THE HANDSTAND | DECEMBER 2005 |
Heavy Hand of the Secret
Police Impeding Reform in Arab World
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/international/middleeast/14jordan.html Mr. Qudah, sentenced to a year in
jail for a similar offense in 1996, was apprehensive but
not surprised. The secret police, or mukhabarat in
Arabic, is one of the most powerful and ubiquitous forces
in the Arab world. "We are hungry for freedoms like the right to express ourselves," said Mr. Qudah, 35, whose day job is supervising construction projects as a civil engineer. "But our country lives under the fist of the mukhabarat." In Last week's terror attacks in "The department has become so big that its ability to concentrate is diluted," said Labib Kamhawi, a businessman active in human rights. "The fact that the intelligence is involved in almost everything on the political and economic level, as well as security, might have loosened its grip on security." In Jordan, one of the region's most liberal countries, the intelligence agencies vet the appointment of every university professor, ambassador and important editor. The mukhabarat eavesdrops with the help of evidently thousands of Jordanians on its payroll, similar to the informant networks in the Soviet bloc. The secret police chiefs live above the law. The last head of the Jordanian mukhabarat routinely overruled the smoking ban on Royal Jordanian Airways, lighting up as he pleased. No one dared challenge him. The State Department's annual human rights report, unusually critical of a staunch ally, particularly one that offers widespread cooperation on terrorism issues, said the lack of accountability within the mukhabarat and the police resulted "in a climate of impunity" and underscored "significant restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly and association." It said the agents "sometimes abuse detainees physically and verbally" and "allegedly also use torture." Although the Bush administration has cited the need for democratic change in the Middle East as a reason for going to war in Iraq, the threat of instability on Jordan's border may actually be restricting democratic freedoms there. Even with the bombings in "The issue of security has
become a nightmare," Mr. Kamhawi said, contending
that Getting a senior mukhabarat officer to speak to a journalist is extremely rare. The Jordanian mukhabarat made the head of its domestic affairs branch available for this article on condition that he not be identified, but what he said offered meager insight into the agency's inner workings. "There is no freedom like
that in However, Mahmoud A. al-Kharabsheh,
a maverick member of Parliament who joined the mukhabarat
in 1974 and retired as its head in 1991, spoke candidly.
The mukhabarat, he said, runs "Some Parliament members allow the mukhabarat to intervene in how they vote because they depend on them for help in getting re-elected," he said. "They enter into 90 percent of the political decisions in this country." Keeping Watch Omnipresent secret police exist in every Arab country. Indeed, mukhabarat (pronounced moo-kah-bah-RAHT) is among the first Arabic words expatriates learn, particularly reporters. This reporter's experience in Once in late 2001, I was loitering
outside the "Is this an interrogation?" I asked. "No, it's just tea," the major responded, grinning. After a brief, friendly
conversation about my impressions of But in the years since, whenever I
was involved in any reporting in In Jordan, interviews over three weeks recently with dozens of people - including members of Parliament, former ministers, journalists, professional association leaders and businessmen - turned up tales of frequent encounters with the secret police. Muhammad Atiyeh, 51 , described two encounters, the first after he undertook the seemingly innocuous task of trying to set up an organization of single parents. The group was denied a license, he said, then the Ministry of the Interior's security arm rejected him as president for seven months. The organization "had nothing to do with politics, and yet they interfered," said Mr. Atiyeh, who thinks Jordanian citizens should have a right to know what their secret police files contain. "I have never done anything against the society or the government or the regime, so I am still waiting for someone to explain why." In another incident, Mr. Atiyeh and a few friends, in a puckish mood on a winter weekend in 2004, decided to decorate a stretch of exterior wall at his house with graffiti. One man wrote a line from the Constitution stating that that personal freedom is protected. Another wrote, "Love is immeasurable." A third scrawled, "Life comes first." Mr. Atiyeh himself wrote an Arab proverb about the absence of choice. Three days later, the phone rang. The secret police summoned him and ultimately ordered him to paint over the graffiti because it might be "misinterpreted." In a recent poll by the Center for
Strategic Studies at the Maj. Gen. Rouhi Hikmet Rasheed, a 33-year army veteran and former top military dentist, ran for Parliament in 2003 on a platform calling for a constitutional monarchy. His campaign drew the attention of the head of the mukhabarat, Maj. Gen. Saad Kheir, who warned him to stop, Dr. Rasheed said. "He told me that if I meant
we should have a monarch like General Kheir declined a written request for an interview, and the senior mukhabarat official interviewed for this article said he was unaware of such a call. Poetry and Politics Mr. Qudah, the poet, said the
secret police summoned him for the first time in high
school. His offense was helping to lead a 1988 protest
against the death of Khalil al-Wazir, a Palestinian
guerrilla leader assassinated by Israeli commandos in But he notes that there are far
worse places in the region than Mr. Qudah was born in 1970 in Ajloun, about 30 miles north of the capital, into a sprawling east Jordanian tribal clan. The oldest of nine children, he remembers his first poem was an ode to the snow falling on the local reservoir that fed the surrounding orchards of apples, figs and olives. Mr. Qudah's political education started in grade school, when he was particularly engaged by the history lessons surrounding the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, the British-French pact that divided the Arab world into separate countries and laid the groundwork for a Jewish homeland. He said he eventually absorbed every history book in the school library, and grew up yearning for a pan-Arab state. Unlike many native Jordanians, Mr. Qudah takes no issue with Palestinian refugees settling here permanently. Expressing topical ideas through
