1999 - King Abdullah ascends the Jordanian throne

AMMAN: I will never forget the grief and anxiety that gripped all Jordanians following the announcement of the death of King Hussein on Feb. 7, 1999. 

Having succeeded his father, King Talal, in August 1952 at the age of just 16, he was the longest-serving executive head of state in the world. During a reign that lasted 47 years, his fostering of Jordan’s reputation for openness, tolerance and compassion had earned the affection of his people, to whom he was known as “The Humane King.” 

At home and around the world, King Hussein was linked inextricably with Jordan, and Jordan with him. With the king gone suddenly, at the age of only 63, there was widespread fear that Jordan as we knew it might also be gone. 

We need not have worried. 

Just weeks before his death from cancer, the king had named his eldest son, Abdullah, crown prince and heir apparent, ensuring that his final gift to his country was a seamless transition of power that kept Jordan on course. 

After taking the oath during an emergency session of the Jordanian parliament on Feb. 7, 1999, King Abdullah II took the throne. It quickly became apparent that in running the country’s affairs he would follow in his father’s footsteps, albeit with a modernist touch. 

From the beginning of his reign, Abdullah set about dismantling Jordan’s status as a rentier state, dependent upon aid in the form of foreign grants and loans, which had burdened an economy already suffering as result of limited resources. In its place he introduced liberal economic policies underpinned by deregulation and privatization, reducing the barriers to international trade and inviting greater participation by the private sector. 

The changes were as welcome as they were quickly noticeable. There was a time in Jordan, for example, when one had to wait ages for a landline telephone connection. I remember that in the summer of 1999, just a few months after the beginning of the new king’s reign, a phone was installed in our home less than a month after my father requested it — something unheard of before. 

Suddenly, it became similarly easy to buy a car or a PC, or to acquire a building license and many other necessities of the modern world that under the bureaucracy of the previously state-controlled economy had not been easy to obtain. 

In short, King Abdullah’s liberalized economic policies transformed the role of the state from controller to regulator, while at the same time he maintained a traditional approach to bastions of the state such as the armed forces and national security. 

Indeed, during a meeting at the time of the Arab Spring, the king told a group of young, left-leaning activists that he advocated right-wing policies when it came to defense and left-wing policies for education and the economy. 

But even as he was earning a reputation as a modernizer and reformer, Jordan found itself rocked by turbulent regional and global events within a few years of his accession to the throne. 

After less than four years of prosperity and calm under the young king’s reign, Jordan — by virtue of its precarious geopolitical situation, bordered to the north by Syria, the east by Iraq, and the west by Israel and the West Bank — found itself dealing with the fallout from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, which exposed it to unprecedented security challenges and cross-border terrorism. 

On Nov. 9, 2005, for example, Jordan experienced its first taste of internal terrorism, when suicide bombers attacked three luxury hotels in Amman, killing 57 people and wounding 115. 

The simultaneous attacks, carried out by Iraqi refugees residing in Jordan, were masterminded by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national who had fought in Iraq and sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda. 

After containing the security spillover from Iraq, and the repercussions of the 2008 global financial crisis, in 2011 Jordan found itself buffeted by the winds of the Arab Spring that were blowing across the region. 

Daily protests, demonstrations, sit-ins and large-scale Friday rallies swept the country and, as long-standing strongmen leaders in Tunis, Egypt, Libya and Yemen fell, all eyes turned to Jordan, anticipating a similarly sweeping political transformation. 

However, Jordan and its monarchy managed to avert political upheaval, thanks largely to the light touch of its security apparatus and a series of substantial political reforms introduced by the king. 

Further tests lay ahead. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, the resulting influx of more than a million refugees from the country put more pressure on an already struggling Jordanian economy. 

Through it all, however, under the leadership of King Abdullah Jordan not only endured, but since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 it has also taken a leading role in efforts to resolve the Syrian refugee issue. 

More than 5 million people were displaced to surrounding countries and on March 9 this year, Amman hosted a meeting of Syria and its neighbors, including Turkiye, Iraq and Lebanon, to discuss security, reconstruction and the return of the displaced, thousands of whom, according to the UN’s refugee organization, have already started to return home. 

It remains a puzzle, to perplexed geopolitical analysts, quite how Jordan managed to endure and survive a series of political and economic upheavals, from the Gulf War through to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Gaza, among others. 

To Jordanians, at least, the answer is clear: Through it all, Jordan has been steered through troubled waters by the steady hand of two successive kings, both of whom earned the affection of their people. 

• Raed Omari, editor-in-chief of The Jordan Times, is also a political analyst, parliamentary affairs expert and commentator on regional affairs.