The Dominion - Jordan

Oil in the Desert

stephlaw — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:48:38 +0000

Will water be sacrificed to oil in Jordan?

AMMAN, Jordan—In March of 2011, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan jumped headlong into unconventional oil extraction, and signed a deal with Karak International Oil (KIO), a subsidiary of Jordan Energy and Mining Limited (JEML--a British company), for the commercial mining of oil shale approximately one hour’s drive from the capital of Amman. Unlike most countries in the region, if you fill up your gas tank in Jordan, you are using imported oil— but the Kingdom is touting a future when extreme extraction will change that, and soon.

Jordan is one of the countries most likely to bear the harshest impacts of climate change, and least suited to dive headlong into the most destructive forms of energy yet devised. Walking the streets of Amman, however, one gets the sense that the government has already decided the country will serve as a launching pad for American interests. The entire city is oriented towards the American troops, engineers, and others who stop off on their way to and from Baghdad, Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq transformed Jordan without the dropping of a single bomb overhead. New oil shale proposals could promote a similarly intense kind of change with an absence of popular input—but perhaps even more discreetly.

The main oil shale deposit designated for exploitation in Jordan is at Al Lajjun in the southern Karak governorate, and the lease has a 35-square-kilometer radius. This project is expected to produce commercial crude for refining within five years, maxing out some years after that at 60,000 barrels of mock crude per day. By way of comparison, the entire nation consumes an average of 200,000 barrels per day.

Part of the project’s construction and know-how will be imported into Jordan from the Athabasca region of Canada via Thyssenkrupp Group of Germany. Thyssenkrupp has pledged to build strip mining operations there based on their existing work in Alberta's tar sands mines—the largest existing industrial project in human history.

Elsewhere in the country, Royal Dutch Shell operates under a 100-per-cent-owned subsidiary called Jordan Oil Shale Company (JOSCO). JOSCO also has long-term development plans for oil exploitation in Jordan that are expected to come online no sooner than 2021. Shell/JOSCO have exploration rights to large segments of the country. Shell will also be bringing technology from their operations in Alberta, Canada—including the huge Albian Sands mine.

It's not just Shell and Thyssenkrupp that are coming in with the know-how. So too are Petrobras and TOTAL SA Energy, of Brazil and France respectively. Petrobras has long since operated an oil shale mining and conversion to oil and gas plant. TOTAL has multiple unconventional oil shale and tar sands plays around the world, some operational.

Oil shale slated for extraction in Jordan is for local electricity (not synthetic crude production), by Eesti Energia of Estonia. Estonian electricity has been provided almost exclusively by oil shale mining and burning for several decades. Eesti Energia is now looking into providing technology and constructing electrical plants from shale in not only Jordan, but also in Morocco. Estimates of a recoverable 40-billion barrels of mock crude exist in Jordan, in a total of 26 different deposits.

“We depend 96 per cent on importing our energy from outside of Jordan. It's basically coming from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq and from Egypt,” said Basel Burgan, the head of the Jordanian Friends of the Environment—a group that, among other issues, is in opposition to possible nuclear development in the country on economic and environmental grounds.

“We had depended for a good time on the Egyptian Gas that was cheaper than heavy fuel, but unfortunately the Egyptians have been bombing the pipeline that's sending gas through Sinai to Jordan because it's connected at the same time to Israel,” he said.

Jordanian Friends of the Environment has yet to take a firm position on oil shale.

Power needs for synthetic oil production are vast, and could coincide with a brand new nuclear power plant expected to be announced by French nuclear powerhouse Areva. The amount of water needed for cooling nuclear reactors as well as heating oil shale to extract petroleum is exceedingly high.

