Shaheed Mwaffaq Air Base
Azraq, Jordan
31°49'59"N 36°47'02"E
Almost 1,200 personnel from the 4417th Air Expeditionary Force set up camp at Shaheed Mwaffaq Air Base near Azraq, Jordon between 30 March and 28 June 1996. The Air Force dubbed the deployed contingent in Azraq: "AEF II." The 4417th air expeditionary Force (AEF) was commanded by Brigadier-General William "Tunes" Looney. Airmen living in tent city called it Tunes Town after Looney's nickname "Tunes." Tunes Town contained more than 160 lodging tents with about eight people bunking together. It had around 80 showers, 80 toilets, and 40 washers and dryers, which also were all in tents.
A legion of support folks sustained the AEF operators and maintainers launch sorties. They included medics working out of an air transportable clinic, finance, personnel, administrators, services, legal, civil engineers, chaplains, photographers, and a host of others. The communicators set up a local area network, which had E-mail capability to the world. A tanker airlift control element team worked with a contingent of mobile aerial port personnel to load and unload air cargo. They lived on the flightline outside of Tunes Town, calling their desert home "the suburbs." Despite the primitive living conditions, harsh climate, and grueling workload, most managed to stay chipper and upbeat throughout the 80-day deployment.
The U.S. military is spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars to build up a seldom-acknowledged air base in Jordan, with the latest project announced earlier this week. The construction stems from the increased American military presence in Jordan in recent years, as the longtime U.S. ally seeks to bolster its security in the region, analysts said. One contract, worth $14.6 million, funded construction of an air traffic control tower in the eastern city of Azraq, the Pentagon announced Tuesday. The project is the seventh awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 2017 as part of an expenditure of at least $265 million to repair runways, drill water wells and build dorms that can house up to 280 people.
Although the base isn’t named in the announcement, the Pentagon has identified the headquarters of its 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing’s air combat command as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq.
Azraq is a small town in Zarqa Governorate in central-eastern Jordan, 100 kilometers east of Amman. The population of Azraq was 9,021 in 2004. Azraq is an oasis wetland, located in the arid desert. It is a quiet and relaxing place, strange in the middle of the desert. It attracts migratory and resident birds due to its location on the Africa - Eurasian flyway. An ancient wall has been found here, which is said to be of Roman origin, which was built upon by Byzantines and Umayyads as foundation for the Qasr Azraq.
Azraq Wetland Reserve is easy to visit. It lies about an hour east of Amman. It is well sign-posted in Azraq town, near where the highway divides into two branches (one to Iraq, the other to Saudi Arabia). It is a national park trying to protect wetlands in the middle of the desert, which used to be important on the migratory birds route. However, the wetlands are fed by aquifers that have now dried up (due to water pomping toward Amman), and most of the wetlands have disappeared.
Azraq Refugee Camp
Opened in 2014 to avoid overcrowding in Zaatari camp, Azraq hosted around 41,000 Syrian refugees as of December 2023. About 14.7 km2 in size, the camp has four operational villages. The village-based approach aims to foster a greater sense of ownership and community among residents. Some of the key facilities in Azraq camp include a hospital, health clinics, a solar power plant, schools and community centres. The Syrian Refugee Affairs Directorate (SRAD) and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, co-coordinate the camp management.
Uniform rows of white caravans plotted neatly in the desert’s empty expanse are home to nearly 38,000 Syrian refugees in Azraq, Jordan, as of Marxh 2022. They are the victims of the now 11-year-long Syrian war who continue to wait at Jordan’s Azraq camp, their futures still uncertain and their livelihoods still dependent on donors’ generosity. Opened in 2014, the camp was designed to address the challenges that emerged during the informal growth of Zaatari camp, Jordan’s largest for Syrian refugees. However, the top-down system of management, high security, and remote location have left Azraq commonly referred to as the “least desirable” of Jordan’s two main camps for Syrian refugees.
It hosts “Village 5”, a secured area where nearly 10,000 Syrians are kept on the premises for reasons of safety and national security, the camp’s stringent security protocols largely attributable to the prison-like compound. Azraq has never reached even half its maximum capacity of 120,000, the majority of refugees choosing to bear the high costs of living outside its perimeters.
A limited number of income-generating opportunities are available in the camp including through the IncentiveBased Volunteering (IBV) scheme, or through private businesses, either home-based or in the local market. Also, refugees with work permits have access to work outside of the camp. The IBV scheme enables refugees to engage in volunteering activities, such as translation, cleaning, admin work, and more, with organizations that work in the camp and receive financial compensation for their contribution. The scheme is an important means of allowing refugees to earn extra income to support their livelihood.
UNHCR provides “caravan”-like shelters called transitional shelters to refugees in the camp. There are a total of 10,545 shelters of which around 9,000 are allocated to refugees. UNCHR conducts regular monitoring to assess the shelter situation and updates the shelter allocation system. In the first half of 2023, all shelters in Azraq were upgraded with a kitchen extension which increases the shelter space to 32m2. All shelters in the camp are connected to electricity with regular maintenance provided through a private contractor.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
