Captured pilot shows risks of Jordan's Islamic State fight

The Jordanian pilot captured by Islamic State just last week shrugged off his uncle's concern about being in the air force, telling him: "Don't worry about me."

Mu'ath Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh, 27, became the first airman in the U.S.-led coalition against the militants to be held by the group. His aircraft went down near the Syrian city of Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold.

"He's a lively, modest and devout person," Hassan al- Kasassbeh, the pilot's cousin who was at the meeting with the uncle, said by telephone from the city of Karak in southern Jordan. "We're still in shock."

His capture marks a setback for Jordan's efforts to quell extremists, whose surge in neighboring Iraq and Syria has further destabilized a region in turmoil since 2011. At home, authorities in the monarchy of 7 million people have redoubled their efforts in recent months to prevent any violent spillover from the Syrian conflict, using security services to suppress any signs of radicalism.

The government in Amman tightened an anti-terrorism law, suspended clerics who promoted the radicals and clamped down on pro-Islamic State demonstrations in some cities. King Abdullah II, whose Hashemite family has ruled the former British protectorate since the 1920s, has also joined a regional crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, a group whose stated aim is to gain power through elections.

"When we joined the war against Da'esh, we were fully aware there might be losses, hostages, martyrs," Mohammad Momani, Jordan's minister of state for media affairs, said on television after the pilot's capture, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. "This is our destiny, and the army will continue to defend the homeland."

Jordan has struggled with a group of extremists who advocated violence against local authorities and foreign targets and went on to lead radical movements abroad. One of them is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who set up a branch of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida in Iraq. It became the precursor of Islamic State.

After the group declared a caliphate on land straddling the Iraq-Syria border in June, Islamic State supporters in some Jordanian towns flew its black flag from rooftops, sprayed graffiti hailing the militants and staged protests before the government cracked down on them.

About 1,300 of the more than 2,000 Jordanians who are fighting in Syria joined Islamic State, according to Musa Abdullat, a legal representative in Jordan for the Salafi movement, which follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam. About 250 Jordanians have died, he added.

Salafi groups "can create trouble, but there's not enough of them, and the Jordanians have a handle on them," said Faysal Itani, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

The potential threat would grow only if the country starts experiencing more serious social and economic problems, he said. The power of the central government in Jordan and close ties with the security agencies also reduce the danger.

"ISIS is a threat, but it's not an existential threat," said Rami Khouri, a senior research fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut.

Hasan Karira, head of the Islamic affairs ministry's preaching and guidance department, said his ministry is taking measures that "contribute toward interrupting the flow of radical ideas" and expose the true face of Islam.

Three clerics have been suspended for "mentioning Da'esh positively," Karira said in an interview in Amman.

Preaching Ban

The ministry is enforcing a ban on preaching or giving religious lectures without government permission to ensure the podium isn't used to radicalize worshippers. It is also suggesting topics for Friday sermons that observe prohibitions against promoting extremists.

The measures and Jordan's contribution to the U.S.-led mission are part of its "own war against ISIS because it sees it as a war of values about who represents Islam, and not just a military war," Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and now a vice president at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an interview in Amman. "As such, the country will keep on participating in this war."

There's a risk it might backfire, said Murad Adaileh, spokesman for the Islamic Action Front, a political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was outlawed in Egypt after the country's military-backed takeover last year.

The crackdown might provide extremist groups with more potential recruits because the expanded laws also target mainstream Islamist movements such as the Brotherhood that are part of the political process and have publicly shunned Islamic State, Adaileh said in Amman.

The Brotherhood's deputy in Jordan, Zaki Bani Irsheid, has been arrested under that law on the ground of harming relations with a friendly country after questioning the legitimacy of the United Arab Emirates's rulers in a piece he posted online in November. The UAE, like Egypt, has cracked down on the Brotherhood.

"When you close all doors and windows, you are deliberately pushing youths to extremists," Adaileh said.

If Jordan's aim is to reduce support and sympathy for Islamic State, there have to be other options within Jordan's own political process, said Shadi Hamid, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"ISIS has a stronger narrative because the alternative approach of the Muslim Brotherhood and other mainstream Islamists has failed," said Hamid, author of "Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East," which focuses on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan.

The U.S. military said the Jordanian plane wasn't shot down by Islamic State, as the group alleged.

The U.S. "will not tolerate ISIL's attempts to misrepresent or exploit this unfortunate aircraft crash for their own purposes," General Lloyd Austin, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement, using another acronym for Islamic State.

In Karak, the pilot's extended family held a meeting hours after they got the news of his capture. Safi al-Kasassbeh said his son, who got married in July, didn't show nervousness about taking part in the airstrikes.

"He would say he is a military person," Kasassbeh said by phone. "His job is to obey orders and serve the country."