AMMAN: He had a good job and a loving family, but it wasn’t
enough for a 25-year old Jordanian who abandoned his life of privilege in Amman to join ISIS, the
group that has seized swaths of Iraq and Syria. Handsome, courteous and
highly regarded in his profession as a radiologist, the man, whose name has been withheld for
security reasons, disappeared in early August after the Eid al-Fitr holiday. He did not tell his
family where he was going. He later called his parents from an
undisclosed location to say he had “forsaken his life for the glory of Islam,” a relative said. “His
father is heartbroken, and his mother is in hospital from shock,” he
said. He is among the first known cases of Jordanians joining ISIS since
the group declared a “caliphate” in June after dramatic territorial
gains. His story points to the widening support for ISIS among Jordanian
Islamist fundamentalists inspired by its recent advances in countries neighboring Jordan. With that
support come new risks for a U.S. ally mostly unscathed by the Middle Eastern turmoil of recent
years. Jordan’s powerful intelligence services appear to be deploying
their full range of tools to counter the threat. King Abdullah has said the country has never been
better prepared to face the radical threat sweeping the region. The gains
by ISIS have sparked a fierce debate among Jordanian Islamists from the ultra-orthodox Salafist
movement on whether to back the group, whose brutality has been criticized even within radical
Islamist circles. But buoyed by territorial gains, ISIS sympathizers
appear to be winning the argument. “Many youths have changed their
distorted view of [ISIS] after they saw their actions on the ground, their achievements, and how the
West has ganged up against it,” a well-known Jordanian militant told Reuters under the assumed name
Gharib al-Ikhwan al-Urduni. Since the civil war erupted in neighboring
Syria in 2011, hundreds of Jordanians have joined an insurgency against President Bashar Assad. More
than 2,000 men, ranging from underprivileged youths to doctors and – in one case – an air force
captain, have abandoned Jordan for jihad in Syria, according to Islamists close to the
subject. At least 250 of them have been killed
there. But the recent accomplishments by ISIS are helping to galvanize
support like never before among radical Islamists who dream of erasing borders across the Muslim
world to establish a pan-Islamic nation. It raises the prospect of yet
more Jordanians crossing the border to fight, but also the risk of ISIS sympathizers striking in
Jordan itself – a country that has suffered Islamist militancy before, notably bomb attacks on Amman
hotels by Al-Qaeda-linked militants during the U.S. occupation of
Iraq. The appearance of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, calling for the
support of Muslims in the pulpit of a mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul last June acted like a
magnet for young Jordanian Islamists. “Their dream was setting up the
caliphate, and now they see it being achieved. This made people consider very seriously joining,
especially since [ISIS] had officially invited them,” said Bassam Nasser, a Jordanian Islamist
scholar. The roots of ISIS can, in one sense, be traced to Jordan. It was
Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, who founded the Iraqi arm of Al-Qaeda that would eventually mutate
into ISIS, which has now been disavowed by the famous terrorist group. In
the impoverished Jordanian town of Zarqa, Zarqawi’s birthplace and a traditional stronghold of
Islamist fundamentalists, support for ISIS was on full display during Eid prayers that marked the
end of Ramadan in late July. Scores of men dressed in the kind of
Afghan-style clothing often worn by radical Islamists waved the black ISIS flag as they gathered in
an open field to listen to Jordanian Islamist Sheikh Amer Khalalyeh praise the
group. “O Baghdadi, you who has spread terror in the hearts of our
enemies, enlist me as a martyr,” chanted the sheikh over a microphone. The footage was captured in a
video posted on YouTube. In the assessment of one senior regional
security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, Jordan could be home to “hundreds if not
thousands of potential sympathizers” who could turn into “potential sleeper cells and time
bombs.” The roots of radicalization in Jordan mirror those commonly cited
as its primary cause across the Middle East and include a lack of political liberty and economic
opportunity. King Abdullah, a steadfast U.S. ally who has safeguarded his
country’s peace treaty with Israel, is seeking to ease concerns in Jordan about the threat posed by
ISIS. “I am satisfied with the preparations of the armed forces and
security agencies. We had planned for surprises several months ago and we were ahead of others. I
can assure you – politically, security-wise and militarily our position today is stronger than in
the past,” he told politicians. In an indirect reference to ISIS, he
warned Jordanians not to fall prey to outside parties seeking to exploit their
grievances. In recent weeks, the Jordanian intelligence services have
tightened security around sensitive government areas, stepped up surveillance of Islamist
fundamentalists and arrested activists seen as a threat, diplomats and officials
say. At least a dozen people have been arrested for expressing support
for ISIS on social media. Jordan’s approach to confronting the risk has
set it apart from some other Arab states. Its dependence on sophisticated intelligence gathering
rather than arbitrary arrests have been credited for sparing Jordan the kind of vendetta-fuelled
Islamist insurrections seen in states such as Egypt and Syria. The
authorities last month released a prominent Islamist scholar, an influential figure in militant
circles, who is one of the leading Islamist opponents of ISIS. Sheikh Abu
Mohammad al-Maqdisi’s release has added an influential voice to the debate, but also revealed
divisions among Jordan’s previously cohesive hard-line Islamist community of ultra-orthodox
Salafists. Maqdisi has mocked Baghdadi’s caliphate and expressed outrage
at the brutality unleashed by ISIS. “It is giving our jihad a bloody
texture that we cannot accept. These images of decapitations are painful. This is something we
cannot accept, nor Allah. Mercy with the infidels dominated during the spread of Islam,” he said
this month in an audio message. That has triggered an avalanche of
attacks by ISIS supporters who have shown none of the deference usually reserved for senior scholars
such as Maqdisi. They say he was released not because he had served out his five-year jail term, but
with a specific remit to attack ISIS. The row has sparked verbal and
physical conflict. Two radical Islamists who spoke out against decapitations and indiscriminate
killings of Shiites by ISIS were recently physically beaten by the group’s
supporters. The ISIS flag was also raised in June by supporters in the
historically volatile city of Maan, a tribal stronghold of over 50,000 people about 250 kilometers
south of the capital. Here, crosscurrents of crime, smuggling and tribal
disaffection are a combustible mix for the Jordanian government, resented for neglecting the area’s
development. That has provided fertile ground for Islamist
recruitment. But Mohammad Shalabi, a militant Salafist from Maan who has
encouraged Islamists to go to Syria to fight, said Jordan was not a target for ISIS, which now calls
itself the Islamic State. “The Islamic State ... has no interest in
targeting Jordan. When I have not consolidated my presence firmly enough in Iraq and Syria I cannot
move to Jordan,” said Shalabi, also known as Abu Sayyaf. He spent 10 years in prison for militancy
including a plot to attack U.S. troops in Jordan. Shalabi, a respected
figure by locals in the city who mediates with tribal chiefs in disputes with the authorities, said
his followers had no interest in destabilizing Jordan, unless the government provoked them. “If we
felt, God forbid, that injustice is going to befall us or that the circle of injustice is expanding,
we will not sit with our hands tied.”
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