AMMAN: A burly American contractor and a sleek young Jordanian lawyer dig into steaming plates of Chinese noodles as Ukrainian hostesses freshen their drinks. Across town, exiled Baathist millionaires toss money at belly dancers and dedicate songs to Saddam Hussein. And outside the Bristol Hotel, tattooed private security contractors exercise their bomb-sniffing dogs.

This is the new Amman. More than two years of relentless conflict to the east has turned this once-sleepy capital into the increasingly bizarre nerve centre for Iraq. It seems like something out of the movie “Casablanca” or, maybe more aptly, the cantina scene from “Star Wars.”

It’s the Middle East’s newest boomtown. Property values are up as much as 200 per cent in the last two years, traffic jams are worsening, and hotels are packed with the strangest of war-zone bedfellows: Iraqi politicians and businessmen, international aid workers, foreign contractors and mercenaries.

“To do business in Iraq, you have to go through Jordan,” said Wael Jaabari, a wealthy real estate agent who estimates that as much as half a trillion dollars has poured into the Jordanian economy because of Iraq, starting shortly before the invasion. Luxury villas for Iraqi businessmen and politicians such as former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi dot the landscape. Massive multinational contracting companies, Jaabari said, “are buying apartments left, right and centre.” A low-slung, sand-coloured city of about 2 million nestled among a cluster of rolling hills, Amman may not look like much at first. But for those emerging from the emotional and sensory assault of Baghdad 500 miles away, it might as well be paradise. The first night in a bed in a five-star Amman hotel, the first overpriced meal, the first outdoor stroll without bodyguards or paranoia — all feel like extravagances to anyone whose life is tied to Iraq.

Five years ago, the very mention of Amman in comparison to other Arab cities would prompt snickers and eye rolling. It was a backwater next to the throbbing vitality of Cairo and glitz of a resurgent Beirut. Even Baghdad under Hussein had a livelier reputation. According to guide books, the esteemed travel writer Paul Theroux once dismissed it as “repulsively spick-and-span.” But that very blandness has become the city’s principal virtue. Amman has been safe, and in the modern Middle East, safety sells.

Like age rings on a tree, several decades of turbulent Iraqi history are layered onto Amman. It’s where the new Iraqi political and business elite works and plays. And where the Baath Party politicians and tycoons they replaced hide out. “They can’t go back,” Jaabari said. “At least not for five or 10 years, until they clean their hands.” There are even a few exiled monarchists from the days before the 1958 overthrow of King Faisal II. “You have the ancient regime,” an Amman-based Western diplomat who requested anonymity said with a chuckle. Remarkably, the presence of all these traditional enemies — along with presumably half the intelligence agencies in the world — hasn’t translated into violence, retribution or noticeable intrigue. Residents attribute that to a combination of a stable monarchy, vigilant Jordanian internal security and an unspoken communal agreement to leave issues at the border.

“All foreign residents and visitors have an obvious interest in behaving within bounds here,” the diplomat said. “The prominent Iraqi residents of various political hues and backgrounds will all have been told that the Jordanian authorities’ continued tolerance of their presence here will depend on their respect for Jordan’s laws.” The social revival is in full blossom at the restaurants, clubs and bars of a city not renowned for its nightlife. Locals mutter about the appearance of seedy bars and massage parlours packed with suddenly ubiquitous Eastern European women.

The city’s war-related resurgence also coincides with an influx of free-spending vacationers and investors from Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Long since frightened away from New York and London for fear of post-Sept. 11 backlash, the Gulf crowd first turned to Beirut — until the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February. “Now whoever was thinking Lebanon is thinking Jordan,” Jaabari said. “It’s hard to get a reservation lately…. We don’t have enough places to entertain them.”

Aside from the nightlife, Amman fulfils a vital and lucrative role as a safe staging point for operations in Iraq. For months, Royal Jordanian Airlines offered the only commercial air route out of Baghdad, a 70-minute flight to Amman for $600. Now other links to Beirut; Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Cairo have opened; but Amman remains the route of choice.

International organizations such as the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross maintain large operations here, usually connected to skeleton staffs hunkered down behind blast walls in Baghdad. Non-governmental organizations based in the Iraqi capital often open satellite offices in Amman to interact with the outside world, including donors. Wealthy Iraqi businessmen keep their families and primary offices here, with one or two trusted relatives based back home.

“There’s a lot of remote-controlling going on,” said Joost Hiltermann, the Amman-based Middle East director for International Crisis Group, an independent conflict-resolution think tank. “You have here all the people who don’t want to expose their families to violence, kidnapping, bad schools, etc.” What’s bad for Iraq has almost invariably been good for Jordan.

For more than a decade, a steady flow of goods across the Jordanian border enabled Saddam to defy UN sanctions. In return, the Jordanian government received millions of dollars in free Iraqi oil. Hussein’s largesse also co-opted most of Jordan’s media outlets, professional syndicates and much of the government. “Everybody but the royal family” was on Hussein’s payroll, one Jordanian businessmen said, asking that his name not be used, for fear of retribution.

After Hussein’s ouster in 2003, Jordan quickly shifted tracks, becoming a centre for reconstruction conferences and a training site for new Iraqi police. Amman became even more important as Iraq’s security situation deteriorated, forcing international organizations and businesses to relocate. Now rich Iraqi businessmen are given fast-track residency and even citizenship in Jordan. “Quietly, a lot of people in Jordan got on with the business of making a lot of money,” the Western diplomat said. “The Jordanian attitude to this has been pretty hypocritical.” Manal Omar, regional coordinator for Women for Women International, an NGO, summed up the attitude she hears from many Iraqis about Jordan: “It profited from propping up Saddam. It profited from the sanctions. And now it’s profiting from the current misery.”

