As many Jordanians condemned the riots that rocked this tiny nation for two days, King Hussein on Sunday accused “foreign powers” of provoking the violence and he was quoted as blaming Iraq.
In Amman, the king told state-run television that an investigation was under way that would expose the parties involved in fomenting the unrest touched off after the government’s doubling of bread prices last week.
In a separate report by CNN, the king was quoted as saying that forces backed and supported by Iraq were responsible. He did not elaborate.
In the southern port of Aqaba, customers crowding the city’s largest bakery criticized Jordanians who rioted in southern towns around the medieval fortress city of Karak and later in the capital, Amman. But they also denounced the steep rise in bread prices that sparked the unrest.
“I am angry. I don’t deny it,” declared Amr Fahrhoun, 30, a driver for a local hotel in this sweltering seaport. “But I tell you we cannot go into the street and throw rocks at the police. We shouldn’t make any problems.”
“The salaries here in Jordan are low, not high,” said Fahrhoun, as bakers nearby stocked shelves with tray after tray of fresh, warm pita bread. “This is difficult for someone who has children or a big family. I can live with this alone, but with a family, I can’t. It’s very difficult for us.
“What happened in Karak is very bad for our country, for the tourists in our country,” he warned, as customers around him nodded agreement. “This is not the way to solve the problem.”
Jordan’s government boosted the price of bread under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Unofficial sources said the alternative might have been a devaluation of the Jordanian dinar.
A tense calm settled over Jordan on Sunday after Hussein dispatched troops around the troubled areas, imposed an overnight curfew and threatened to “strike with an iron fist” against all lawbreakers and those instigating violence.
On Saturday mobs took to the streets, clashing with police and burning cars, banks and government buildings in Jordan’s worst violence since 1989, when similar riots broke out to protest the government’s raising of fuel prices.
The rioting erupted in Karak on Friday and spread to surrounding towns. Riots also broke out in a poor central section of Amman early Sunday, but police arrested more than 100 people and the army clamped a tight lid on the unrest later in the day.
Relations have deteriorated between Jordan and Iraq since the king gave asylum last year to two high-level Iraqi defectors, including a son-in-law of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The king also called for a change in government in Baghdad.
In an address on state television, King Hussein declared: “I believe there were foreign parties (behind the unrest), and our investigation is going to show all of that.
“They tried to abuse people’s emotions in a cheap way before people realized what had occurred.”
Official sources indicated privately that those responsible are supporters of a local pro-Iraqi Baath party and another local leftist party with links to a radical Palestinian group based in Damascus. But many Jordanians frustrated with economic hardship and the government’s perceived failure to curb corruption have brushed aside reports of foreign intervention.
Ever since the king signed Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel, Jordanians’ high expectations that the pact would lead to an economic boom have been dashed. The government’s financial belt-tightening was long expected to lead to unrest.
“The peace is almost two years old,” noted Abdul-Aziz al-Kabariti, a Jordanian business executive who is the prime minister’s brother. “The bread problem is the excuse. The economic frustration and the lives of the people have not improved at all because of the peace.”
The outbreak of riots even among the Bedouin, the king’s strongest traditional supporters, underscored the gravity of the crisis, but diplomatic sources in the region said there was no immediate danger to the stability of the regime.
The political fallout may bypass the king, who has appeared in televised addresses for three days calling for calm, and fall instead on Prime Minister Abdul-Karim al-Kabariti.