poetry is an Arab tradition. Criticism of It also brings another kind of attention. As an undergraduate, he said, the mukhabarat questioned him 20 times after poetry recitals critical of the government. Still, he notes, "you cannot form a political party by reciting poetry," something he would like to do to push for bigger, specific demands, like appointing the prime minister from among elected members of Parliament, rather than by the king. Political parties were banned here for decades. Most are legal again, but are either religious or promote failed ideologies like Baathism, a vision of a secular Arab renaissance hijacked by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad. The personal costs of any serious organizing effort hobbles reformers, Mr. Qudah and others said. "If you work in the daylight you might be imprisoned for a year or two, but you can still come back and work," Mr. Qudah said about overt political organizing. "But to work in the daylight you have to be very persuasive, serious, honest, and you can't quit as soon as the government offers temptations, so you compromise." Today, the drab headquarters of
six major professional associations are the hub of Still, Mr. Qudah says he wants to change the reality that most Arabs have no say in how their countries are run. Nor can such reforms be held hostage by the likely deranged types who carry out terrorist attacks like those here last week, he believes. Good security is a separate issue. "Why does this part of the world lack any kind of democratic practices?" he asked. "To respect your own intelligence means you cannot accept the way things are, you cannot live with the official lie that all is well in the Arab world." An Expanding Influence Reformers believe that King Abdullah II is ambivalent about political openness. On his frequent visits to the The king, the reformers note, was educated partly in the West and inculcated to a degree with democratic values. But he was thrust onto the throne unexpectedly - King Hussein designated him the heir just two weeks before he died in 1999 - so the 43-year-old king relishes the chance to rule alone, they believe. Reformers say they are
disappointed that he has not enacted more tangible
changes. They often place blame for this lack of change
on the mukhabarat's influence, which has expanded since
the 1990's, with the death of King Hussein and While peace diminished the need for the military, the mukhabarat expanded its role to monitor widespread opposition to the agreement. After the king died, the mukhabarat helped provide stability and support while the young heir found his feet. Many reformers, including some members of Parliament, believe a crucial reason the legislative branch of government remains so weak is that the mukhabarat grew accustomed to interfering not only in elections, but also in parliamentary votes. The mukhabarat spokesman denied any such interference, but members of Parliament said the mukhabarat could sway any electoral campaign by getting hundreds of voters to the polls, as well as providing access to government jobs for constituents, money and other facilities. "It's a carrot and stick," said Mr. Kharabsheh, the former mukhabarat chief and current member of Parliament. "They tell the M.P.'s that whatever they want in the future, they will support them. It is well understood that they will turn against any M.P. who fails to do what they ask." He also expressed concern about the mukhabarat branching into business - financing companies like Al-Haq Agriculture, a major farming enterprise, as well as overseas investments, all of which involve hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees. He has asked for details of all mukhabarat investments, but has yet to receive an answer, he said. One longtime head of the agency, Samih Batikhi, was sentenced to four years in jail in July 2003 after being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement in a case involving shady loans to businessmen. The last head, General Kheir, was
replaced this year. The agency spokesman declined to detail its business investments, but said they were all registered and strictly legal. 'In the Eye of a Hurricane' Senior security officials like the
former interior minister Samir Habashneh argue that
freedoms taken for granted in Western democracies cannot
be practiced in If the security agencies relaxed their vigilance and civil liberties were granted without condition, it would lead to more bloody chaos like the bombings here, they argue. Any conversation with senior
security officials invariably harks back to 1970, when
the Hashemite dynasty held onto the throne by facing down
armed Palestinian factions on Jordanians pushing for reform call this a pretext for hanging onto power. For Mr. Qudah, nothing underscores this more than his yearlong imprisonment after reciting a poem in August 1996 that criticized the way "The Manager" runs an unidentified country. It included these lines: He has never taken any decision Without asking for the public's
permission Or without a public referendum What a public Whenever something urgent comes up The public assembles Then there is a comprehensive
speech, whipped up by the Manager Followed by an ululation and a
blessing And the auction is open for
whistling, drumming and for honking And afterwards, the audience claps And this is the consensus in my
state And this is freedom of expression His 10-day interrogation, though
civil, focused on whether he was trying to incite
anti-government unrest and whether he belonged to any
secret organization. He believes the jail sentence from
the military-run He spent the year at Suwaga prison in the southern desert playing soccer and leading seminars on the need for political and social change. "That year just deepened my sense that reform is necessary and made me want to challenge the system more," he said. Trouble with the security services creates a ripple effect. Mr. Qudah says he has never been allowed to publish anything here, although Jordanian critics find his work subtle and witty. When he was arrested again in 2004 he expected another jail sentence, but a tribal elder who represents his district in Parliament and is a government ally intervened. Mr. Qudah was sprung after 24 hours. The spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the case, but denied the mukhabarat would jail someone for poetry alone. Like many Arabs seeking reform,
Mr. Qudah is torn by He finds a certain hypocrisy in the official American outlook. "They gave the green light to all these Arab leaders to create police states, then the reaction was religious extremism," he said. "You raise someone for 50 years to go the wrong way down a one-way street and then suddenly tell them that they have to respect the law. I don't think any of these regimes are capable of creating a democratic reality." Mr. Qudah wants Arabs to be able to live without fear of the mukhabarat or other forms of repression. "If you have stability, but life is desperate, what does that bring you?" he said. "We Arabs, all of us, we are marrying, drinking, laughing, making love. So why can't we live in a free environment? Why can't our freedom just be one aspect among many in our lives. Why do we have to wait? What for? We've been waiting for more than 50 years." Suha Maayeh contributed reporting
for this article. |