JORDAN’S ROLE IN ANTI-I.S. COALITION REMAINS “COMPLICATED” —AS CAPTURED PILOT REPORTEDLY BURNED ALIVE

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Contents:

Jordan's Fight Against the Islamic State Remains Complicated: David Schenker, Weekly Standard, Jan. 14, 2015— In a grim interview last month with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s online magazine Dabiq, Moath al Kasasbah—the Jordanian pilot shot down and captured during a recent bombing run over Syria—was asked if he knew what ISIS would do to him. “Yes,” he said, “they will kill me.”

ISIS Tactics Questioned as Hostages Dwindle: Rod Norland, New York Times, Feb. 1, 2015 — The extremists of the Islamic State managed to parlay their Japanese and Jordanian hostages into 12 days of worldwide publicity.

With Friends Like Jordan, Israel Doesn't Need Enemies: Mike Fegelman, National Post, Dec. 13, 2015— On Nov. 18, two Palestinian terrorists entered a Jerusalem synagogue armed with pistols, meat cleavers, knives and axes.

Muslims and Islamists: Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, Jan. 20, 2014— The terrorism in Paris is yet another bad chapter in an ongoing Western debate over a seeming paradox.

On Topic Links

Jordan Says Ambassador to Return to Israel: Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2014

Jordanian Opposition to Fight Against Islamic State Grows More Vocal: Maria Abi-Habib & Suha Ma’ayeh, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2014

Jordan's Deal With Isil Sets a Dangerous Precedent: Con Coughlin, Telegraph, Jan. 28, 2015

Tribal Loyalties Drive Jordan’s Effort to Free Pilot: Rod Nordland &  Ranya Kadri, New York Times, Jan. 31, 2015            

JORDAN'S FIGHT AGAINST THE ISLAMIC STATE REMAINS COMPLICATED                                         

David Schenker                                                                                                    

Weekly Standard, Jan. 14, 2015

In a grim interview last month with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s online magazine Dabiq, Moath al Kasasbah—the Jordanian pilot shot down and captured during a recent bombing run over Syria—was asked if he knew what ISIS would do to him. “Yes,” he said, “they will kill me.” Regrettably, Kasasbah is probably correct. Although he is a devout Sunni Muslim who reportedly made the Haj to Mecca just prior to his fateful sortie, ISIS shows little compunction in dispatching its co-religionists. And if Kasasbah wasn’t already doomed, Jordan’s pivotal role—serving a regional base for air operations—in the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition likely sealed his fate.

Jordan’s first military casualty at the hands of ISIS executioners could complicate Amman’s already unpopular involvement in the coalition. Many if not most Jordanians oppose the central role the kingdom is playing in the campaign against ISIS. Among the nearly 98 percent of Jordan's population that is Sunni Muslim, there is broad sympathy for the revolt in Syria against the nominally Shiite Assad regime. To date, more than 200,000 mostly Sunnis have been killed in the war, in which ISIS stands as the most militarily effective rebel force. Perhaps because of this dynamic, according to a poll published in September by the Center for Strategic Studies at University of Jordan, only 62 percent of Jordanians consider ISIS to be a terrorist organization.

To be sure, Jordanians understand that ISIS's goal of establishing a region-wide caliphate incorporates the kingdom. Although, security forces in the kingdom have already arrested hundreds of suspected ISIS members and sympathizers, at present the dominant view–articulated last year by twenty-one members of parliament and by an increasingly popular Jordanian Twitter hashtag–is that "This war is not our war." Whose war is it? Jordanian Islamists say the objective of the fight against ISIS is to protect Israel and is yet another American "campaign against Islam." According to prominent left-wing Jordanian columnist Lamis Andoni, Jordan has been blackmailed into participating. Involvement in American wars, she wrote on December 30, has become "an implicit prerequisite for economic growth and [the continued] flow of aid" to Jordan. Not everyone in Jordan agrees with Andoni, but her column highlights the sensitivities of the anti-ISIS campaign–and the capture of Kasasbah–for the Jordanian government.

