AMMAN, 26 November 2005 — Jordan’s mainstream Islamists yesterday warned Jordan’s new security-minded Prime Minister Marouf Bakheet against adopting repressive policies to curb militancy, saying it would backfire and fuel extremism.
King Abdallah asked Bakheet, 58, his national security chief and a member of the powerful intelligence establishment, to form a new Cabinet with a strong mandate to wage an “all-out war” against militancy, two weeks after triple suicide bombings killed 60 people.
The Islamists expressed disquiet at the unusually tough language Abdallah used in his letter of appointment to Bakheet, saying it raised fears of a tougher crackdown on public freedoms in coming days under the pretext of a war on radicalism.
“There is a need for security vigilance but not a tougher security grip that will only fuel extremism,” Azzam Huneidi, a leader of the Islamic Action Party (IAF), the most vocal opposition group in the 110-seat Parliament, told Reuters.
“I am not belittling what has happened, but I think there is now a climate of fear of repression by the authorities...” said Huneidi, whose party is the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan’s largest organized political movement.
