely credited to Washington's persuasion in oil-rich states to keep Jordan as stable as possible -- despite the surrounding violence.