Jordan INTRODUCTION
Figure 1. Administrative Divisions of Jordan, 1989
THE PRESENT KINGDOM of Jordan has had a separate existence for
almost seventy years, from the time of the creation in 1921 of the
Amirate of Transjordan under Abdullah of the Hashimite (also seen
as Hashemite) family, the grandfather of King Hussein. To form
Transjordan, the Palestine Mandate was subdivided along the Jordan
River-Gulf of Aqaba line. At its creation, Jordan was an artificial
entity because inhabitants of northern Jordan have traditionally
associated with Syria, those of southern Jordan have associated
with the Arabian Peninsula, and those of western Jordan have
identified with Palestinians in the
West Bank (see Glossary).
Moreover, the area that constituted Jordan in 1990 has served
historically as a buffer zone between tribes living to the west of
the Jordan River as far as the Mediterranean Sea and those roaming
the desert to the east of the Jordan River. Over the centuries, the
area has formed part of various empires; among these are the
Assyrian, Achaemenid, Macedonian, Nabataean, Ptolemaic, Roman,
Ghassanid, Muslim, Crusader, and Ottoman empires.
Transjordan's creation reflected in large measure a compromise
settlement by the Allied Powers after World War I that attempted to
reconcile Zionist and Arab aspirations in the area. Britain assumed
a mandate over Palestine and Iraq, while France became the
mandatory power for Syria and Lebanon. In a British government
memorandum of 1922, approved by the League of Nations Council,
Jewish settlement in Transjordan was specifically excluded.
As Transjordan moved toward nationhood, Britain gradually
relinquished control, limiting its oversight to financial and
foreign policy matters. In March 1946, under the Treaty of London,
Transjordan became a kingdom and a new constitution replaced the
1928 Organic Law. Britain continued to subsidize the Arab Legion,
a military force established in 1923. In the Arab-Israeli War of
1948, the Arab Legion gained control for Transjordan of the West
Bank, including East Jerusalem. The war added about 450,000
Palestinian Arab refugees as well as approximately 450,000 West
Bank Arabs to the roughly 340,000
East Bank (see Glossary) Arabs in
Jordan. In December 1948, Abdullah took the title King of Jordan,
and he officially changed the country's name to the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949. The following year he annexed the
West Bank.
Abdullah was assassinated in Jerusalem in July 1951. Abdullah's
son, Talal, who was in ill health, briefly succeeded to the throne
before being obliged to abdicate in favor of his son, Hussein, in
1952. Hussein, who had been studying in Britain, could not legally
be crowned until he was eighteen; in the interim he attended the
British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and returned to Jordan
in 1953 to become king.
The survival of Hussein as king of Jordan represents one of the
longest rules in the Arab world, thirty-seven years. Hussein's
survival has entailed a keen sense of what is politically possible;
moving cautiously and seeking to build consensus, he has exercised
skillful diplomacy, both domestically and regionally. For Hussein
survival has involved achieving a balance between more liberal
Palestinians and more traditionally oriented Transjordanians,
particularly the loyal beduin tribes of the East Bank, as well as
negotiating a place for Jordan among the Baathist regimes of Syria
and Iraq, the Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdul Nasser and Egypt's
successor governments, and the conservative rulers of Saudi Arabia
and the Persian Gulf states. Moreover, Jordan has the longest
border with Israel of any Arab state. Although Jordan has never
signed a peace treaty with Israel, having lost the West Bank and
East Jerusalem to Israel in the June 1967 War, Hussein nevertheless
achieved an unofficial working relationship with Israel concerning
the West Bank.
Despite Hussein's preference for cautious consensus, he is
capable of decisive action when the maintenance of Hashimite rule
is threatened. He took such action in connection with the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrilla groups (fedayeen) in
Jordan, based in the refugee camps, who became almost a state
within a state. Intermittent fighting occurred from 1967 onward,
with Israel engaging in reprisal raids against Jordan for fedayeen
operations launched from Jordan, and the fedayeen increasingly
directing their efforts against the Jordanian government rather
than against Israel. Ultimately, in September 1970 a civil war
broke out, martial law was reaffirmed, and as many as 3,500 persons
are thought to have died. Despite various cease-fire agreements,
sporadic fighting continued through July 1971, when the Jordanian
government ordered the fedayeen either to leave Jordan or to assume
civilian status. Isolated by the other Arab states because of its
repression of the fedayeen, Jordan gradually had to repair
relations with those countries because they constituted the major
source of its financial aid.