With regards to the water needed to run nuclear plants, Burgan says the Jordanian government “claims they are going to take this grey water and do tertiary purification which is a very costly plan, about $800 million [US], and eventually it will produce good water available to be used in a reactor.”
Burgan went on to explain how all of these projects may in fact rely on one another, and even on further regional integration with Israel:

“Some people have said that Jordan will end up sending electricity to Israel. [...] I have read only that Hashemite University, located in the area proposed for the plant site (north of Amman ~40kms) has signed an agreement with Colorado University, which already has an agreement with Ben Gurion University on the same project to build up some kind of desalination plant inside the Hashemite University with modern technology for purification and desalination. We say that all of these agreements and projects are basically depending on the Jordanian nuclear reactor because any desalination plant or station would need massive energy, and the energy would be available from a nuclear reactor.”

Jordan possesses, at best, the fourth smallest water to population ratio on the planet. Israel, which is also poor in terms of water, has already constructed five desalination plants, one of which is the largest on the planet. In the area where KIO plans to construct a large oil shale mine, many traditional Bedouins live off the land and source their water through deep wells in an extremely arid environment just east of the Dead Sea. Damage to the water table through use for extraction, or through contamination resulting from toxic waste produced by the mining process could have disastrous health effects on local people and ecosystems. The same would be true of air quality.

One of the other possibilities for increasing available water supply is a massive industrial project euphemistically known as the Red-Dead canal. This canal comes with a plan to pump sea water over 200 kilometers from the Red Sea to fill up the ecologically unique Dead Sea (where water levels are currently dropping at an alarming rate) and provide sea water for desalination projects and industry to both Israel and Jordan. Essentially Red-Dead project would transform the Dead Sea into little more than a reservoir for Israel and Jordan to use for industry, and would likely require the deepening of 1994 normalization agreements signed in the shadow of the increasingly sidelined 1993 Oslo Agreements, themselves signed as a pre-cursor to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Jordanian water is used in varying amounts by Israel, depending on the season, under the terms of the '94 normalization between the two states. The water situation in Jordan is so bleak that the Red-Dead Canal is endorsed by groups that oppose nuclear power, including Friends of the Environment, in the hopes that this massive Israeli-Jordanian project could supply the population with potable drinking water even as climate change dries out the planet ever further.

The Jordanian government has announced open bids for nuclear plans, while the United States—backed by Israel—demands the uranium be converted to fuel somewhere other than the Kingdom out of a desire to prevent technological and research development. For obvious reasons, official confirmation or details about Israel's continued uranium research at their Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where Israel's nuclear arsenal was almost certainly developed, are not forthcoming. Israel has also declared their desire to have a nuclear power plant in the Negev—the hot, arid desert lands west of the rapidly drying Dead Sea.

If normalization were to include collaboration on a plan to extract crude from shale, industrial mega-projects would stand in as a regional response to dwindling water and energy supplies.

With the Red-Dead Canal plan still in play, the possibility of collaboration and increasing development on both sides of the Dead Sea looks likely.

This article is the second in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published at http://mediacoop.ca

Israel Jordan Shale Oil Map

Violence, Poverty Underscore Story of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:48:11 +0000

[This article was originally published by New Standard News, a daily source of original journalism. Non-corporate journalism depends on reader support; please consider contributing to New Standard News to ensure more independent coverage from the Middle East and elsewhere.]

Iraqi men in a park in Amman, Jordan. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005

AMMAN, Jul 22 - Hisham Jamil is unequivocal when asked why he and his wife have chosen a life of unemployment in a foreign country over the life they built together in Baghdad.

"You know why we left," he said as he walked hand-in-hand with his wife, Hamsa, down a busy street here in Jordan's capital. "The whole world knows why we left. We can't live in Baghdad anymore; it is as simple as that. Life is impossible."

Jamil, a fashion designer in his now-former life in Baghdad, said his family's home was destroyed in March 2004 by a massive car bomb that targeted Baghdad's popular Mount Lebanon Hotel. "Our home was adjacent to the Hotel. It has been structurally damaged to such a degree that selling it is impossible; so too is living in it," Jamil said.

Transcending economic and social class, religion and hometown, the principal reason Iraqis living in Jordan cite for fleeing their country is the ubiquitous violence and instability that has engulfed and suffocated Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion of their country.

