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على ذمة لوس انجلوس
تايمز : الملك عبدالله ضعيف وينتظره مصير شاه ايران ...سلم امور البلاد
للمخابرات وابتعد عن الشعب والقبائل الاردنية اصبحت تجاهر بعداوته
عرب تايمز - خاص
شنت جريدة لوس انجلوس تايمز هجوما شديدا على الملك الاردني ووصفته بقلة
الخبرة وتوقعت له مصيرا مشابها لمصير شاه ايران وذكرت انه قبض بلايين
الدولارات من الولايات المتحدة
وجاء في المقال الذي ظهر في الجريدة يوم امس ان الملك ارتمى في حضن
امريكا وان جهاز المخابرات الاردنية اصبح يلعب ادوارا قذرة بالنيابة وانه
اصبح متحالفا مع المخابرات المركزية الامريكية اكثر من الموساد
واضافت الجريدة ان الملك يحيط نفسه باسلحة امريكية وبجواسيس واشارت
الجريدة الى ذكاء الملك الراحل حسين الذي ساند صدام في حربه مع الكويت
ومع ذلك حافظ على علاقاته مع امريكا كما حافظ على التوازن بين القبائل
الاردنية من ناحية وبين الفلسطينيين ووفقا لما ذكرته الجريدة نقلا عن
مسئول اردني كبير طلب عدم التصريح باسمه فان الاحوال في الاردن وصلت الى
ماكانت عليه احوال ايران زمن الشاه ولو كان في الاردن خميني لانتهى امر
العائلة المالكة كما ذكر المسئول الاردني
واشارت الجريدة الى ان الملك يتصرف بطريقة مخالفة للعادات والتقاليد
العربية وهو اوروبي في تصرفه وفي طريقة حياته وان شعبية اخيه الاصغر حمزة
في ازدياد وبعد ان تعقد الجريدة مقارنة بين المخابرات الاردنية وجهاز
السافاك الايراني زمن الشاه تنسب الى رئيس الجهاز محمد الذهبي تصريحات
ليبرالية مذكرة ان منظمات حقوق الانسان ادانت عمليات التعذيب التي تتم في
سجون المخابرات بالنيابة عن دول اجنبية
واشارت الجريدة الى قانون معاقبة المواطنين الذين ينتقدون الملك والاسرة
المالكة وربطت بينه وبين خوف الاردنيين من نقد الملك نافية وجود حرية رأي
في الاردن
وفيما يلي النص الحرفي لمقال الجريدة الامريكية باللغة الانجليزية
Jordan's King Risks Shah's Fate, Critics Warn
Abdullah II, who has closely allied himself with the U.S., is accused
by reformers and traditionalists alike of alienating his people.
By Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writer
October 1, 2006
AMMAN, Jordan — A politically inexperienced king takes control of a
Middle Eastern monarchy from his powerful father, surrounds himself
with U.S. military hardware and spies, loses touch with his people and
is finally ejected in a popular uprising.
That was the tale of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, the pro-American
ruler of Iran whose ouster ushered in the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and three decades of Islamic rule.
Now many in this Arab country of more than 5 million people fear that
a similar fate could befall King Abdullah II, the Jordanian monarch
who assumed power after his charismatic father died in 1999.
"Until now in Amman we don't have a Khomeini," said one mid-ranking
official serving the Jordanian Cabinet. "If there was a Khomeini, then
this family would be in trouble."
The king's father, Hussein, deftly balanced his country's
contradictory pressures. He paid respects to the conservative East
Bank tribes' demands for stability while also attending to calls from
the nation's more cosmopolitan majority Palestinians for democratic
change.
But critics on both sides of the Jordanian divide say the 44-year-old
king has failed to garner popular support. Descendants of the tribes
that are the monarchy's base criticize the king for failing to abide
by tribal customs and losing touch with his supporters. They whisper
the name of Abdullah's popular younger brother, Hamzeh. Palestinian
groups and activists fear that the government in Amman has gotten too
close to Washington, has adopted the Bush administration's
with-us-or-against-us worldview too thoroughly and is sliding on human
rights and democracy.
"King Hussein was an artist," said Ivan Eland, for 17 years a staff
member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and now an analyst at
the Oakland-based Independent Institute, a think tank. "He was roundly
criticized for supporting Saddam [Hussein] in the first Gulf War. But
in retrospect, he looked pretty smart.
"The son has gotten more in bed with the United States," he added. "He
hasn't been distancing himself from American policy. That has put him
in a hole he hasn't been able" to get out of.
Numerous parallels exist between the shah's rule and that of Abdullah.
