Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Jordan Invites US Targets for Syrian Retaliation
By Nicola Nasser*
Located at the crossroads of several regional crises,
including the Palestinian – Israeli and Iraqi conflicts, Jordan has been in the
eye of the Syrian storm for more than thirty months, and managed to navigate
safely so far, but the reportedly imminent US strike is pressuring the country
between the rock and the hard place of the antagonists of the war on Syria.
Heavily burdened by the pressure of its strategic allies
and financers in the US and
the GCC Arab states, who have been leading an unwavering bloody campaign for a
“regime change” in Damascus ,
Jordan
Thus, grudgingly or otherwise, Jordan
has in practice invited potential US
Anthony
Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on
August 29, interviewed by abcnews online, said that
“Jordanian targets” could be targeted by Syria
or by a Syrian allied “third party,” a possible development that could embroil
the US
Should such a scenario develop, Jordan
will evolve unwillingly into a war zone, to regret yielding to the prerogatives
of its strategic alliance with the United States
US Targets Invited
When the Eager Lion 2013 exercise ended
in June this year, Jordan ,
inviting a US target for
Syrian retaliation, asked the US
Then, Jordan’s Prime Minister, Abdullah
al-Nsour, indicated a second US target when he told reporters that some 900 U.S. military personnel
were in the country, of whom 200 are experts training Jordanians to handle a
chemical attack and 700 manning the Patriot system and reportedly 45 F-16
fighter jets.
On last August 14, Gen.
Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Jordan asked the United States to provide manned US
surveillance aircraft to help keep an eye on its border with Syria; thus a
third US target for Syrian retaliation was invited.
The USA
embassy would be a fourth target should any planned US
However the Centcom’s
Forward Command in Jordan
In mid-August, Gen. Martin Dempsey was in
Amman to inaugurate the CFJ, which is manned by 273 US officers, with a closed
section, which “houses CIA personnel who control the work of US agents going in
and out of Syria,” and also a communications center, where “atop the
underground facility is a large surface structure accommodating the American
military and civilian offices dealing with Syrian issues from Jordan,” according
to the Israeli www.debka.com on August
17, 2013, which confirmed a report two days earlier by The New York Times
according to which “American correspondents were allowed to visit the site
under ground rules that its location not be disclosed.”
However, on October 18 last year the
Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly reported that the location chosen to host the CFJ was
“a Jordanian military base built in an abandoned quarry north of the Jordanian
capital Amman, just 35 miles from the Syrian border,” which extends 300 miles
along Jordan’s northern flank, and some 120 miles from the Syrian capital
Damascus.
Al-Ahram explained that “the origins of
the previously secret US deployment
in Jordan
Speaking to the media at the close of a
two-day NATO defense ministers meeting at the time in Brussels, former US
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed the existence of a “US task force that
has been sent to Jordan this week after it was first reported in The New York
Times,” Al-Ahram added. “The force would be tasked with ensuring the security
of the chemical and biological weapons in Syria Amman
could play a broader role should American policy change" and Washington decide to launch an intervention in Syria
Denial in Doubt
The denial of the initial reports about the existence of
the CFJ as “not true” by a spokesman from the country's armed forces, quoted by
the state-run news agency Petra, sheds doubt on a statement by Jordan’s PM al-Nsour, quoted by the London –based
pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi on Monday, that his country knows nothing about
the timing, track and targets of a US military strike in Syria, which the US
President is now seeking an “authorization” from the Congress to launch.
Al-Nsour’s “lack of knowledge” sounds odd
in view of the long established multi-faceted strategic ties between Jordan and
the United States, which makes it the obligation of Washington to inform Amman
in advance of at least the “timing” of the imminent US strike and makes it an
obligation of the Jordanian government to ask for it, at least to be on equal
footing with the other Israeli strategic “partner” of the US; it is public
knowledge now that the US is committed to inform Israel in advance of any
imminent US strike on Syria.
In comparison, at least logistically, if
not militarily, especially as far as the Syrian conflict is concerned, Jordan is much more important to the US than Israel
to deserve a US
Moreover, Jordan
is in the immediate danger of being flooded with more Syrian refugees who for
sure will be an integral part of the humanitarian crisis that the US strike will inevitably exacerbate in Syria
Unless Jordan is denying its “lknowledge”
to avert being accused by Syria of complicity with the US, al-Nsour’s “lack of
knowledge” sounds more odd not only because his country hosts the CFJ.