Rather than focusing on a grand political narrative, Jamil, like virtually all Iraqis who spoke to The NewStandard, stressed the lack of electricity, sanitation, potable water and absense of security that plagues daily life in Iraq. Because of this, he said, "life is impossible on the most basic level."

Carol, a middle-aged beautician and salon owner in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district, left Iraq in June. She is equally blunt in explaining why she left.

"We are full of frustration and angst," she said over dinner with several Iraqi friends. "No one in the world would leave their home willingly, unless it was under such circumstances."

The violence is, of course, not a mysterious phenomenon to Iraqis. They see it as a direct result of the ongoing occupation.

"At first we believed that America has come to save us from a cursed situation under Saddam Hussein," said Carol. "But in fact they have given us an even greater curse. We have no dignity; we are humiliated. We have no water, no electricity, and no security. We don't understand. We know the Americans can make the situation better, but they are not."

Popular accounts on the streets of Amman place the number of Iraqis in Jordan seeking refuge from the war at 500,000 and higher, though only a tiny fraction of these people are officially categorized as refugees.

Jordanian Interior Ministry General Secretary Mukhaimer Abu Jamous told TNS that the accepted number of Iraqis in Jordan is more like 300,000 – though he was quick to claim that these are not refugees, but rather people on personal business or vacation.

An official at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Amman said that 15,000 Iraqis had received temporary protection for asylum-seekers pending official refugee status. Only 800 Iraqis have received official refugee status in Jordan, she added, almost all of whom fled during the Saddam Hussein regime. The official refused to allow TNS to report her name, claiming it is UNHCR policy for spokespeople not to be identified in news stories.

According to the official, "only in the rarest of occasions" have those who fled after March 2003 received official designation, and therefore the attendant compensation from UNHCR. All such rare cases are characterized as the "most vulnerable" – primarily the elderly or ill.

A lack of resources makes outreach to those Iraqis who have fled the war impossible for the UNHCR, the official said, and only those who approach the offices are able to navigate the necessary bureaucratic machinations in order to qualify as recognized refugees.

Both the Interior Ministry and the UN agency said that, although they had expected one, there was no influx of Iraqis as a result of the war, and that the flow across the border has been steady but unchanged by the conditions in Iraq. "Influx is a big word, we cannot say that that is what has happened," said Adel Al-Hadid, director of international organizations at the Interior Ministry.

Refugees shopping in an almost all-Iraqi area of downtown Amman, Jordan, July 2005. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005.

Yet, on the streets of Amman, popular sentiment is that "influx" is exactly the word for it. Whether in the malls, parks, or simply on the street, Iraqis are everywhere in Amman.

While most Iraqis living in Jordan were able to successfully escape the violence of their home country, others, like Suasan Shakir, were not so lucky.

Shakir left the violence of Iraq overland on a makeshift gurney in the collapsed back seat of an SUV. A terrorist attack left her paralyzed in November 2004. A man trying to sneak a bomb into the bank where Shakir worked detonated his deadly burden early when police stopped him at a checkpoint. His payload of explosives killed two officers and sprayed shrapnel throughout the immediate area.

Along with about two-dozen other bank employees being shuttled to work on a minibus, Shakir was waiting at the same checkpoint. Five pieces of shrapnel embedded in her spine, and one penetrated the base of her skull, coming to rest in her brain. She fell paralyzed instantly, losing her ability to see or speak.

The staff at a Baghdad hospital was able to stabilize Shakir's condition, but her husband says a lack of resources and medicines robbed her of the chance to improve in her home country. Doraid Kadhim Abd-al Hameed took the opportunity to move his wife to Amman in search of better care, presently unavailable in Iraq after fifteen years of sanctions, war and occupation.

In the more than three months since Shakir arrived in Amman, her husband reported, their family has spent upward of $25,000 USD on her care, with no help from any government.

Abd-al Hameed says he has sold everything of value to pay for his wife's care: his bookstore, a building he rented-out and his car. "I bought my bookstore in 1996 for $10,000," Abd-al Hameed recalled. "Because of the situation in Iraq, I received only $2,000 when I sold it one month ago," he said. His modest monthly income of $200 has been all but eliminated by the sale of his store and the building he owned in Baghdad. The substantial income they claim now is the $125 USD per month Shakir receives from her former employer.