Jordan, never well known for transparency, has been especially reticent to discuss details of its role in coalition operations and is saying even less about Kasasbah. Like the vast majority of his fellow troops, Kasasbah hails from a Jordanian tribe, the segment of the population long considered the most loyal to the monarchy. Until recently, Amman had been trying to quietly negotiate his release via cross-border tribal contacts. Not surprisingly, though, the effort fell short as ISIS was demanding Jordan’s withdrawal from the coalition in return for the safe return of the pilot. Just days ago, unconfirmed reports suggested that U.S. forces had entered ISIS-controlled Raqqa in an aborted attempt to rescue Kasasbah. Given his likely fate, few would criticize Washington and Amman for trying, but the operation was nonetheless a big risk. After all, if Kasasbah had been killed during the mission, it could refocus blame on the government and generate a new round of anti-U.S. recrimination.

For the time being, at least, it appears that Kasasbah's capture is generating a rally-around the flag effect in Jordan. "Suddenly," Jordanian political analyst Oraib Rantawi recently observed, "most if not all of Jordanian families felt like they had a son named Moath Kasasbah." Regardless of whether one agrees with or opposes the war on ISIS, Rantawi says, Jordan is witnessing "a higher degree of cohesion and unity behind the army, the air force, and Moath and his family." In the short term, this "we are all Moath" sentiment will buoy support for Jordanian kinetic operations against ISIS in neighboring Syria. But after Moath is gone–beheaded or somehow miraculously returned home alive to his family the kingdom–Jordanians are likely to resume their criticism of the government and the King’s palace for what they believe to be an ill-advised and open-ended campaign. Meanwhile, as Jordanian casualties inevitably mount, so too will domestic—and perhaps even tribal–opposition to Jordan’s involvement.

Much like al Qaeda’s 2005 hotel bombings in Amman turned an ambivalent population against Bin Laden, it’s possible that a successful ISIS terrorist attack in Jordan would shift public opinion in favor of the war. It’s equally conceivable, however, is that such an attack would be seen as retaliation for the kingdom’s coalition activities. Threatened by ISIS and beholden to Washington, Jordan will continue to play a critical role in the coalition. But the kingdom’s involvement comes with a cost. Absent significant progress in rolling back ISIS, participation in the coalition joins a growing list of popular Jordanian grievances that include a moribund economy, the deal to purchase natural gas from Israel, planned construction of two nuclear power plants, and endemic corruption. Given the slow tempo of air operations and the ongoing territorial expansion of ISIS, the war is likely to remain a source of contention in the kingdom for some time.                              

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ISIS TACTICS QUESTIONED AS HOSTAGES DWINDLE                                                               

Rod Norland                                                                                                         

New York Times, Feb. 1, 2015

The extremists of the Islamic State managed to parlay their Japanese and Jordanian hostages into 12 days of worldwide publicity. But other than depleting their supply of foreign hostages, did they really accomplish anything? Analysts who study terrorist groups were skeptical, and many said the militants’ tactics had backfired badly, particularly in Jordan. The extremists apparently killed two Japanese men, but failed to achieve either of their professed goals: $200 million in ransom, and the release of a female Iraqi suicide bomber from death row in Jordan.

Their threat to kill a captive Jordanian air force pilot (and their failure to produce evidence that he was alive) did not achieve the intended effect of undermining support for Jordan’s role in the international coalition bombing the Islamic State. Now even skeptical Jordanians have begun rallying around their government’s position and denouncing the extremists. That shift comes as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has nearly run out of Western or other foreign hostages, as fewer aid workers and journalists dare to enter Syrian territory. Last August, when the American-led bombing campaign began, the group held at least 23 Western hostages; now they are believed to have four hostages viewed as prominent internationally, including two Westerners. The extremists continue to hold an untold number of Syrians. Over the weekend, the group released a video showing the apparent beheading of the journalist Kenji Goto, who was captured when he went to Syria last October in a bid to find Haruna Yukawa, a Japanese adventurer who disappeared there in August. A video showing a still image of Mr. Yukawa beheaded was released by the group on Jan. 24. Beginning on Jan. 20, Mr. Goto was forced by his captors to plead for his life, directing those entreaties at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe…Mr. Abe responded that Japan “will cooperate with the international community and make the terrorists pay the price.” He added, “I’m outraged by the despicable terrorist act, and I will never forgive the terrorists.”

