3 U.S. Military Trainers Killed at Jordan Air Base

by Peter Baker
The New York Times

JERUSALEM — Three American military trainers assigned to help upgrade Jordan’s armed forces were shot to death on Friday at a Jordanian Air Force base, an alarming confrontation that raised questions about the relationship between two longtime allies.

The Jordanian military said the trainers failed to stop as they approached a gate at the air base in the southern part of the country, and the Pentagon said it was examining the circumstances of the episode. It came a year almost to the day after a Jordanian police captain killed two American contractors in a rampage at a training facility.

A Jordanian military official, who declined to be identified discussing a matter that is now under investigation, said the trainers had tried to enter the base in a vehicle without heeding the orders of guards at the gate to stop.

American officials confirmed that the trainers had been killed at the gate but did not comment on whether they had been ordered to stop and failed to obey. “We are working closely with the government of Jordan to determine exactly what happened,” said Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary.

The Pentagon did not identify the Americans who were killed or their unit. One trainer was reported killed at the scene while two others were initially said to be in critical condition and transported to King Hussein Hospital in Amman, the capital. They were reported later to have died. Jordan said one of its soldiers was wounded as well.

The fatal clash echoed last year’s shooting at a police training center in Amman. A Jordanian police captain killed two Americans along with two fellow Jordanians and a South African. The deaths raised fears of rising extremism in a country that has largely resisted it in a volatile region.

It was unclear whether Friday’s shooting was purely an accident or the result of hostility of some sort, but it could unsettle relations between Jordan and the United States for the near term. Jordan has been one of the most reliable American allies in the tumultuous Middle East in recent years, aiding the coalition fighting the Islamic State in neighboring Syria and sheltering hundreds of thousands of refugees.

American and Jordanian soldiers conducted a live-fire military exercise together just last month, culminating two weeks of joint training. The C.I.A. and Arab partners have also run a training program for Syrian rebels on Jordanian territory.

Yet investigators have found that some weapons shipped to Jordan by the C.I.A. and Saudi Arabia had been stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatorsand sold on the black market. Some of the stolen weapons were determined to have been used in the police training center shooting a year ago.

Jordanian officials said privately that initial indications suggested the shooting at the King Faisal air base near Al Jafr on Friday stemmed from some sort of confusion rather than deliberate targeting of the Americans.

But American military officials had questions about this version of events. American soldiers certainly know to slow or stop at military base gates, whether in Jordan or anywhere else in the world. It was not clear whether the Americans who were killed were driving or being driven. The Jordanians said there was an exchange of gunfire, but the Americans did not confirm that.

Security experts in Washington and Amman were concerned that the shooting might reflect increasing radicalization in Jordan, which is surrounded by nations struggling with terrorism, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

In June, an attack on a Jordanian intelligence service office in a Palestinianrefugee camp near Amman killed five people.

“Jordan is not going to escape from unharmed from all this trouble,” said Fares Braizat, who served as director of strategic studies in the office of King Abdullah II until this year.

“I don’t want to make a judgment on this yet because we don’t know the facts yet,” added Mr. Braizat, who is now chairman of NAMA Strategic Intelligence Solutions. “But the overall atmosphere is not very encouraging because we have seen so many attacks on Jordanian security forces. These incidents are occurring more frequently, and that is indicative of a deeper issue.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/world/middleeast/jordan-us-military-shooting.html