CIAO DATE: 04/2012
March 2012
Something is brewing in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It is not so much that protests have been spreading since 2011; the country has experienced these before and so far they remain relatively small. It is, rather, who is behind them and from where dissatisfaction stems. East Bankers – Jordanians who inhabited the area before the arrival of the first Palestinian refugees in 1948 – have long formed the pillar of support for a regime that played on their fears concerning the Palestinian-origin majority. That pillar is showing cracks. The authorities retain several assets: popular anxiety about instability; U.S. and Gulf Arab political and material support; and persistent intercommunal divisions within the opposition. But in a fast-changing region, they would be reckless to assume they can avoid both far-reaching change and turmoil. Ultimately, they must either undertake the former one or expe-rience the latter. The season of Arab uprisings neither engulfed Jordan nor entirely passed it by. Frustration had begun to bubble up in 2010; the following year, a series of protests of modest size but not modest significance brought together a wide popular spectrum: East Bankers, but also citizens of Palestinian origin, Islamists as well as unaffiliated youth. Those who took to the streets had various grievances, but at their core they were expressing anger with the state of the economy, ostentatious corruption, unaccountability and the concentration of power in the hands of the few.
Resource link: Dallying with Reform in a Divided Jordan [PDF] - 1.9M