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The brutal murder of Muadh al-Kasasbeh, the pilot who was captured by the Islamic State (Isis), is likely to have a devastating impact on Jordan and may in the long term undermine its role in the US-led coalition attacking jihadi targets in Syria.
The Jordanian government and its citizens will be horrified by thisexceptionally cruel killing. King Abdullah will be concerned that it will weaken the already lukewarm support for the country’s military participation in the fight against Isis. That was without doubt the intention of the group, which often singles out the Hashemite monarch in its venomous rhetoric, calling him the “Jordanian tyrant”.
Even before the shock of Kasasbeh’s death, opposition to Jordan’s anti-Isis role was on the rise. It is hard to see Jordan suddenly withdrawing from the coalition, but the king may become more cautious, while appealing to his people’s sense of patriotism and injured national pride.
Calls for revenge were quickly voiced by those who had been chanting the slogan “We are all Muadh” in recent weeks.
Jordan is one of four Arab countries – the others are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – that have been taking part in anti-Isis attacks in Syria since they began last September.
But the western-backed kingdom is in an especially vulnerable position: it is the only one of what the US calls its Arab “partner nations” that shares borders with both Syria and Iraq. It has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and there is sympathy and even support among Jordanian Sunni extremists for what is seen as an Isis fightback against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
About 200,000 people, the majority of them Sunnis, have been killed since the uprising erupted nearly four years ago. Assad is also bracketed with his close ally Iran and Shia sectarianism more generally. According to a poll last September by the Centre for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, only 62% of Jordanians consider Isis to be a terrorist organisation.
Jordan was the homeland of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, a direct forerunner of Isis. The 2005 hotel bombings the group carried out in Amman, killing 60 people in what is often called Jordan’s 9/11, are a terrible reminder of the risks of homegrown fanaticism.
An estimated 2,000-2,500 Jordanians are known to be fighting with Isis – the third largest foreign Arab contingent after Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Many come from impoverished no-hope towns on the East Bank, a world away from the sophistication of Amman.
King Abdullah, who was informed of the grim news about Kasasbeh while on a visit to Washington, has been a keen participant in the anti-Isis effort. He has emphasised the need to fight the group’s extremism and brutality and its claim to be Islamic.
A government information campaign echoes the king’s message about the values of moderate Islam and the rejection of the takfiri school that Isis uses to sanction the often sectarian killing of so-called apostates. But the campaign generated mixed feelings at home from the start. A popular Twitter hashtag #thiswarisnotourwar makes the point succinctly.
“Isis sympathisers feel injustice and anger at America and Israel and always felt that Islam was under attack by Crusaders,” Muin Khoury, a leading Jordanian pollster, told the Guardian recently. “And now they don’t agree with Jordan being involved in the coalition.”
Adnan Abu Odeh, a former minister, said the government was “walking a tightrope”. Other critics suggested that Jordan had been somehow blackmailed by Washington into taking part.
Discontent became more voluble after Kasasbeh’s capture when his F16 came down near Raqqa on Christmas Eve, especially among his powerful tribe, one of several which form the loyal backbone of the Jordanian armed forces and security services. In his home town of Kerak, dozens of people protested, chanting anti-coalition slogans and calling on the king to pull out of the campaign against Isis.
Abdullah moved quickly to reassure the pilot’s family that everything was being done to secure his release. But even as he comforted Kasasbeh’s parents and wife in the royal palace in the capital, demonstrations took place outside without the police intervening – something that would be unthinkable in normal times.
Kasasbeh’s capture, one MP complained to the BBC, was “making it harder to convince Jordanians that we should be in this war in the first place”.
Official nervousness has been evident from the beginning. The Jordanian government did not advertise its military involvement, perhaps fearing revenge attacks by Isis or a domestic backlash. It had been assumed before the campaign began that Jordan would offer to use its highly regarded intelligence services rather than get involved in armed action.
Abdullah, like his father, King Hussein, is close to the US and has maintained Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel in the face of domestic opposition. But the present monarch’s critics sometimes describe him as impetuous. Observers have made the comparison between the anti-Isis campaign and King Hussein’s decision to stay out of the US-led coalition that came together to eject Iraq forces from Kuwait in 1991.
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