Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Jordan and the US: An alliance too important to fail
Jordan's King Abdullah II meets US President Joe Biden on Monday. An economic crisis, severe drought and an attempted coup make this meeting of allies more important than ever.
On Monday, King Abdullah II of Jordan will become the first Arab head of state to meet with United States President Joe Biden.
The two will meet at the White House in Washington. The visit is part of a three-week tour of the United States by the Jordanian king, his wife Queen Rania, and his son Crown Prince Hussein.
The visit "will be an opportunity to discuss the many challenges facing the Middle East and showcase Jordan's leadership role in promoting peace and stability in the region," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this month.
"This meeting is very important for Jordan," Edmund Ratka, head of the Amman office of Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told DW. "It has both an important international dimension and a vital domestic dimension."
Long-running friendship
"Given the various crises that Jordan has been dealing with recently, it's of great symbolic importance," Ratka said, referring to recent political plots within the Jordanian royal family, the country's ongoing economic and water crises and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The past few years haven't been easy on the small Middle Eastern state, or its alliance with the US.
Washington's friendly relationship with Jordan dates back to the end of World War II. But it was not until the 1950s that the kingdom became truly important for the American govern
ment — which saw it as a safe, moderate country and a bulwark against communism and Arab nationalism in the region.
Over the decades, Jordan has also played a long-running role in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It was the second Arab nation to make peace with Israel in 1994, but also lobbies strongly for the Palestinian people. Many Jordanians have Palestinian roots.
US-Jordan relations at a 'low point'
Still, none of this prevented the previous US president, Donald Trump, from sidelining Jordan. Trump seemed to favor the strongman leaders of other countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt over Jordon's King Abdullah.
"He [Trump] really didn't care about Jordanian interests at all," said Ratka. "It was very difficult for Jordan under Trump. The relationship was really at a low point."
At the same time, Jordan is not as stable as it once was. In an analysis by the Brookings Institution's Doha Center, the country of 10 million was described as a "soft dictatorship" with minimal democracy. Simply put, despite elections and a parliament, the royal family are in charge.
Jordanians have now begun
to question their legitimacy. Recently, against the backdrop of an economic recession and what are seen as broken government promises, Jordan experienced grassroots Arab Springstyle protests.
These were quickly repressed — but this April, the country made international headlines after what appeared to be a possible coup within the palace, allegedly led by King Abdullah's half-brother, Prince Hamzah, a would-be reformer.
Multiple crises
Due partially to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, conditions have failed to improve in the resource- and water-poor country. According to the World Bank, the Jordanian economy shrank 1.6% over the course of the last year while unemployment has risen to nearly 25%. Youth joblessness is even worse, at around 50%. Jordan also has major water woes and at the sam time is experiencing a severe drought.
As a result of these factors, Jordan remains heavily dependent on foreign aid — most of which it receives from the US — amounting to around $1.5 billion (€1.26 billion) annually.
According to a July Congressional Research Service's report, Jordan received $22 billion (€18.6 billion) from the US between 1946 and 2018. "Currently, Jordan is the third-largest recipient of annual US foreign aid globally, after Afghanistan and Israel," the briefing noted.
Jordan gets military aid from Washington, too. The US Department of Defense (DoD) says the kingdom has received$1.5 billion in military assistance since 2015. The funding allows the kingdom to buy and maintain military equipment like F-16 fighter jets. There are also currently around 3,000 American soldiers stationed in the country.
And although American funding did keep flowing during the Trump presidency, the country lost its foreign policy significance. At first, King Abdullah clearly attempted to find favor with Trump — but around halfway through the former president's tenure, the Jordanians seemed to give up on him.
Biden changes everything
After December 2017, when the US controversially announced that Jerusalem would be the site of its new embassy, contact at the leadership level ceased, something that observers said was unusual in the long alliance.
Jordan has always been a supporter of a two-state solution, where both Israel and Palestine would have their own countries. The decision to relocate the US Embassy seemed to fly in the face of that idea. Jordan also acts as the "caretaker" of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam.
But the election of Joe Biden has changed all that. Biden and King Abdullah have met many times, as the US president often traveled to Jordan as both a senator and as a vice president. King Abdullah was the first world leader to congratulate Biden on his election in November 2020,
and also the first Arab leader to speak with Biden on the phone that same month.
Jordanian revival
"The Jordanian monarch hopes his long-standing friendship with Biden will yield dividends that would not only give a much-needed boost to the economy, but will also show Jordanian citizens, especially those in the majority who are of Palestinian descent, that he will use his influence with the US president to solidify US support for Palestinian rights," Gregory Aftandilian, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington, wrote this week.
