When our country is described as frail

These last two weeks have taken us on a rollercoaster ride and left us reeling. 

Whether it is the government announcement that it intends to further tax citizens on their income, the leaked reports on exemptions given to senior officials, the systematic murder of Gaza-hostage Palestinian protesters by Israel, the decision of US President Donald Trump’s administration to open its embassy in Jerusalem in contravention of international consensus, the Arab leaders submission to Israeli will and the unexplained foray of Trump’s Senior Adviser Jared Kushner into Jordan’s guardianship of holy places in Jerusalem. 

There is no doubt that these successive quick events, against the backdrop of regional uncertainty and violent conflicts are draining the citizen of the will to hope or aspire. Doors appear to be closing and opportunities appear to be diminishing.

As if in collusion, the government appears to be committed to draining Jordanian citizens financially, politically and even individually. By subjugating citizens to a series of enforced dictates, policies and actions, it is systematically targeting their will, squeezing them out from the public space, mumming their voices and subjugating them.

Jordanians whisper that it appears that the world and the government have conspired against them.

Everyone I meet describes a form of resigned frustration and declares a decision to escape this environment and go it alone without looking back. If every Jordanian were to leave, immigrate, give up on trying, protesting and demanding, where would that leave the country?  

An international political expert in conversations recently described Jordan as “frail”. The expert pulled political analysis from all corners of the world: the US administration’s policies in blind support of Israel, the divisions in the Gulf, the conflicts around us fuelled by sectarianism and narrow interests, the refugee crises and the water shortage crises. They all boiled down to a key takeaway: these developments, in a single summation, add to a challenging political environment for Jordan and very little space for political maneuvering. 

Added to what the expert continued to describe internally: lack of credible systems fostering pluralism, weak political institutions, slow reform steps, policies hostage to “old guards”, inability to foster assimilation of diverse origins and ethnicities, gender inequality and youth marginalisation, the expert concluded that the country as a whole today appears “frail”.

This analysis’s absolute and dark conclusion may not be entirely correct since it does, in my opinion, ignore some lanterns of light. But today I don’t want to focus on the bright side but to pick on the elements of truth in that analysis and especially on the clear link between an empowered citizen and an empowered state. 

Do the architects of the apparently systematic disempowerment of the Jordanian citizen really understand that they are contributing to the apparent grander design to see Jordan double up, surrender and capitulate? Do they understand that by weakening the will and capacity of the citizen to stand proud and resilient, they feed directly into the state’s ability to also be resilient and stand up to the conspiracies against it?

There are important examples only in this past couple of weeks: the video of a relatively senior police official striding determinedly through a maze of apolitical protesters while brandishing a knife, only to cut the strings to a paper kite being flown by a child; the holy month of Ramadan being declared by the government in a series of threats to citizens promising them ominous and merciless punitive action if anyone ate or drank; the official refusal to celebrate the achievement of a Jordanian author — yes of Palestinian origin — who won the prestigious Booker Prize for literature; the shameful and damaging show around a family drama that made a mockery of our security authorities and drowned us in nonsensical tribal showmanship and with it all the farcical see-saw statements around the new tax directives. 

In all of those examples, the government essentially bullied the citizen, shut the citizen up, disregarded the will of that citizen, mocked the citizen and treated the citizen as a child without the capacity to think or decide. 

In the paper kite incident the state showcased its military authority to deny Jordanians the right to peacefully send a message to Palestinians that they share in their humanity and pain, the declaration about Ramadan rules reeks of superiority treating citizens as children who cannot be allowed to make decisions on their own by shaking the finger at the citizen and threatening to punish every act of individual will, a Jordanian winning the Booker prize is a huge national source of pride, but the government’s decision to officially ignore the achievement and then allow any attempt to celebrate it to become mixed with the ruinous narrative about origins, reinforces the state’s disdain for diversity among its citizens and mocking their individual success and finally the show around officials misusing their power to snoop on citizens is the ultimate reminder to citizens that their lives are not their own to live in privacy.

What we seem to forget is that every time a citizen is dishonoured, there is a chip being chiseled out of the rock that is the state. All may appear to be small and “insignificant” chips in the first instance, but collectively they are taking away from the whole structure that houses us all. 

What Jordanians privately say is that they have been stripped of their dignity, not only by the decisions of international and regional powers, which they understand is mostly outside their control, but even more importantly and painfully, by the actions and tone of the government that should have stepped up to protect them rather than take advantage of the global situation and Jordanians’ commitment to stability, to further humiliate and weaken them. 

The analyst’s prediction that Jordan is “frail” is not a totally accurate assessment of where we are today. But it can quickly become a reality if the government continues to undermine and chip away at what has made it withstand the global challenges over the many years since the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring: Jordanian citizens’ collective resilience and dignity, regardless of origin, political affiliation, religion, gender or ethnicity. 

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