The clashes began Monday in Maan province following the deaths of two people during a fight among workers at a water project, official media reported. The troubles quickly escalated into a dispute between rival clans and widespread rioting.
The independent Ammon News website quoted a security source Wednesday as saying that 50 people had been arrested so far. Several people had been injured.
Maan has long been a hotbed of tribal disputes. Interior Minister Saad Hayel Sorrour Tuesday insisted that a fresh deployment of security forces had restored order in the southern city after riots with anti-government overtones erupted in the wake of the two men's funerals.
But the local unrest could be a sign of broader problems for Jordan, a U.S.-backed monarchy that along with Egypt is among only two Arab states that have full diplomatic ties to neighboring Israel. As power has shifted from the tribes to more affluent, Westernized and urban Jordanians of Palestinian descent, some analysts worry the unruliness is a sign of widening discontent with the country's establishment.
"The power base of the Jordanian regime has always been the tribes and the military," said Nabil Ghishan, a Jordanian political analyst and columnist. "These unrests are a result of the people losing confidence in the state."
Jordan's 6 million inhabitants are roughly grouped into tribal and formerly nomadic "East Bankers" and the descendants of those who fled or left what was then Palestine west of the Jordan River after the 1948 establishment of Israel. The tribes, which contribute disproportionately to the security forces, long constituted the backbone of support for the country's monarchy, now led by King Abdullah II.
Observers have for the past 1 1/2 years noted deteriorating security in the country's tribal south and north, poor rural areas far from the upscale neighborhoods of Amman. Violence has broken out on occasion, with police sometimes unable to enter areas where tribal toughs wield powerful weapons and blithely shrug off the entreaties of clan leaders or public officials to stand down.
Critics of the government say the role of tribal leaders has been marginalized and the state is perceived as disengaged from the economic and social plight of rural areas amid rising prices and social inequality.
Some have long worried that Islamists could exploit the situation. The local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is already seeking to appear as champions of political and social reforms, tapping into the widespread dissatisfaction among the lower classes to forge ties with tribal groups and even dissident former army officers who traditionally opposed the Islamists.
A group of retired generals last year warned that the lack of political reform and credible national figures in government could have consequences. They said escalating prices, perceived corruption and mismanagement would cause civil unrest.
This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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