Is Jordan Next For The Islamic State?

Kevin Sullivan, the Compass/Real Clear World: The Caliphate Inches Closer to Jordan

Rumors have been circulating in recent days that the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade -- a Syrian rebel group that gained notoriety in March 2013 when it kidnapped, and subsequently released, 21 Filipino UN workers -- is readying to declare its own emirate, or wilayat, in the Syrian city of Daraa, one of the group's strongholds.

The word emirate evokes all kinds of images and assumptions, but the motivations behind Yarmouk's potential push for autonomy may be rooted in very terrestrial and parochial interests. Although the Yarmouk Brigade has been rumored as having ties with the Islamic State group, the militant separatists have repeatedly denied such charges. Compounding the confusion is the fact that these accusations have been levied by Jaish al-Fatah, a Syrian rebel alliance with ties to al-Qaeda. The two factions have fought each other on the field of battle and in the court of law, and their disagreements are largely over matters of jurisprudence, affiliation, and religious interpretation.

WNU Editor: I suspect that most Jordanians do not want to be living through the carnage that is happening right now in Syria and Iraq .... and on those grounds alone the Islamic State will probably have trouble penetrating Jordanian society. But ISIS does have supporters in Jordan just as they do in other Muslim states, and it is a problem that I suspect will be persistent (and dangerous) for Jordan and for of these other countries in the years to come.