Amman Saved From Terrorism...until when?

It seems our beloved city was saved from a deadly terrorist attack coordinated by the gang of Al Qaeda which seems determined to hurt Jordan, as much as the people of Jordan should be determined to thwart such crimes. The official Jordanian media outlets described the conspiracy as a suicide attack attempt on a vital civilian target in Amman planned by a group of non-jordanian jihadis. Earlier that day, the triple drama in the Jordanian prisons organized by fundamentalist convicts and prisoners came to a welcome peaceful end after too much tension.

Jordanian bloggers were as usual quick and sharp in their follow-up of the events. Natasha Twal was very quick to highlight the announcement of the foiled attempt, while Khalaf provided a detailed critical analysis on the prisone mutiny. Naseem Tarawneh kept an updated monitor of all the security related events in Jordan while the first reaction to the story was posted by Tololy and I am sure much will follow later.

This is another harsh evidence of the realities imposed on Jordan recently. The country has always been a target for terrorism but the scale and momentum are higher now. The security forces have been able to contain the situation apart from that bloody suicide attack of Nov 9th 2005.

The trend in the future will be even harder. To keep the tranquility and stability in Jordan, the citizens themselves have to offer help to the security forces. This might seem to be rather eccentric for someone who is advocating free speech and liberalization, but unless the Jordanian public comes to the reality that militant Islamists represent a direct danger to the safety of our families there will always be possibility that the terrorists might eventually outsmart the security in one attemt or more.

In case that another, or maybe two consecutive attacks occure in Jordan our lives will change competely and we will go back to living in a police state with security overshadowing democracy. To protect our freedoms, liberties, families, and everything we belive in we have to be an open eye for the help of security forces in one and only one dimension: monitoring and cracking down Islamist fundamentalists.

The Jordanian public should be the first defence line against terrorism, and it is not a betrayal of free speech principles to adopt a public security strategy against fundamentalists that ordinary people will participate in without imposing any restrictions to peaceful and civil freedoms.