I'll bet a U.S. military occupation would help melt it.
"Jordan fears expanding home-grown ISIS could take action" by William Booth and Taylor Luck | Washington Post June 29, 2014
MAAN, Jordan — Demonstrators angry with Jordan’s government have unfurled in this desert city the black battle flags of the Al Qaeda-inspired extremists now in control of large swaths of Iraq, stirring fears that support for the group is growing in Jordan.
Related: Jordan Jostles Around Protesters Against Israel
Then Israel retaliated.
At two rallies in Maan this past week, scores of young men, some in black masks, raised their fists, waved homemade banners bearing the logo and inscriptions of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The protesters shouted, ‘‘Down, down with Abdullah,’’ the king of Jordan. Abdullah II, a close US ally, is widely viewed as a moderate in a country considered an oasis of stability in the Middle East.
That -- and the general lack of coverage of Jordan in general -- can only lead one to believe they are not U.S-sponsored or approved for overthrow. In this case, it likely is a people's protest against another US stooge.
The demonstrations have been the first public displays of support for ISIS in Jordan.
Abdullah’s government has put the country’s Border Guard on alert, reinforced troops along its 125-mile frontier with Iraq and added tanks and armor to thwart any move into Jordan by the militants, who along with Sunni insurgents have seized a string of cities from northern Syria to western Iraq.
They also have U.S. "trainers and advisers" in country helping to train ISIS.
But more troubling to the Amman government than the possibility of an ISIS invasion are signs that support for the group may be expanding here and that home-grown recruits could take action in Jordan, according to former military officers, security analysts, and members of Jordan’s jihadist movement.
‘‘We no longer trust or respect the government and have been searching for an alternative that ensures our basic rights,’’ said Mohammed Kreishan, one of the marchers. ‘‘In the Islamic State, we have found our alternative.’’
Despite the barbarous brutality of those folks?
Last week, antigovernment demonstrators gathered at the mosque in central Maan and marched toward the courthouse with gasoline bombs, but they were deterred by the presence of Jordanian riot police in armored personnel carriers.
A symbol of Jordan’s monarchy and central government, the charred and bullet-riddled courthouse has been the scene of near-nightly gunfire in recent weeks. ISIS banners were briefly raised on the mosque’s roof and still fly from flagpoles at traffic circles.
Maan is an impoverished regional center 150 miles south of Amman, the capital, and a world away from the five-star hotels and Western-style coffee shops of that cosmopolitan city. The official unemployment rate in Maan tops 25 percent and is far higher among its youth. One of the largest employers is a state cement factory.
These aren't ISIS terrorist supporters at all. This is people being pissed off at indifferent rule by royalty.
Maan has been a crucible for antigovernment activists for a generation and today is home to leading Al Qaeda clerics, who themselves fear that the younger generation may no longer listen to the Salafist old guard but instead run off and join newer, more extreme groups such as ISIS.
Like most observers, Jordan’s leaders appeared to be taken by surprise by the lightning-quick advance and string of conquests this month by ISIS fighters and Sunni rebels who reached the environs of Baghdad.
Still waiting for the juggernaut to.... never mind.
Originating in Al Qaeda, patched together by splinter groups fighting in Syria and Sunni insurgents in Iraq, ISIS seeks to establish a Muslim caliphate based on an especially strict interpretation of Islamic law.
All this stuff Freudian slips from the propagandists or....???
Security analysts estimate that about 2,000 Jordanians are fighting in Syria and Iraq today, at least half of them with ISIS.
Reports earlier this month suggested that ISIS forces had taken the key Iraqi-Jordanian border crossing at Turaibil, but Jordanian military officials told reporters last week that Sunni tribes control the area after the Iraqi military left after clashes with ISIS. Border traffic is lighter than normal but flowing, according to eyewitnesses.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry met with Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, in Paris last week to discuss a regional response to the ISIS threat.
