Family from Homs, Syria, outside a derelict house in Al Mafraq, Jordan, where they fled. Andrew McConnell/Panos/International/ Press Association. All rights reserved. As Jordan is hit by two attacks in one month, the first such attacks since the 2005 hotel bombings orchestrated by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the question must be asked: who are the Jordanians fighting in Syria and what threat do they pose to the Hashemite Kingdom?
There are between 2000 and 2500 Jordanians who have traveled to Syria since the outbreak of civil war, with most having joined Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIL. Many of these volunteers had no history of Salafi Jihadist activism but now fight for groups with the very same ideologies they had previously rejected.
Salafi jihadism, the belief in using violence to create an Islamic government, is not new to Jordan. Yet according to Dr. Mohammad Abu Rumman, a Salafi jihadist expert, prior to the Syrian Civil War there were only 1,500 - 3,000 Salafi jihadists in Jordan. Now that number is nearer 10,000. But the men who now fight under this new ideology did so after specific events occurred in Jordan, not necessarily out of any new-found religious zeal.
