AMMAN, Jordan—Fearing the fallout and the spread of the uprising in Syria, Jordanian officials have recently moved more forcefully to restrain opponents of the Syrian government who have fled to Jordan, activists here say.
A Syrian opposition leader from Dara’a said that intelligence agents tried to dissuade him from returning after a recent trip outside the country. Jordanian airline officials demanded he buy a ticket to go on to Damascus before he boarded the plane. In another case, an artist once imprisoned in Syria said that since arriving in Jordan in March, he had been interrogated four times by intelligence agents who warned that he would be sent back to Syria if he engaged in conspicuous activism against the Syrian government.
The episodes reflected Jordan’s perennially anxious state, battered by cycles of crises in the region, fearful of stronger neighbors and dependent on others for financial and military support. In recent weeks, Jordanian officials and commentators have made dire predictions that refugees could overwhelm the country as the war worsens, strangling Jordan’s fragile economy and straining its resources.
But officials are especially concerned that the uprising could unsettle the country’s already turbulent politics. Small but persistent demonstrations over the past year have focused on government corruption, and have resulted in increasingly bold expressions of anger directed at the country’s monarch, King Abdullah II.
The king has tried to manage the call for change with a limited reform program that his critics say hardly diminishes his grip on power. The Syrian conflict could worsen one of Jordan’s deep domestic schisms, between citizens of Palestinian descent and so-called East Bank Jordanians.
Violence has already crossed the border. Residents near the frontier with Syria said they had seen at least one clash between Syrian Army troops and Jordanian border patrol officers who were trying to help refugees cross. On Monday, Jordanian police officers fired tear gas to break up a fight between Syrian refugees and local residents outside a refugee camp near the border.
The confluence of fears has led the country’s leaders to watch their words. King Abdullah, who previously called for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to step down, was more circumspect in an interview last week, mentioning worries that Qaeda-linked fighters had joined the opposition. “If Bashar leaving the scene and exiting Syria brings a stop to violence and creates a political transition, that’s the lesser of evils,” he said on CNN. “But have we gotten past that stage? That’s a question I can’t answer.”
The Jordanian government has won praise for accepting 140,000 refugees. Many Syrians who have fled said that Jordanian officers rescued them on the border, in some cases as the Syrian Army pursued them.
The Kurdish woman said she left after her house collapsed under government shelling, killing her mother. Though she had no identity papers, the Jordanian authorities let her and her family enter; now they are searching for a Jordanian sponsor so they can leave the camp.
But Palestinians who have made it to Jordan cannot leave their camp, not even if they have family living elsewhere in Jordan.
Wessam Salama, an activist who has lived in Jordan for several years, said he had been able to provide charitable services to Syrian refugees, with little harassment from the state.
The government seemed most concerned with anyone trying to provide weapons to the Syrian rebels, he said. “Anything with guns, anything that creates chaos, they will have no hesitation in delivering us to Bashar,” he said.
Nizar al-Hrakiy, an opposition activist from Dara’a, said he had received threats from people he believed represented the Syrian government since he arrived in Jordan, causing him to twice change where he was staying. At the same time, he had to contend with warnings from the Jordanian authorities. “They put pressure. They do not want us to talk to the media, or to work on any military issue,” he said.
“They are focusing on their security,” he said, adding: “They don’t want the contagion of the revolution.”
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