Hard-line Islamists feed off anger of poor

Food crisis sparks rancor against governments

AMMAN, Jordan - The smell of freshly baked bread calms the room filled with women in frayed cloaks and worn slippers. Grateful for the assistance, they walk out of a Muslim Brotherhood social service center into the trash-strewn alley, clutching plastic bags packed with flat loaves.

For five years, the Jordanian government has clamped down on the Islamist group's electoral ambitions and its charity programs, suspicious it was using good deeds to win political support.

But the global food crisis has carved out new opportunities for the Brotherhood and other hard-line groups across the Muslim world. Increasingly unaffordable prices underscore criticism of autocratic governments and drive more people toward fundamentalist groups.

Although the Brotherhood fared poorly last year in municipal elections, it has been steadily gaining ground, sweeping votes for the leadership of Jordan's professional associations.

"We used to win some and lose some. Now we win all of them," said Zaki Bani Arshid, leader of the Islamic Action Front, the political party of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. "The government which tried to marginalize us politically for years has now given us a big gift."

The spike in food prices has challenged America's goals in the Middle East at a critical juncture, when it is attempting to win support from friendly governments for an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, and for confronting Iran and Al Qaeda.

The anger has taken on an increasingly anti-American tone, even among elected officials. Egyptian lawmakers, for example, have accused the United States of causing the food crisis by conspiring to keep their country dependent on wheat exports.

"If we look at these main factors behind the increase in world food prices and the specter of famine and political turbulence, we will easily reach the conclusion that [the] Bush administration and the bunch of neoconservatives and their foolish policies in waging external wars . . . are, in practice, behind this deep crisis," said an April column in the progovernment daily newspaper Al Watan in Oman, a staunch US ally.

"America is being held responsible for what is happening," said Arshid, of Jordan's Islamic Action Front. "It's supporting these corrupt regimes."

The frustration is potentially more explosive in Jordan than in more democratic parts of the developing world.

"People can tolerate anything except when it comes to food," said Labib Kamhawi, a Jordanian economist and critic of the government. "The security establishment cannot open a file for the hungry like you can for the political activists. One day you'll wake up and see havoc."

Officials throughout the Middle East have begun importing food, implementing price controls, slashing import duties for foods, and locking in prices for future purchases of wheat and rice. They have also begun preparing fields for wheat production and making monetary reforms.

Morocco has decided to spend $2 billion to raise public-sector wages. In Egypt, where subsidized bread is synonymous with the people's bond to the state, officials fear the kinds of deadly riots that broke out during the 1970s when President Anwar Sadat considered slashing bread subsidies.

President Hosni Mubarak is working to calm an explosive atmosphere marked by a rising inflation rate, labor unrest, strikes, and fears that long bread lines may again appear.

Jordan and Egypt have raised government salaries and pensions by more than 20 percent. And Lebanon's Ministry of Social Affairs plans to increase by eightfold the number of people it aids.

Jordanian government officials consider the economic situation their highest priority, a grave, snowballing threat, analysts said. Officials fear the kinds of riots that erupted when the price of sugar went up in 1971 and bread prices jumped in 1996.

Despite the global nature of the price increases, governments across the Arab world have come under particularly strong criticism. Public service employees in the Arab world cling to the vision of the state as a caretaker, especially for those who have served in the security forces. But free-market policies adopted in recent years have decreased official control over prices.