In the process of maintaining Jordan's tenuous position in the
region, Hussein's basic orientation has been pro-Western; he has
sought economic and military assistance from the United States and
Britain in particular. When arms purchases were blocked by the
United States Congress, however, he did not hesitate to buy weapons
from the Soviet Union. Regionally, following the Arab world's
boycott of Egypt as a result of Anwar as Sadat's signing the Camp
David Accords with Israel in 1978, Hussein sought a more
significant leadership role. Fearful of Syria, which had intervened
in Jordan in 1970, and apprehensive over the 1979 Iranian Islamic
Revolution's destabilizing influence on the area, Hussein strongly
supported Iraq in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and established
friendly relations with Iraqi president Saddam Husayn.
Hussein's precarious balancing act has resulted, to a
significant degree, from Jordan's disparate population. According
to unofficial estimates (the government does not provide a
breakdown of statistics on East Bank and West Bank inhabitants),
from 55 to 60 percent of Jordan's population is Palestinian.
Moreover, in contrast to the strong rural element in Jordan's early
history, according to the
World Bank (see Glossary) in the late
1980s about 70 percent of the population was urban, one-third of
the total residing in the capital of Amman
(see
fig. 1). Tribal
relations characterized pre-1948 Transjordan, extending to village
dwellers and many in the cities as well as rural areas. Such
relations hindered the assimilation of West Bank Palestinians, who
by the 1980s had established substantial economic and cultural
influence in Jordan and who tended to be more liberal regarding the
role of women. The government sought to minimize distinctions
between people from the East Bank and those from the West Bank in
large part by upgrading education; in 1989 Jordan had the highest
number of students per capita of any country except the United
States. A societal problem Jordan faced, however, was the
disrespect for technical education and manual labor as opposed to
academic education. Despite this difficulty, Jordan regarded its
educated work force as its major economic asset. Having such a work
force enabled Jordan to provide skilled and professional workers to
other Arab states, particularly those in the Persian Gulf, and
worker remittances were a leading source of gross national product
(GNP--see Glossary).
In 1988 such remittances exceeded US$1
billion.
Jordan's relatively small population of fewer than 3 million
persons in 1987 resulted in a limited domestic market unable to
achieve economies of scale; thus, Jordan needed to develop export
markets. Apart from its labor force, which the government actively
encouraged to seek work abroad in view of scanty domestic
employment opportunities, Jordan's principal natural resource
consisted of phosphates--it was the world's third largest
phosphates producer--and potash. It also was actively engaged in a
search for oil and gas; small amounts of both had been discovered.
These extractive industries, however, required large capital
investments beyond the capability of Jordan's private sector. In
consequence, the government not only played the key role in
development planning but also became a major economic participant,
ultimately sharing in forty semipublic companies, contrary to its
avowed advocacy of free enterprise. In addition, Jordan benefited
from the Civil War in Lebanon that began in 1975 and the war's
troubled aftermath, which heightened Jordan's role as a provider of
banking, insurance, and professional services formerly supplied by
Lebanon.
