14-Aug-18: Chasing (some) terrorists in Jordan

Image Source: Twitter account of Jordan's royal court

A significant clash between the forces of the king and what are being called a terrorist force happened on Saturday across the valley from us over in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

It all started, as far as we know, with an explosion at a Jordanian music festival on Friday. First reports - like this one from an English-language Arab source, were careful to tiptoe around the possibility of terror:

A vehicle belonging to the Jordanian gendarmerie was hit by an explosion on Friday evening, leaving one sergeant dead and wounding six other security personnel, an official at the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie has said. The blast happened just outside the capital Amman, where the unit was tasked with guarding a cultural festival held in the western outskirt of the city. Local news media quoted government sources denying the blast was linked to terrorism, however, investigations are continuing... Local media quoted security sources as saying that "a gas bomb exploded near the fuel tank, causing the explosion of the vehicle". The Fuheis festival is an annually held event in Jordan and is considered the second largest festival in the country after the Jerash Festival... Fuheis is a Christian-majority town, around 20km northwest of the capital Amman. [The New Arab (UK), August 11, 2018]

Pretty soon, the story got darker: turns out it was a bomb that 

was planted under a police vehicle providing security at [the festival]... No group immediately took responsibility... Prime Minister Omar Razzaz portrayed Friday's bombing as a "terrorist attack"... Jordan is a close Western ally in a turbulent region, and has largely been spared from the conflicts in neighboring Syria and Iraq. However, the kingdom has also been targeted by Islamic militants, both domestic and foreign who have carried out a series of attacks... [Associated Press]

Fuheis (or Fuhais or Al Fuheis) is about 20 kilometers north-west of the capital Amman. The Fuheis Festival has been held annually for the past 25 years and is considered Jordan's second-largest cultural festival. Wikipedia says the town has 20,000 residents, 60% of them Greek Orthodox Christians. It's in the Wadi Shueib (Valley of Jethro) area, between Salt and Amman.

A place with a historical heritage ["Is Al-Salt Set to be Jordan’s Next UNESCO World Heritage Site?"] Salt, also called Al-Salt, happens to be where the security forces made up of "special forces", police and the army carried out a raid on Saturday. And where things seem to have gotten badly out of control. Salt had 97,000 inhabitants in 2006: 65% of them are Muslim and the remainder Christians.

Image Source: Where the ISIS people had their base - till Sunday

Newly appointed government spokeswoman Jumana Ghneimat said the security forces we just mentioned were pursuing a "terrorist cell". Here's a summary of what Agence France-Presse reported ["4 security force members, 3 'terrorists' killed in Jordan raid"] on Sunday:

• Quoting not its own reporters but the Jordanian government, it says: "Four members of the Jordanian security forces and three "terrorists" have been killed during a raid on a militant hideout after an officer died in a bomb blast near the capital..."
• Making clear Jordan now tied the raid to what had happened in Fuheis on Friday, it said "Five suspects were also arrested during Saturday's raid in connection with the home-made bomb that exploded under a patrol car at a music festival."
• According to Ms Ghneimat, "The suspects refused to surrender and opened heavy fire toward a joint security force". They "blew up the building in which they were hiding, and which they had booby-trapped earlier".
• The three security forces who were killed died in the shootout with the gunmen. A fourth died later of his injuries.
• The bodies of three terrorists (AFP puts that word in quotation marks) were found in the rubble of the exploded building as were some automatic weapons. Five militants (AFP's word) were arrested in the operation.
• AFP quotes "medical sources" saying 11 people "were wounded during the raid, including members of the security forces and civilians who were residents of the building where the militants were hiding". They included women and children. The AFP report has no details of who thhey were, their ages, or the extent of their injuries.
• Now this interesting direct quote based on something said by a "security official who asked not to be named": "All the terrorists who were killed or arrested were Jordanians and residents of Salt."
• The king, Abdullah II, is quoted saying Jordan would "strike mercilessly and forcefully" against whoever they are blaming which is not yet specified. "This cowardly terrorist act, and any act that targets the security of Jordan, will only add to our unity, strength and determination to wipe out terrorism and its criminal gangs". 
• And this intriguing comment from the recently appointed (see "New Jordanian cabinet has fresh faces but same old problems", The National, June 14, 2018) prime minister Omar al-Razzaz: Jordan will "not be complacent in the hunt for terrorists".

