Mysterious bombing
The Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad became the first foreign diplomatic mission to be bombed in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime on 9 April. Sana Abdallah reports from Amman
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A car bomb exploded in Baghdad outside the Jordanian Embassy on 7 August, killing ten
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On the morning of 7 August, a car stopped abruptly in front of the embassy gate in the Ghazalia district of Baghdad, the driver was seen quickly running out of the car before it exploded, killing ten people and injuring a dozen others. All those killed were Iraqis, and both Jordanians and Iraqis were among the injured. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
Officials in the Jordanian capital, Amman, were quick to condemn the attack as a "criminal and cowardly terrorist act", describing it as a "cheap and obvious attempt by those who failed to damage the historic and brotherly relations linking the Iraqi and Jordanian peoples". Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher called Colin Powell to complain that the US forces occupying Iraq were responsible for the security of his country's embassy, its staff and interests in the country. Powell reportedly promised to beef up security and vowed to launch a full-scale investigation.
Officials stopped short of pointing the finger at any particular party for the attack, while US authorities blamed one of their favourite "terror groups", the northern-Iraq based Ansar Al-Islam. The organisation is said to be affiliated with Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda network, and is accused of involvement in the killing of a USAID employee, Laurence Foley, in Amman last year. However, the group denied having anything to do with the embassy bombing.
Newspapers and analysts blamed US forces for the lax security situation, saying that Iraq had become a "fertile ground" for terrorists, international intelligence agents and blood-letting.
Jordanian officials were puzzled that their embassy was targeted in the first such attack in Iraq, saying that Jordan "has always been the lung of the Iraqi people". Iraq was once Jordan's main trading partner that had provided the country with all its oil needs -- half for free and the rest at sharply discounted prices under Saddam's rule. After the collapse of the former Iraqi regime, Jordan dispatched a field hospital to Falluja, while dozens of injured Iraqi children have been receiving medical treatment in Amman at the orders of King Abdullah.
Despite the close ties between Jordan and Iraq over the last two decades, analysts in Amman said any number of parties in Iraq could have had cause to target the embassy. The bombing came just one week after King Abdullah, with the apparent prior consent of US authorities, granted safe refuge to two of Saddam Hussein's daughters, Raghad and Rana, and their nine children, for "humanitarian reasons".
It was the second time the two women were granted asylum in Jordan. In August 1995, they joined their husbands, Hussein Kamel, who headed Iraq's weapons programmes for ten years, and his brother, Saddam Kamel, when they defected to the kingdom. Although the Kamels said they were seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime, the brothers and their families returned to Iraq in February 1996 after they were promised amnesty by their father-in-law. They were killed upon their return.
Official newspapers and pro-government analysts used the bombing to blast the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, accusing him of exploiting the refuge given to Saddam's daughter to "attack Jordan in an obvious move of score settling".
Before the bombing, the INC's newspaper, Al-Mu'tammar (The Congress), had accused Jordan of "attacking Iraqi nationalists and hosting pillars of the deposed regime", a charge Amman had vehemently refuted, denying that Saddam's daughters were "pillars" of their father's regime.
Although stopping short of pointing the finger at Chalabi for carrying out the attack, some Jordanian analysts accused him, his group and newspaper of "inciting violence and hatred" against the kingdom. The proposed motive was revenge for his conviction in absentia by Jordan's State Security Court in the early 1990s. Chalabi was sentenced to 20 years in prison for embezzling millions of depositors' money when he chaired the private-owned Petra Bank, which was later liquidated.
Some analysts speculated that the attackers could have been any other anti-Saddam Iraqis angered by Jordan's decision to host Raghad and Rana, noting that following the blast, a crowd stormed the embassy, ransacked some of the offices, and tore up pictures of King Abdullah and his late father, King Hussein.
Others believed the perpetrators could have been those opposing the US invasion of their country and Jordan's role in facilitating and hosting US Special Forces in the country before and during the invasion. Although Jordan insisted that "several hundred" US soldiers in the kingdom were there only to operate three Patriot anti-missile batteries during the military operations against Iraq, it was an "open secret" that the country hosted American troops who were granted permission to send ground troops into Iraq's western front.
Amman had officially opposed the war on Iraq, mostly for local consumption to appease the overwhelming popular anger against the US invasion of a neighbouring Arab country. But officials privately admitted that Jordan's financial dependence and alliance with Washington gave the country "no choice" but to bow to pressure and "take the side of the Americans".
Some conspiracy theorists said the Americans themselves could have orchestrated the attack. Eyewitnesses at the scene said they saw a US helicopter hovering above the embassy minutes before the car exploded. Eyewitnesses told Arab television channels there were no US forces near the embassy, and that they were slow to respond to the bombing.
These speculators suggested that the US might have been "sending a message" after Jordan, joining its Arab League fellow members, refused to dispatch peace-keeping troops and would not recognise the Interim Iraqi Governing Council.
