Protests have once again rocked the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with truckers, bus and taxi drivers, and others in the transportation sector having staged various work stoppages, sit-ins, and protests in recent weeks. The trigger this time was the steadily rising price of fuel due to the Jordanian government’s having complied with IMF-directed budget cutting measures to reduce state subsidies that cap energy prices, while at the same time raising taxes on the very same commodities.
Truckers and public transportation workers in southern cities like Ma’an and Karak went on strike, demanding that the government intervene to stop the price hikes on fuel and arguing that the increased costs were making their businesses and livelihoods unmanageable. The latest price increases came in the context of an already long-standing economic crisis in the kingdom, with high inflation rates and high unemployment (especially among the youth) combining to ensure that the cost of living for most Jordanians remains outrageously high, especially when it comes to food, housing, and fuel.
Although these strikes are a new development, the broader context of protests, societal grievances, and state responses is not, and together these fit an all-too-familiar pattern in modern Jordanian political life. Cost of living concerns affect the overwhelming majority of the population, and have been the focus of standard and quite legitimate complaints among Jordan’s citizenry for years. Energy prices are an especially sensitive issue for most Jordanians, but are even more significant now as colder winter weather sets in and the prices of cooking and heating fuel increase.
The South Sets the Pace
For transportation workers in Jordan’s poorer southern communities, their meager livelihood was the only thing that stood any chance of even slightly offsetting these concerns, and now that too is becoming nearly untenable, hence the widespread anger and strikes. And as has so often been the case in Jordan’s modern history, protest movements began in the south of the country and soon spread elsewhere. Protests, marches, and demonstrations expanded to include Irbid, Zarqa, and the capital, Amman. In the south, many merchants in Ma’an and Karak subsequently closed their shops in solidarity with striking transportation workers, while some demonstrators blocked roads with debris and burning tires.
As has so often been the case in Jordan’s modern history, protest movements began in the south of the country and soon spread elsewhere. Protests, marches, and demonstrations expanded to include Irbid, Zarqa, and the capital, Amman.
Many aspects of this latest set of episodes seem to be part of a recurring pattern wherein IMF-driven structural adjustment programs and austerity measures are implemented by the Jordanian government amid the country’s chronic economic and fiscal crises, and are followed by grassroots anger over the perception that it is poorer working people who seem to be the ones required to do all the “adjusting.” The recent transportation strikes are therefore simply the latest in a long line of protests and activism in response to similar actions.
What is perhaps not so familiar, however, is the violence that appears to have accompanied the latest unrest. While multiple police officers have recently been killed, reports suggest that their deaths were concurrent with, but not necessarily a part of, the protests themselves. For example, on December 15, in Husseiniya, north of Ma’an, Deputy Chief of Police Colonel Abdul Razzaq al-Dalabeh was shot and killed. Jordan’s Public Security Directorate stated that the officer’s death came as police were trying to deal with riots in the town. Protest organizers and activists, however, have denounced violence and vandalism, and insist that any violent behavior that has occurred has not come from the protesters themselves, and is certainly not part of the organized strikes.
Four days after the death of al-Dalabeh, Jordanian police raided the hideout of the suspected killer. In the shootout that followed, three more Jordanian police officers were killed, as was the suspect. Police said that they made nine additional arrests of accomplices, who they declared to be “takfiris,” a term often used to describe jihadist militants, who have emerged as a growing threat to Jordan in recent years. The labor strikes and demonstrations, of course, are not in any way connected to jihadist activity. But the largely impoverished city of Ma’an has for decades been something of a hotbed for multiple different types of opposition to the Jordanian state. Southern Jordan, including Ma’an, has been a center of activism and protest in the country for decades. During the current strikes and protests, the state has responded by deploying security forces and armored vehicles in Ma’an and elsewhere, making dozens of arrests, and even suspending key social media applications such as TikTok, accusing activists of using the app to stoke societal discord.
Current developments, including the tragic deaths of Jordanian police officers, are of course very important in and of themselves. But there are also deeper patterns and contexts to activism and protest movements, economic and political crises, and security threats within the kingdom.
The Deeper Context of Protests and State Responses in Jordan
As political scientist Jillian Schwedler has shown in her latest book, Protesting Jordan, which comprises a comprehensive study of more than 100 years of protests, Jordan has a long and diverse history of protest movements, which predates even the emergence of the state itself. Over the last 30 years or so, many of these protests have been rooted in grievances triggered by economic crises and accompanying austerity measures. Sometimes, protests begin with the withdrawal of food—and especially bread—subsidies, as was the case in both the massive protests of 1989 and the bread riots of 1996. And some have been triggered by the lifting of fuel subsidies, as in the particularly volatile protests of 2012.
Over the last 30 years or so, many of the protests have been rooted in grievances triggered by economic crises and accompanying austerity measures.
Other protests have been even broader, drawing on a host of grievances, including Jordan’s own version of the “Arab Spring” protests of 2010 to roughly 2013. These protests expanded to include broad and diverse opposition coalitions, including traditional sources of opposition like leftist and pan-Arab nationalist political parties, as well as professional associations and Islamist movements, and especially the kingdom’s large Muslim Brotherhood movement. But the most distinctive aspect of protest during that era was the emergence of the Hirak, the largely East Bank or Transjordanian youth movements that (as usual) started in the south and then expanded to every corner of the country. Almost every city and town in Jordan had its own localized version of the Hirak. And certainly, one of the greatest fears of some members of Jordan’s security forces was that the geographically-dispersed Hirak might truly coalesce into a national movement. Ultimately, they did not—at least not yet.
