Jordanian Public Opinion

"Public opinion in Jordan is putting huge pressure on the government to negotiate with the Islamic State group."
"If the government doesn't make a serious effort to release him, the morale of the entire military will deteriorate and the public will lose trust in the political regime."
Marwan Shehadeh, ultra-conservative Islamic scholar, Jordan

Safi al-Kassasbeh, the father of Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh (portrait), who was captured by Islamic State (IS) group militants on December 24, protests outside the Royal court in Amman on January 28, 2015 (AFP Photo/Khalil Mazraawi)

The Jordanian public is hugely averse to their government's position in taking up arms alongside the United States and its Western and Middle East allies to combat the Islamic State. It's worth bearing in mind that the Islamic State has taken under its regional occupation as an expanding caliphate, vast territory of two neighbouring states. It cannot be a secret to Jordanians that Syria and Iraq are in a state of collapse from within.

Jordan has, after all, taken in hundreds of thousands of desperately fleeing Sunni Syrians, refugees anxious to escape death from the Syrian military obeying the commands of Syrian Shiite Alawite President Bashar al-Assad who has rewarded their pleas for citizenship equality with barrel bombs and chemical attacks, using mass starvation as an instrument of war to inflict maximum pain on helpless civilian subjects.

What was Syria's affair has become Jordan's affair. Yet Jordanians viewing from afar -- but not too far -- the predations and vicious slaughter, mass rape, enslavement of minority ethnic and religious groups of neighbouring countries, feel it is not incumbent upon their government to use their military to meet the Islamic State in combat.

The most immediate victims of the advance of the jihadist Islamic State terrorists once the countries they've occupied become completely pacified, will be to march toward neighbouring states and Jordan's citizens could be next in line for the appropriation of their territory, and the slaughter of their families. ISIS will not take kindly to citizens of a country that has defied their agenda, but on the other hand, if Jordan withdrew from the opposing coalition it would no more ensure its safety.

Which means that Jordanians must surely realize that their stability and security is under potential threat. The only hope they have to avoid becoming victims themselves of the Islamist terrorists is that enough nations will be prepared to mount an effective offense against their seemingly inexorable advance, during which they post videos trumpeting the most excruciating atrocities they mount, inviting the world to witness the level of their degraded humanity.

Islamic State represents a finite number of fighters, even though they attract recruits from across the Muslim world and numbers throughout Europe. The Arab states in the region have large standing armies and they have equipped their militaries with advanced weaponry. They have the capacity to mount a collective, and effective strike to eliminate the Islamic State, yet they have never ventured to do anything so useful.

The zeal to do so when it came to conquering Israel never failed them, though their campaigns to destroy the Jewish State did meet with failure.

It seems more than abundantly clear that the very same Middle East countries that deplore the presence of the United States in their geography -- the Western nation that exemplifies for them the very topmost exploiter of Arab resources, the country that most interferes with Middle East sovereignty, with the reputation of invasions to remove dictators, resulting in the unleashing of sectarian violence -- expect the United States to enter the situation with Islamic State and mop up the threat they live under.

In criticizing the decision of King Abdullah to lend his military to the collective offence against ISIS, Jordanians signal their disinterest in their region's future, let alone their own country's. There is no regional loyalty, there is only tribal and sectarian loyalty. "Listen, Abdullah, the son of Jordan [the pilot] must be returned home", chant protesters outside the king's palace in Amman. Urging their government to move the heavens to effect the release of the captured Jordanian pilot.

Ensuring in the process, that more captives will be abducted, more such exchanges of mass murderers be demanded, and the cycle of violence and retribution by the vicious jihadist terrorists will continue unabated.