"If we were to take legal action against the British and the Americans – who created this catastrophe for all Iraqis – the problem would be how to even imagine what degree of compensation to ask for," Abd-al Hameed added. "We have lost everything: our future, our families' future…" His voice trailed off as he choked-back tears.

Shakir's condition has improved since coming to the Ibn Al-Haytham Hospital in Amman. Last month she began to see for the first time since the accident and her speech is slowly returning, though during a bedside interview, her enunciation was limited, her words slurred.

Yet, in a day or so, Shakir will return to Iraq, the family unable to sustain the costs of treatment in Amman.

"Please, I ask that you put more pressure on the American government – on the Western governments – to pull out of Iraq, immediately," said Abd-al Hameed as Shakir wept.

The Poverty of Diaspora

The package of twelve kitchen sponges with scouring-pads cost pennies each, but for Thayla Kareem they represent hope that she will someday return to her family in southern Iraq. Kareem is one of thousands of Iraqi refugees struggling to make ends meet on the streets of Amman.

An Iraqi street vendor sells her wares in Amman, Jordan, July 2005. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005

Known as the basta – an Arabic term that describes their simple existence, whereby their goods are spread out on cardboard or small mats placed on the ground, rather than in proper market stalls – Iraqi women such as Kareem are fixtures on streets throughout the city.

Dressed from head to toe in traditional, flowing black abaayas, these women sell everything from sponges and toothbrushes to individual cigarettes -- anything that comes cheap and can be resold at a modest profit.

Because of debt incurred starting her small street enterprise, and the meager revenues it brings in, Kareem is stuck in Jordan, hundreds of miles away from her family in Amara, in southern Iraq. "The work is not good enough," Kareem said, squatting in the hot midday sun on the marble steps of a grocery store.

"I pay 30 [Jordanian dinars] every month for rent, electricity and water," noted Kareem. Thirty JD is about $42 USD, a substantial burden on her monthly take. She shares an apartment with seven other Iraqi women – all of them street vendors.

The economic difficulties affect a large swath of the Iraqi refugee population in Jordan. On any given day the downtown parks of Amman are a haven for unemployed Iraqi men, ranging in age from late teens to elders.

Ziad, a 25-year-old originally from Baghdad, now spends his afternoons sitting listlessly in the park beside the Roman Amphitheatre in Amman's downtown core, along with dozens of other Iraqis.

"I have been here for eighteen months," Ziad said. "I left Iraq after the war, as the resistance began to escalate. I could no longer get to work safely; car bombs and American attacks made such a simple task a gamble for your life."

In the summer of 2003, Ziad said he began to line up for the newly opening positions in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and police forces. "But how many bombs exploding in the line-ups would it take before you decided to stop?" Ziad asked rhetorically.

"I would rather be unemployed in Jordan than dead in Iraq," he added flatly.

Ziad said he has had several odd jobs since arriving in Jordan, including one in a restaurant, where his salary was one-half that of his Jordanian coworkers. He quit, frustrated at the wage discrimination.

"I search each day for work," Ziad insisted, "but everyone says the same thing: 'I'll call you back.' They never do."

There is a degree of resentment, simmering just below the surface, toward the Iraqis living among Jordanians, believing their arrival has driven prices up dramatically. A Jordanian taxi driver put the common nationalist perspective in plain terms: "You see, they sold their country and came here to buy ours."

The competition for "unskilled" labor has become fierce as well, as so-called "illegal" Iraqi refugees have allegedly driven wages down across the board by working for significantly less than the previously prevailing rate. Meanwhile, signs can be spotted in Amman that advertise "Jordanian workers wanted," a not-so-subtle reference to the developing segregation.

Work permits are very difficult to obtain for Iraqis in Jordan, and their cost is often prohibitive. At approximately $225 each, a one-year permit costs more than most "unskilled" jobs pay in a month.

