In an interview with NHK network’s anchorman Yoshio Arima on Wednesday, His Majesty King Abdullah said: “People are still, I think, staggering that Jordan is still able to survive with a 21 per cent increase in 18 months.”
 
King Abdullah said that even countries as economically strong as Japan will find it hard to survive such a crisis and the ensuing burden.
 
“Take it from a Japanese perspective, if you were in our shoes, how would you be able to do it with the strength of your country? These are the challenges that we are facing today,” he said in the interview, which was conducted on the sidelines of the Kings’s working visit to Japan, which started Tuesday.
 
Praising Japan’s help in this regard, His Majesty said the Asian donor “has been very, very supportive of Jordan. We have gotten, I think, up to date, almost $400 million in aid from Japan”.
 
However, the King noted that in this year, for example, the amount of foreign aid that has come to Jordan and to the UNHCR only amounts to 29 per cent roughly of what is needed for this year. “The rest is going to be the burden that we have to find for ourselves,” His Majesty said.
 
On the next possible measures the coalition against the Islamic State (IS) terror group might take to escalate the campaign, the King said that currently the coalition is dealing with air strikes against IS, but that “is never going to be the full solution, but on the ground as you are seeing in Syria and Iraq, the ability of how do you reach out to the locals; how do you reach out to the Syrian and Iraqi tribes, empowering them to fight back against [ISIS], this is the medium-term concept”.
 
However, His Majesty pointed out that the US is not leading the coalition because it is a US problem, saying “I am alluding to the fact that this is an Arab-Muslim issue, so this is actually in reality an Arab-Muslim coalition because this is our problem.”
 
The King said what is happening is a confrontation between moderation against extremism. “What I have been saying is that this is a fight inside of Islam, and this is an issue that Arabs and Muslims have to deal with together.”
 
His Majesty warned against focusing on terrorism as problem confined to Syria and Iraq, saying “Let’s not just focus on Syria and Iraq because the problem also is in Libya, there [are] problems in Yemen, Mali and Nigeria. It is a regional issue and could be a global issue, so you have got to concentrate on more than one place. This is why there has to be this global strategic alliance of good against evil.”
 
Regarding expectations from Japan in this regard, the King said the discussions he was scheduled to hold with the Japanese government would cover this issue, adding: “You commit so much aid to support the development of countries throughout our whole region. You have a tremendous impact in doing so many good things in the Middle East and Africa that I think it is so important to Japan that forces of moderation and good are protected and supported.”