From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 18, no. 1, March 2003.

Leaving behind the political turmoil in the Middle East and in Indonesia, Tupoutu‘a Lindborg has returned to the safety of her Tongan home.

Very few Tongans have had the opportunity to live, and work in the Middle East. Tupoutu‘a Lindborg from ‘Utulei, Vava‘u, lived in Amman, the capital of Jordan for five years, from 1997 to 2002, where her husband Jon D. Lindborg was the Director for the USAID Office of Economic Opportunity.

Tupou worked for an accountant and a consulting firm, the biggest in Jordan.

She said that Jordan, was a constitutional monarchy, like Tonga, and the present king, Abdullah II, was dedicated to developing the country. “He has already committed to making Jordan the centre for information technology in the region and every village in Jordan has a computer centre, and internet cafés are everywhere.”

Palestinians

During her five years in Jordan Tupou met different nationalities from throughout the Arab world, giving her an opportunity to get to know them, and to draw some conclusions on the big issues, which intrigued her, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, terrorism, and the disarming of Iraq.

Tupou said that about 70 per cent of the population of Jordan were Palestinians, while the other 30 per cent were Jordanians, Iraqis, Syrians, Kuwaitis, Egyptians and others. “Their ethnic identity was very important to them. They are all Arabs but when you ask someone where they come from, the answer is, I am from Iraq, or Syria, but my family has been here for 200 or 300 years. So they are from where they originally come from first, then a Jordanian second.

“When the British carved up the region, the people who happened to be in a particular area at the time became the citizens of that country, but before that they were nomads roaming the desert.”

Tupou said that the Arabs had a distinct character, “they generally like to express their opinion freely on issues, and they love to debate, most of the time very loudly, to the point where you think they might start bashing each other, but then they stop, kiss each other and then continue. When they hop into their cars and drive away, you can still hear them shouting at each other.”

Israel

Tupou said that the one issue that Arabs loved to debate was the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “Most Arabs refuse to recognise that Israel  exists, and the worst insult that anyone can make is to point out that Arabs and Israelis are cousins, that they look alike, and they are neighbours so they should forget about their differences and get on with their lives.”

Tupou said that not long after they arrived in Jordan they decided to visit Israel, which is about 25 to 30 minutes away from Amman, “I went out to buy a map of Israel but I just could not find one anywhere, no one seemed to know Israel, even though they are neighbours, so I had to borrow a map from a friend who had visited Israel. I realised then the depth of the animosity between Arabs and Jews.” Tupou said that the general view held by Arabs and the Palestinians was that the state of Israeli is occupying Palestinian land and therefore there should be no state of Israel.

Jerusalem

Tupou further witnessed the animosity between the two groups when she arrived in Jerusalem and visited the Wailing Wall. “After visiting the Biblical sites, then at the Wailing Wall, where there were a lot of tourists walking around, I stepped back and looked up, and I could not believe what I saw—about 200 yards apart were soldiers with machine guns pointing at each other. There was a cold war going on up there, between the Israelis and the Palestinians. You don’t understand the tension of the situation until you are there.”

Another instance that Tupou will never forget occurred about a month after she started working. Arafat had just announced the beginning of the Uprising or, Indifata, and the 5th suicide bomber had just struck a target in Israel. Then someone came to her office and asked her how much was she going to contribute. “I said, what for, a birthday?” Tupou  said and she realised then  that a public donation was being collected to support the family of the suicide bomber. “The initial amount was $10,000, then it went up to $20,000.”

On the question of whether there should be a state of Israel and a Palestinian State, Tupou believed that the Israelis had established a state and they were willing to live there and die there. With the Palestinians she believed that they should compromise their demand to have the whole of Jerusalem back, which would be  difficult. Tupou believed that the Palestinians should establish a state first on the land that they occupied now and then negotiate for more land later.

Tupou said that after the September 11 attacks in the United States, she was surprised by some reactions among her friends.

“The day after 9/11 I decided not to go to work, because I was so tired, we had been staying up late, following the event on television. When I returned to work the next day, the place was unusually quiet and I could feel that my staying away from work was interpreted to mean something else other than the fact that I was tired. Colleagues were either ringing me up or dropping by to express their condolences about the attack on my country and told me not to worry they would protect me. I was very surprised by their reaction.

“And when it became known that the terrorist attack was carried out by Arabs, they said no, no, no, Arabs are nice people they would never do things like that, it must be the Israeli Mosad and the CIA.” Tupou said that even when she left Jordan early last year many Arabs were still convinced that the terrorist attack on the USA was made by the Mosad and the CIA to create hatred against Arabs. “There is a well established propaganda mechanism in operation in the Arab world, and Arabs do not believe anything that is reported in the Western media. When the Iraqis were kicked out of Kuwait, most Arabs did not believe it, they were led to believe that Saddam’s army was winning, and it was not until later when they found out the truth. But when you point out that they have been misled, they would say, yes, but the situation now is different, it was definitely the Mosad and the CIA. America wants to attack Iraq because they want our land and our oil.”

Tupou said that she had many Iraqi friends in Jordan, and she noticed that they were living in fear and mistrust of each other. “They have to be careful of what they are saying because if it gets back to Iraq that they said something bad about the government of Iraq they could do something bad to the other members of their family who are still in Iraq.”

Evacuated

Tupou and her family left Jordan early last year, and returned to Jakarta where they had been previously stationed for four and a half years. “It was good to be back to this part of the world again, and I like Indonesia because I just become one of the locals.”

However, in the few years they had been away Tupou found that Indonesia had become a more dangerous place to live. She arrived in Jakarta in August, “and about two weeks later a grenade was thrown at a building next to where we live, and then about a week later there was the Bali Bombing.” Tupou and her son were evacuated to Tonga while her husband remained in Jakarta, where he is now the Deputy Mission Director for the US Agency for International Development.

The really bad news did not come until October. Tupou received news that their good friend Larry Foley, a USAID colleague had been assassinated in Amman as he left his home to go to work. “It was a cold-blooded murder, Larry was over 60 and was ready for retirement, and there was no way that he could defend himself.”

Tupou recalled that before they left Amman she told her husband and Larry that they had been watched, she could sense it, “but my husband thought that we were not that important, for anyone to be interested in us. We thought that we were safe. But if they can kill Larry, then no one can escape.”

Despite all the troubles, Tupou believed that there was a great future for Jordan.

“Jordan is a developing country, but it has the appearance of a rich country, some of their houses, are like big stone palaces. Their GDP is low but remittances are high and that is why people are saying that there is a lot of money in Jordan. The education system is high and they export their human resources to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”