MIDDLE EAST : In Pushing Peace, Jordan Sides With U.S. Against Iraq

Near a desert oasis that once was the headquarters of Lawrence of Arabia, a Jordanian air base is quietly being reconstructed this month to host nearly 1,500 U.S. Air Force troops and 34 F-16s that will soon start flying daily sorties over southern Iraq.

U.S. warplanes based in the Jordanian desert to monitor Saddam Hussein’s army? The very idea would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Still, even as Jordan is earning Washington’s gratitude for standing up to the Iraqi regime, the kingdom is coming under criticism from some quarters in the United States and Israel for not stopping the flow of money through Jordanian territory to the Islamic extremist group Hamas, responsible for the recent spate of deadly suicide bombings in Israel.

Jordan is a country caught in the middle, a role it knows well.

These days its nimble King Hussein is juggling on two fronts. He is working hard to push the Middle East peace process forward without alienating his own largely Palestinian subjects, who are furious at the crackdowns on Palestinians by Israel after the suicide bombings. And he has started calling openly for “change in Iraq”--code for the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein--and cooperating more closely with the United States and with Iraqi opponents of the Hussein regime abroad.

It all contributes to a vague sense of unease here.

“Too many things are happening at once,” said political commentator Sari Nasser.

During the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis, Jordan refused to join the U.S.-led alliance against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and Jordanian popular opinion was strongly behind Saddam Hussein. Jordan’s stance cost the hard-pressed kingdom millions of dollars in aid from an angry Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states.

Five years later, Jordan has volunteered its air base near Azrak as a temporary site from which the Americans can fly 100 to 150 sorties a day to enforce the U.N.-mandated “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq. The first few U.S. troops are already on the ground, and the bulk of the force is expected by mid-month.

The deployment is supposed to last two or three months, during a hiatus when there will be no U.S. aircraft carriers in the region. Militarily, it represents little change from the status quo. But for Jordan, symbolically, it is an escalation.

“It is dangerous,” said one government official. “But our king is very into principles.”

Jordan is taking other bold measures against Iraq. Last week, it evicted an Iraqi diplomat. It also gave the green light for an Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord, to open an office in the suburbs of Amman, the capital.

The government said the office can be used only for political purposes. In other words, no coup attempts are to be hatched there. Even so, some Jordanians are worried.

“We can’t really judge security-wise whether it is safe,” said Iyad Qattan, a Jordanian intellectual. “We’re not really interested in having a wave of terrorist actions. . . . We have enough of that in this region already.”

Since Jordan signed its peace treaty with Israel in 1994, 60-year-old King Hussein has thrown himself strongly behind the process, risking the ire of his own people, more than half of whom are of Palestinian origin. The government is therefore angered by criticisms that it is not doing enough to stop funds allegedly reaching Hamas terrorists via Jordan.

Western intelligence agencies think that a significant portion of the estimated $70 million a year the group receives passes through Jordan. The country’s Muslim Brotherhood, officially a charitable organization, collects large sums for social programs--and some of that money is believed to go to Hamas.

But Information Minister Marwan Muasher says the government requires more than “just accusations in the air” before it can act against alleged Hamas sympathizers.

“We will not crack down on people because of their political views,” he said. “We have a very successful experiment in democracy.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Caught in the Middle

King Hussein of Jordan has started calling openly for “change in Iraq”--code for the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein--and cooperating more closely with the United States. Among bold measures Jordan has taken against Iraq: It recently evicted an Iraqi diplomat and allowed an Iraqi opposition group to open an office Amman, the capital.