King Abdullah II
Abdullah II has been King of Jordan since February 1999, ruling a resource-poor country that has absorbed successive waves of refugees while remaining one of the few stable states in its region. Born in Amman in 1962, the eldest son of King Hussein and his English-born second wife Princess Muna, he was educated at St Edmund's School in Surrey, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, and Sandhurst. He made his career in the army, commanding Jordan's special forces and rising to major general. He was not expected to succeed: his uncle Hassan had been crown prince for thirty-four years, and Hussein changed the succession only weeks before his death from cancer. Jordan's structural position defines his reign. It has almost no oil and chronic water scarcity, and depends on aid from the United States and the Gulf. It has taken in Palestinians, Iraqis after 2003, and about 1.3 million Syrians after 2011, in a country of roughly eleven million. He liberalised the economy, privatised state assets and signed a free-trade agreement with the United States, producing growth that did not reach most Jordanians; unemployment among the young remains very high. He rode out the Arab Spring in 2011 by replacing prime ministers and offering constitutional amendments rather than conceding power, and the monarchy retains the authority to dissolve parliament and appoint governments. He has positioned Jordan as a security partner against the Islamic State, which murdered a captured Jordanian pilot in 2015, and as custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem under the 1994 peace treaty with Israel. In 2021 his half-brother Hamzah was placed under restriction over an alleged plot.
- Lived: 1962 CE – ?
- Nationality: Jordanian
- Roles: King of Jordan (1999-present)
