An activist from the Jordanian Islamist Al-Tahrir party holds up a placard during a protest against statements made by some members of parliament (MPs) in Amman. A number of MPs have called on the government to seal Jordan's entire border with Syria to stop the influx of Syrian refugees crossing illegally into the country, which has put a strain on Jordan's economy. — Reuters Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Khaled Yacoub Oweis
AMMAN — The growing power of Islamist fighters in southern Syria is causing alarm in neighboring Jordan, which backs rebels battling President Bashar Al-Assad but fears those linked to Al-Qaeda. Similar concerns among Syria's other neighbors, including Turkey and Israel, are complicating an already disjointed world response to the bloody turmoil at the heart of the Middle East. Jordan has allowed limited US military training of rebels on its territory. Some other fighters have crossed from the kingdom into Syria, although others, especially Islamists, have been intercepted and even put on trial. Eighteen months ago, Jordan's King Abdullah was the first Arab leader to urge Assad to step aside, but he used a visit to Washington last week to voice Jordan's concern over “militant terrorist organizations” gaining ground along Syria's southern frontier with the kingdom. His comments in the Oval Office alongside US President Barack Obama underline fears that Jordan's national security is now threatened by Islamists in Syria whose hatred of Assad is matched only by their hostility to the pro-Western monarchy. As a result, senior diplomats in Amman say, Jordan has resisted pressure from Gulf Arab states to step up arms shipments to rebels it believes might one day turn against it. Jordan is also concerned that Syria, which is widely believed to possess chemical weapons, might lash out in reprisal for any heightened Jordanian support for insurgents. “The fire will not stop at our border and everybody knows that Jordan is as exposed as Syria,” Assad said two weeks ago in an interview which depicted Al-Qaeda as a security concern for both countries — a message which resonated with many Jordanians. Syria's rebel Nusra Front, one of the deadliest forces fighting to topple Assad, declared its allegiance to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahri earlier this month, formally cementing an alliance with a group which has targeted Jordan in the past. At the same time, Nusra Front fighters and other rebels have opened a new battlefront in southern Syria, a move which Assad blamed on the infiltration of thousands of militants from Jordan, seizing military posts and swathes of land. “The security threat comes from the Nusra Front and the radical groups — if they win and are stationed on the Jordanian border, that causes problems from the army's perspective,” said retired Jordanian Maj. Gen. Fayez Dwairi. Jordanian officials, who asked not to be identified, said limited security cooperation with Damascus was continuing. As well as the danger of fighting spilling over its border from Syria's southern province of Deraa, Amman faces the familiar threat of young Jordanians joining a regional conflict and then returning home, battle-hardened and radicalized. Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s and also fought in Iraq, from where he was believed to have planned attacks on hotels in Amman which killed dozens of people in November 2005. With the Syrian border just 120 km from Amman, the conflict in Jordan's northern neigbor is much closer to Abdullah's capital than the turmoil in Iraq ever was. So although Jordan has allowed the training of rebels on its territory and permitted some Gulf-funded arms shipments into Syria, it has rebuffed pressure to send larger consignments into the war zone, according to diplomats. “Jordan national strategic interests come first and before any Gulf agenda,” said a senior security official who asked not to be named, singling out Qatar for what he said was a flawed policy of empowering the Muslim Brotherhood, a longtime adversary of Jordan's monarchy. Jordan's jitters were illustrated last month, rebels say, when it warned them not to seize the main Nasib border crossing. They said Jordanian forces also detained and interrogated local weapons smugglers to curb the flow of small arms into Deraa. Syrian rebels have received military supplies via Turkey, which also frets about the rise of radical Islamists among the insurgents, fearing greater security problems along its 900 km border should they rise to prominence in a post-Assad Syria. Those concerns are limiting direct support to the opposition from Syria's northern neighbor, Turkish officials say. “Turkey is at least as concerned as the US and other allies about Al Nusra. Turkey also thinks that the continuation of the current situation will feed more extremism,” said a source close to the Turkish government. — Reuters