Hosting and participating in the meetings
of the US – led so – called “Friends of Syria,” as well as the military
meetings of eleven chiefs of staff of “The Friends of Syria Core Group,” in
addition to hosting the annual Eager Lion exercises, let alone the bilateral
strategic ties between Jordan and the US and the anti-Syria members of the GCC,
have all combined to posture the country as being an active member of what the
Syrian government rename as the “Enemies of Syria,” who are party in the
conflict and not part of its solution.
Moment of Truth Approaching
The Eager Lion exercises, from the start,
focused on training to intervene and secure the purported Syrian chemical
weapons if and when developments dictate such an intervention, which the
imminent US strike is now turning into a matter of time.
Last June 18 the AP reported that the Eager Lion Drills
“are focused
on ground operations, involving commandos from Jordan Washington
D.C. , Dana Zureikat Daoud, told The Center for Public Integrity
earlier this year that those drills are “not mission-oriented,”
reported recent involvement of Jordanian commandos in Libya and elsewhere in the region gives credence
to the reports on their possible involvement anew in Syria
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, during
his testimony at the Congress on Tuesday, while confirming that the
administration of President Barak Obama “has zero intention of putting troops
on the ground,” he in practice retained the option of sending US “boots” to
Syria.
"I don't want to take off the table an option that
might or might not be available to the president of the United States” in a
scenario where "Syria imploded" and stockpiles of chemical weapons
needed to be secured from extremists, he said.
It is public knowledge now that what Obama said will be a
strike “limited in time and scope” aims at “degrading” Syrian chemical
“capabilities;” the purported Syrian chemical weapons which are now very well
secured will be far less secured after the strike and will demand immediate
intervention to secure them.
So the moment of truth is around the corner for an
intervention either from or with the participation of Jordan
A Syrian possible military clash with Jordan or with
Jordanian – hosted US – led intervention units was only a postponed development
and will most likely be accelerated by the US planned strike, which is expected
to embroil Jordan militarily in the Syrian conflict, willingly or unwillingly.
Counterbalancing with Syrians
To counterbalance with the Syrians, who so far seem
flexible enough or under too much pressure to open a diplomatic or non –
diplomatic dispute with their southern Arab neighbor, Jordan kept the
diplomatic and security channels of communication open with Damascus and went
on record to offset its “enemy” posture, but only verbally, to make Jordan a
place where words and deeds collide.
As recently as August 29, Jordan ’s King Abdullah II after a meeting with Pope
Francis, according to an official Vatican
statement, reaffirmed that dialogue is the “only option” to end the
conflict in Syria
More than twenty two months ago, in comments in the Oval Office alongside President Obama,
King Abdullah II was the first Arab leader to urge Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad to step aside. "I believe, if I were in his shoes, I
would step down," he told BBC World News in an exclusive interview.
So far, Jordan declined to go public and on record in a
clear-cut opposition to the imminent US strike; not excluding the military
option, Information Minister Mohammad Momani
said that “Jordan believes diplomatic efforts must be exhausted before
Washington opts for military action,” but PM Al-Nsour said there will be “no strategic” benefit in insisting on striking
Syria and he as well his Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh reiterated that the
territory of the kingdom “will not be a launchpad for any military operation
against Syria.”
Jordan’s noninterference in internal
Syrian affairs is the officially declared policy, but the reported training in
the country of Syrian opposition fighters, the recent visit to the country by
the President of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Ahmad al-Jarba, the
latter’s visit to southern Syria across the Jordanian borders and the reports
about opening a SNC representative office in Amman
after al-Jarba’s meeting with Nasser Judeh, and the reported infiltration of
arms and “Jihadists” from Jordan
into Syria are all
indications that compromise Jordan
In April this year, Syrian President
al-Assad said that Amman “is facilitating the
passage of thousands of fighters into our country;” it was his first public
warning to Jordan
Al-Assad added that he had sent envoys to
the kingdom during the preceding two months to remind Amman Jordan is exposed
to what Syria
In November 2005, al-Qaeda mounted a
series of devastating bomb attacks at three luxury hotels in the Jordanian
capital, killing some 60 people. The attacks were said to be in retaliation for
Jordan hosting training centers for the new Iraqi army and police, and for
becoming a de facto logistical transit base in support of the US occupation of
Iraq in 2003.
