The bars are filled with tattooed ex-soldiers, young former officers and eastern European prostitutes. The men talk of the Iraq where they work for private security firms, and the women try to offer them an expensive escape.
Amman has become the service center for Western efforts to pacify and rebuild Iraq and Jordan's once faltering economy is booming to the point of overheating.
While many hotel guests are Jordanians, a large proportion are journalists, diplomats, soldiers, security guards and others who work in Iraq but use Amman as a base.
While most of the victims of Wednesday's suicide bombings were Jordanians, mainly at a wedding celebration, large numbers of Europeans and Americans were close to the explosion at the Grand Hyatt hotel. An al-Qaeda statement posted on the internet described the three hotels that were attacked as "filthy entertainment centers for the traitors and apostates of the umma [the Muslim world] and a safe haven for the infidel intelligence services."
The decision of King Abdullah II to support the war in Iraq and the continued US presence there has led to many economic benefits but it has placed the country squarely in the enemy camp in the eyes of Islamic fundamentalists and particularly Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born al-Qaeda leader.
The presence in Jordan of US special forces troops, employees of private security companies and western contractors for recuperation has made it an attractive target for militants fighting in Iraq.
Jordan has a porous border with Iraq, which is mostly uninhabited desert, and there is a large amount of traffic between the countries.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
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