US embassy cable - 05AMMAN6526

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 AMMAN 006526 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/16/2015 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, ECON, EAID, JO 
SUBJECT: IN MA'AN, GOJ TRIES TO CHANGE ATTITUDES 
 
REF: A. AMMAN 5830 
 
     B. AMMAN 5451 
     C. AMMAN 470 
     D. O4 AMMAN 9226 
 
Classified By: CDA David Hale for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
1. (C) SUMMARY: Two and a half years after a 
failed uprising left six persons dead, citizens 
of Jordan's southeastern transportation hub of 
Ma'an are still restive.  This hardscrabble 
desert town is influenced both by surrounding 
tribes, and by the many who drifted in to town 
and away from tribal society.  Some of these have 
found new purpose in strong salafist networks. 
Ma'an has acquired a reputation for unrest. Its 
role in the founding of the Hashemite monarchy 
has produced a belief among Ma'anis that they are 
particularly entitled to GOJ largesse, and a 
corresponding propensity to rise up when they 
feel they have been taken for granted by the 
government.  Like many other East Bankers, 
Ma'anis view the rise to power of the Amman-based 
Palestinian merchant class, and the reduction of 
the state's role in Jordan's economy, as a 
betrayal of their birthright.  These attitudes, 
however, are slowly starting to change, thanks in 
part to the influence of Ma'an's rapidly- 
expanding Al Hussein 
University. END SUMMARY. 
 
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A DISTINCT IDENTITY 
------------------- 
 
2. (C) Ma'an, which originated as a resting place 
on the Hajj route, is a crossroads town that 
entered the modern era as a stop on the Ottomans' 
Hijaz Railway, linking Istanbul with the Muslim 
holy city of Medina.  In 1921, soon-to-be Emir 
Abdullah I, Jordan's first Hashemite ruler, 
disembarked from a train car with his retinue and 
temporarily set up court in Ma'an before moving 
north to Amman with the support of the southern 
tribes.  These tribes - particularly the 
Huwaytat, who dominate the area surrounding Ma'an 
- would go on to form the backbone of Jordan's 
Arab Legion.  While the tribes of the Ma'an 
region share some characteristics with those 
elsewhere in central and southern Jordan, they 
have unique songs, dances, and folklore and an 
intense independent streak.  One former 
government minister noted to poloff, "Almost 
every boy in the Ma'an area receives a gun on his 
twelfth birthday and it becomes his most prized 
possession."  A city long known for its Muslim 
piety (a result of the Hajj traffic), Ma'an 
maintains strong ties with Saudi Arabia, where 
many Huwaytat also live.  (Note: Riyadh asserted 
a claim to the region for several decades, and 
rumors still circulate that the Saudi government 
pays subsidies to Ma'an-area sheikhs. End Note.) 
 
3. (C) Despite its historical link with the 
Hashemite monarchy, the unique character of Ma'an 
has contributed to its long-standing sense of 
detachment from the government in Amman.  More 
recently, the city has earned a reputation for 
restlessness.  In April 1989, there were serious 
riots in Ma'an over a 30 percent increase in fuel 
prices, demanded of Jordan as a condition of an 
IMF bailout.  After the rioting spread to other 
cities, King Hussein decided to reopen Jordan's 
parliament after almost thirty years in abeyance. 
Operation Desert Fox spurred minor clashes in 
Ma'an in 1998, and Ma'an again erupted in 
November 2002, after police tried to interrogate 
a Ma'ani extremist in the aftermath of the 
assassination of USAID official Laurence Foley. 
The clashes between armed extremists and police 
left six people dead, including two police 
officers, and many others wounded. (Note: The 
extremist whose attempted arrest sparked the 
riots, Muhammad Ahmed al-Shalabi aka Abu Sayyaf, 
was finally captured in September 2003 after a 
ten-month manhunt and is now on trial, along with 
his alleged accomplices, for their role in the 
violence - ref C. End Note.)  When the GOJ 
recently announced fuel price hikes of 30% and 
more (ref B), many in Jordan's political classes 
predicted new unrest in Ma'an.  So far, there has 
been no trouble in Ma'an or elsewhere in Jordan. 
This is due, we believe, to the Jordanian 
security services' careful preparations. 
 
