Jordan’s Batch 54 Closes a 34-Year Gap in Conscription

Jordan’s army chief graduated the second 2026 national service class at Shweier on 15 September. The army lists that intake as Batch 54, the first numbered class since Batch 53 left the camps in 1992.

Crown Prince Al Hussein bin Abdullah II had reactivation of the National Military Service as a youth project in Irbid on 17 August 2025. The state then ran a three-month course for 6,000 men born in 2007, not the two-year draft their grandfathers knew.

The Crown Prince Reopened Service in Irbid

The meeting was at King Abdullah II Gardens in Irbid Governorate. Al Hussein told the young people there that Jordanians must be prepared to serve and defend their country, and that those who had already done national military service knew what the experience was worth.

He said the programme would strengthen national identity and a young person’s tie to home, and that time with the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army builds character and instils discipline. He added that he had already told the government to work with its partners on a timetable, with details to come later.

The same session ranged over information technology, volunteer projects, and vocational training. Guests praised both the service idea and the Crown Prince’s backing for technical courses that lead to work. That mix, a call-up beside a jobs pitch, is how Jordan has talked about this file for twenty years.

Mohammad Momani, then minister of government communication, and Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hiyari, director of military media, filled in the missing terms the next day, 18 August 2025. Momani said the programme was not vocational training and not a return of the old Popular Army. The armed forces would run it. He also said work on the plan had been under way for about a year, pushing back at the claim that Irbid was a snap reply to a week of Israeli political talk.

Six Thousand Men, Drawn on a Map

Momani said conscription would resume with Batch 54, after the halt that followed Batch 53 in 1992. The first year would take 6,000 young men born in 2007 who would have turned 18 by 1 January 2026, split into three groups of 2,000. Names would come from an electronic draw, weighted by governorate, not from a public list in the papers.

GOVERNORATE QUOTAS FOR THE FIRST 6,000

He said the count would rise to 10,000 in later years if the training held its quality, with the aim of covering most eligible groups over time. Each conscript would receive JD 100 a month (about $141). Call-up would run through the Interior Ministry, police directorates, the Sanad app, and SMS. After the legal steps were done, a man could check his status with his national number rather than wait to see his name in a newspaper.

WHO IS EXEMPT OR DEFERRED

• Only children: Sole sons are exempt under the cases Momani listed.
• Medical unfitness: Men ruled unable to serve are exempt.
• Students: School and university students can defer, and a student who is called keeps his university seat.
• Residents abroad: Men living outside Jordan can defer if they file papers, then serve once that reason ends.
• Equivalent courses: Military sciences or national education can be recognised in place of part of the programme.

Refusal, Momani said, carries three months to one year in prison, with no substitute penalty. He said the Crown Prince had insisted the draw be fair and that no one pulled in the lottery would be excused by pull. Prime Minister Jafar Hassan told the Cabinet the government would finish the legal work with the army so training could start in February 2026, with money from 2025 emergency spending and the 2026 budget.

Batch 53 Was the Last Class Until Now

Jordan did not repeal the statute when it stopped calling men. It mothballed a system that still sat on the books, then spent a generation trying to restart a thinner version of it.

THE ROAD BACK TO CONSCRIPTION

1. 1976: the 1976 National Service Law makes men over 18 liable for 24 months, with students able to wait until after university or age 28.
2. 1986: Compulsory Military Service Act No. 23 restates the duty; later revivals still cite this law.
3. April 1992: Service is suspended after Batch 53. The statute is not repealed, so the duty can be switched back on.
4. 5 March 2007: The Cabinet backs a 2007 plan for three-month service. Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit sells it as discipline, citizenship, and labour-market training. MPs amend the law on 19 April 2007.
5. 2018: The Labour Ministry describes a voluntary course for unemployed 18-to-25-year-olds, with one military month and three vocational months, paid at JD 100.
6. 9 September 2020: Prime Minister Omar Razzaz oversees a government-army memorandum for 25-to-29-year-olds out of work, three military months plus nine months of skills placement, again at JD 100. The order does not take effect.
7. 17 August 2025: The Crown Prince announces the reactivation in Irbid. The Lower House passes the 2025 amendments on 17 November; the Official Gazette carries the law on 26 November.
8. 1 February 2026: Batch 54 begins at Shweier. The first class graduates on 29 April; the second joins on 20 June and graduates on 15 September.

The 2007 and 2020 files used the same three-month length and the same JD 100 stipend, and both were sold as a cure for idle young men. They never received a batch number. Batch 54 is the first class the army has counted since 1992, which is why the Irbid speech was less a debut than a successful restart.

