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Terrorist Spillover in Jordan

(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) David Schenker - On June 6, five Jordanians were killed during an assault on a General Intelligence complex at Baqaa near Amman, Jordan's largest terrorist attack in more than a decade. While the general uptick in terrorist activity is troubling, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Baqaa attack is the perpetrator, the nephew of a former parliamentarian. To date, three sons of sitting members of parliament have been killed fighting either with ISIS or the al-Qaeda affiliate Jebhat al-Nusra in Syria. The susceptibility of the most privileged segment of Jordan's population to Islamic militancy does not bode well for the long-term stability of the kingdom. The Jordanian military is well trained and loyal, and will not collapse under assault from the Islamic State. But as Jordan's leading expert in Islamist groups, Mohammed Abu Rumman, recently wrote in Al Ghad, "the real danger of [ISIS] is not external, it is internal." The writer is director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute.
2016-06-24 00:00:00
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