By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 17, 2006

AMMAN, Jordan -- Jordanian border police are turning away hundreds of Iraqi vehicles daily at the Karama border crossing, often without explanation, creating huge parking lots of frustrated travelers in the Iraqi desert. At Queen Alia International Airport, just south of Jordan's capital, Amman, Iraqi passengers are ushered into a room and interrogated before being allowed to enter the country. And some Iraqis who used to be able to get 30-day visas to Jordan are now being allowed to stay just a few days at a time.

The security restrictions being applied to Iraqis stem from the bombings of three Amman hotels on Nov. 9. The attacks -- which killed 59 people, most of them Jordanians -- were carried out by three Iraqi suicide bombers; a fourth Iraqi's explosive belt failed to detonate. Jordanian security officials say the extra measures are necessary to keep out would-be terrorists.

Jordan's government spokesman, Nasir Judah, confirmed that the country had imposed new border restrictions on Jan. 2 that prohibit vehicles with Iraqi license plates from entering the country. As a result, Iraqi commercial drivers are effectively prevented from taking passengers to and from Jordan, and private vehicles with Iraq's signature black license plates are stopped at the border. The only Iraqi vehicles allowed into Jordan are those with white license plates, which can be obtained only after the owner puts funds into a trust equal to the value of the car.

"It's only routine measures . . . but because of the circumstances we have to be cautious and take all the essential measures," Judah said.

But some Iraqi citizens say they feel as if they are being profiled -- suspected of wrongdoing simply because of their nationality. Their complaints echoed those of Arabs in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

On Highway 35 between Amman and the northern city of Irbid recently, a police officer stopped a white rental car to question three female passengers: an Iraqi and two Americans, one of whom was of Arab descent. After examining the Iraqi's passport, the officer returned it and apologized, explaining that police had special orders to scrutinize the travel documents of female Iraqi travelers since the announcement that the surviving Amman hotel attacker was an Iraqi woman.

In a parking lot in Amman where Iraqi drivers assemble with their passenger vans, a group of men with tired faces surrounded a reporter and interpreter, demanding to be heard.

"We are suffering, sister," said Abu Khalid, 48. Like the other drivers, he declined to give his full name for fear of retaliation by the Jordanian government. The drivers said they were particularly singled out at the border because their passports were filled with entry and exit stamps. "What have we done wrong?" Abu Khalid asked.

The men said the 500-mile trip from Baghdad to Amman used to take between eight and 10 hours. Now they are stuck at the border for three or four days, which not only is a huge inconvenience to their passengers, but also makes them targets for looters and insurgents. The delays, drivers say, are costing them business.

"We are with the Jordanians against terrorism," said Abu Mustafah, 37. "We feel sorry for them."

Abu Hussein, 32, said he recently drove a delegation of Iraqi university professors to Jordan so they could fly to Germany for a conference. Even though they had official travel documents, the delegation was turned back for the night. "One of the women with them got dizzy," he said. "She had to go to the bathroom. She went in an abandoned area. There's no comfort in Iraq, and now there's no comfort in Jordan. Where should we go?"

Waiting for a ride back to Baghdad, Iqbal Shawk, 35, stretched her legs out of the door of a passenger van. Shawk said she came to Amman regularly for medical treatment for her eyes. Her Iraqi doctor fled the violence in Baghdad, and now she must follow him here to Jordan, she said.

"The Iraqis are already hurting," Shawk said. "It's not safe. There are no doctors. It's not our fault. It's terrorists that do this. Why are all the Iraqi people guilty? Why?"

Alaa Abbas, 39, who was wrapped in a dark shawl against the evening chill, said she was recently singled out at the airport when she arrived from overseas, and was now headed to Baghdad by car. "They made 100 copies of my passport," she said. "We are the mother of civilization. Why does everyone treat us like this? I am an Iraqi! I am an Iraqi! I was the only one at the airport they searched."

At a desolate waiting area between Ramadi and Hit in western Iraq, where Iraqis who are turned back at the border often bide their time for a few days before giving up and returning home, Hassan Yaqub, 45, a Baghdad resident, said Jordanian authorities did not allow him to enter the country and offered no explanation, "even though I am a merchant and I make many trips to Jordan a month. I have proof."

Muhammad Sabah, of the southern Iraqi port city of Basra, said guards at the Jordanian border offered to allow his wife and daughter to cross without him. "But my wife and my daughter refused and told them either we enter together or we go back together," he said. The family left.

Hikmat Saub, an Iraqi customs agent, said Jordanian authorities were "allowing four out of every 100 to enter -- and mostly residents or people who had permission from the Iraqi government."

Dhia Kabi, a prominent Iraqi surgeon, slept on the Iraqi side of the border in one of the passenger vans. "They said my daughter can enter, but I told them that my wife is in Jordan and I must meet her there with my daughter," he said. "They refused, so I took my daughter to return back but I could not reach Baghdad. We are out of gas, and we are waiting for someone to bring us gas."

Special correspondents Yasmine Mousa in Amman and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.