U.S. prepares to go boldly where most Arabs fear to tread

By JOHN YAUKEY
Gannett News Service

BAQAA REFUGE CAMP, Jordan — Palestinian Sukaina Mohammed knows of her birthplace in the West Bank of Israel only through stories the older refugees here tell as the children play among pools of sewage and chicken blood.

"I was 4 when we were forced to leave because of the Israelis, so I remember very little,'' the 39-year-old woman almost whispered. "I know that is my home, but I fear I will spend the rest of my time here in the camp.''

Her husband, Abdul-Hadi, vividly recalls the farm he was forced to leave at age 15, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

"I had cows and a good life there,'' he said. "If I had meat every day here but only onions to eat in my homeland, I would still go back. Here we are dead. We died as soon as we left our homes.''

Home for both is now a tin-roof shed in this overcrowded 50-year-old refugee camp. Generations of Palestinians have been born and raised in this outpost of more than 100,000, spending idle hours in the fly-infested open markets bitterly pondering their spiraling fate.

If the United States launches an attack against neighboring Iraq, Jordanians fear this camp and many of the 58 other Palestinian ghettos like it across the Middle East will explode in rebellious violence against governments seen as too cozy with Israel and the United States.

Indeed, if a war against Iraq goes as badly as many here predict, it could shake the fragile alliance of Arab nations from its already loose moorings, jeopardizing weak national borders with a wave of tribal splintering.

And the countries that suffer the worst likely will be the ones the United States needs most to help modernize and moderate the Arabs.

Jordan is among the most valuable U.S. allies in the Middle East, and the most vulnerable, heavily dependent on bargain-priced oil trucked in from Iraq.

With its charismatic young King Abdullah and one of only two Arab peace treaties with Israel (Egypt has the other), Jordan is positioned for the kind of democratic development that the Bush administration hopes will reform the repressive Arab autocracies.

Yet sandwiched between Iraq on the east and the explosive West Bank, Jordan is constantly tugged back into the problems that have plagued the Arab world since Europeans partitioned it into emirates of economic convenience and geographic advantage following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Palestinian-Saddam connection

Much of the fear here stems from the ubiquitous belief that Americans have only a cursory understanding of Arabs — just enough to cause real trouble.

Americans, for example, are comfortable talking about the Palestinian problem and Iraq as separate issues. But in the Arab world, they are inextricably linked. This is especially true in Jordan where more than half the nation's 5 million people are Palestinians who cheer Saddam for his payments to the families of the suicide bombers terrorizing Israel.

"There is a profound sadness that all Arabs feel for the Palestinians,'' said Jordan's former Minister of Information Hani Khasawni. "And Saddam Hussein is seen by many Arabs as a valued supporter of the Palestinian martyrs. If the Bush administration thinks it can remove Saddam without making the Palestinian situation much worse, it is terribly mistaken.''

The connection goes even deeper.

Khasawni argues that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, while the Bush administration talks about regime change in Baghdad, only bolsters the impression among Arabs that Americans and Israelis are allied against them in yet another colonial campaign.

Thus, even for Arabs on the fence about Saddam, the case against Americans is made by what appears to be a bold U.S.-Israeli collusion to redraw the boundaries of the Arab world.

Fear of democracy

In its campaign against Saddam, the Bush administration has talked about spreading the seeds of democracy across Arabia, starting with Saddam's replacement. But right now, little would take root in a progressive, Western-friendly way.

In Jordan and some of the other moderate countries, democracy is backsliding in large part because the recent turbulence has forced crackdowns. Palestinian unrest and a looming war with Iraq have prompted Jordan's Abdullah to suspend parliamentary elections twice.

Ironically, in Amman it is Muslims from the once-radical Islamic Action Front who are pressing for elections against a reluctant monarchy backed by the United States.

"The government here has plenty to fear,'' said the Front's Jamil Abu-Baker. "If there are elections, we will win seats.''

In bellwether Egypt, candidates from the terrorist organization Hamas have been winning campus elections running on anti-government, anti-American platforms.

In Saudi Arabia, the fear is that the democratic alternative to the strict brand of Islamic rule practiced by the House of Saud could look dangerously like the reactionary Islam espoused by Osama bin Laden.

The more the Bush administration talks about regime change in Baghdad, the more leaders here quietly shudder at what could happen in Iraq and in their own countries where a sudden, uncontrolled power vacuum could suck in radicals.

''This notion of somehow re-arranging the region and changing regimes and systems of government in a way that fits the interests of the United States is indeed a very scary notion,'' said Marwan Muasher, Jordan's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Ethnic tribal problems

Worse than a foundering democracy in a post-Saddam Iraq is a scenario where there is no Iraq.

The fear that the country could Balkanize along old tribal lines, as soon as the despotic glue of the old regime has dissolved, pervades the Middle East.

Concern is especially acute among Iraq's neighbors, such as Jordan and Turkey, who face the prospect of massive refugee flows and having to police ancient rivalries in whatever remains after Saddam is overthrown.

"The populations of Iraq are bound by the regime there — not the state,'' said Labib Kamhawi, a well-known political analyst in Jordan. "Take away the regime, and there goes the country.''

The Kurds, Saddam's tribal enemies in U.S.-protected northern Iraq, present the most volatile problem. They appear willing to help topple Saddam, but formal autonomy would likely be their price. That could foment a violent separatist rebellion among neighboring Turkish Kurds and a harsh response by their government.

In southern Iraq, many Arab countries are suspicious of any potential Shiite Muslim government forming there that might identify too closely with the Shiites in Iran and bolster Iran's radical mullahs. But Shiites are a majority in Iraq, and must be accommodated to some extent.

If this ethnic-tribal problem spins out of control in Iraq, "it could spark similar divisions across the Arab world,'' said Rami Khouri, a senior analyst with the Middle East office of the International Crisis Group, a private violent conflict resolution agency based in Brussels.

A lack of strong regional support for post-Saddam Iraq also would greatly undercut the perceived legitimacy of any new government.

All that said, Jordan and other Iraqi neighbors could potentially profit handsomely from a successful toppling of Saddam.

An Iraq free of a rogue dictator could eventually provide cheap and plentiful oil for Jordan and other oil importers while a rebounding Iraqi economy would open new markets. Iraq is relatively secular and literate, and Baghdad was once a cosmopolitan capital, so a lot could go right.

But even the optimists point out that this is Arabia, where more than a century of Western meddling has left an often contentious, force-fitted confederacy of 22 states now struggling with what Khouri called "a crisis of identity and legitimacy.''

More than any one scenario, what worries many observers in the Middle East most is the United States' willingness to rush so aggressively and confidently into this minefield where Arabs themselves now fear to tread.