Jordan's long-term plans called for economic self-sufficiency,
and the king's brother, Crown Prince Hasan, and the Jordan
Technology Group that he founded in 1988 were key elements in
Jordan's economic endeavors. The surface prosperity of the early
1980s, however, was ended by the downturn of oil prices in the late
1980s, the resulting return home from the Persian Gulf of thousands
of Jordanian workers, the decrease in Arab subsidies to Jordan
(from more than US$1 billion in 1981 to about US$400 million in
1990), and Jordan's increasing debt (estimated in early 1990 at
between US$6 and US$8 billion). Austerity was reflected in the
1988-89 devaluation of the dinar (for value of the
dinar--see Glossary)
by more than 40 percent to counter the black market, the
freezing of the exchange rate, and increased import duties on
luxury goods. These measures, combined with the reduction of
subsidies on many basic commodities to comply with International
Monetary Fund
(IMF--see Glossary)
requirements led to riots by East
Bankers and beduins in several towns in late 1989. Jordan had been
obliged to reduce subsidies as part of an economic stabilization
program so as to qualify for a US$79.3 million IMF credit. IMF loan
endorsement was a precondition for Jordan's rescheduling payment on
many of its outstanding loans and obtaining new loans of more than
US$300 million from the World Bank, Japan, and the Federal Republic
of Germany (West Germany). Furthermore, Jordan was sharply affected
by the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988; during the war, because of
its good transportation facilities, especially between the port of
Al Aqabah and Amman, Jordan served as the primary transshipment
point for goods destined for Iraq.
The development of service industries, of industries involving
import substitution, and of export industries, such as industrial
chemicals and pharmaceuticals that required technical expertise,
was an economic necessity for Jordan because its agricultural
potential was very limited--the greater part of the country is
desert. Moreover, Jordan was facing a water shortage in the near
future. With a population estimated to be growing by at least 3.6
percent per year, plus expanded industrial use of water, some
experts estimated that the demand for water could outstrip supply
by the early 1990s. Jordan's attempt to stimulate exports was a
major factor in its formation in early 1989 of the Arab Cooperation
Council, consisting of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and the Yemen Arab
Republic (North Yemen), with headquarters in Amman. This regional
arrangement, however, promised relatively little economic advantage
because the participants tended to produce similar goods. In spite
of all of its efforts, Jordan continued to rely heavily on foreign
aid, which in the 1980s constituted between 30 and 40 percent
annually of government revenue before borrowing.
Economic reasons thus shaped not only Jordan's domestic
development and employment policies--the government was the largest
single employer, accounting for more than 40 percent of the work
force--but also its foreign policy because of Jordan's dependence
on foreign aid. Although Jordan is a constitutional monarchy, the
king has extensive legal powers that allow him to shape policy by
appointing the prime minister, other cabinet ministers, and the
thirty-member Senate, as well as by dismissing the National
Assembly (composed of the Senate and the eighty-member House of
Representatives) and ruling by decree if he sees fit.
Traditionally, prime ministers have come from East Bank families
loyal to the Hashimites. The House of Representatives originally
had equal representation from both the East Bank and the West Bank;
prior to the elections of November 1989, no general election had
been held for more than twenty-two years (since the June 1967 War)
in view of the impossibility of elections in the Israeli-occupied
West Bank. Experts believe that a major reason for holding the 1989
elections was to defuse discontent, reflected in the 1989 riots,
among beduins and East Bankers traditionally loyal to the crown.
Although martial law remained in effect, the 1989 elections
were free, the king having released all political prisoners in a
general amnesty in the first half of 1989. Elections were preceded
by considerable press criticism of government policies and active
campaigning by 647 candidates. Among the criticisms was that of
disproportionate representation: electoral districts were so drawn
as to give greater weight to rural areas at the expense of cities.
Political parties had been banned since 1957 so candidates ran with
only informal affiliations. To the government's chagrin, twenty
Muslim Brotherhood adherents, fourteen Islamists with other
affiliations, and ten secular antigovernment candidates were
elected, leaving progovernment representatives in the minority. The
success of the Muslim Brotherhood was not surprising because it was
the only organized quasi-political organ participating in the
elections and because the PLO intentionally remained on the
sidelines. The Muslim Brotherhood appealed to the poor particularly
and advocated jihad, or holy war, against Israel to liberate the
West Bank. Many observers believed that the Muslim Brotherhood
garnered protest votes primarily and that genuine Brotherhood
sympathizers were relatively few. It should be noted, however, that
Jordan is an overwhelmingly Muslim country. More than 90 percent of
the population are
Sunni (see Glossary)
Muslims; there are some
Shishans who are
Shia (see Glossary)
Muslims; and the remainder of
the population is made up of a small number of Christians of
various sects, Druzes, and Bahais.