During Monday's meeting, the Jordanians are expected to lobby for an extension of its current five-year aid package, worth $6.4 billion and set to expire next year, experts have said.
Although tangible outcomes from the talks won't be immediately apparent, the signals sent will be significant.
"Luckily for the kingdom, regional and international actors still see the country as too important to fail," Aftandilian said.
"The fact that Biden is taking a more balanced approach to the Middle East means that once again, Jordan has a role to play," Ratka concluded. "Jordan still wants to play a part in those major Middle Eastern questions."
tation in both countries starting on July 14. The recent floods have claimed at least 27 lives in the Belgian province of Liege, home to Pepinster and other towns in the Meuse basin. Some 90 people in the province are currently still missing, local officials told DW.
With the worst of the flooding now over and the sun shining down on the quiet town, the people of Pepinster are beginning to pick up the pieces. The main road is unrecognizable — not a single shop or house at ground level has been spared. The cobbled street is hidden beneath layers of dirt and debris and the street is strewn with people's belongings and goods from local stores, all drenched in mud and far beyond repair.
Jennifer Talmas only opened her hair salon two weeks ago. Now, the plush salon chairs lie on the ground outside and a thick layer of sludge covers the salon floor. "We'll be talking to our insurance," she said. "We just have to get on with it. What else can we do?"
Others were less sanguine. Sweeping dirty water out of her front door and piling up the ruined toys, furniture and clothes from the ground floor of her house, mother of four Hanal said she was outraged. "How could they not have warned us properly?" she said.
EU promises solidarity
Wearing sturdy rain boots below their shirts and suit trousers, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived from Brussels, the home of the EU institutions, to show their support on Saturday. The locals were mostly uninterested and carried on with their excavation efforts.
Von der Leyen, however, had a message for them: "Europe is with you. In these difficult moments, your grief is our grief and we will come out of this together," she told reporters between conversations with local business owners and residents.
Earlier this week, Belgium activated the European Union's Civil Protection Mechanism to ask for help dealing with the floods. A European Commission spokesman told DW that the
Netherlands, France, Italy and Austria have so far sent support to Belgium in the form of rescue teams, boats and helicopters.
'How exceptional will phenomena like this be in the future?'
Looking out on the destruction, Prime Minister De Croo said his government's priority was to give people their lives back and restore hope and dignity to the town. But he also spoke of the future and dealing with the climate crisis.
"It's clear that we're being confronted with more extreme weather phenomena," he told reporters. "Here we're confronted with something that happens every 200 years. This is very exceptional — but the whole question of course is how exceptional will phenomena like this be in the future? That analysis needs to be done in a very profound way."
Herve Jamar, the governor of the province of Liege, told DW there was an enormous amount of work to do to restore the town and others in the region, with bridges, buildings and power infrastructure all badly damaged.
Community volunteers step up as dangers remain
Meanwhile, local police have warned there were still imminent dangers in the town. In the worst hit neighborhood by the river, officers waded through water to put up signs asking people to stay away from several houses still at risk of collapse. Other officers used the loudspeaker of their police van to spread public service announcement in the streets: "Attention: There is clean drinking water available outside the police station," they said.
As well as water, local volunteers in luminous yellow vests have piled the stone city hall steps high with toilet paper, sanitary towels, clothes, biscuits and other products donated to help those impacted by floods. It's a clean oasis in the surrounding muddy mess.
"There's an amazing spirit of solidarity in Pepinster," volunteer Oceane Nourdinjer told DW. "That's what people in Pepinster are like. We all come together and everyone helps each other," she said. Nourdinjer lives in the hills by Pepinster, where lush green grass surrounds white houses entirely untouched by flooding. She said other residents from the area have all come down to lend a hand. "After all it's our Pepinster — it's our home," she said.
'We won't give up'
Despite losing the house they've lived in for 20 years and all their belongings, Paul Brasseur and his wife, Madeline, were moved to tears of gratitude when speaking of the community spirit and local support they've received. "This is the time you see how selfless people can be," Paul Brasseur said.
Brasseur and his family are currently living in a hotel. They have good insurance and hope they will eventually be able to reconstruct their life. "We're living minute by minute. We have no idea how things will go but we have a whole network of friends around us who are doing everything they can to help us. All things considered, we're incredibly lucky. We won't give up," he said.