Jordan’s Transformation Is a Victim of Mideast Turmoil

King Abdullah II of Jordan dreams big. After he inherited the throne three years ago, the former special forces commando designed an ambitious program to help his oil-less desert kingdom leapfrog centuries using technology and political reform.

His agenda included high-tech centers to teach Bedouin nomads and impoverished villagers--many of whom had never even seen a typewriter--how to get wired.

The impact was soon visible as the government accelerated a painful and occasionally noisy transition. Jordan now brags that it has more computer programmers than Ireland, and its economic growth last year was 4.2%--the highest in the Arab world.

But today that transformation is on virtual hold--and even faces reversals, as the king acknowledged in a series of interviews during a day trip from Washington to Texas.

Abdullah, 40, hasn’t lost his boyish enthusiasm, but both the Net-surfing king and his conservative tribal society are increasingly victims of the Mideast crisis next door. And the cost since the current Palestinian intifada began 19 months ago is anguishing for a nation that is one of only two Arab countries to have made peace with Israel but that is also at least half Palestinian.

Instead of opening up to create a new model for the last bloc of countries to hold out against the democratic tide, Jordan has instead suspended parliament, postponed elections, blocked demonstrations, and arrested protesters and journalists. Government officials blame the regional turmoil.

So now Abdullah--son of King Hussein, who made Jordan one of the Arab world’s few stable countries during his half-century rule--is dreaming big again, this time about peace.

During the last two months, he has become a central figure among moderate Arab leaders who are for the first time talking about a full and final peace with Israel.

“These guys have done more in two months than the entire Arab world has done in the past 20 years,” said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity. “This is one of the signs that gives us hope that something might actually happen this time around.”

Abdullah gets special kudos from the White House. “He is a leader among leaders in his work to bring peace to the region,” said Sean McCormick, a National Security Council spokesman.

But that work is taking a toll on the king, who is now under pressure from all sides.

The peace treaty with Israel, signed in 1994, is increasingly controversial at home. Anti-American sentiment is also mounting in the country, which has been a more consistent U.S. ally than any other Arab state. And the sieges in Ramallah and Bethlehem and the devastation of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, which was part of Jordan until 1967, have sparked protests--some of which the king’s riot police had to put down.

Acknowledging public opinion, Queen Rania led a peaceful protest march through the capital, Amman, last month. Rania, who was in computer marketing until she met the king a decade ago, is the daughter of a prominent Palestinian family from Tulkarm, another West Bank city raided during the Israeli military operations.

Meanwhile, the United States wants Abdullah to contain the violence and persuade hard-line Arab leaders to end support of radical groups. And Israel is pressing him to rein in Islamic militants.

Abdullah is candid about the challenges--and his response.

“When you have a crisis and people are angry and frustrated, you have to be sterner with your people so things can’t get out of control. I’m sure there’s a graph of different countries about how draconian they’ve had to be with their societies. Some countries have had to be very tough. I like to think we’re on the lower end of the graph,” he explained in a rare interview aboard his Royal Airbus.

But in intensive talks all week at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill during his 10-day U.S. tour, the king also warned of the potential dangers the longer hostilities drag on.

“I wanted the Americans to understand that whenever you have to be tough on your society, you’re paying a price you’ll have to deal with later,” he said.

The king said his message was as important for an American audience as for his 5 million subjects.

About three-quarters of the Mideast population is young and, in the Information Age, is being saturated with images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the venom of hatred, he said. Without imminent resolution, there’s a growing danger of losing that generation to extremism, with a ripple effect that would spill well beyond the Mideast’s borders.

“Can you imagine the horror if we lose that 75% of the Arab population to extremism? Not only does it destroy all my hopes for the future of my country, but it definitely will affect the future and interests of the West and the United States. I don’t want to frighten people about Sept. 11 scenarios, but if you have a militant region, it’s going to take decades to fix,” he said.

“If I were Osama bin Laden now and I originally thought I’d lost, I’d be coming out of my cave and thinking, ‘Ah, maybe I have a chance now.’”

Abdullah gained public respect in the early days of his rule when he disguised himself and showed up at various government facilities--from hospitals and welfare offices to the internal revenue service--to see how well they served him as an ordinary citizen. At Jordan’s internal revenue service, he actually managed to walk into an office and walk away with several files.

The king doesn’t have time for his one-man investigations anymore. He’s now absorbed in trying to expedite the peace process.

“That’s why I have so many gray hairs in my beard. I didn’t have them three years ago,” he said.

He’s also off caffeine because he’s having trouble sleeping. And his anguish worsens every time he hears about another Palestinian suicide bombing or Israeli military retaliation. He was in Washington preparing for his Oval Office visit when he heard about the bombing Tuesday in a pool hall near Tel Aviv that killed 15 Israelis and injured dozens. He threw his head into his hands. “Oh, no,” he remembers saying. “This is crazy.”

The outside world isn’t helping Jordan’s plight much either. In the king’s 40-minute meeting with President Bush, 37 minutes were spent on the peace process.

“That’s usually the case now. In any meeting, the majority of the time is spent on the conflict and the remaining time on Iraq. And then, when I’m walking out the door it’s, ‘Oh, we have a debt relief problem, and can you help us,’” he added, as he talked aboard his plane en route to Houston to give a speech--on the Mideast conflict.

In his address, at Rice University, Abdullah called for the creation of a global “peace alliance” to foster a new approach to settling the conflict. Its goal, he said, should be a plan to ensure that the security, economic and political needs of both Israel and the Palestinians are met--and guaranteed to endure. “The deal must aim for the finish line--not the halfway markers, not the rules for pit stops,” he said.

The previous approach of phased steps, with an undefined outcome, has run its course because the current crisis has left the world’s most volatile region “at ground zero,” he said.

“Both peoples are exhausted and are ready for a peace that will allow an Israeli mother to send her child on an errand to the local supermarket without fear, a peace that will allow a Palestinian mother to deliver her newborn, alive, at a hospital and not at an Israeli roadblock,” said the king, referring to two recent episodes that led to deaths.

The new peace alliance should pick up, he said, on the initiative sponsored by Saudi Arabia and passed by the Arab League in March, offering Israel an end to war plus normalized relations and trade with all 21 member countries in exchange for the return of lands occupied since the 1967 Middle East War. And it should move as quickly as possible.

During the speech, Abdullah won a standing ovation when he said, “Far too much is at stake to go on as we are. The wake-up alarm has rung.”