Jordanian officials were more circumspect, as their pilot remains at the extremists’ whim. Jordan’s offer to trade him for the suicide bomber, Sajida al-Rishawi, remains on the table. But Jordanian society underwent a sea change in its attitude toward the coalition last week, as the fate of the pilot, First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, transfixed the country and its powerful tribes. Even many Jordanians who at the beginning of the week said the hostage crisis showed they were involved in someone else’s war seemed to change their minds, especially after the horrible images of Mr. Goto’s killing emerged. “From Day 1 of Jordan joining the coalition against ISIS, part of our people believed it’s not our war,” said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies here. “Another part felt that sooner or later it will be, so it’s better to fight them in the backyard of another country than in our own bedrooms.” “Moaz is in every bedroom in Jordan now,” said Naif al-Amoun, a member of Jordan’s Parliament who is from Lieutenant Kasasbeh’s hometown, Karak. “We are not going to let anyone exploit this issue to turn us against the government.” Mr. Amoun added, “In the last couple of days, the treatment of the pilot backfired against ISIS. Instead of dividing Jordan, Jordanians are more united behind their government.”

Ora Szekely, a political scientist at Clark University in Massachusetts who studies extremist groups like ISIS, said that nonstate actors like the Islamic State “are much less coherent and cohesive than they want us to think they are.” Since the extremists seemed to have no coherent strategy in how they handled the Japanese and Jordanian hostages, their most likely goal was public relations — and it was a flop, she said. “There is a certain amount of making this up as they go along.” “Killing the second Japanese was a big mistake and they got nothing for it,” said Clark McCauley, a psychology professor at Bryn Mawr College who studies political radicalization. “These people are in many ways their own worst enemies. You just have to give them time and space and their extremity will alienate their own base.” Hassan Abu Hanieh, an Amman-based political analyst who follows extreme Islamist groups, cautioned that the Islamic State still has the pilot — assuming he is alive — and may well use his fate to try to shift Jordanian public opinion. Jordan is one of four Arab countries participating in airstrikes against ISIS. While ISIS cares little about public opinion in Japan — or Britain or the United States, two other countries whose nationals have been beheaded — Jordan is a different matter. “It has goals for expansion into Jordan, and when ISIS realized this is a losing game on their end, they stopped the game and killed the Japanese, but not Lt. Kasasbeh,” Mr. Hanieh said.

Other than the Jordanian pilot, ISIS is known to be holding two Western hostages: the British journalist John Cantile, who has made a series of videotaped speeches on behalf of ISIS, and an American female aid worker, whose identity is being kept confidential. Another female aid worker from an undisclosed country is also being held. In addition, three staff workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross disappeared in October 2013, although no information has been released about their identities or who abducted them. The Islamic State reportedly has been paid millions of dollars in ransom for its hostages, particularly in the past six months, making hostage-taking an important form of financing. As one journalist working along the border between Turkey and Syria put it recently, “Journalists in Syria are seen as walking bags of money.”…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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WITH FRIENDS LIKE JORDAN, ISRAEL DOESN'T NEED ENEMIES                                                               

Mike Fegelman                                                                                                            

National Post, Dec. 13, 2014

On Nov. 18, two Palestinian terrorists entered a Jerusalem synagogue armed with pistols, meat cleavers, knives and axes. They murdered five Israelis — four rabbis and a police officer — and injured over a half dozen others, including a Canadian-Israeli dual citizen. One would expect that such a shocking attack perpetrated against innocents in a place of worship would be universally condemned. And yet, the Jordanian parliament commemorated the attack by observing a moment of silence and reading verses from the Koran to pay respects for the two Palestinian terrorists who were killed. Though the Jordanian government officially condemned the deadly terror attack, its parliament honoured the attackers.

According to the Jerusalem Post, a Jordanian member of parliament rose during the proceedings and proclaimed, “In regards to the martyrs that smashed and murdered the Zionists, I am asking for this respected parliament to stand up and read the Al-Fatiha [the prayer at the beginning of the Koran] to glorify their pure souls and to glorify the souls of all the of the martyrs in the Arab and Islamic nation.” Following the motion, members of parliament stood for 60 seconds and venerated the terrorists. To view this act as nothing short of a gesture of hostility would be an understatement. Imagine the inverse occurring. Heaven forbid that an Israeli would enter a mosque in the Palestinian territories and slaughter innocent Muslims at prayer. You would never see members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, paying their respects to Israeli terrorists. In sharp contrast, their actions would be forcefully denounced.

