More's The Pity

Truly an honourable man, former King Hussein of Jordan was outstanding as a ruler for many reasons. He was a proponent for peace, for one thing, at a time and place when all his Arab brethren ruling their own countries felt that peace was an alien concept, and all the more so where the State of Israel was concerned. Nothing daunted, King Hussein steadfastly worked to achieve an understanding between his state and that of Israel.

At the time of his death he was the 42nd generation direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammad and the longest-reigning executive head of state in the world. As part of his education he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in England. He ascended the throne of Jordan at age eighteen. And from that time on he worked to raise the living standard of Jordanians, building an economic and industrial infrastructure.

He worked to make water, sanitation and electricity available to the population. Jordanians under his rule reached an 85.5% literacy level. Between 1981 and 1991 Jordan achieved the world's swiftest annual rate of infant mortality decline. He was instrumental in drafting UN Security Council Resolution 242 calling on Israel to withdraw from Arab lands it occupied after the 1967 war in exchange for peace. A resolution serving as a benchmark for all subsequent peace negotiations.

The 1994 Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel represents the potential for achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East. Clearly, King Hussein was a man of his times, but he was also a man of unique qualities, a born leader and peace-maker, more concerned with quality of life for his people than conquering a territory given over to shared settlement by two distinct peoples. And which remains in a state of urgent contention.

Jordan has long been considered to be the most stable and just country in the Arab Middle East. King Hussein's son King Abdullah II has taken his father's reign and made it his own, following closely the manner in which his father ruled. But like other countries of that geography that have undergone change resulting from the Arab Spring, Jordan too is being impacted and its peaceful co-existence with Israel is being challenged.

As in Egypt, the Muslin Brotherhood has established a background presence and it agitates for change. The majority population of the country is Palestinian in origin, with members of the Hashemite tribe representing the minority, loyal to their Hashemite king. All is not well in the region; last month at the World Economic Forum King Abdullah warned that al-Qaeda was increasingly active in Syria.

Spillover from the Syrian civil war is impacting on Jordan with an influx of up to 300,000 Syrian refugees crowding into the country, a total that continues to grow at the rate of 1,500 daily. Many of those refugees live outside the UN-sponsored refugee camps, joining the local economy. Should the Syrian conflict not be resolved, by the end of the year it is possible Jordan could be invaded by a total of a million Syrians, in a country of just 8 million Jordanians.

A country, moreover, with serious economic problems, with an unemployment rate of 13%. Jordan has no oil resources to make it wealthy. It cost the state $600-million to host refugees last year, and for this year the anticipated cost will be $800-million, growing as new waves of refugees enter the country.  Jordan is experiencing political and social unrest of its own, albeit nothing to the degree of its neighbours.

This country's stability and its ability to retain its unique presence in the Middle East, as a force for enlightened rule and an advanced sense of global decency may be threatened not too far down the road, if its inner political and social unrest grows. And if that happens, not only will Jordan lose its character setting it apart from other Arab states, but the situation in the geography in general will have been set back immensely.