"I have tried so hard to get a work permit," said Hisham Jamil, the former fashion designer. "It seems that it isn't possible for Iraqis."

Abu Jamous of the Interior Ministry explained that this obstacle is a natural step in protecting Jordanian workers.

Salah, a Shia Muslim from the southern city of Hilla, has been living in Jordan since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

At 27, Salah said he possesses a degree in Computer Science, which should render him a hot resource in Iraq, a country that has experienced a relative boom in Internet access and the spread of technology since the fall of Saddam. Instead, Salah, spray bottle hanging from his pocket, pushes a broom through the Mecca Mall, collecting fallen ketchup packages and random French fries strewn about the bustling food court.

In Amman, Salah lives like many refugees who do not have the support of a wealthy family; that is, in a small apartment that he shares with 15 other Iraqis. He pays only $25 USD a month for his accommodations, "which means I can send the rest home to my family in Hilla," he said.

"I came here for work, to feed my family," he said. His family in Hilla has 20 members dependent almost solely on Salah's modest wages. Salah said he is the only one of them with work.

Salah works in the mall from 7 a.m. until the mall's midnight closing, seven days a week. His monthly pay of about $160 USD constitutes significantly less than the $200-plus made by Jordanians for the same work.

This discrimination is simply the reality for most Iraqis who are fortunate enough to find work in Jordan.

Salah obtained his job in housekeeping in April 2003. "Back then, it was relatively easy for Iraqis to work," he said. "But I fear my time is running out. My contract ends at the end of the year." he lamented. When his contract expires, so too does his work permit.

As he sees it, when that happens, Salah will have two options: either obtain an extension on his work permit -- virtually impossible for Iraqis working in the general labor sector unless their employers vouch for them -- or else live illegally and likely unemployed in Jordan, facing the possibility of sanction and deportation.

Abu Jamous said that the Jordanian Public Security Department is "proactive" in working with inspectors from the Department of Labor in seeking out "illegals," as he referred to undocumented immigrants, be they Iraqi or otherwise.

If workers are caught in violation of the typical three-month visas or year-long work permits, Abu Jamous added, they are detained in police custody for seven days before being deported to the third country of their choice. According to the Interior Ministry, immigrants generally choose expulsion to a country like Yemen, which does not require a visa.

"For humanitarian reasons, we cannot deport them back to Iraq if their life is deemed to be in danger there," said Abu Jamous.

Still, that does little to quell Salah's anxiety about his soon-to-expire permit. "I have to support my family," he said. "I do not know what I will do."

In Jordan, Jon Elmer describes the plight of thousands of Iraqi refugees.

On Iraq-Jordan Border, Various Roles Play Out in Desert

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 17:40:54 +0000

AL-KARAMA, Jul 13 - Omar Al-Jarirri is the controller of the Mahat'ta, the staging point for travelers preparing to make the 1,000-kilometer trip from Amman, Jordan to Baghdad, Iraq by car. This is the way most Iraqis travel in and out of Iraq. Air service in occupied Iraq is cost-prohibitive for most.

The departure area is a dusty harbor of white, late-model Chevrolet Suburban sport utility vehicles.

The drivers, almost all Iraqi, often sleep in their vehicles, partly in order to get a good spot in the line-up and partly because their homes are in Iraq, a thousand kilometres away. The vehicles most often leave Amman in the middle of the night to avoid driving in Iraq after dusk. Almost none of the drivers owns his own vehicle; they are simply the ones hired to negotiate the harrowing journey to Baghdad.

A small man dressed in a flowing white dishdasha, Al-Jarirri walks with a pronounced limp. "Ninety-nine percent" of the travelers on the Amman-to-Baghdad voyage are Iraqis who have fled their war-torn country and are "going back to visit family," he said.

Iraqis queue-up at the border, waiting to cross into Jordan. (© Jon Elmer 2005)

The highway, a vast desert expanse marked by signs warning of camels, is a rat race of SUVs, leap-frogging one another for the whole 400 kilometres to the Al-Karama border crossing.

