Jordan is stepping up a propaganda war against radical Islamists to counter their growing threat to the U.S. ally’s stability, politicians and analysts said on Friday.
State television earlier this week trumpeted the capture of an alleged al-Qaida militant who operated inside Iraq, and his confession that he killed a Jordanian driver last year.
Two weeks earlier, three detained Hamas activists were shown recounting a plot to stage attacks inside Jordan, and in March authorities said they had thwarted plans to blow up a major power plant.
'A pre-emptive and reassuring step'
The unusual broadcasts follow hotel bombings in Amman that killed 60 people last November and which were claimed by the Iraq-based Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has warned of more attacks in his homeland.
They also come against a background of rising violence across Jordan’s eastern border in Iraq and economic crisis and political infighting in neighboring Palestinian territories after the militant Hamas movement swept to power in January.
Analysts say the Jordanian authorities are trying to reassure people that security forces still have a firm hand on the country.
“There is a lot of nervousness because of Jordan’s position between a clearly deteriorating situation in Iraq and an increasingly endangered situation in the Palestinian territories,” said Claire Spencer, head of Middle East program at London’s Chatham House thinktank.
“So (the broadcasts) are a pre-emptive and reassuring step.”
Islamists emboldened
Many observers say a tide of radicalism in the region has emboldened Jordan’s homegrown Islamists, posing a challenge to the Western-educated King Abdullah’s vision of a secular state.
They see the videotaped broadcasts as a warning from Jordan’s omnipresent security forces to supporters of both al-Qaida and Hamas not to meddle with the country’s security.
“These televised confessions, whether by Hamas or al-Qaida, send a very powerful message that they are not beyond the reach of the Mukhabarat (intelligence services),” said Jordanian deputy Mahmoud al-Kharabsheh.
In one broadcast, state television beamed images to the country’s 5.6 million inhabitants of black-uniformed masked agents from the elite “knights of righteousness” unit.
Seen jumping from a helicopter with a captured Qaida militant, the agents put on a show of force which appeared designed to counter images on Arab satellite stations of militant Islamist attacks in Iraq and across the region.
Some of those images fired the imagination of disaffected Jordanian youths, many of them descended from Palestinian refugees and living in poverty. Members of Bedouin tribes have also been won over by the militant films.
Changing image
“These convincing confessions reduce the emotional impact that radical Islamist tapes have on youths, who no longer see them as Mujahideen (holy warriors) but as terrorists,” Abdullah Friehat, a parliamentarian for the northern Ajloun province.
Alongside the display of military might, television has shown weeping relatives of a victim of one attack, interspersed with the killer’s chilling account of his death.
But some Jordanians are sceptical of the confessions and said authorities, faced with a radical brand of Islam that feeds on despair and social injustice, cannot win over hearts and minds without engaging in serious political and economic reform.
“I don’t think this highlighting of the role of a security organs will bring social peace,” said Sheikh Hamza Mansour, the head of the shura council of the Islamic Action Front, the country’s largest political party.
“This cannot deal with religious extremism that feeds on lack of justice and monopoly of power.”