But another alarming issue for some in the regime was the fact that these movements, just like the massive 1989 protests, began in the south, in the very communities that allegedly used to be the “bedrock support” for the Hashemite state. The Hirak protesters, in short, often emerged from the same communities from which the state routinely recruits for its own police, military, security forces, and intelligence services.
The era from 1989 to 1993 started off with massive protests, but the Hashemite regime responded with a fairly extensive reform program, the partial liberalization of much of Jordanian political life, and the restoration of parliamentary elections and legal political parties. Since then, however, Jordan has gone through multiple cycles of reform and change—and of liberalization and deliberalization—that sound very much like déjà vu. The country’s cycles of economic crisis, protests, government reshuffling, and limited reform are therefore quite familiar to many Jordanians, perhaps too familiar.
The era from 1989 to 1993 started off with massive protests, but the Hashemite regime responded with a fairly extensive reform program, the partial liberalization of much of Jordanian political life, and the restoration of parliamentary elections and legal political parties.
Most of Jordan’s economically-motivated protests begin with a key cost of living issue, but soon broaden to include other social and political grievances. In 2018, for example, Jordan saw its biggest mass protests since the Arab Spring period, as the government attempted to reform and also to simply enforce its own income tax laws. But pressing an already-strained society to further tighten its belt was a non-starter in such difficult economic times, and instead led to days of sustained nighttime protests during the month of Ramadan. Like many Jordanian mass protests, these led to the ouster of a prime minister and his government. But unlike the volatile 2012 protests over fuel price hikes, the 2018 Ramadan protests were much larger, took place in most major cities, and went on for days, largely peacefully. The regime even pointedly applauded the right of Jordanians to speak, organize, and protest. And even Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah visited protesters in the capital, voicing sympathy and support.
While the Hashemite state remained very supportive in public, there were many in the country’s security and intelligence circles who were very alarmed indeed, especially because these protests had crossed almost all of Jordan’s usual social divides. What some may have seen initially as a middle-class tax revolt was actually much more. It had begun with a one-day work stoppage by Jordan’s professional and trade unions. But even the organizers themselves were surprised by the scale of participation, which was far larger than the membership of the parties, professional associations, trade unions, and the Hirak combined. The 2018 protests included Jordanians from all walks of life, crossing economic and social classes and including Jordanians of both Palestinian and East Jordanian origins, Muslims and Christians, and Arabs, Circassians, and Chechens. But despite the structured nature of the initial strikes, these protests were not particularly organized, nor were they partisan. Rather, they were mostly spontaneous, as multiple generations of countless families spent night after night during the month of Ramadan in the heart of the protests.
Countering All Forms of Activism
Ever since the 2018 Ramadan protests, however, the state has attempted to ensure that no such national-level demonstrations would take place again, and certainly that they would not coalesce into a national movement. In addition to restricting geographic spaces for protest, the state has tried to emphasize new red lines against attempts to link movements, organizations, or governorates together, all in an attempt to prevent any truly national protest movement from forming.
This has even led the state to curtail the activities of what many saw as the main success of Jordan’s Arab Spring period: the creation of a national teacher’s union. Over the last several years, the government has suspended the teachers syndicate, arrested its leaders, and detained activists when they have tried to protest. For some in Jordan’s security services, there is intense concern that any economic grievance will soon resonate across society and threaten to become something larger, both topically and in terms of public participation. For both state and society, protests over economic issues—especially in areas like Ma’an—make for a familiar story indeed, and always have the potential to lead to something much larger.
For some in Jordan’s security services, there is intense concern that any economic grievance will soon resonate across society and threaten to become something larger, both topically and in terms of public participation.
Jordan’s current round of protests, in fact, appears to address an almost predictable litany of domestic challenges, with protesters and grassroots activists focusing on both economic hardship and perceived corruption and indifference on the part of public officials. Meanwhile, many state security officials are instead focused on domestic security threats from militant Islamist and even jihadist movements. For the security forces, recent events in Ma’an and the deaths of multiple officers in the line of duty are a disturbing echo of events in Irbid and Karak in 2016. Both of those incidents involved shootouts with homegrown Jordanian jihadists and the deaths of security personnel. Some security officers are therefore likely to view the current protests in Ma’an through the lens of counterterrorism and counter-jihadi security efforts, even though most grassroots protesters are not militant or jihadist in any way, and are instead simply truck and bus drivers who are just looking to get help with fuel prices and trying to make ends meet for their families.
Put bluntly, state and social forces may at times eye each other warily, but there are some legitimate concerns here, including about the Jordanian security apparatus and severe economic hardship, as well as grievances over failed governance, especially in terms of the government having neglected to hear and to help local communities amid the difficulties of everyday life that so many Jordanian families are currently facing. Reform and “modernization” efforts tend to focus on changes to laws governing political parties and elections, which are indeed much-needed. And most of the external focus on the kingdom remains on royal rifts, palace intrigue, and Jordan’s role in regional affairs.
But most Jordanians are far more concerned with more day-to-day issues, and with the difficulties of simply getting by in the face of Jordan’s severe economic crises, which have been further impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply chain issues, and even the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The state has responded actively in the world of regional and international affairs by shoring up allies and by lobbying for aid, investment, and economic support from its friends in the Gulf and the West. But the latest strikes, demonstrations, and protests are a reminder that much still needs to be done on the domestic front to ease the lot of everyday Jordanians and to address their deep concerns over governance, rising restrictions on the press and media, high levels of unemployment, and the staggering costs of food, housing, and fuel. Moreover, they also suggest a broader sense on the part of many Jordanian citizens of being marginalized economically and politically, prompting the feeling that protest—not parties or elections—is the only way to truly be heard.
Featured image credit: Facebook/Jordan Public Security
