Letter From Jordan (Page 4)

Zaben tours his district, a mere forty-minute drive from Amman, in his son's late-model Jeep Cherokee. He is warmly welcomed as he calls unannounced on homes made of cinder-block walls and corrugated steel roofs suspended by narrow, roughly hewn wooden beams. The average income here is about half the national level and most families rely on the awqaf to get by. Beni Sakhr tribesmen used to be well represented in Jordan's armed forces until the government required new recruits to have at least a high school education.

"We're not getting the schools we need," says Awad Shamoor, a minor sheik, after greeting Zaben in an outdoor circle of tea-sipping notables. Shamoor, a security guard at a high school, makes about $100 a month. He is affluent by Badia standards, with two of his seven children in college. To finance their tuition and other expenses, he has been selling strips of his estate--land that has been in his family for generations--to wealthy Palestinians. "I used to own 200 dunams [about 800 acres]," Shamoor says between sips of tea. "Now I'm down to ten."

As Shamoor's estate has dwindled, King Abdullah has expanded his--or at least that's how some Jordanian dissidents are interpreting a May 10, 2000, government memo. In the memo, a copy of which has been obtained by The Nation, the Aqaba Regional Authority informs the land registrar of a decision "to register all the land that belongs to the treasury that is in field no. 1 and also the land no. 51 which is in field no. 3 from Aqaba land, in His Majesty Abdullah's name"; in a similar memo, dated less than a year later, the registrar orders its regional offices to "register land in Naour, Lipat, Bilalal, Um Qasyr, Samek, in the name of His Majesty, Abdullah, [and] to cancel land use...from list no. 7...for municipal use and re-register it in the name of His Majesty Abdullah (God protect and preserve him)." The government spokesperson acknowledged "swaps" between crown property and public land, but only to expedite public-works projects. In such exchanges, she said, the value greatly favors the state rather than the crown.

Rumors of a royal land grab have simmered for years. In 2001, according to a source close to the palace, Abdullah sold for $43 million property his father confiscated under martial law in 1982. The palace denies this. Laith Shubuilat, a former parliamentarian who has spent much of his political career in opposition, says a recent decision to let the army control Jordan's largest freshwater reserve will give the King de facto control of it.

"The army is the King's power base," says Shubuilat. "The King is robbing the government and the army is his bagman."

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is in Jordan today a transcendent nostalgia for the light touch of the late king. Six years after his death Jordanians of all ethnicities and sects--even among those who oppose the monarchy--speak mystically of Hussein as if he were still among them, like a twitch in an amputated limb. It is why many cherish the 25-year-old Prince Hamzah, Hussein's son by Queen Noor, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his father and is said to have inherited his legendary charisma and body language. Days before his death Hussein made the elevation of Abdullah as his successor conditional on Abdullah's maintaining Hamzah as crown prince and heir apparent.

Last year Hamzah abruptly vacated his offices to make room for a primary school run by Queen Rania for the children of Amman's rich elites--a conspicuous and somewhat ironic move in a country with a failing public school system. In November Abdullah relieved Hamzah as crown prince--a gesture, the king declared in a televised message, that would allow his half-brother "more freedom of movement." Following the announcement palace officials phoned journalists and recommended they keep the reporting to a minimum. "We were told it was purely a family matter," says Randa Habib, Jordan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse.

In response to his dismissal, Hamzah sent the king a verse from the Koran, published by several Jordanian newspapers, about the hypocrisies of unjust leadership.

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