How firmly does King Abdullah actually run things in the kingdom? You get a sense of this from a recent comment by the sober and generally respected Deutschewelle news service:

Since the king calls the shots on all policy issues, it is unclear what mandate Razzaz will have to take measures to pacify the protesters ["Jordan's king appoints Omar Razzaz as new prime minister to defuse protests", DW, June 5, 2018]

On the other hand, how well that's going can be surmised by how many prime ministers the king has appointed and then replaced. Since he was crowned on June 9, 1999, Abdullah II has hired and fired 12 prime ministers, not including the new man, Mr Razzaz. They have served, on average, for less than a year and a half each. (We did the calculations from public records.) The economy is perhaps the most visible sign of how much of a challenge Jordan's managerial class have on their hands: see "'We simply can't take this': Jordanians vow to continue protests after PM resigns" [Middle East Eye, June 5, 2018]

Monday night brought this update:

Jordan said Monday that a terror cell targeted in a deadly weekend raid by security forces was composed of supporters of the Islamic State terror group and shared its extremist views. Saturday’s raid, during which three jihadists were killed and five arrested, revealed that they were preparing a series of attacks in Jordan, Interior Minister Samir Mubaideen said... The suspects “were not part of an organization but followed its takfiri (Sunni Muslim extremist) ideology and supported Daesh... All of them were Jordanians... The raid also foiled other plots to carry out a series of terrorist operations against security installations and public gatherings,” he said. ["Jordan says jihadists killed in raid were Islamic State supporters", AFP, August 14, 2018]

Reuters added:

• Also quoting al-Mobaideen, it says the "militants... did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology... There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won’t tell them so people won’t get terrified”... 
• [T]here were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. “The investigations are secret and ongoing,” he told a news conference
• Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect’s possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added.
• The militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology. “What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan’s security,” [head of the Gendarmerie] Hawatmeh told reporters.
• "Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalization among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty."

A report from a Palestinian Arab source ["Jordanian King Abdullah II vows to eliminate terrorism", Ma'an News Agency, August 12, 2018] datelined Amman says:

The Jordanian King Abdullah II released a statement on Sunday, vowed to end the existence of terrorism, following a deadly terror attack in the town of al-Salt, Jordan. [He] stressed that this cowardly act of terrorism and any action aimed at the security of Jordan "will only increase unity, strength, and determination to eradicate terrorism and its criminal gangs."

What's actually going on behind the official statements and media releases? It's genuinely hard to know. Jordan doesn't have a free and enquiring media and much of what emanates from official sources is spin. A Jordan Times article yesterday shows (probably inadvertently) how that works:

Spokesperson of the Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs Sami Mahasneh told The Jordan Times over the phone that a meeting with the minister and heads of political parties had been concluded with "unanimous agreement upon the government’s media strategy". He announced that a new platform dubbed “It’s Your Right to Know” is being developed by the government to issue around-the-clock news, which he said "will hopefully put an end to all false news and deal with sensitive ones in a delicate manner"...
Bayan Tal, senior advisor at the Jordan Media Institute, told The Jordan Times that this approach is "indeed noticeable" in the new Razzaz government. "There is a gap of trust between the government and the citizens when it comes to news. This is a result of the past governments’ way of dealing with the media and it is what leads citizens to often turn to rumours or unofficial news outlets for information, rather than the government's press release, as proven by studies,” Tal said... The competition between news agencies should not push them to commit immoral and disgraceful acts just to get views, likes, and comments, as those are “not the values of a true journalist”... ["Officials warn against false news ‘igniting national fear’", Jordan Times, August 13, 2018]

We actually do have things to say about how the "values of a true journalist" operate in Jordan. See

• 27-Apr-18: If it really means to tackle radicalism, the Kingdom of Jordan should extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the US
• 23-Jan-15: What's said in London stays in London: Jordan's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't war on terror
• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred

and especially

• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?

Now seems like a perfect time for the Jordanians to show how firmly they oppose Islamist terror by handing high-profile Islamist terrorist and Jordanian media celebrity Ahlam Tamimi over to US law enforcement authorities as they are obliged to do under the 1995 Extradition Treaty between the two countries.

12-Mar-17: ISIS bomb attack on a giant German mall is thwarted

The Limbecker Platz mall on less fraught days [Image Source]

There's so much news about terrorism that most people pay little attention.

Yes, it's a sort of paradox but our own experience bears out its truth. Why people tune out reports about terrorist threats, terrorist arrests, victims of the terrorists - those are weighty and troubling questions to which useful, persuasive answers are in short supply. Perhaps they're part of a work in progress. We can hope.

Likewise the matter of why so many people - especially public figures with political and or law-and-order responsibility - find it hard to even pronounce the word.

Our self-appointed task here is simply to help people have access to some of the information and to aspire towards creating a context that helps them understand how all of this affects us and them.

To Germany.

The Limbecker Platz shopping mall in Essen (population about 600,000) was shut down in its entirety by police yesterday (Saturday). Nearby parking garages as well as an underground rail station were all put into lockdown while sniffer dogs searched the entire area.

