Posted on 06/21/2014 6:48:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Lost in the flurry of rambling threats to Iraq’s Shiite community during its surprise military blitz last week, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) issued an even bolder statement: a call to arms in Jordan.
Emboldened by its impressive gains in Iraq and southern Syria, the former Al Qaeda affiliate took to social media to announce that it would “soon bring the Islamic state” to “brothers in Jordan”.
According to senior ISIL-linked Jordanian jihadists, the former Al Qaeda affiliate has reportedly pumped $3 million (Dh 11m) into Jordan in the past month for “recruitment purposes” and to fund the medical treatment of its fighters returning from Syria.
Sharing a 370-kilometre border with Syria to the north and 180 kilometres with Iraq to the east, ISIL has identified Jordan as a vital “linchpin” to uniting its young caliphate, whose position would allow the movement to open up new routes for fighters and arms between Iraq and Syria – a move that has been singled out by its leadership as key to widening its wars on Baghdad and Damascus.
Yet even more attractive to ISIL is the 220km stretch of Jordan Valley farmland separating Jordan from Israel and the Palestinian territories – with leaders eyeing a push into Palestine and possible “liberation of Jerusalem” as key to winning over ISIL’s doubters.
In recent months, Jordanian jihadists have served as ISIL’s most vocal critics, with Abu Mohammed Al Maqdisi, who once ranked third in Al Qaeda’s leadership chain, denouncing ISIL as “deviants”.
Key salafist theologian and theorist Omar Mahmoud Othman (better known as Abu Qatada) has taken an even harsher stance, using his continuing trial in Jordan as a stage to attack the movement’s massacres of minorities and referring to its leadership as “dogs”.
The Islamic State will likely find that repeating its successes in Jordan will not be easy, as most in the country still solidly backs the Hashemite monarchy.
And, unlike the undertrained Iraqi government forces or the rapidly depleting Syrian security forces, ISIL would be up against the seasoned veterans of Jordanian intelligence and a well-trained military, who boast more than three decades of antiterror experience and have successfully infiltrated several Al Qaeda cells within Jordan and Iraq. Jordanian authorities have proven deft at applying their antiterror tools along the Syria border, arresting more than 200 suspected ISIL fighters since December last year and sentencing more than a quarter of that number.
The vast majority of Jordanians also have little appetite for the instability brought by hardline Islamist groups, a sentiment tapped into by Hussein Majali, the interior minister, who called on citizens to join the national effort to curb extremism.
Jordan has proven to be two steps ahead of the Islamic State, unleashing in April a new “pre-emptive strike” campaign along its border to prevent the movement from reaching Jordanian soil, engaging in a series of cross-border battles with suspected ISIL fighters that have reportedly left 20 dead and led to more than 100 arrests.
With a missile strike of four suspected ISIL vehicles along the Syria border last week, Jordanian officials returned the Islamic State’s warning shots and a message that ISIL’s path will face a roadblock in Jordan.
Jordan will have the backing of Israel even if its unofficial plus we’ve got troops in Jordan now.
When are these caliphaters going to pick a caliph so we can kill him?
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and of course the US - not that US support means very much while Obama is in office.
They will soon find out the dangers of trying to fight on too many fronts at once.
President Cruz will make a hard right. President H.R. Clinton? Not so much.
They have new recruits coming from as far away as Minnesota, Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia every day.
Jordan will fold like the cheap suit it is... this article indicates a lack of understanding of the middle east in general and the blood thirsty caliphate seeking ISIS (using ISIL just avoids referencing a previous pagan religion).
Although he’s a foreigner, he’s writing for a Jordanian newspaper and probably knows where his bread is buttered.
——Jordan will fold like the cheap suit it is..-——
I might suggest you do a little research on Jordan, their people and especially their King.....
You cannot be more wrong....
The only reason they’ve lasted so long in Syria is because they had our help and then they beat the big guy in Iraq who looked tough but couldn’t fight. That inflated their egos and trying to fight Jordan will bloody or break the nose of ISIS.
We’ll see shortly
The king is old.....
The Current King was born in 1962....
http://kingabdullah.jo/index.php/en_US/pages/view/id/148.html
Here’s a chance to learn something...
Highly unlikely. Israel will back them along with others in the region.
ISIS/ISIL or whatever you want to call them, will soon bite off more than they can chew and they will be rolled up rather easily. Their conquered “territories” will gain them very little in manpower that is reliable and they will eventually realize their limitations.
Yes. That’s why it is/was important to understand the chosen name ISIS in Arabic, that is Islamic State in Iraq & (Al Sham). The accurate/direct translation is Not ‘Islamic State in Iraq & Syria’. It is the Islamic State in Iraq & the Levant. Al Sham in the Arab world would be immediately understood as ‘Greater Syria’ (the Levant). Syria in Arabic is ‘Souriya’.
The greater Caliphate. I wonder if 1 out of 100 Westerners know the meaning of that?
So is Vladimir Putin and most of Africa, what’s your point? LOL
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