What ignited the anger of Jordanians to the degree we witnessed in recent days is the extent of baseness and treachery in the terrorist attack, targeting innocent citizens in a place of worship while they were taking part in a funeral.
اضافة اعلان
There's no doubt these considerations greatly fueled waves of condemnation and denunciation, and a desire for revenge against the terrorists and those behind them or supporting them at home and abroad. The global condemnation campaign, which encompassed most countries of the world, sprang from the same premises, in addition to Jordan's reputation and standing as a stable and secure country, one that has long differed from other countries of the Levant that have sunk into sectarian wars and civil conflicts.
For all this, the terrorist operation at the Hmoud church appeared a strange and incomprehensible event. Alongside the anger mixed with bitterness and disappointment, a general feeling of deep concern has begun spreading among Jordanians, under a central question: is the Jordanian exception in our afflicted Levant truly under threat?
Among those mourning the martyrs of the massacre, the last hope of the Jordanians who poured in by the thousands was that such a terrorist incident would not happen again.
The matter isn't measured by a single security breach in many years, but by the number of terrorist operations thwarted in the past years, which security agencies rarely announce.
An operation of this size and danger appears to have opened a wide door of questions and anxiety. The Jordanian exception is becoming a model in a region whose peoples suffer daily under instability, security chaos, and terrorist activity that never stops in its various forms.
At the official level, Jordan has not overlooked the threat posed by the ISIS terrorist organization, despite its declining influence and presence in neighboring countries. It has closely monitored the movements of its cells in southern Syria and Iraq, and continues to work and coordinate with coalition countries against ISIS to continue the war on the organization's cells, which have begun reorganizing their ranks following recent developments in the region. This was no hidden secret; it was recorded by research center reports and closely tracked by security agencies.
However, the belief, or let's say the impression that prevailed in Jordan, did not treat ISIS as an imminent threat, given all the blows it had taken and the close security monitoring of individuals in Jordan who carry the organization's ideology. For this reason, the latest terrorist attack in the town of Hmoud appeared to be an operation outside the general context of ISIS activity, which is currently concentrated in Syria more than anywhere else in the Middle East, seeking to undermine the authority of the new regime in Damascus and rebuild its former zones of influence in Syrian and Iraqi territory.
The sudden breach of the Jordanian arena, and the success in carrying out a deadly operation, may tempt elements linked to the organization to regroup without needing instructions from leadership abroad, and attempt further terrorist operations. Hence the need for a deterrent security approach to this shift, which turns a marginal and secondary arena like Jordan into a center for expanding activity and regaining attention and presence, at a time when the terrorist organization's capacity for inspiration and appeal has declined.
There are spaces in Jordan's social environment that give the terrorist organization an opportunity to infiltrate and recruit elements intellectually prepared to slide down this path. The beginning of the fight lies in identifying these social spaces, subjecting them to comprehensive assessment, deep examination, and precise diagnosis, so that we do not wake up to a second terrorist operation that topples the Jordanian model.