"We received very serious indications from security sources that a possible attack was planned here for today and would be carried out," a spokesman for Essen police told the Reuters news agency. "That is why we were forced to take these measures." Police later ordered the shopping center, one of the biggest in Germany, to remain closed for the rest of Saturday... ["Arrests made following terror threat on Essen shopping center", Deutsche Welle, today]

The German tabloid newspaper "Bild" detailed the nature of the threat as human bombs - or in their words, a multiple suicide bombing. They say the attack, which they see as the work of Islamic State (ISIS), has now been foiled and that two males in Oberhausen, a nearby community, were arrested last night in connection with the threat. But we saw a different German report that says there is an ongoing search for people connected to the making of an explosive device. And that one of the two men arrested had already been released as of late Saturday night.

Police closed the entire complex down on Saturday [Image Source]

A German who went to Syria to become an ISIS fighter is believed to be the plot's mastermind. He was - perhaps still is - in contact with people in the Essen area to organize it. He sent them bomb-making instructions via the Internet. The German Press Agency says the two arrested last night were in contact with him but are nonetheless not being treated as intending perpetrators.

The Limbecker Platz mall is a serious enterprise with more than 200 stores and up to 60,000 people flocking to it on a normal Saturday. Germany has many dozens of large-scale malls (here's a listing of the largest).

For reasons related to why we blog, we have written numerous times about Germany in the past couple of years (click to see some of those earlier posts). Sadly for the Germans, there's little chance that we will be lacking terrorism-related material about which to write in the foreseeable future.

It's a country going through some major wrenching changes. An estimated 300,000 migrants arrived in Germany in 2016 [source: "The Islamization of Germany in 2016", Gatestone Institute, January 2, 2017], in addition to the more than one million who arrived in 2015. At least 80% (about 800,000 in 2015; about 240,000 in 2016) of these migrants were Muslim according to the Central Council of Muslims in Germany.

21-Nov-16: German experts "discover" that Islamist terrorists are "being trained" to come into Europe as asylum seekers

Asylumn seekers arrived in Germany [Image Source]

Whether or not there are genuinely new disclosures here, the article published  a week ago on the website of Deutsche Welle ("Germany’s international broadcaster [where] 3,000 employees and freelancers from 60 countries work") is sober and plain-spoken even if its conclusions are emerging a little late.

'Islamic State' reportedly training terrorists to enter Europe as asylum seekers | Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016 | Germany's spy agency has warned that the "Islamic State" (IS) is infiltrating refugee groups to get into Europe. Officials and analysts are now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early. | On November 13 last year, three teams of militants from the so-called "Islamic State" (IS), armed with Kalashnikovs, stormed the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and several pubs in Paris. The rampage left 130 people dead, 85 of them in Bataclan, where the band, the Eagles of Death Metal, was playing.
Meanwhile, investigations have revealed that all nine men involved in the attacks had traveled to Europe together with the stream of refugees that entered the continent in 2015. According to German weekly "Welt am Sonntag," the country's spy agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has warned that IS is specifically training terrorists to merge with asylum seekers looking for safer havens in Europe. The report's authors say that the BND suggests that terrorists train potential attackers on how to answer questions during border interrogations so they can prove their credibility as refugees. The spy agency has refused to comment on this matter. Responding to an email query by DW, an agency press spokesman said: "Basically, the BND communicates its information only to the German government or to responsible bodies of the German parliament in confidential sessions." Many refugees have fled from IS terror in regions like Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq...

A million immigrants arrived in Germany last year, and Muslim organizations assert [here] that "at least" 800,000 of them are Muslim. They keep coming in large numbers that have no precedent even as news stories about the massive influx of 'asylum seekers' disappear from news sites and television screens.

Germany's total population was about 80 million five years ago. It's currently about 82 million. An estimate quoted here suggests that Germany was home, as of the end of 2015, to 5,945,000 Muslims. Pew Research says [here] France has 4.7 million Muslims, and that Germany has slightly more,

The European Commission, aware of how much misinformation and disinformation accompanies this issue, publishes a valuable though laconic document entitled "Asylum quarterly report". Using notably dry language, its most recent issue published [here] in September offers some startling data:

• The number of first-time asylum seekers arriving in the European Union's 28 countries during the month of September 2015 alone was 170,825. (We're selecting September to enable a comparison to be made. Otherwise, September has no special significance.) Of those, 47,185 sought asylum in Germany, representing about 28% of the entire human 'asylum seeking' tidal wave now arriving at Europe's shores.
• The same numbers for the month of September 2016, a year later show a total of 101,765 arrived in all the 28 countries taken together. That's notably down on a year earlier, But of those, no fewer than 76,320 came to Germany. That's 75% of the entire EU number. 
• If that tidal wave of 'asylum seekers' is subsiding, as the greatly diminished amount of news coverage might imply, there's simply no sign of it in Germany. 
• (The numbers for all 28 European countries are on display in this dynamic online table. If these stats interest you, this is an excellent and authoritative source,)

Asylum seekers in Berlin [Image Source: Uriel Heilman/JTA]

When Islamists carried out shocking terrorist attacks in Paris almost exactly a year ago ["14-Nov-15: The Friday 13th terror assault on Paris"], European and German public officials were anxious to downplay - even to deny - any connection between such outrages and the flood of Muslim "asylum seekers".

