An Admiration Born of Hatred Toward the U.S.

MAAN, Jordan —  Khalil speaks with an innocent enthusiasm that belies his message: He loves Saddam, he admires Osama, he hates the United States government.

“Sept. 11 made me so pleased,” said Khalil, 40, as he and several neighbors gathered on the roof of a house damaged by recent fighting between townspeople and government forces.

The day that terrorists smashed planes into U.S. landmarks, people in Maan celebrated, shooting into the air and distributing sweets, one of Khalil’s neighbors recalled. “What I liked was that [the United States] faced a catastrophe, like we face,” the neighbor explained.

And what about Iraq or its president, Saddam Hussein?

“Saddam, his picture is in my heart,” said Khalil, who works in the local government health department and declined to give his last name.

Here, in the middle of the desert, closer to the Saudi Arabian border than to Amman, Jordan’s relatively cosmopolitan capital, it is easier to hear the unvarnished sentiments and frustrations of this Arab country.

“Maan is a case study for Jordan. It reflects how we think in this country,” said Taher Masri, an urbane former prime minister who remains close to the government. The confrontational statements, he says, are part of a complex philosophy common in this part of the world.

“Saddam is not liked for himself. He is liked, if he is liked, because he stands up to America and Israel -- and it has developed that the source of power for Israel is America and this is, of course, what” Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden has been saying.

“And what you will see in the streets is not support of Saddam, it’s anti-American, anti-Israeli feeling,” Masri said.

The confrontation in Maan also suggests how far even moderate Arab governments might go in responding to further unrest that could be ignited by a war in Iraq. It demonstrates that when moderate Arab countries repress the most vociferous Islamist voices, they run the risk of inflaming anti-American sentiments because the repression appears to be in the service of U.S. interests.

It was here, late last fall, that Jordan felt compelled to resort to violence against its own citizens. Locals energized by an explosive combination of poverty, fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, a desire to protect illegal smuggling and resentment over government neglect faced off against heavily armed government forces that had come to question a known fundamentalist leader about the assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley. The confrontation left two police and four civilians dead.

Today, the signs of siege are still visible. Armored personnel carriers are parked on the main streets and near the edge of town. Although the streets are again filled with men in traditional desert dress -- wide-legged pants, heavy wool capes and red-and-white checked headdresses -- there is a slight wariness in their movements and conversations, as if they are always on guard.

“Events in Maan have laid bare deep-seated problems in Jordanian society -- if situations like this only get handled as a security threat, then the approach may backfire,” said Joost Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group’s Middle East project director. ICG, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on conflict and post-conflict regions, released a report on Maan last week titled “Red Alert in Jordan.”

Pro-Western Arabs could take comfort if the recent upheaval in Maan were an isolated event. But this was at least the fourth incident of anti-government violence in Maan since 1989, and there is a risk that the violence could spread to other communities, Hiltermann said.

Foley’s slaying in Amman on Oct. 28 shook U.S.-Jordan relations. In search of the culprit, police attempted to question known militants, including Mohammed Shalabi, an Islamist sometimes known by the name Abu Sayyaf, although he has no connection with a Muslim militant group with the same name in the Philippines.

When the police stopped Shalabi, he refused to follow them for questioning. Instead, he raced toward Maan, exchanging fire with police and receiving a bullet wound to his shoulder, according to the ICG report.

Shalabi entered a government hospital but avoided arrest because his armed followers took control of the building and eventually escorted him to his father’s home. By this time he was considered a fugitive, and events went rapidly downhill.

The government branded Shalabi’s men “a lawless gang” and charged that they were weapons and drug smugglers who sought to create a militant Islamic theocracy in Jordan.

Shalabi and some of his followers appear to have made at least some of their living, as many Maan natives have for generations, by smuggling weapons and goods between Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinians who live in the West Bank.

By mid-November, according to the ICG report, Maan was under curfew, helicopters buzzed overhead, and armored personnel carriers ringed the city. There was no independent media access, radios and telephone lines were disabled, and thousands of army and special troops flowed into the isolated area. Over the next few weeks, armed clashes occurred between local militants and security forces.

Shalabi and three of his closest associates escaped, but scores of other Maanis were arrested -- 45 remain in prison -- and numerous houses in the neighborhood near where Shalabi lived were damaged by automatic-weapons fire.

“Calm and order have been restored,” said Jordanian Information Minister Mohammed Adwan. “Maan is not so much a political issue as it is a security issue. There are many outlaws there, and you have some extremist groups that use these gangs.”

What happened in November was in many ways a natural outgrowth of several decades of economic decline and a longtime policy of leaving Maanis to police themselves.

It was a result of “many previous mistakes that had not been resolved and the ignorance of the government about people inside Maan,” said Sheik Suleiman Mohammed Qaba Khatab, leader of the Khatab tribe to which Shalabi belongs.

“The people of Maan have no development, no factories, no schools, no education, no hospitals. For a long time the government has left people here in a poor situation,” Khatab said, as he settled himself on floor cushions in his home.

As he spoke to visitors in a room decorated by photographs of himself with Jordan’s late King Hussein and with Prince Hassan, the chief of the local intelligence department called him repeatedly, urging him to dismiss his visitors and making clear that intelligence agents were monitoring the tribal leader’s movements.

The area surrounding Maan has a long history of rule by local sheiks, who combined fierce independence with a deep respect and love for the Hashemite monarchy. Maan was where Jordan’s first ruler, Emir Abdullah, settled when he entered the area that is now modern Jordan after the Arab rebellion against the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Because this area was treated differently from the rest of the country, Maanis felt that justice and law enforcement were a local matter. Their smuggling was overlooked, and until this winter the police ceded control of whole swaths of the region.

Now that has changed.

On a recent Saturday morning in a popular corner sweet shop, the patrons included soldiers, police and several undercover government agents, who were immediately recognized and pointed out by the shop’s manager. Young men were eager to show visitors the houses damaged by the government’s guns and to describe the travails of their brothers, uncles and cousins who were detained by the police. The entire town hung black flags during the Eid feast that ended the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in December, symbolizing mourning for those who had died or been imprisoned.

The siege brought bitterness and a sense of betrayal to locals who feel as though they were first neglected, then crushed. That sense of persecution now appears to color the Maanis’ views of recent world events.

Even illiterate Maanis are avid watchers of Arab television network Al Jazeera and CNN, and what they see on television is a United States willing to declare war on another Arab country -- Iraq -- and aiding Israel, whose soldiers are viewed as killing Arabs and Muslims every day.

The only figure standing up to such powers is Iraq’s Hussein. “Saddam is the favorite Arab leader because he’s against America,” said Khalid, 30, an employee in a phosphorus plant.

Khalid shrugged off questions about weapons of mass destruction. “If they only want to go after weapons of mass destruction, why don’t they go after Korea, Germany, Israel. [Saddam] has weapons only to defend himself.” He smiled broadly and added, “All leaders do this, even George Bush.”

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This is one of an occasional series dealing with the mood of the Arab world during the crisis over Iraq. The first article is available at: www.latimes.com/arab.