Heavy Hangs the Head That Wears the Crown

 
Walid Phares has some ideas why Jordan may be the focus of a coming wave of terrorism.

• This is the clash of the Hashemite kingdom (Jordan) versus the wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. King Abdallah’s ancestors were considered the legitimate rulers of the holy places until Western Arabia was taken over by the Saudi clan. The Hashemite remnant, with the help of the British, established Transjordan. As Phares puts it :

  The result: two fundamentally opposing views of Islam and the world.

  The Hashemites ruled as monarchs, proposed a moderate form of religious belief, and allied themselves with the West. The wahhabis have spent generations and billions tearing the world apart in Allah’s name. (ed. note: In other words, the bad guys got the oil)
  
• Phares says that al-Quaeda grew out of the Cold War, aligning itself against the West in the process.

  While bin Laden pledged to destroy America and the infidels, King Hussein remained a faithful ally of the West and a proponent of a peaceful settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. After his passing, his son, Abdallah, pledged to resume his father's anti-terrorism stance.

  
  
• Jordan didn’t participate in the first Iraqi war, nor did they help in the removal of Saddam Hussein. They also opened their borders to fleeing refugees, mostly Sunnis, which has attracted the anger of the Shi’ites.
  
• On the other hand, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, which certainly annoyed the jihadists.
  
• But here are two main reasons for the attack:
  
  First, the Hashemite kingdom has actually managed to counter radical Islam and to negate the fundamentalist doctrines of the Wahhabis. Moderate clerics are supported by the government. They have also opposed Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.
  
  Second — and, in my opinion, most fundamental to all of this — is Abu Massab al-Zarqawi. Terrorist extraordinaire and…a Jordanian. Phares says that Zarqawi wants to “teach the apostate monarch and his Western educated queen a lesson.”
  
  Homecoming for Zarqawi is necessary. Opening his office in downtown Amman with the requisite bombing party, Zarqawi is elbowing more room for his terror network, crowded as it is by now in Iraq. Two years ago, Zarqawi tried to use a biochemical attack in Jordan. It failed, but it also exposed to plain view Syria’s role in aiding and abetting Zarqawi, since the plotters originated there.
  But now he thinks Jordan has been softened up sufficiently to begin the real denouement. Kill off the tourist trade (so to speak), destabilize the economy, work up resentment against Jordan’s role in establishing stability in the region, start a civil war, and —poof!— there goes another Iraqi ally. And here comes Wahhabi power grab, via Jordan’s errant son, Zarqawi.

We can only hope there will be a Shakespearean fifth act with all the bad guys lying dead on the stage while the Hashemite king explains in some version of Arabic blank verse why it ended badly for the villains. Any other ending does not bode well for the West.

This may be a long and tiresome play, but it must be got through. The curtain should be rising on the second act any day now.


Hat Tip:Jihad Watch