Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 3/14/05: Indifference, Our Biggest Export

filed under: Despatches

A continuing series of periodic Procrastinet Despatches from Amman, Jordan. By Nicholas Seeley.

We all live in a world of strange and inexplicable oppositions, and it’s seldom more obvious than here. My thoughts on the overwhelming licentiousness of Islamic societies could fill a column on their own – or perhaps a book.

Honesty is another thing. Jordan (and, as I understand, Arab societies in general) are by and large frighteningly honest -- at least by American standards. The culture demands hospitality to guests, and that includes tourists. Street crime here is close to nonexistent. (Street fights between guys are common, but that’s another story.)

Even when you do encounter someone who will rip you off, it seems to be because of some peculiar mental game they’ve played – like, “this person isn’t Muslim, so it’s okay if I rip them off, they don’t really count.” How different is that from all the wonderful rationalizations Americans use to avoid giving change to panhandlers? “Well, they don’t count, they probably do this for a living.”

Everyone has their rationalizations.

But even with honesty and politeness being of paramount social importance, the government here is as paranoid, incompetent and kleptocratic as any.

Maybe that’s just the nature of government.

It’s not the Royal Family, who, by and large, seem to be intelligent and activist, and have a strong social and economic agenda for the country. And yet. In a recent conversation with the editor of a local Arabic newspaper, I learned that for the past 15 years or so, the country has had a special tax, the proceeds from which were supposed to be dedicated to providing electrical power to the rural south of the country.

Problem is, the rural south has been pretty much electrified for 10 years.

This editor tried to ask the ministry in charge where the money was going. They spent weeks sending his reporters from office to office, as every minister pretended he wasn’t the one responsible for the program. No one could produce any record of how the money from the tax was being spent. Millions of dinars just vanished into thin air.

It’s like that all over. In most countries, the government officials at least have the decency to lie to reporters; here, many won’t speak with them at all, or will persistently put them off in the hope that they will go away.

Of course, the real problem isn’t that the government uses this tactic – it’s that it works. The paper never ran that tax story, because they couldn’t get the government to answer their questions. Every place I’ve worked, every reporter I’ve spoken to, they squelch stories because they’ve been stonewalled by some elected official. No one wants to offend the government by showing them up. Politeness and timidity trump the truth again.

Of course, as long at the media allow the government to choose what gets reported and what doesn’t, there’s never going to be any transparency.

Gosh, now it sounds like I’m talking about America, doesn’t it?

Of course, the media has a disadvantage of it’s own. Even if there were magazines and newspapers and TV stations digging deep into the country’s dirty laundary, someone would have to read the stories. And indifference seems big here. Jordan, after all, has civil unrest on three borders now. I would expect people to be more bothered.

Perhaps it’s numbness. Things have been blowing up around here pretty regularly for 60 years; one more bombing, or the murder of one more politician just doesn’t create the same waves of fear and outrage that a similar event would cause in the U.S.

Of course, there is a fair amount of “who REALLY killed Hariri,” going on in bars – though less than you’d think, because pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to seems convinced the Syrian government did it. Hey, law of unintended consequences. Governments kill people all the time – who can predict when a routine extrajudicial assassination is going to blow up in your face?

Perhaps, too, there’s a certain amount of “not in my backyard” thinking. Because Jordan’s monarch is strong. His secret police are vigilant. The economy is booming – so much so that the poorest people in the country are being priced out of the market as Jordan tries harder and harder to be a slice of America in the Middle East.

And perhaps that’s the most disturbing thing about the relative silence about Hariri. Because if America proves anything, it proves peoples' ability to tune out the problems of others when their bellies are full. (Yes, there are also plenty of people in America who have little time for other’s problems because they are too genuinely preoccupied with their own survival, but that’s true everywhere in the world.)

Give people a couple malls and Britney Spears videos, and suddenly their problems become completely different than their neighbor’s problems.

Give a country a little economic prosperity, a few western trappings, and suddenly they start pulling out of the fray altogether. Paying attention to the disasters looming on every side might mean having to justify their own success. Worse still, it might mean, occasionally, standing up to the United States. Can’t have that.

Well, look who sends them the movies, the fashion magazines and pop stars and Prozac and maxi pads with wings -- all the things that keep us nicely sedated at home. I wonder if we do it on purpose.

- Nicholas Seeley, 3/14/05

Posted by rjt at March 14, 2005 02:40 PM