What instability in Jordan means for the Middle East
For years, Jordan has been a fairly stable country in an unstable region. But this weekend in Jordan was uncharacteristically tense, as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest government austerity measures. Within days of the outbreak of the protests, Prime Minister Hani al-Mulki resigned and King Abdullah II ordered Education Minister Omar al-Razzaz to form a new government. How much does it really matter that a small country like Jordan is experiencing the sort of social unrest that is normal in its chaotic region? Potentially quite a bit…
As it has done in the past, the Jordanian government turned to the International Monetary Fund in 2016 for credit to deal with a growing budget deficit and debt. As part of the IMF’s restructuring plan, the government implemented austerity measures that included cutting subsidies on over 150 goods and commodities. Particularly harmful was the removal of subsidies on staple food items and the introduction of a 10 percent tax on agricultural goods that were previously exempt from taxes. Public protests against rising bread prices started six months ago with a handful of unemployed people in isolated locations and evolved into organized demonstrations involving multiple groups and thousands of protesters. The government has tried to alleviate some of the pain related to rising prices with direct cash transfers to low-income individuals, but the issues were structural – and those types of issues don’t go away overnight.
Jordan occupies a strategic location in the Middle East, wedged between Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of the region’s leading powers. To its north and northeast lie Syria and Iraq – the region’s main hot spots that have drawn in regional and global powers like Iran, Turkey, Russia and the United States. Jordan initially was concerned about the crises in Syria and Iraq because of the fear that the Islamic State would spread into Jordan or that the waves of refugees fleeing these countries might reach its borders. Indeed, Jordan is now home to 660,000 Syrian refugees, nearly 7 percent of its total population. But the threat of IS expansion in the Middle East has largely subsided, with the group now relegated to sleeper cells and isolated pockets of territory. Nevertheless, Syria and Iraq still present a host of challenges for countries in the region, and if those countries took a turn for the worse, Jordan would likely be among the first to suffer. For this reason, Jordan’s relative stability matters greatly in the Middle East and beyond…
According to Al-Jazeera, this weekend’s protests in Jordan were led in part by a youth movement called Hirak Shababi, which Israeli intelligence accused in 2016 of being directed and funded by Hezbollah, Iran’s longtime proxy in Lebanon. The Israeli Defense Ministry promptly outlawed the group, which it considered a Palestinian umbrella organization. Though Iran has not been directly linked to the group’s operations in Jordan, the possibility must be raised given how it would help further Iranian interests in the region.