Thus, for instance, an un-named "source in Germany's federal police" quoted in an Israeli report a few days after the coordinated massacres that took the lives of 130 people and injured an astounding 400 more at the Stade de France, numerous Parisian cafés and restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in the centre of the French capital.

"That is what I fear, people on the right side of political spectrum confusing the refugee problem with the Islamic terrorism problem, even though there is no connection," admitted a source in Germany's federal police... [i24news.tv, November 15, 2015]

No connection, he said? Did he have any actual idea at the time? Does he now? When Germany's government officials say a year later that they are "now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early", the realists among us can only offer them the best of luck.

And for a European reaction, consider this brief extract from a news report published in a respected news source in the wake of the Paris savagery:

The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned Europe against confusing refugees and terrorists, asking the public not to “give in to such basic reactions”. And speaking to the AFP News Agency, a Syrian refugee named Ghaled said he wished the empathy for the scores killed Paris could be translated to empathy for the hundreds of thousands dead in his home country... ["Paris attacks: Syrian refugees put shootings in French capital in perspective", The Independent (UK), November 16, 2015]

A year on and "confusing refugees and terrorists" turns out not to have been such a "basic" reaction.

That DW report we mentioned above goes on to provide a platform for some German voices that don't seem the least bit surprised by what's just been conceded:

Regardless, the fact that IS terrorists have slipped into the continent with hundreds of thousands fleeing from war in the Middle East is nothing new, says Susanne Schröter, expert on Islamic terrorism at Frankfurt University. "This was known since the beginning. I warned about such a possibility even before there were any examples of terrorists slipping in," she told DW. "This is because IS announced that it would send attackers to the continent through the route which refugees were taking. At the time, politicians denied this," she added, referring to over 1 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, who landed in Europe last year. The situation in European countries like Germany, which took in over 840,000 refugees in 2015, was difficult. Border controls had to be given up and many of those coming in could not be registered by authorities properly, compounding the problem, Schröter said... [Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016]

The DW article goes on to provide plenty of exposure to the more conventional sort of European and German viewpoint. For instance (and these bullet points are all direct quotes):

• "The steady flow of refugees at the time also unleashed a sequence of violent attacks against asylum seekers, especially in the states of former East Germany. "Our leaders thought, if we now admit that there could be terrorists among refugees, then it would serve as fodder for right-wing populists and lead to more anti-migrant feelings. So they played it down, but ultimately that was not the right thing to do," the analyst said.
• "Bataclan was not the last target on the list of attacks in Europe. A major attack on Brussels' main airport and an underground station on March 22 this year killed 32 people and wounded many others. 
• "Smaller knife attacks and a suicide explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach shook the country and Europe. 
• "Most of these attackers were refugees themselves or had contacts with asylum seekers, highlighting the fact that the newcomers were especially vulnerable to terrorist recruiters. "There are different kinds of people who come in as refugees. They have different political backgrounds and there are some who are close to IS, and some who have fled from IS," said Schröter.
• "Most of the asylum seekers who come to Europe are young men, who are disillusioned when they land in Europe, because smugglers have promised them something completely different, like more money, a house and a car, Schröter said. 
• "The long registration and waiting process until they finally know what is going to happen to them, adds to the discontent, she explained. Many people simply leave refugee homes and never return, and terror groups and Islamic fundamentalist organizations, like Salafists, use this to their advantage and recruit young people to stage attacks.
• [Schröter says] "the state will have to monitor people more closely. The possibility of terror attacks and cyber invasions has now prompted the German spy agency BND and the domestic intelligence organization, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, to plan a 73 million euro ($78 million) project for supervising internet and telecom messaging services. The agencies have not revealed exact plans, but according to a combined report by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" daily, and public broadcasters WDR and NDR, the BND wants to react faster to messages sent on mobile services like "WhatsApp." 
• "The agencies justify the project, called "Panos," by saying that the "security of Germany and its citizens can no longer be taken for granted. [Can anyone's today?]
• "It is likely that the heightened supervision of communication channels will affect normal citizens and refugees not involved in terrorism. But, as Schröter says, "considering the present situation, there could be nothing worse than a big terror strike, not only because of the possible victims, but also because of the effect it will have. And that is why everything needs to be done so that there is no big attack."

Forgive us, but given the scale of the threat and the indications that serious-minded malevolents with Islamist doctrine as their guide have targeted their towns and public places, these German voices strike us as being sadly indecisive.

For their sakes, we hope we're wrong.