When is Something, Something? Jordan’s Arab Uprising. Throughout the early months of 2011, and the Arab uprisings, I was living and conducting research in Jordan.
I paid close attention to the reverberations of the Arab Spring on the ground in Jordan, and grew frustrated with the absolute lack of attention, or worse yet, dismissal of political developments there. I cannot count how many times I heard the refrain, “But nothing is happening in Jordan” or “Nothing will ever happen in Jordan.” In response, I ask here “When is something, something? In 2012, events in Jordan began to garner further attention by Middle East scholars in the US and the US media. Policy analysts writing for forums such at Foreign Policy’s Middle East channel and Al-Jazeera finally began to acknowledge that Jordan was witnessing some pretty significant socio-political transformations.
Many of the scholars with whom I have discussed Jordan have expressed skepticism about political developments there. And then came the Arab uprisings. Jordan Starts to Shake by Nicolas Pelham. Will Jordan Be the Next To Fall? The Possibility Is Bad News for Israel and the U.S. On Wednesday, U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the United States was sending a small contingent of troops to Jordan in the event that the conflict in Syria spreads across the country’s border as it has with Turkey. Even if it doesn’t, the Obama Administration is right to be extremely concerned with how events in Syria might affect its longstanding and reliable Middle East ally in Amman. Should King Abdullah II become the next Arab ruler to fall as part of the upheavals that have swept through the region now for almost two years, it will mark another major setback for the United States in the region.
For Israel it’s significantly worse news. Jerusalem would lose its remaining strategic partner in the region—having already lost Turkey and Egypt—and face a possible nightmare on its longest border, exposing the country’s center to attacks from the east that might include Sunni Jihadists or Iranian-trained Iraqi agents. “We’re in a crisis mode. Like this article? Jordan and its king: As beleaguered as ever. Middle East Research and Information Project. The November 13 withdrawal of fuel and electricity subsidies has sparked vigorous demonstrations in Jordan, prompting renewed speculation about whether the wave of Arab uprisings that began in late 2010 has finally arrived in the Hashemite Kingdom.
Indeed, amidst the rush of scholarly attempts to explain why uprisings did or did not occur in various Arab countries in 2011, Jordan is proving a stubborn case. Jordan fits nearly all the criteria for an uprising, but sustained protest has yet to take root. If social media and Internet access drove the revolts, then Jordan should have already had an upheaval, for it ranks well ahead of Egypt and Libya and is comparable to Tunisia in Internet penetration.
Some have argued that the building blocks of protest were increases in literacy rates and average number of years of schooling. Yet from 1980 to 2010, Jordan ranked ahead of Egypt and Tunisia in rate of increase in years of schooling (see p. 169 of Filipe R. Jordan, Forever on the Brink. The sudden, unprecedented resignation by Jordan's Prime Minister Awn Khasawnah last week threw a sudden spotlight on the ongoing shortcomings of political reform in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The deficient new election law rolled out last month, like every step the King has taken over the last year and a half, did too little, too late to respond to the concerns of Jordanian citizens. Limited reforms have done little to stem a rising tide of protest across the towns of the south, a deeply struggling economy, loud complaints of corruption, and an intensifying edge of political anger. Add in the potential impact of the ongoing crisis in Syria or of a new escalation in the West Bank, and concerns for Jordan's political future seem merited. Veteran observers of the region can be excused for rolling their eyes ever so slightly at reports of instability in Jordan, of course. Some hopes had been placed in the appointment of the respected liberal jurist Khaswaneh as Prime Minister.