Last month, a terrorist attack occurred in the Jordanian city of Karak, leaving fifteen dead. It now seems that the perpetrators belonged to a cell of Islamic State; in the subsequent crackdown, Jordan uncovered a fairly extensive network affiliated with that organization. Yoni ben Menachem writes:
Islamic State sleeper cells could infiltrate Jordan to carry out terror attacks or attack the Jordanian border guard. The two refugee camps on the Syrian-Jordanian border, al-Hadalat and al-Rukban, which harbor 100,000 people, offer a convenient haven and staging ground for attacks against Jordan.. . . .
[In a rare interview,] General Mahmoud Freihat [the chief of staff of the Jordanian military] said that Jordan sometimes communicates with Bashar al-Assad’s regime via “liaison officers,” and that there have been talks on moving the two [refugee] camps several kilometers into Syrian territory. . . . The Jordanian chief of staff sees another danger . . . emanating from Islamic State in the form of the Khaled bin al-Walid Brigades, which has an Islamic State orientation and is operating only one kilometer from the Jordanian-Syrian border. According to General Freihat, the organization is equipped with tanks and heavy weapons. . . .
Jordan has long been supplying light weapons to the Bedouin tribes in southern Syria so that they can form a buffer zone and fight Islamic State forces and other jihadist organizations. Jordan is now signaling to Syria that it is prepared to cooperate with it in the war on Islamic State despite its disapproval of Syria’s close ties with Iran.
Read more on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: http://jcpa.org/islamic-state-seeping-jordan/