And yet, two Jordanian MPs recently went on national Jordanian television praising the synagogue attacks and spewing vile antisemitism by referring to Jews as the “descendants of apes and pigs.” The Times of Israel notes that Jordanian “public figures regularly rebuke the Jewish state and voice anti-Semitic rhetoric on Jordanian media.” With media outlets worldwide transfixed on the daily conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, what’s evaded the media’s spotlight is the increased friction between Israel and Jordan — two countries that forged a just, lasting and comprehensive peace treaty in 1994 and who engage in substantive trade, tourism and who co-operate on sensitive security issues on a daily basis. It’s important to note that Jordanian security forces recently arrested 20 men who were suspected to be forming a terror group that was planning on smuggling weapons to be used in terror attacks against Israelis.

Recently, controversy erupted over Israeli access to what Jews refer to as the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary. Palestinian Arabs have clashed with Israeli forces, claiming the Jews should be prevented from praying at Judaism’s holiest site. Yet, the status quo continues to be observed by Israeli authorities: Israeli Jews can visit the site, but are expressly forbidden from praying there. Under the terms of the 1994 peace treaty, Jordan is recognized as the custodian of holy sites in east Jerusalem and the King of Jordan is responsible for the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf trust that administers the site. Recently, the Jordanian government sent an official letter to Israel warning against making any changes to this status quo. Meanwhile, Israel’s top envoy to Jordan warned that the two country’s peace treaty was at risk of collapse, due to the clashes around Jerusalem’s holy shrines. Many experts dismiss the fraying of relations between the two countries as nothing more than hyperbolic rhetoric intended for domestic consumption. Even though Jordan claims it will not annul its peace treaty with Israel, the tensions that it itself has exacerbated have only served to undermine the peace that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Israel forged years ago.                      

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MUSLIMS AND ISLAMISTS                                                                           

Victor Davis Hanson                                                                                                                        

National Review, Jan. 20, 2015

The terrorism in Paris is yet another bad chapter in an ongoing Western debate over a seeming paradox. Almost all recent global terrorism is attributable to Islamic-inspired violence — much of it directed against Muslims. And yet the vast majority of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims do not directly aid and abet the spate of Islamic extremism. How then to focus on the Islamic terrorists without polluting the surrounding sea in which these sharks swim? Do history’s radical movements assume initial or even ongoing popular majorities to ensure their viability? Obviously, the vast majority of Germans, Japanese, Italians, and Russians did not support the extremists who came to power with Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, and Lenin.

Indeed, besides carrying out the Holocaust against the Jews, Hitler killed thousands of his own Germans, an array of homosexuals, Communists, domestic critics, and the physically handicapped. Stalin caused more deaths among his own fellow Soviet citizens in the Twenties and Thirties than the Wehrmacht later did. The point is that extremist movements, even when they become strong enough to reach power, are not always particularly kind to their own or well liked among them. That Muslim radicals kill Muslims in their midst does not necessarily mean that they do not prefer to kill non-Muslims. The continued influence of radical Muslims who engage in terrorism hinges on whether they bring power, prestige, and resources to the people that they otherwise usually oppress. Islamic theocrats control governments only in the Gulf, Iran, and Gaza, and are trying to cobble together a caliphate largely in Syria and Iraq. Turkey likewise is moving toward theocracy. But Islamists are active, both above and below the radar, in almost every Muslim-majority nation — and they can manage this even where they enjoy very little popular support.

A great deal of attention has been given to radically changing views toward Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, after the disintegration of Syria and the rise of the Islamic State, along with the bloody rampage of Boko Haram in central Africa. But what is even more striking is the large minorities who still either are willing to state their support for terrorists or say they are unconcerned about their activity. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, Muslim support for suicide bombing has dropped in recent years. Yet even so, in 2014 in major Islamic countries — Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan — somewhere between 18 and 46 percent of the population expressed approval for the proposition that suicide bombing against civilian targets can “often/sometimes be justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies.”