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PERCEPTIONS OF BETRAYAL 
----------------------- 
 
4. (C) At first glance, Ma'an seems an unlikely 
breeding ground for discontent.  A city of 
100,000, Ma'an compares favorably with most 
Jordanian towns its size.  The level of evident 
poverty is no worse than can be seen in any other 
Jordanian provincial city, and some of Ma'an's 
villas would not look out of place if 
transplanted to affluent West Amman.  Poverty 
statistics confirm this impression: Ma'an 
governorate's rate is far from the worst in 
Jordan, and while GDP per capita is not as high 
as in many other governorates, that measure 
excludes income earned by Ma'anis staffing the 
GOJ civil service, the Jordanian Armed Forces 
(JAF), and security services outside of the 
governorate - much of which is transferred back 
to Ma'an, as the high-end villas show.  Islam and 
tradition are still the most significant 
influences on the city's life, but women on the 
city streets do not seem more conservatively 
dressed than elsewhere in Jordan (outside of West 
Amman). Similarly, the hostility in Ma'an to 
Israel and the U.S. are certainly not unique in 
Jordan. 
 
5. (C) The paradox of Ma'an, say professors at 
the city's al-Hussein University, is that the 
recent unrest in the city stems directly from 
Ma'anis' long-standing belief that the Hashemite 
regime owes them a special debt because of the 
surrounding tribes' supposedly central role in 
the foundation and survival of the monarchy. 
Throughout the history of Jordan, the regime and 
the southern tribes have, it is true, had an 
implicit bargain: the tribes were given 
government jobs and palace bribes in return for 
their support (occasionally armed, though in 
recent decades merely political) of the 
government and the royal family.  However, the 
catalyst for Ma'an's more recent outbreaks of 
violence, say these professors, has been the 
perceived failure of the regime to keep its side 
of the bargain.  The stagnation of the government 
sector, to which the GOJ is trying to add as few 
jobs as possible, and a slowdown in the trucking 
industry, which Ma'anis claim has not been the 
same since the 1991 Gulf War, have left Ma'anis 
feeling betrayed.  Ma'anis also believe that 
their historical position of favor has been 
usurped, even in the south, by an Amman-based, 
Palestinian-dominated commercial elite.  This 
belief has only been furthered by the GOJ's drive 
to privatize state-owned companies that 
previously hired disproportionately (given 
relative skill levels) from the south, and by the 
establishment of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone, 
which has moved the focus of development in the 
south away from Ma'an and whose leadership 
includes prominent West Amman Palestinian- 
Jordanians. 
 
6.  (C) Another factor in Ma'an's chronic 
discontent stems from the transient nature of 
much of its population.  For many of those who 
have drifted into Ma'an over the past generation 
(for instance in the large trucking industry) 
town life has worked them loose from the tribal 
system, and from that system's controls on 
behavior and politics.  Much as in Zarqa (ref D), 
some of these detribalized people have found a 
sort of surrogate extended family in the Islamic 
revival.  In Ma'an, that revival has been heavily 
influenced by salafism, and by the wahabism of 
neighboring Saudi Arabia. 
 
-------------------- 
SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT 
-------------------- 
 
7. (C) Anger and mistrust in Ma'an towards the 
King's policies and advisors are everywhere 
apparent, reinforcing mistrust of Palestinian- 
Jordanians.  A meeting between emboffs and the 
Ma'an Chamber of Commerce - which was arranged to 
discuss the health of the region's economy - 
briefly demonstrated this tension and how it is 
displaced onto convenient foreign scapegoats. 
Turning to economic subjects for the first time 
in the Chamber's hour-long diatribe on the 
alleged faults of U.S. foreign policy, a Chamber 
member noted that U.S. economic assistance was 
being diverted from "real Jordanian needs" to the 
bank accounts of technocrats in Amman, and that 
the U.S. was aware of, and therefore complicit 
in, this corruption.  He was quickly cut off by 
another member, who stated that rumors of aid- 
related corruption were lies, spread by Israel to 
stop donor countries from giving assistance to 
Jordan.  Heated intramural debate followed, ended 
only by the return of the conversation to the 
USG's alleged abuses and mistakes in Iraq. 
 
