Jordan economy struggles as land that tourism forgot

ON THE DEAD SEA, Jordan -- The river where Christ was christened. The mountain from which Moses peered at the promised land. The fortress where Herod handed a delighted Salome the freshly severed head of John the Baptist.

Not a bad slice of history for a country slightly smaller than Kentucky. The kingdom of Jordan has Crusader castles, Muslim citadels, Stone Age caves, a temple dedicated to Hercules and an entire Roman City. It has Petra, a mind-bending metropolis that an ancient race carved out of a grand canyon, then went back to being nomads.

It's a rare confluence of religion, culture and civilization. Yet one of the most peaceable places in the Middle East lacks something most tourist meccas have in abundance: tourists. Jordan has become a quiet casualty of the violence that surrounds it.

Critical conditions

"It has a terrible effect on tourism," said Jack Farrhaj, an official with Jordan Circle Tours in Amman, where business has plunged 60 percent in the past three years. "Tourism is one of the main income sources. A lot of tour operators didn't survive."

Consider the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, 1,300 feet below sea level. It isn't completely lifeless; 11 species of microbes manage to live in water that is roughly one-third salt.

Still, on any given day, the germ gang seems to outnumber the bather bunch, who hop across hot sand to bob like beach balls in one of the world's briniest, most buoyant bodies of water. Few are foreigners.

"I'm seeing just locals," said Yasmeen Bazian, 21, a Jordanian who splits time between her hometown of Amman and Brigham Young University in Utah, where she studies marketing and advertising and yes, has seen Utah's Great Salt Lake.

"Last year it was the same. In previous years we saw Israelis, French, Spanish, Americans."

Today, the Iraq that is sprawled on Jordan's eastern border is an unruly place policed by U.S. and British troops. To the west lie Israel and the future Palestinian state, which have waged bloody battles the past three years.

To the north lie militant Syria and its satellite Lebanon, and to the south is ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, the Islamic kingdom out of which came 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Terrorism scares tourists

Farrhaj said the combination of the Palestinian uprising and Sept. 11 was a one-two punch of unprecedented impact. "We used to have periods when business deteriorated, but it never took so long to get back to normal."

Jordan seems a model of Muslim diversity and, at least on the surface, secular tolerance. Low-slung pants and stiletto heels are worn as comfortably as the traditional head-to-toe abaya.

While drinking alcohol in Saudi Arabia can earn one a lashing, Jordan produces fine wines and brews a beer with a heady 11 percent alcohol content.

"Tourism isn't dead, yet," said Bazian, stepping out of the sea in her aquamarine swimsuit, in search of shade before the Dead Sea's drying mineral salts sting her skin. "Maybe it's in critical condition. But I'm not optimistic."

Some have a gloomier view. Care to stare at the narrow bend in the River Jordan where John may have baptized Jesus? An empty tour bus, a pristine ghost town of a reception center filled with unsold gift items -- along with three bored guides -- await your company.

Beder al Dwan, 33, a Muslim guide who steps off the bus after it passes a military checkpost a few hundred yards from its Israeli counterpoint leads his one-man tour group down the serpentine path through a jackal-infested forest to the River Jordan. Across the narrow stream, an Israeli flag flies near that country's own shrine to Christ's baptism.

"The Israelis say John baptized Jesus on their side of the river, but we have better proof that it took place on this side of the river," said Dwan, who notes that Jesus was Issa, an important prophet in the Koran.

Only Israel itself is as lavishly endowed with the remnants of the rise of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, much of it still being unburied. It has far less violent crime than the United States, yet Westerners have abandoned Jordan because it rests in the cradle of contemporary terrorism.

"I don't even bother to argue with my friends about it anymore," said Bazian. "I don't find many who really know the region."