The vast majority of Muslims no longer express support for the late Osama bin Laden, but sizable minorities in some countries still do: 15 percent in Egypt, 23 percent in Bangladesh, and 25 percent in Palestine. The polls suggest two disturbing possibilities. In a world of 1.5 billion Muslims, perhaps 150 million Muslims worldwide — 10 percent — still admire bin Laden, are not concerned about Islamic violence, and support suicide bombing against the perceived enemies of Islam. While Muslim majorities are beginning to react negatively to the escalating violence in their own midst, millions still do not. In a historical sense, under political and religious systems that tolerate no dissent — it is still a capital crime in most Muslim countries to slander the Prophet Mohammed or to become an apostate from Islam — it is hard to assess what percentage of the population at any given time supports radical leadership. Hitler was extremely popular with the German people after the fall of France in June 1940, but he was generally disliked by mid 1944, the time of the heavy bombing of German cities, the invasion of Normandy, and the collapsing German front in the East. Yet throughout those years, the Allies nonetheless used the inexact rubric “Germans” without concern for the fact that over the duration of the war sometimes many, sometimes very few Germans supported what was done by the Third Reich in the name of Germany. Just as foreigners more recently talked inclusively of “Americans” without regard for Republicans or Democrats, who had far different views by 2006 on the Iraq war, and as people speak of “Christians” to mean everyone from Southern Baptists to Brazilian Catholics, so it is just as legitimate or illegitimate to generalize about “Muslims.”

In 2003, substantial numbers of people in many Muslim countries expressed “confidence” in Osama bin Laden — 46 percent in Pakistan, 56 percent in Jordan, 59 percent  in Indonesia, 72 percent in Palestine (all these countries recipients of U.S. aid). Those favorability ratings declined significantly after the terrorist hijackings of the so-called Arab Spring, the internecine wars in Lebanon, the collapse of Syria, the crimes of Boko Haram, and the rise of the Islamic State. Was it politically correct to say that “Muslims” supported terrorism in 2003 because a clear majority in places like moderate Jordan so polled? Clearly polls are not the only evidence of the level of support for Islamic-inspired radicalism. More important can be the degree of passivity of the population. General Sisi of Egypt recently argued that the Muslim clerical establishment bore a great deal of responsibility for global Islamic terrorism, not because these clerics necessarily voiced support for it, but because they were unwilling or unable to mobilize Muslims against it. I can recall meeting with a group of Libyan exiles living in the United States in 2006, all of whom were highly educated, Americanized professionals. They voiced optimism that their former tormentor Qaddafi was liberalizing their country and offering hope of recreating a civil society even for secularized dissidents like themselves. But when I mentioned the then-current case of the Islamic attacks against those associated with the caricatures of Mohammed in the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten, all four Libyans voiced unanimous approval of the violence against such blasphemers. And when I asked them about the then-recent suicide bombings in Israel, they again voiced support for such activities.

So far, international polling organizations have not conducted surveys in Muslim countries to ascertain popular attitudes about the attack on Charlie Hebdo. However, we should not be surprised if sizable minorities should voice their support. I would assume that a certain number of Muslims worldwide — perhaps the 150 million posited above — would admire the so-called martyrs whose terrorist acts were thought to be in service to the reputation of the prophet. While there is great talk in the West that it is only a small minority of Muslims who support Islamic terrorism, and that the remedy for such terrorism must be found within the world of Islam, there is not much logical or historical evidence that such truisms matter much. Ten percent is a tiny minority of any population. But if 10 percent of Muslims worldwide support ongoing terrorist movements, that is still 150 million Muslims, who comprise a large enough pool to aid and abet terrorism, either by giving moral and financial support or by acting as pressure groups within mostly autocratic political systems…

[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]

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On Topic

Jordan Says Ambassador to Return to Israel: Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2014—A spokesman for Jordan’s government says its ambassador will return to Israel after he was pulled over growing confrontations at a hilltop site in Jerusalem holy to both Jews and Muslims.

Jordanian Opposition to Fight Against Islamic State Grows More Vocal: Maria Abi-Habib & Suha Ma’ayeh, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2014—Jordan’s effort to win the freedom of a pilot captured by Islamic State is exposing growing opposition here to the government’s involvement in the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremist group.

Jordan's Deal With Isil Sets a Dangerous Precedent: Con Coughlin, Telegraph, Jan. 28, 2015 —The dramatic offer by the Jordanian authorities to hand over a convicted female suicide bomber to Islamic State (Isil) in return for one of their captured pilots is a deeply disappointing development for all those countries, such as Britain, that continue to uphold the principle of never negotiating with terrorists.

Tribal Loyalties Drive Jordan’s Effort to Free Pilot: Rod Nordland &  Ranya Kadri, New York Times, Jan. 31, 2015—It is often said that in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan all politics is tribal.

Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org

Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com