---------------- 
BUYING THEM BACK 
---------------- 
 
8. (C) It will be no easy task to shore up 
Ma'an's support for a monarchy that now 
emphasizes reform and openness, but the GOJ is 
certainly giving it a try.  In the aftermath of 
the 2002 rioting (as well as a highly critical 
report published by Jordan's Center for Strategic 
Studies that blamed the government for its poor 
handling of that crisis), the GOJ seems to have 
decided to spare no expense where Ma'an is 
concerned.  It is shoveling industrial 
development projects in the city's direction at 
the highest rate in decades (ref A), but the 
flagship of the GOJ program is clearly Ma'an's 
Al-Hussein University, the area's first and only 
institution of higher learning.  The 5,000- 
student school, founded as a branch of Kerak- 
based Mu'ta University in 1996 and made 
independent only in 1999, was moved at the end of 
2004 to a sparkling new JD 24 million ($34 
million) campus on the edge of town - the first 
of three stages in a planned JD 60 million ($85 
million) facility. 
 
9. (SBU) The university, which plans to double 
its enrollment by 2008, is furiously training 
professors - drawn almost exclusively from the 
three southern provinces of Ma'an, Tafila, and 
Aqaba - at overseas universities, in addition to 
sending over 100 students every year on 
scholarship programs to study abroad.  Offering 
heavily subsidized basic tuition to students 
overwhelmingly from the south, the university 
still finds that it must provide financial aid to 
a large percentage of its students - and the GOJ 
has given it the resources to do so.  Given GOJ 
budget constraints, the amount of money poured 
into the university represents a clear commitment 
by the GOJ to promote change and development in 
Ma'an. 
 
---------------------- 
CHANGING THEIR OUTLOOK 
---------------------- 
 
10. (SBU) According to university administrators 
and professors, the school has already had a 
noticeable effect on the larger community.  In 
contrast to the university's founding, when area 
residents protested against co-educational 
classes and viewed the university as a threat to 
their traditional culture, Al-Hussein University 
is now recognized as an integral part of Ma'an 
and most citizens see it as directly connected to 
their own interests.  Mixed-gender classes no 
longer raise many eyebrows and tribal fathers who 
once saw no need for higher education for their 
daughters are now encouraging them to study at 
the university (roughly 65% of the students at 
al-Hussein are female).  In 1994, only 3.4% of 
Ma'anis held bachelor's degrees, but this figure 
had increased to 10.3% by the end of 2003.  Many 
of these recent college graduates are from low- 
income families, and could not have afforded to 
study elsewhere. 
 
11. (SBU) In addition to changing the outlooks 
and attitudes of Ma'anis, the university is 
having an economic impact.  Student spending is 
supporting new consumer businesses and the city 
is physically growing in the direction of the 
university.  While many southerners still resist 
looking for jobs outside the public sector, the 
school is producing graduates with information 
technology and other skills that are actually 
needed by private industry, and who may even 
start their own small businesses.  In recognition 
of the currently limited job opportunities in the 
area, the university is trying to develop classes 
that will help students find employment in the 
few "bright spots" in the regional economic 
picture, including courses related to tourism, 
hotel management, mining, environmental 
engineering, and archaeology. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
12. (C) Restive attitudes among Ma'anis reflect 
both historical aloofness toward outside 
regulation of their affairs, and a change in the 
needs of the monarchy and the GOJ.  Loyal tribal 
troops from the area are no longer a priority 
need for the government as in earlier days, when 
the country faced threats from the forces of 
secular Arab nationalism; the newer GOJ 
priorities of growth, development, and reform are 
here to stay.  Closing the gap between Ma'an and 
the GOJ will therefore be a challenge.  As Jordan 
advances reforms, some conservative elements will 
be left behind -- unfortunately, sometimes 
concentrated in pockets like Ma'an.  Despite 
significant levels of state spending and much 
intelligence work, the city is likely to remain a 
breeding ground for extremists. 
HALE