The recent protests in several Jordanian cities have revealed the impact of regional crises, whether geopolitical or economic, on Jordan, such as the pressures of the Syrian refugee crisis, understandings on the deployment of forces in southern Syria, repercussions of the possible settlement of the Palestinian issue, and the diminishing prospects of success of certain terrorist organizations. In the meanwhile, local and regional parties are trying to exploit the violent protest wave to their advantage.
Crisis Maps
Geographically, Jordan is situated in a region fraught with many tensions. The numerous crises in neighbouring countries have direct repercussions on Jordan’s security, interests and internal stability, from the chronic crisis of the Arab-Israeli conflict, to the US occupation of Iraq, and ending with the ongoing Syrian crisis.
However, over the past decades, Jordan has succeeded to some extent in containing the impacts of those crises. It has managed to do so through accommodation politics, alliances and regional balances to such a degree that it turned some of these challenges into real opportunities, through which it made numerous political and strategies gains. But the recent internal and external developments demonstrate that this equation has become obsolete and that Jordan seems to be entering into significant domestic and regional challenges in the near future.
Regional fallout
King Abdullah II of Jordan did not overstate, on 4 June 2018, when he was keen to make a connection between the current growing protests at home- which forced the resignation of Hani Mulki’s government and mandated Omar al-Razzaz to form the new government- and the nearby regional developments on Jordan’s borders, foremost among which are the developments in the Syrian conflict. This link takes on particular importance and momentum in light of a set of factors that can be outlined as follows:
1- Spillovers: Some estimates do not rule out that current protests in Jordan may take perilous paths, which may throw Jordan into a “dark tunnel” or plunge it into the “unknown”, as King Abdullah II put it. These estimates suggest that what is happening may portend a new wave of protest, affecting other states in the region, particularly those suffering from deep economic pressures and crises. Some countries in the Middle East have experienced strong internal crises and protests, mostly because of economic pressures, albeit these protests took varied paths, depending on the internal contexts and existing regional circumstances.
Strikingly, one cannot exclude that the current events in Jordan will have direct repercussions on other states, which introduce reform measures to tackle the economic crisis, in what could be termed “snowball”. Thus, these repercussions may spill over from Jordan to other countries.
2- Pressures of regional crises: Jordan was one of the first countries in the region to be affected by the escalation of the Syrian crisis, especially since it was one of the main recipients of the Syrian refugee waves, which placed strong economic pressure on the country and pushed successive governments to introduce unpopular reform measures, the latest of which was the income tax law that triggered and exacerbated the recent protests.
Imad Fakhoury, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation of the outgoing Hani government, said on March 18, 2018, that the total cost to host Syrian refugees over the past seven years, reached 10.5 billion dollars, as Jordan shouldered the burden of hosting 1.3 million Syrian refugees.
This cost is equivalent to 1.5 billion dollars a year, 4% of Jordanian GDP, and 16% of the annual government revenue, Fakhoury said. The indirect cost was estimated to be between 3.1 billion dollars and 3.4 billion dollars per annum on the economy, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
3- Preoccupation with external threats: The regional crises besieging Jordan prompted the government to pay greater attention to the repercussions of these crises on the internal situation in Jordan. On the Palestinian issue, Jordan shows remarkable caution about the growing talk of the so-called “Deal of the Century”, which may not derive, according to many estimates, clear support of Amman. This may stem from considerations related to its impact on Jordan’s traditional role as a direct party, whether on the issue of Jerusalem, the peace process and the settlement with Israel, or its internal demographic balances between Jordanians and Palestinians.
Hence, the Jordanian stance on the deal of the century amounts to reservation or rejection, in anticipation of the unfolding developments, amid the country’s desire to contain any negative fallout of the raging controversy on that issue on its traditional relations with allied countries. Currently, Jordan seems to be engaged in political and security understandings with the US, Russia and Israel, and possibly the Syrian regime, about evacuating southern Syrian areas from pro-Iranian forces and militias, in exchange for allowing the Syrian army to redeploy in some regions of the south.
Therefore, Jordan believes that these steps may bolster security stability on its border with Syria, since they will reduce, to a large extent, the possibility of direct military confrontations between Iran and Israel, which may have direct impact on Jordan.
This is inseparable from Jordan’s tireless efforts to reduce the prospects that some terrorist organizations, operating in Syria, may succeed in penetrating its borders and carry out high-profile terrorist operations, such as the Rukban attack, which took place on June 21, 2016. The Jordanian authorities succeeded in dismantling terrorist cells at home and thwarting terrorist operations. A case in point was what happened on 17 February 2018, when the Jordanian army declared that it had foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons and terrorists into the old oil pipeline (Tapline) linking the Jordanian border with Syria and Iraq.
Certainly, all these developments have repercussions on Jordan. Besides the dangers of terrorism, which have had negative economic impacts, particularly on tourism which has seen a decline in recent years, these developments prompted the government to implement bold economic reforms, to prevent the external chaos from spilling over to home and fortify the home front against the possible fallout from the surrounding crises.
4- Interconnected neighbor issues: Some regional actors have remarkably begun to pay attention to what is happening in Jordan. They are keen to make a connection between these developments and other regional issues, in an attempt to exploit the Jordanian protests to make political gains so as to strengthen their position versus their rivals. They want to take advantage of the current crisis to fuel divisions among Arab states, pressure Jordan and force it to bargain and ultimately abandon its stabilizing role in the Middle East.
Extreme fluidity
In sum, the current protests in Jordan can no longer be divorced from the overall developments in the region. The traditional separation between internal balances and regional changes is no longer valid, given the fluid patterns of alliances, rapid changes in the various regional crises and shifting positions of the concerned and involved regional and international powers.
