Ammon News - AMMONNEWS -Snipers scramble up the dirt verge, take position, and aim. The sharp crack of automatic gunfire echoes through the desert valley, dust clouds flaring from the kickback. Below, soldiers dash through the streets of sandstone buildings. Shouts of "Allahu Akbar" ring out as the men burst into the building. Moments later they emerge, heaving a human-shaped weight on their shoulders.

The hostage release is not for real; it's a staged scenario in a fake desert cityscape, part of the four-day Annual Warrior Competition in Jordan. The competition brings together elite anti-terrorism squads from around the world in an attempt to build friendships and share knowledge, while the soldiers and officers test their skills.

Held at the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center on the outskirts of Amman, 38 teams from 18 countries including the United States, Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and China compete in theatrically-titled events such as the "High Angel Drive-By" and the "3-Gun Gauntlet," before reaching the grand finale, the "King's Challenge."

In the "Airbus Seizure," teams surround a grounded aircraft before storming it to take down militants and rescue hostages. Later, they scramble under nets, up ladders and over walls to reach sniper positions and hit targets, winning points for speed and accuracy in the "Desert Stress Shoot."

While the competition is pure sportsmanship, many of the events the teams compete in mimic deadly real-life scenarios that special units must be prepared for; perhaps none more so than host country Jordan.

Neighbored by Syria and Iraq, the Hashemite Kingdom has spent more than a decade with bloody sectarian war on its doorstep. There are few countries to which the threat of the Islamic State (IS) is a closer and more immediate threat, and counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency training is high up on the country's defense agenda.

In November 2014 IS, which has long controlled cross-border trade from Amman to Baghdad, surged out of its heartland in Iraq's Anbar province to attack six control posts across the Jordanian border. Last month, to the south, the final crossing from Jordan into Syria was declared indefinitely closed after Free Syrian Army rebels briefly supported by al Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate, seized the post.

"For Jordan this problem [the Islamic State] is not just a theoretical, it's existential, it's a knock at the door that's getting louder," Patrick Skinner, special project manager at security intelligence consultancy Soufan Group, told VICE News. "Even where it's not IS at their border, it's militant groups where we have to use the word 'moderate" in quotation marks."

Standing at the sideline of a firing range where his team are competing in the "Desert Shoot Stress" event, Malik Khalab Al-Alwan, a lieutenant in the Jordanian Armed Forces, said that fighting IS and other jihadi groups was a hot topic among the contestants. "There is a lot of talk about these groups," he told VICE News. "They are fake Muslims using Islam as a cover for their actions, and [they are] a common enemy."

*Vice News