Like the shah's SAVAK security and intelligence service, Jordan's
General Intelligence Department, now in a new hilltop complex in an
Amman suburb, operates as a "subdivision" of the CIA, said Alexis
Debat, a former French Defense Ministry official who is a
counter-terrorism consultant and a senior fellow at the Nixon Center
in Washington.
By Debat's estimates, the Jordanian intelligence agency receives at
least $20 million a year in U.S. funding for operations and liaison
work. "They're doing all the legwork for the CIA," he said.
The Jordanians have become one of Washington's closest allies in the
intelligence-gathering business, second only to Britain's MI6,
counter-intelligence experts say. They are closer to the CIA than the
Mossad, Israel's much-touted intelligence agency, which is considered
to have too much of an agenda of its own to be completely reliable,
Debat said.
Like the Iran of the 1970s, Jordan has become a receptacle of U.S.
interests and trade. American aid to the kingdom has totaled $3.59
billion over the last five years, compared with $1.36 billion during
the previous five years, according to the Congressional Research
Service.
Like the shah's regime, the Jordanian monarchy has surrounded itself
with American hardware. Just before Hussein's death, Amman took
delivery of 16 advanced F-16 fighter jets. "That was a sort of
threshold that Jordan crossed," said Michael R. Fischbach, a professor
of history at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. "They got truly
advanced weaponry. It made Jordan have aircraft on par with Israel."
U.S.-made military hardware abounds on Jordan's streets. Jordanian
soldiers carrying American-made M-16 assault rifles and riding in
olive-green U.S.-made Humvees watch over sensitive military and
political sites in Amman, the capital. Convoys of U.S. military
transport trucks move in and out of the country.
Perhaps most controversially, say Amnesty International and other
human rights groups, Jordan has become an important nexus in U.S.
intelligence's subterranean "renditions" network, in which terrorism
suspects are secretly detained and interrogated in countries with
blemished human rights records. Jordanian officials deny
participationin the program.
Many worry that bolstering Jordanian security forces amid widespread
reports of abuses against detainees has hampered the country's baby
steps toward democratization.
"The security forces are improving at the cost of democracy," said
Hamzeh Mansur, a leader of the Islamic Action Front, the main Islamist
parliamentary bloc.
Jordanian officials say the security apparatus has been ramped up and
civil liberties laws tightened out of fear the country will become a
staging ground for secretive cells plotting violent operations in
Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Jordan has also been
victimized by terrorism, including the Nov. 9, 2005, bombings of three
Amman hotels that killed dozens.
"You have to combat terrorism while it's in its planning stage," said
Nasser Joudeh, a government spokesman. "We will not allow Jordan to be
used as a scene for any activity relating to non-Jordanian problems.
We will not allow anyone to bring militant or extremist ideas into
Jordan or export them elsewhere."
But the Hashemite kingdom's evident close ties with Washington and its
leap into the U.S.-declared war on terrorism threaten to put the
government on what some call a collision course with many of its
people, especially in light of a sharp increase in anti-American
sentiment after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Israel's
recent bombing of Lebanon in the Jewish state's war against Shiite
Muslim militants.
"Being darlings of the U.S. is considered bad, bad, bad," said a
Western analyst based in Jordan who requested anonymity.
Jordanian government officials say the security forces have become
less heavy-handed in their approach. "I am liberal-minded," said Maj.
Gen. Mohammed Dahabi, the chief of Jordanian intelligence, who says he
was appointed in December with a mandate to clean up the service's
reputation as well as confront the growing threat of Islamic militants
in neighboring Iraq and the West Bank.
However, confronted by the recent allegations of torture, the
officials acknowledge that the past casts a long shadow on the
country.
"Old habits die hard," said Dahabi, who represents a segment of the
tribal-dominated security forces that strongly supports the king.
Few publicly speak out against the king because of a law that can be
used to prosecute those who do. "Criticisms of the king and the
intelligence forces are strictly taboo and carry serious penalties,"
says a January 2006 Human Rights Watch report. "Articles of the penal
code criminalize speech slandering public officials, criticizing the
king and his family, and harming relations with other states."
But Abdullah has emboldened a legion of critics among the country's
tradition-minded tribes that are the backbone of the monarchy.
"He talks about information technology and foreign investment, but he
doesn't really know his own people," said the government official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because of his sensitive position
within the Cabinet.
"The tribes are very upset with him," said the Western analyst in
Amman."The impression is that he's too Westernized."
Many critics say the monarch has been too busy pursuing a Western
agenda instead of forging ahead with a vision for uniting the country,
which remains divided between the powerful tribes and the numerous
Jordanian nationals of Palestinian descent.
"He has ambitions to make Jordan a modern country," said Jean-Robert
Leguey-Feilleux, a scholar of Middle East politics, diplomacy and
terrorism at St. Louis University. "You can't do that without the
support of the people
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