The good times won’t last if the new rulers of Iraq have their way. Many leaders of the Shia coalition controlling the government in Baghdad nurse a grudge against Jordan for helping Saddam Hussein and accuse it of ignoring Iraq-bound insurgents they say are crossing its borders. Jordan’s King Abdullah II, a Sunni, is regarded as an opponent of the Shia resurgence, and Jordanians in general are viewed as Saddam’s sympathizers.

—Dawn/LAT News Service

ISTANBUL: Turkey could face a nationalist backlash if long-awaited talks over joining the European Union fail, leading commentators say after protests in the capital, Ankara, by thousands of Eurosceptics. Protesters took to the streets in a foretaste of domestic difficulties that are likely to afflict Turkey’s protracted accession process. Although organised by the ultra-right Nationalist Movement party, the rally is believed to have attracted growing numbers of Turks who feel aggrieved at the way they have been treated by the European Union.

“A lot of people, including those who have always been very supportive of the EU are sick and tired,” said Cengiz Aktar, a prominent political commentator. “Certain Europeans keep changing the rules of the game and, frankly, it’s outrageous.” As a result, he said, the predominantly Muslim country was being pushed into a “defensive nationalism” on the eve of a day Turkey had long dreamed of. “From now on, there will be a maelstrom of nationalist outbursts which won’t be good for anyone.”

In sharp contrast to the euphoria that had greeted the EU’s decision last December to open talks with Ankara, Turks across the political spectrum voiced concern on Sunday at a host of perceived injustices meted out to them by Europe. Their main concerns are that the negotiations are open-ended, and that Turkey could be forced to make concessions without any guarantee that the nation of 70 million people will be allowed to join the club. “When, a year ago, I asked my students how they felt about the EU they were terribly enthusiastic and excited,” said Cuneyt Yuksel, who teaches international law at the Bosphorus University. “Now, pro-European sentiment has definitely lessened. People are much more suspicious about Europe’s intentions and they don’t understand because they really believe that Turkey can contribute something to the EU.”

Support in recent opinion polls has fallen from 73% to 63%. Almost all of the ambivalence has been generated by three issues, analysts say: Cyprus, Turkey’s ethnic Kurdish minority, and the Armenian genocide 90 years ago. In each case, the EU has demanded that Ankara take steps that the majority of Turks strongly oppose — recognising Greek-run Cyprus, giving the Kurds more rights, and accepting that up to a million Armenians were deliberately killed during the break-up of the Ottoman empire. Until recently, all three were taboo topics, rarely ever discussed openly. “Turks can accept Europe’s intervention on issues that are political and economic, but on these issues they feel it is totally unjust and unfair,” said Ihsan Dagi, a political science professor at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.

“Turks see the EU as a means to improve their lot. They cannot understand what relevance the Armenian question, for example, has for Turkey’s quest to join the EU.” All three issues had proved to be ammunition for traditional-minded opponents of EU accession within Turkey, say observers. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service

PYONGYANG: North Korea has begun to reverse market reforms by kicking out international relief workers and choking off supplies of food and medical aid in a crackdown that puts millions of the country’s children and elderly at risk.

In what one resident described as the biggest change in the humanitarian situation in 10 years, the government in Pyongyang is attempting to regain control over the distribution of essential supplies that have increasingly been provided by the market and outside donors. As of Sunday , stall-holders have been ordered to stop trading in cereals, including rice. From now on they can only be sold at controlled prices through the state’s public distribution system.

This is not the only regressive step. In August the government told foreign non-governmental organisations that they must leave by the end of the year. Groups such as the World Food Programme and the Red Cross and Red Crescent — which have fed more than a fifth of the country’s 23 million population and provided two-thirds of essential drugs since the famines of the mid-Nineties — will have to stop providing food and medicine on 1 January. The controls appear to be an effort to close the gates of economic reform that were opened in 2002 through government relaxation of price controls.

According to sources in Pyongyang, the government has dumped 200,000 tonnes of its rice stocks on the market in the past few weeks in a move interpreted as an attempt to drive down prices and put traders out of business — or to make a quick profit before the new restrictions. Adding to the pressure on traders, the state has raised the amount it pays farmers from 140 won (£36) to 180 won per kg. But this is still far short of prices of between 700 and 1,000 won on the open market.

South Korean media report that soldiers have been posted in paddy fields to ensure harvests are sold to the state. Even the grain output of individual ‘kitchen gardens’ — the tiny crops yielded in backyards and balconies — must go through the public system under the new rules. ‘They are marching back on the reforms of 2002 in an attempt to reimpose social discipline,’ said a diplomatic source. ‘If you tell people on the streets they must make a living to procure their own food, it starts them thinking for themselves. The government doesn’t want that.’

The anxiety of the world’s most reclusive state was evident last year when mobile phones were suddenly banned. A bigger source of unease has been the role of foreign aid workers in spreading information about the outside world. Of the 23 million people in North Korea, only 300 are non-Korean residents — five are teachers, about 180 are diplomats and the rest work for NGOs or the UN. But these aid workers are a bridge to the outside world. Some, like the WFP’s workers, travel across the country meeting tens of thousands of local officials.

While the country was dependent on food aid, this was tolerated by the government as a necessary evil. But after four years of improved harvests and increasing inflows of rice and maize from China and South Korea, the authorities say that they no longer need humanitarian support from the WFP — an organisation that insists on strict monitoring. The government insists this is part of a move away from a shameful dependency on outside support. Instead of charity, it wants economic assistance to develop its infrastructure. But many in Pyongyang’s tiny foreign community believe that there are other motives. —Dawn/The Observer News Service