That labour argument has not gone away. The Department of Statistics put unemployment among Jordanians at 21.0% in the second quarter of 2026, down from 21.3% a year earlier. Among Jordanian men the rate was 18.5%, down 4.2 points from 22.7% in the second quarter of 2021. The 2025 design still teaches the job market in a classroom. Momani still refused to call it a vocational scheme.

What Does a Three-Month Course Include?

Training is at the National Military Service centre in Shweier. Hiyari said the armed forces would run it to military standards, with housing, food, and clinics on site. Each course lasts three months and mixes a field track with a classroom track.

The field track covers discipline, fitness, and light weapons. The classroom track covers active citizenship, national awareness, financial literacy, and the labour market. Momani’s line that this is not vocational training sits beside a syllabus that still spends hours on how to get a job.

CAMP RULES AT SHWEIER

• Closed month: Conscripts stay inside for the first four weeks, then get a 48-hour leave.
• Weekend leave: After that, they can leave from Thursday evening to Saturday evening.
• No phones: Personal mobiles stay out; a camp switchboard handles family calls.
• Military papers: Civil IDs are replaced with military documents through Sanad.

Those weekend buses are how men from Karak, Tafilah, and the south get home, and how a civilian coach ended up on the Desert Highway in September. The course is short enough that a student can treat it as a term, which is why the education ministry has been writing rules for credit rather than emptying lecture halls.

April’s Class Heard the Crown Prince in Person

Al Hussein went to Shweier on 29 April 2026 for the first class of the year. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maj. Gen. Yousef Huneiti and Royal Hashemite Court Chief Yousef Issawi received him with other senior officers. Graduates marched, then ran a silent drill and hand-to-hand display. The Crown Prince gave prizes for infantry and combat readiness, then spoke as the son of a soldier, quoting his grandfather King Hussein to the first regiment of an earlier age.

National Military Service is a declaration of the utmost loyalty to the homeland.

King Hussein, as quoted by Crown Prince Al Hussein bin Abdullah II, first cohort graduation, Shweier, 29 April 2026

He told the class the three months were not a phase to mark off on a calendar. Loyalty, he said, is a duty in hard times, and the country’s turbulent neighbourhood had been a forge for national character rather than only a burden. He closed by saying the graduates were setting a precedent for the classes behind them.

The second group was told to report on 20 June 2026. Training opened at Shweier two days later. On 15 September, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Maj. Gen. Majdi Harasis, who had taken the post on 2 September, graduated that class. The ceremony opened with a recitation for the conscripts killed on the highway the week before, then the same parade, silent infantry, and unarmed combat the April class had shown. Harasis handed prizes to the men who had led the course.

On 30 September, Education Minister Azmi Muhafaza sent a circular to every public and private higher-education institution in the country. It told them to apply the instructions that count lectures and training toward national service and reserve service, under Article 14 of Law 23 of 1986. The 1986 act is still the legal spine. The 2025 amendments only switched it back on.

A Cargo Truck on the Karak Highway

On 10 September 2026, at about 3:15 p.m., a civilian bus carrying conscripts home to the south collided with a cargo vehicle on the Desert Highway at Al-Bayda in Karak Governorate. A Jordan Armed Forces spokesman said four conscripts and the bus driver were killed at the scene and 18 conscripts were injured. Sixteen of those injuries were described as moderate and two as serious. The wounded went to Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein Military Hospital, Karak Government Hospital, Tafilah Government Hospital, and, in later visits, King Hussein Medical Centre.

Conscript Mohammad Yahya Nassar Al-Maraieh later died of his injuries and was buried on 13 September with military honours. The other dead were buried in their hometowns on 11 and 12 September, also with military honours. Issawi visited the injured that first evening on royal orders. Harasis toured the wards on 12 September. On 16 September the Crown Prince offered condolences to the families.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The vehicles: A civilian coach of conscripts heading south hit a cargo truck on the Desert Highway at Al-Bayda, Karak, at about 3:15 p.m. on 10 September 2026.
• The toll: Four conscripts and the driver died at the scene; 18 conscripts were hurt; Al-Maraieh later died of his injuries.
• The funerals: The dead were buried in their hometowns with full military honours, with wreaths from the General Command.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Final blame: Traffic Department Director Brig. Gen. Raed Assaf said early findings pointed to the cargo driver’s sudden lane change and to human error; a Public Security committee was still at work.
• Leave rules: No public order has changed the Thursday-to-Saturday home trips that put conscripts on civilian buses.

The Irbid speech in August 2025 sounded, to many listeners, like a country putting young men on a war footing. What the army has actually run is a numbered class of 6,000, drawn by governorate, taught for three months, paid JD 100, and sent home on weekends. Two of those classes have now left Shweier. Batch 54 is on the books. The two-year service that ended with Batch 53 is still in the past.