Bilal, who has driven the route regularly since the climax of the US-led invasion of his country in 2003, is a 22-year-old from Sadr City, the sprawling, poverty-stricken Shia district in Baghdad. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Bilal applied for a nursing position at Baghdad's biggest hospital, Madinat Al-Tib -- Medicine City. But when he called on his school to obtain his nursing records, Bilal learned that the files had gone missing when looters stole the school's computers during the chaos that swept over Baghdad in the first days of US occupation.

"All of my records were destroyed. You must have seen this on TV," he said, referring to the riotous images broadcast around the world in the days following the fall of Baghdad.

"'You're free, take what you want,'" Bilal mimicked sardonically, a reference to Rumsfeld's infamous statement in the second week of April: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

Bilal said he proposed to a woman about a year ago, but her mother refused the marriage because he no longer had a degree and could not acquire decent work without one. So he tried to pay a bribe in order to get a job as a police officer, but it failed to secure him one of the most dangerous jobs on earth.

Instead, he drives the infamous land route, which Iraqis refer to simply as "the highway," through some of Iraq's most dangerous areas, including the restive Al-Anbar province.

The highway requires operators to be alert and hyper-vigilant, always on the lookout for US convoys, which require the drivers to pullover as far as possible.

"If we drive too fast, or are too tired to notice the American convoy in the distance, they will shoot me up, and waste my car," said Bilal, something that has happened more times than anyone knows on the highway and elsewhere throughout Iraq.

The drivers are not permitted to work legally in Jordan, and in Iraq, they are under siege.

"Why do I have to stay up all night to make a simple living," Bilal said, rubbing his eyes between deep yawns. "We are exhausted. This is no life."

Usually, Bilal shuttles between four and six passengers per trip. Though each traveler pays 15 Jordanian dinars -- about $20 USD -- for the ride to Baghdad, Bilal makes only about $40 USD for each round trip, a journey that generally has him away from home for four or five days.

With each trip home, he imports items that his family needs but finds difficult to obtain in Iraq. This time, the precious cargo is boxes of laundry and dish soap.

The dominance that the Suburbans enjoy over the Jordanian road is not broken until about 350 km's east of Amman, near the town of Al-Ruwayshid. There, they are joined by the bah'haar, or "merchant seamen" -- smugglers who run Iraqi gasoline out to Jordan.

Omar Al-Hayek, one of the elder seamen, explains the moniker: "Just as the fishermen who head out onto the sea in search of plenty, for the benefit of those on shore, we are transporting the riches of Iraq: the gas."

Apparently one of four original seamen, Al-Hayek, said he has been smuggling gas across the border to Jordan since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Before that, he explained, the smuggling was in the opposite direction, from Jordan to Iraq.

But the end of the war saw Iraq's oil production skyrocket, reaching levels comparable to those boasted by Saudi Arabia. Al-Hayek describes the years following the war with Iran as the glory days of the merchant seamen.

His car, a baby-blue 1991 Chevrolet Caprice station-wagon, is in relatively decent condition. Given the volatile cargo, it has to be. Yet, juxtaposed against the late-model Suburbans, the seamen's sedans of '80s vintage, retro-fitted with large storage tanks that hold up to 500 liters of gas, look decidedly aged and worn. They travel at about half the speed of the Suburbans.

"I take the car into my mechanic after each day, just to make sure everything is right, and safe," Al-Hayek said.

The smell of fuel in the car is overwhelming. One little flaw – a flat tire, an errant spark, a damaged muffler – could lead to catastrophe.

Tankers wait on the Jordanian side of the Iraq border for their American military escorts to arrive and take them into the war zone. (© Jon Elmer 2005)

The border is a mesh of people heading west into Jordan – some are Iraqi workers escaping the rampant unemployment and lack of opportunity in their homeland, some are merchants moving their wares to markets elsewhere. Many others are going to visit family members who have escaped the chaos in Iraq or are themselves fleeing.

