Lion of Jordan

by Avi Shlaim

  On 5 September, Hussein returned from his tour of Europe’s capitals and flew straight to Baghdad to try once again to persuade Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait. This was the second of three trips he made to Baghdad in the quest for a peaceful settlement. On this trip he conveyed to Saddam his firm conviction that the Western leaders and their allies were not going to allow him to stay in Kuwait. ‘Make a brave decision and withdraw your forces,’ Hussein advised the Iraqi leader. ‘If you don’t, you will be forced out.’ Saddam, however, remained unmoved.31 He was less concerned with the future of Kuwait than with his own future. He probably calculated that if he ordered his army to execute a humiliating retreat, his own leadership would be called into question. The Western logic said that if he did not withdraw voluntarily and unconditionally, he would be compelled to withdraw by force. From his own perspective, however, it was probably less risky to let his army be driven out by force than to lose face with an unconditional surrender. Pride in the Arab world was very important, as Hussein was reminding his Israeli friends.

  Hussein’s perseverance in the role of peacemaker in the face of so many rebuffs is nothing short of astounding. He felt deeply that the Middle East could not afford another war and that the world should not impose one on it. His next venture was a Maghrebi peace initiative. On 19 September, King Hassan II of Morocco hosted in Rabat a meeting to which President Chadli ben Jedid of Algeria was also invited. The prospects of an Arab solution to the crisis were far from promising, but the assembled heads of state agreed to make another effort. Three days later Hussein addressed a long letter to the Iraqi leader in which he conveyed their collective wisdom. The core of the letter was the advice to Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait and to avoid the approaching war. It was made clear to Saddam that the Arab governments could not accept the acquisition of territory by force not only as a matter of principle but because failure to uphold it would play into Israel’s hands. The letter appealed to Saddam’s ego by extolling his leadership and Iraq’s achievements under his leadership. But it also spoke of the ambitions of the large industrial powers to dominate the region and warned him that a war would spell disaster not only for Iraq but for the entire Arab world. These powers were deliberately laying a trap for Iraq, he was told. Saddam was invited to state his precise demands on the subject of Kuwait to enable the three leaders to work for an Arab solution. Having articulated his fears, Hussein placed himself at Saddam’s disposal. ‘I left Baghdad for Jordan anxious and saddened,’ he wrote. ‘I was hoping to continue my activities to prevent the deterioration that has been going on ever since. Will you not respond to my call, and the call of every sincere Arab, before it is too late?’

  Saddam’s reply was carried to Amman by the Iraqi foreign minister on 29 September. It did not respond to the call. Saddam was prepared to take up the challenge of war because he believed, or at least he said he believed, that war would be a disaster not for Iraq but for the United States and its allies. Saddam was prepared to accept one of two solutions to the crisis: an Arab solution along the lines originally proposed by His Majesty on 3 August or an international solution along the lines he himself had proposed on 12 August, linking the question of Kuwait to the problems of Palestine and Lebanon.32 The letter contained no new ideas for breaking the deadlock. The Arab solution had effectively been rejected by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, while the international solution had been rejected by America and Britain. Hussein’s letter failed to avert war, but it established his credentials as someone who had been opposed to the invasion and annexation of Kuwait from the beginning. It showed that he was a good deal tougher on Saddam than his American detractors realized.

  Bush remained firm in his assessment that only military force would drive the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. In October the decision was taken to increase the number of American troops in Saudi Arabia to 400,000. The mission of this huge military force changed from defensive to offensive. The original aim of the American deployment was the defence of the kingdom but additional forces were required for the purpose of evicting Iraq from Kuwait. Bush denied it, but the doubling of American ground forces marked the critical transition from Operation Desert Shield to Operation Desert Storm. An intensified diplomatic campaign accompanied the dispatch of land, sea and air forces to Saudi Arabia. On 29 November the Security Council passed Resolution 678, which authorized the use of ‘all necessary means’ against Iraq unless it complied with all previous resolutions within six weeks. It was promptly dubbed ‘the mother of all resolutions’, echoing Saddam’s threat that if Iraq was attacked, it would wage ‘the mother of all battles’. The radical shift in the American position persuaded Hussein that a military confrontation was imminent, yet he persisted in his efforts to contain the crisis, focusing in particular on securing the release of the Western hostages held by Iraq since the outbreak of the crisis.

