This essay dates from November, 2005, but is still very valid.

Stirrings in the Desert
Heavy Hand of the Secret Police Impeding Reform in Arab World

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov. 13 – At a cultural festival last
year, Sameer al-Qudah recited a poem of his depicting
Arab rulers as a notch below pirates and highwaymen on
the scale of honorable professions. Within days,
Jordan’s intelligence police summoned him.

Mr. Qudah, sentenced to a year in jail for a similar
offense in 1996, was apprehensive but not surprised.
The secret police, or mukhabarat in Arabic, is one of
the most powerful and ubiquitous forces in the Arab
world. Jordan’s network had surreptitiously videotaped his
reading.

“We are hungry for freedoms like the right to express
ourselves,” said Mr. Qudah, 35, whose day job is
supervising construction projects as a civil engineer. “But
our country lives under the fist of the mukhabarat.”

In Jordan and across the region, those seeking
democratic reform say the central role of each country’s
secret police force, with its stealthy, octopuslike reach,
is one of the biggest impediments. In the decades
since World War II, as military leaders and monarchs
smothered democratic life, the security agencies have
become a law unto themselves.

(**)

In Jordan, one of the region’s most liberal countries,
the intelligence agencies vet the appointment of every
university professor, ambassador and important editor.
The mukhabarat eavesdrops with the help of evidently
thousands of Jordanians on its payroll, similar to the
informant networks in the Soviet bloc.

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