Jordan can ‘face all terrorist challenges’

A Jordanian court issued a verdict last week acquitting an Al Qaeda leader and one of its main ideologues of all charges of complicity in “terrorist explosions which rocked Amman in 1998”.

Abu Qatada, Mohammad Mahmoud Omar, had been sentenced in absentia for 15 years for his alleged involvement in that terrorist organisation. He used a forged United Arab Emirates passport to enter England, through Heathrow Airport, and asked for political asylum.

During his stay in London, he became the main ideologue for North African jihadist salafists until he was detained following the July 7, 2006, explosions in London and, in 2013, he was extradited to Jordan.

The court verdict gives a powerful indication that Jordan feels strong enough to face all terrorist challenges, be they from Al Qaeda or, most recently, from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which considers Abu Qatada as the first guru to its founder, Abu Musab Zarqawi, and his disciple, current leader of ISIL, Abu Baker Al Baghdadi.

ISIL drums into its followers the theme of martyrdom at the walls of Jerusalem, fighting the Israelis in Palestine, and the American occupation forces in Iraq.

The Islamic Emirate of Fallujah was the first nucleus that Baghdadi tried to clone when he was still in the primary stages of learning Islamic jihadist salafist ideology, imbibed into him by Palestinian and Jordanian fighters returning from Afghanistan. 

It is not wise to underestimate the danger of ISIL, since it made no secret of its plans to target Jordan.

ISIL hopes to use its dormant cells to cause some terrorist attacks against embassies, ministries and symbols of government authority.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Iraq managed to plant in Jordan many sleeping cells, through university scholarships, lucrative Baath party membership, and special privileges and financial grants to tribal and religious figures. 

But those sleeping cells constitute no danger to the Kingdom, though their actions might be a cause of worry for investors, loss of financial stability and disturbances.

Jordan, with its deep support from the many strata of our society, its armed forces, security agencies and great expertise in handling challenges from terrorist organisations during the last three decades, can defeat the ISIL threat eventually.

The accumulative experience of dealing with terrorist networks explains why Royal Jordanian Air Force planes destroyed four ISIL armoured personnel carriers heading from the Iraqi border towards Jordanian territory on June 23, setting a deterrent to Baghdadi’s group, showing that no infiltrator can fool the vigilance of those guarding our borders.

What Baghdadi is doing now is what his former mentor, Zarqawi, used to: lure hundreds of young people through slogans about Jerusalem and martyrdom.

These people should wake up to the true facts of geopolitical life and the true nature of real Islam.