See: Kerry's Sunni Triangle
‘‘I am worried, but I am not scared’’ of ISIS’s recent success in Iraq spilling over into Jordan, said Mohammad Farghal, director general of the Center for Strategic Studies at the King Abdullah II Defense Academy and a retired major general in Jordan’s armed forces.
‘‘We are quite confident when it comes to securing the border,’’ Farghal said. What is worrying, he said, ‘‘is that poverty and dissatisfaction create fertile ground for extremist organizations in Jordan. This is our greatest security challenge.’’
You guys are finally figuring out people don't like being treated like shit, huh?
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Related: Jordanian airstrike hits Syrian vehicles
And deeper into the war they are drawn.
"Muslim cleric acquitted in terror plot; Jordanian court cites insufficient evidence in case" by Alan Cowell | New York Times June 27, 2014
LONDON — A military court in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Thursday acquitted a militant Islamic cleric known as Abu Qatada on charges of planning a terrorist attack on an American school there in the late 1990s, the latest chapter in a longstanding legal fight that included a death sentence in absentia, a 10-year court battle in Britain, and his deportation a year ago.
Turns out Abu Qatada is MI-5.
The court said it had found insufficient evidence to convict the cleric. The verdict appeared to be a remarkable reversal of one in Jordan more than 14 years ago, in which he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment with hard labor. Supporters of the cleric, who was once described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe,” are certain to depict his acquittal as a vindication of his protestations of innocence.
“I think that justice has taken its place here today,” the cleric’s lawyer, Ghazi Thneibat, told reporters, according to the Associated Press.
The 54-year-old cleric, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, will continue to be held in a separate case relating to a plot to bomb Israeli, American, and other Western tourists at millennium celebrations in 2000, news reports said. Othman has denied all the charges against him.
The court’s ruling seemed to surprise some in Britain, but officials said they would resist his return if he were acquitted in the second case.
“We don’t want this man back,” Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, said in a radio interview.
The cleric was imprisoned in Britain or held under restrictions amounting to house arrest as he resisted efforts to deport him to Jordan, where he was convicted in two trials held in 1999 and 2000. In the first case, he was sentenced to death for the plot on the Amman school, a judgment that was later reduced to life imprisonment. In the second, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for involvement in the plot to attack tourists. Jordan had said he would face retrials if extradited.
Britain finally deported him almost a year ago. His removal was celebrated by many in Britain as a turning point in the country’s efforts to contain militant Islamist ideology linked to Al Qaeda.
Othman, a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian descent, had resisted deportation for many years by arguing that he would be tried in Jordan on evidence obtained under duress, which would be inadmissible in a British court.
He's claiming he was tortured.
Theresa May, Britain’s home secretary, visited Jordan twice, meeting with King Abdullah II and senior Jordanian security officials, in an effort to complete negotiations on a treaty including provisions against the use of torture-tainted evidence in a retrial.
Out it goes.
On Thursday, Judge Ahmad Qatarneh was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying, “The court did not find evidence to support charges” that Othman conspired in late 1998 “to carry out a terror attack on the American school in Amman.”
Accordingly, he was declared innocent, at which point the cleric burst into tears and members of his family rushed to him. A trial in the second case was set for Sept. 7.
“I am surprised at this verdict,” Keith Vaz, the head of the influential parliamentary Home Affairs Committee in London, said. “However, it is right that the Jordanian court has followed due process.”
James Brokenshire, the minister for immigration and security, said Othman had been viewed as a threat to national security. “We are pleased that we were able to remove him,” he said. “He is subject to a deportation order, which means he will be unable to return to the UK.”
Western European intelligence agencies have accused Othman of having links to senior Al Qaeda officials. German security officials have said that tapes of Othman’s sermons were found in apartments in Hamburg that were used by some of those involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Yeah, we got the mythical narrative.
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Also see:
British Judge Craps CIA-Duh
English Extraditions
Hilton Headed Back to Scotland
Going to the British Toilet
Stinks!
