Letter From Jordan (Page 2)

In short, Jordan has degenerated into the kind of despotic kleptocracy the Bush Administration says it will no longer tolerate. But tolerate it the White House does, inclusive of the roughly $450 million in annual economic and military aid that has become the standard rate for maintaining Jordan's peace treaty with Israel and its support for America's "war on terror."

True, Washington has always indulged Jordan, a buffer state between Israel and the other Arab nations--the country is even shaped like a bottle stopper--by turning a blind eye to its human rights abuses. And it was Hussein, after all, who installed as heir apparent the little-known and unseasoned Abdullah just before he succumbed to cancer. In February the State Department gave Jordan a delicate reproach in its annual human rights report. But beyond that, the kingdom is under little public pressure to fight corruption and allow its rubber-stamp Parliament and feeble political opposition to assert themselves.

"The Hashemites are the fair-haired boys," says a US government official. "The King is such a sycophant, telling Washington what it wants to hear and bashing people like [Syrian president] Bashar al-Assad, that they get away with everything."

Americans got a glimpse at the dark side of their plucky Arab ally early this year, when President Bush was asked at a news conference about Ali Hattar, a Jordanian mechanical engineer who spent a night in jail and was fined after he publicly condemned Jordan's peace treaty with Israel and called for a boycott of US goods. Bush was unaware of the case, which had been otherwise overlooked by the Western press.

Hattar was only the most recent target in a series of controversial arrests and detentions that have followed Abdullah's ascension to power. In December 1999 Khalil Deek, a US citizen, was arrested in Pakistan and deported to his native Jordan on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda. He was interrogated without a lawyer present and jailed without charge, only to be released two years later for lack of evidence. Faisal, the former parliamentarian, was jailed in March 2002 for "spreading rumors that incite disturbances and crimes," among other charges, and was freed after a monthlong hunger strike. The former university lecturer says she was imprisoned only after security agents tried to buy her silence with offers of money and luxury cars. "I asked for reform and was offered only bribes and then jail," she says.

In January security agents staged a midnight roundup of Islamic leaders who had criticized government policies while leading Friday prayers. Several were taken to a police precinct and left there overnight. According to the government, the men were detained for violating the state's laws on preaching and spiritual guidance. "It was very, very savage treatment," says Abdul-Lateef Arabiyat, former secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front, who like most of Jordan's established Muslim leaders is fiercely moderate. "This would not have happened under King Hussein."

Then, in early March, leaders of Jordan's Professional Associations Council, a federation of white-collar unions, called for a sit-in to protest a draft law they say would neutralize their ability to organize and mount the closest thing Jordan has to political opposition. Police shut down the demonstration by cordoning off the council's headquarters, the fourth time this year that authorities have banned such an assembly. Security agents also detained a television news crew that had filmed the incident and confiscated its video.

"Even during martial law [during Jordan's 1970 civil war], public gathering was a right for the people," says Hussein Mjali, who in March resigned as head of the Jordanian Bar Association to protest the draft law. "Now it is a gift from the ruler."

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