In November 1989, the king named as prime minister Mudar
Badran, considered to have better Islamic links than his
predecessor, Zaid ibn Shakir. Badran succeeded in forming a cabinet
that included two independent Islamists and two leftist
nationalists from the Democratic Bloc, a new informal political
group, but he was obliged to make some concessions to the Muslim
Brotherhood, such as bringing Jordanian law closer to Islamic
sharia law. A major task facing the new government is the drawing
up of the National Charter (Mithaq al Watani), a statement of
principles to guide the country's political system. This charter is
to be devised by sixty representatives of various political
persuasions appointed by the king in May 1990. The charter is
expected to stress popular loyalty to the monarchy and to limit the
existence of political parties controlled by external influences,
such as the Communist Party of Jordan.
Because of Jordan's large Palestinian population, a major
aspect of its external relations concerns its dealings with the
PLO. Following the 1970-71 civil war, relations between Jordan and
the PLO were strained, but in 1975 Hussein and PLO chief Yasser
Arafat agreed to end recriminations. The king, however, refused to
allow the PLO to reestablish a military or political presence in
Jordan. Jordan was formally linked to the peace process as a result
of the signature of the 1978 Camp David Accords, and a number of
meetings occurred between Hussein and Arafat. When the PLO was
expelled from Lebanon in 1982, Hussein relaxed his restrictions and
allowed some PLO presence in Jordan. The Palestine National Council
met in Amman in November 1984, strengthening Arafat's position with
the more moderate PLO elements.
Cooperation between Hussein and Arafat continued with the
signing in February 1985 of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian agreement
on a peace framework. By terms of the agreement, the PLO would
represent Palestinians but be part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian
delegation at an international peace conference. Hussein, who has
long supported United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 242
setting forth terms for a Middle East settlement, sought to
persuade Arafat to endorse publicly both UN resolutions 242 and
338, which implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist. Arafat's
failure to do so eroded their relationship, and Hussein ended the
Jordanian-PLO agreement in February 1986. Both Hussein and Arafat
vied for influence in the West Bank in 1986 and 1987, but the
intifadah, or Palestinian uprising, which began in December
1987, showed the tenuous nature of West Bank support for Hussein.
As a result of this weak support and the resolutions of the June
1988 Arab summit conference in Algiers that provided funds to
support West Bank Palestinians through the PLO, in July 1988
Hussein formally abandoned Jordan's claim to the West Bank.
Jordan has stressed its support of the Arab cause in general,
and its relations with most of the Arab states have been cordial,
particularly relations with Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
Hussein had advocated Egypt's reintegration into the Arab family of
nations as early as 1981--Egypt was expelled from the League of
Arab States (Arab League) in 1978, following the Camp David
Accords. Jordan was one of the first Arab states to reestablish
diplomatic relations with Egypt, doing so in 1984; after this date,
relations between Hussein and Egyptian president Husni Mubarak
became close. A friendly relationship with Iraq had arisen out of
Jordan's support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, also having hereditary royal families, were the major
contributors of financial aid to Jordan, in accordance with
resolutions reached at Arab summit conferences. (At the Arab summit
conference held in Baghdad in late May 1990, Hussein obtained
renewed commitments of financial support for Jordan from various
participants.) Jordan's relations with Syria were correct but
distant. Despite the restoration of diplomatic relations with Libya
in June 1990, relations remained somewhat tense because of Libyan
support of anti-Hussein Palestinian guerrilla groups since 1970.
Potential threats to Jordan's external and internal security
led to Jordan's devoting approximately 30 percent of government
spending to national security. In view of his military training and
qualification as a jet pilot, Hussein took a keen personal interest
in Jordan's armed forces, both as regards top military appointments
and matériel purchases. Because of Jordan's military tradition,
dating back to the establishment of the Arab Legion in 1923, in
1990 the Jordanian Arab Army was a well-trained and disciplined
force with impressive firepower although it had not seen battle
since 1971. Historically, Israel has been seen as Jordan's primary
threat. Since the latter half of 1989, Hussein has stressed
repeatedly the danger to the stability of the area, particularly to
the West Bank and to Jordan, of the influx of thousands of Soviet
Jewish immigrants to Israel.
