Because the ultimate betrayal is not in selling the land, but in squandering the will of those who inhabit it, the drug dilemma facing Jordan is not only a test of its security capability; it is a mirror reflecting its deepest question about its ability to create a life where consciousness is chosen, and not evaded into intended slumber.
This is the equation that boils down to a single question: Why does the mind flee from itself in its homeland? Whether this escape is a chemical coma internally or a geographical estrangement externally, the root is the same: the nation's loss of its ability to be a space for noble conscious life!
The painful incident in which a lawyer was murdered by her addicted brother is not an aberration, but it is the bitterest expression of the transformation of the holiest relationships into battlegrounds, and of homes from sanctuaries of safety into strongholds of despair. It is the scream declaring that the war is no longer on the borders, but has moved into the bedrooms and corridors of the mind!
The contradiction revealed by serious official efforts in pursuit and control is that the war against the phenomenon succeeds security-wise while failing humanity-wise; because it addresses the symptom and overlooks the disease: the disease of meaninglessness, and the absence of a national project that makes staying "conscious" a natural choice, not an artificial one!
Here meet those seeking a chemical coma and those seeking geographical estrangement, both conceding that escaping reality is easier than confronting it, and that the homeland has transformed from a cradle of dreams into a field for fleeing them. As if the state itself is offering its youth two bitter options: either emigrate with your body or migrate with your mind. Both options share in one crime: stealing the nation’s living energy!
The young person who resorts to drugs does not seek death, but a temporary ceasefire from a life where they find no place for their dignity, while in the coma, they find a false acknowledgment of their worth. This is the same feeling that drives a skilled young person to emigrate, where they seek true recognition of their abilities, after such recognition is absent in their homeland!
The society that agonizes over the crime and then returns to its daily practices without revision resembles a doctor who treats fever with antibiotics but overlooks the original infection.
We face a situation akin to a body bleeding from both ends: internal bleeding due to substances that take away minds, and external bleeding due to emigration that takes away skills. Partial treatment will not suffice, as blood flows from both wounds!
But what is more dangerous than this double bleeding is the despair from the possibility of reform, for Jordan is not a barren land; it is a history of resilience and a will to live that erupts every day in millions of silent details: in the farmer who revives the land, the teacher who builds hope, and the student who defies the impossible. The problem is not in the land but in our inability to transform these capabilities into a life worth abandoning both drugs and exile!
The stringent security solution is necessary like a splint for a fracture, but the real cure requires brave surgery for the environment that produces despair. We need to transform the energy of escape into energy for building, and transform the youth from statistics in drug statistics or commodities in the migration market, into active partners in shaping their destiny.
Victory in this battle will not be measured by the number of crimes that were caught, but by the number of dreams that were saved, and by the number of young people who regained confidence that their lives here are worth living fully aware, not fleeing from it by the shortest route!
And the real question is not: Why do they flee? But rather: What do we do to make them stay? And how do we transform the homeland from a place to escape from to a life to escape to?
This is— in my opinion—the greatest challenge, and the rest are details. Because this land that has stood against all storms is capable of being a homeland for a distinguished life if the intentions are sincere, and dreams are embodied in projects.