Refugee camps on the Jordanian side tell this story in stark relief. They lay off the roadside, hastily constructed of tents with tattered sides flapping in the incessent wind that blows from Saudi Arabia to Syria unimpeded. Small funnel clouds of sand dance about the camps, just one element of the desert's relentless brutality indefinitely endured by those lacking the funds to escape the new Iraqi nightmare in style.

Although many Iraqis wealthy enough to move out of the war-torn country did so before, or during the initial stages of the war, the ever-deteriorating security situation in Iraq has increased the refugee flow dramatically.

Still others are simply seeking short reprieve: a vacation in Jordan's resort towns of Aqaba or Petra, or just a hotel in peaceful Amman.

The Fayez family from the Al-Khadimiyah district of Baghdad is one such case. They are taking 10 days to themselves in a three-star hotel in the Jordanian capital. "We need a break," said Nour, the eldest daughter. "The situation is impossible."

Nour recently completed high school and should have much to look forward to. But the conditions in Baghdad are so chaotic and unpredictable that daily life has been all but confined to the home, she relayed. "There is no life; there is no hope. We must leave."

The border is a major conduit for the machinery of occupation as well. Dozens of trucks – many of them tankers importing fuels for the aircraft and armoured vehicles, others supply trucks toting cargo covered by flapping tarps – wait in long line-ups for military escort into Iraq.

In no small part, it is these convoys that make the highway so dangerous, as they are vast, vulnerable and coveted targets for ambush. Their burned-out carcases litter the highway across Iraq as testament.

On the Jordanian side, the border is patrolled by the Jordanian military; on the Iraqi side, it is the US Marine Corps keeping a watchful eye.

The actual border crossing station between Jordan and Iraq looks like most other terminals between nations, with long line-ups and crowds in the various offices. But here at Al-Karama, the language of expedition is spoken in cash.

Caught in a long wait, cars nudging bumpers with hardly an inch between them, a single Jordanian Dinar slipped subtly out the window to an official will secure a key place in the line-up, or may in fact open another lane altogether. With each incremental move, and each official encountered, the appropriate documents are passed out the window, the necessary money stowed inside. Bilal, the veteran driver, is adept at this form of communication.

The Al-Karama border area is patrolled by a unit from the US Marines' 2nd Division.

Attracted by the sound of English spoken with North American accents, one of the Marines notices that the passport officer is demanding from The NewStandard, a bribe well beyond the usual $1 or $2.

"Hey, 'hajji,' you takin' money? How many times did I tell you not to take money," barked a 19-year-old Marine named Rusty. The epithet "hajji" is an Arabic term conveying great respect, commonly turned on its head by occupation personnel to disparage Arabs and other brown-skinned people in Iraq. "I tell you, we always have to baby-sit these guys," Rusty remarked condescendingly.

Rusty said he graduated high school in May 2004 and immediately enlisted. A distinct accent confirmed his claim to North Carolina as home. In March, the Corps deployed him to the border crossing, where he will likely remain until September.

Rusty's father, also a Marine, only recently returned to the US after serving his own tour in Iraq. "My mom used to worry all the time; now she only worries half the time."

Rusty, dressed to the brim in uniform -- helmet, sunglasses, Kevlar flak jacket with shielding neck-piece, hand on the shaft of his M-16 – was sweating, visibly uncomfortable. "They hate us," he said. "They sure want us out of their country."

Asked if he sees himself leaving, Rusty responded without a moment of hesitation. "No way; we'll be here forever."

Rusty said his platoon has not experienced much combat. "We raid that village over there all the time," he said, pointing to the village of Trebil, "but we never find anything."

Asked if he was disappointed at the lack of action, the Marine nodded slowly. "Yeah, I mean, it would make me feel better about myself," Rusty said, lifting his helmet to wipe sweat from his forehead.

Hours later in Trebil, a village general store owner named Abu Mustafa sarcastically contested Rusty's claim of weekly incursions. "Not really," he said smiling. "Once we went fifteen days without a search."

Jon Elmer speaks to truckers, soldiers, shopkeepers and migrant workers at the edge of the occupation of Iraq.