In principle, two-year military service was compulsory for
Jordanian males, but the number called up annually was limited by
economic considerations and potential inductees could postpone
service to complete higher education. Jordan also provided
qualified military personnel to a number of other Arab states,
especially those of the Arabian Peninsula, and trained their
nationals in Jordanian military institutions.
Jordan's internal security forces, which like the military
dated back to the Arab Legion, operated under constitutional legal
restraints. The Public Security Force, the national police, came
under the Ministry of Interior and was traditionally commanded by
a senior army general. Other than maintaining law and order, the
police and the General Intelligence Department monitored
potentially disruptive elements in the population, such as left-
wing factions and right-wing Muslim extremists.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 found Jordan
itself in a difficult situation, hard pressed both economically and
politically. The enforcement of austerity measures in accordance
with IMF loan requirements had improved Jordan's balance of
payments position, but because of the decrease in the transit trade
across Jordan to Iraq after the Iran-Iraq War ended and the return
of Jordanian workers from the Persian Gulf states resulting from
the downturn of oil prices, Jordanian unemployment had increased to
between 15 and 20 percent. Economic austerity measures had widened
the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" and had caused
discontent among elements of the population traditionally loyal to
the monarchy: the beduins and the East Bankers.
To some extent, the discontent had been countered by the
opportunity for political expression reflected in the November 1989
elections and by the king's ability to devote more time to East
Bank problems following his giving up claim to the West Bank. The
latter action minimized to some degree the competing nationalisms
of Jordanians and Palestinians. The election results, however,
indicated a marked degree of dissatisfaction with the government.
This dissatisfaction was seen in the growing criticism of
corruption among government officials and the demand for trials of
those involved. There was also resentment that martial law as well
as limitations to press freedom remained in force. Members of the
middle class particularly seemed to have gained an awareness that
the liberties they enjoyed were based primarily on the king's
benevolence rather than on acknowledged democratic rights and a
system of checks and balances on what appeared to be increasingly
centralized authority. The urban majority of the population
considered themselves underrepresented in the National Assembly,
and the conservative religious elements felt that little had been
done to make existing legislation conform with Islam. The victories
of the left in elections of professional associations and trade
unions in late 1989 and early 1990 indicated the growing public
role of the left.
Organized political parties began to come into existence after
the November 1989 elections. One of the first political entities to
be formed, in July 1990, was a leftist grouping, the Arab Jordanian
Nationalist Democratic Bloc (AJNDB), composed of Marxists, pan-Arab
nationalists, and independent leftists. In August the Democratic
Unity and Justice Party was formed, advocating the "liberation of
occupied Palestinian Arab territory" by force and a strong role for
government in a free economy. In contrast to these leftist inclined
groups, in October the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists
announced the formation of the Arab Islamic Coalition. The
Jordanian Democratic Unity Party, an offshoot of the leftist
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a member of the
overall PLO organization, came into being in November. Thus, it was
not surprising that in early January 1991, responding to these
political realities, Prime Minister Badran announced that five
Muslim Brotherhood members and two AJNDB members were being
incorporated into the cabinet. The king also announced his approval
in early January of the National Charter that endorsed
constitutional rule, political pluralism, and the legalization of
political parties.
Regionally, Jordan found itself between Scylla and Charybdis.
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the United States
response in sending forces to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf and
encouraging UN economic sanctions against Iraq put Jordan in a
quandary. In accordance with the UN resolution, it closed the port
of Al Aqabah to Iraq, and Hussein announced that Jordan refused to
recognize Iraq's annexation of Kuwait. But Jordan expressed
reservations concerning the Arab League resolution to endorse the
sending of an Arab force to Saudi Arabia.
Hussein saw his role as that of an active mediator between
Saddam Husayn and both the other Arab states and the West. Between
August 1990 and late January 1991, the king held countless meetings
with Western and Arab world leaders, including President Bush in
mid-August. Initially, Hussein sought to promote an "Arab solution"
to the Gulf crisis. Disappointed at the failure of this effort, he
pursued an "Islamic solution" involving Islamic states outside the
Arab world, and after the war began on January 16 he strove to end
the conflict. This policy resulted from a number of factors. The
king shared the view of the majority Palestinian element of
Jordan's population that the West, led by the United States, was
using a double standard in denouncing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to
the point that it was willing to go to war, while ignoring
Palestinian grievances over Israel's occupation policies in the
West Bank. This stance made the king popular with Palestinians, as
did permission for the September holding of a pro-Iraqi conference
by Jordanians and representatives of several major PLO groups,
sponsored by the AJNDB. Yasser Arafat's August endorsement of
Saddam Husayn had, however, created a rift in the PLO as well as
cut off Saudi financial assistance to the PLO. Hussein also had a
longstanding fear that Israel planned to make Jordan the substitute
Palestinian state--this aim had been stated on numerous occasions
by prominent members of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's Likud Bloc-
-thus leading to the downfall of the Hashimite monarchy. The Gulf
crisis was seen as a focus that would divert attention from the
Israeli-Palestinian question and allow Israel greater latitude to
pursue such a course of action. Both of these elements were
reflected in the king's request to Jordanian parliamentarians in
August to refer to him as "sharif" Hussein, demonstrating the
king's view that the Gulf crisis represented a conflict between the
Arab sovereignty and foreign domination similar to the situation
that his greatgrandfather, Sharif Hussein of Mecca, faced at
British hands in 1925.
Perhaps the most important reason for the king's seeking to
reconcile the conflict was the economic consequence to Jordan of
the crisis and the subsequent war. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
created a stream of refugees, primarily Arab and Asian expatriate
workers and their dependents, who had been living in Iraq and
Kuwait. These persons entered Jordan at the rate of more than
10,000 per day, a total of more than 500,000 as of late September;
they required food and shelter before most could be repatriated.
This influx further strained Jordan's economy, in part because
promised Western financial contributions to help defer costs of the
humanitarian enterprise were slow in arriving. For example, Jordan
was obliged to ration subsidized foods such as rice, sugar, and
powdered milk at the beginning of September. Meanwhile, the boycott
of Iraq had a major impact on Jordan because Iraq had been Jordan's
principal export market and its major source of cheap oil
(providing almost 90 percent of Jordan's oil), whereas Kuwait had
been Jordan's second largest market.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia, which had provided substantial
economic support to Jordan in the past, was so angered over
Jordan's failure to back it in its dispute with Iraq that it cut
off oil exports to Jordan on September 20 and shortly afterward
expelled twenty Jordanian diplomats. In turn, in early October
Jordan closed its borders to trucks bound for Saudi Arabia and
instituted fuel austerity conservation measures. The crisis also
resulted in a dramatic drop in tourism income, a major component of
Jordan's GDP. The situation caused Minister of Finance Basil
Jardanah in the latter half of September to estimate that Jordan
would lose US$2.1 billion the first year of the boycott and would
need US$1.5 billion (by January this figure had been revised to
US$2 billion) in aid to avoid economic collapse. He made a strong
plea for financial aid to the UN and the West in general; various
Western nations and Japan promised loans.
In early January, reflecting Jordan's concern over being caught
between Iraq and Israel and the tension prevailing, Jordan
mobilized its armed forces and transferred a number of troops from
the east to the Jordan Valley, indicating that it considered the
threat from Israel to be the more serious. As the deadline for
Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait came on January 15, Jordan announced
that it would protect its land and air borders against external
aggression.
Whatever the final outcome of the crisis resulting from Iraq's
annexation of Kuwait, Middle East alignments have changed
appreciably, and the fiction of Arab unity has been destroyed.
Jordan's position in the midst of this regional dilemma has been
rendered more precarious than it has been for many years.
January 29, 1991
Helen Chapin Metz
Data as of December 1989
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