  A mini-summit took place in Baghdad on 4 December. It was Hussein’s third and last visit to the Iraqi capital in the course of the crisis. Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the PLO, and Salem El-Bid, the vice-president of Yemen, were also there, and they all pleaded with Saddam to pull back from the brink but to no avail. They argued that the consequences of a clash of arms would be disastrous for Iraq, Kuwait and the whole region, but Saddam could not be moved. Sharif Zaid bin Shaker intervened in the discussion as a military expert to underline the seriousness of the situation, but his words too were ignored. His impression was that Saddam and his key advisers were nowhere near as worried by the prospect of war as they should have been. Their understanding of the outside world was very limited. They had no idea about America’s military capability or of the way its political system worked. They said that the Americans were cowards; they would suffer casualties and withdraw. Hussein intervened to tell Saddam that this assessment was wrong, that they would be hit very severely by the allies, and that he should withdraw before it was too late.33 The Iraqi military advisers were even more ignorant of the outside world than their political masters and just as confident and boastful. They said that they were ready for the Americans and that if the Americans came, they would crush them under their boots like cockroaches.34

  A more immediate issue was the fate of the Western hostages, or ‘guests’, held by Iraq. ‘We argued and argued,’ recalled the king. ‘Eventually we managed to get the so-called guests out of Iraq. That is the only positive thing that came out of it.’35 After the summit the Iraqi government announced that all foreign nationals would be allowed to leave the country. As a mark of respect, Saddam personally accompanied Hussein to the airport. At the airport he said to the king, ‘Abu Abdullah, don’t worry. The whole world is against us but God is with us and we are going to win.’ Hussein said, ‘This is beyond my ability to comprehend or to deal with. I leave very saddened and very distressed and I know that the results as they appear to me are going to be disastrous everywhere. But I will be back home. If there is anything I can further do, then you know how to get in touch with me.’ Saddam never called, and the war broke out the following month.36

  Having failed to avert a military confrontation between Iraq and the American-led coalition, Hussein turned his attention to limiting the consequences of the conflict for Jordan. His primary concern was to avoid being dragged into a war to which Jordan was not a party. Iraq and Israel were preparing for war, and Hussein was fearful that his kingdom would be crushed between the two. Late in the afternoon on 31 December 1990, Adnan Abu-Odeh flew to Baghdad in a private plane to deliver an oral message from Hussein to Saddam. When Abu-Odeh arrived, he was told that Saddam could not see him because he was outside Baghdad. So he saw Vice-President Taha Yasin Ramadan and Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, and delivered his message. It was only two sentences: ‘I carry His Majesty’s greetings to the president and His Majesty’s wish is to let you know that in case war flares up he does not want to see Jordanian territory or Jordanian skies violated by anyone.’ In other words, Jordan did not want to be involved in any military action, and it would defend its ter
ritory and airspace against any incursion from any side.37 The verbal warning was followed up by the dispatch of an armoured division to the eastern front. Prince Abdullah was sent to the Iraqi border with a Cobra helicopter squadron. They did not know whether they would be attacked by the Iraqis, the Israelis or the Americans. But the message to Saddam was very clear: ‘If you try to come to Jordan with your troops, you’ll go straight into a military confrontation.’38

  Hussein’s role was the subject of much comment in the Western media, mostly hostile. Those who were beating the drums of war portrayed him as the ally of the Iraqi dictator and as an accomplice in the assault on Kuwait. Those who were still seeking a peaceful solution to the crisis saw him as the most sincere and helpful of all the Arab leaders. In his public statements Hussein tried to counter the media campaign that was being directed against him. He reiterated that Jordan was opposed to the acquisition of territory by force, that it continued to recognize the state and government of Kuwait, and that it was implementing the UN sanctions against Iraq at considerable cost to itself. What Jordan was opposed to, he explained, was the military build-up in the Gulf. He warned that a war would have incalculable consequences for Arabs and Muslims the world over for generations to come. He also appealed directly to the American public to support his efforts to achieve a diplomatic settlement based on Security Council resolutions. But he might as well have been talking to himself, for all the good it did.

  Hussein’s public utterances failed to impress the Saudis, and his efforts to distance himself from Iraq failed to scotch their suspicions that he was secretly in cahoots with Saddam. Here is what HRH General Khaled bin Sultan, a member of the Saudi royal family and the commander of the joint forces in the Gulf War, wrote in his autobiography: ‘With Saddam’s armies at the door, it was not far-fetched to fear that King Hussein dreamed of retaking the Hijaz, once ruled by his greatgrandfather; that President Ali Abdallah Salih of Yemen dreamed of seizing our border province of Asir; that the Palestinians, present in Kuwait in large numbers, imagined that they might establish there a temporary homeland under Saddam’s aegis, pending the recovery of Palestine from the Jews.’39 This passage discloses a disturbing inability to distinguish between fact and fiction. Hussein’s indication to his own people that they could call him either king or sharif further deepened Saudi suspicions. ‘Sharif’ is an honorific title reserved for those who can claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad. However, the king’s words angered and alarmed the Saudi leadership because they seemed to signal his ambition to seize territory in the Hijaz that had once been ruled by his great-grandfather, Hussein bin Ali, the sharif of Mecca.40 But when Hussein grew a sharif-like white beard, which made him look remarkably like his great-grandfather, the jittery Saudis were terrified: it seemed to them to be reviving the Hashemite dynasty’s claim to the Hijaz. The truth, however, was much more prosaic: the king suffered from a stress-induced skin condition that made it painful to shave.

  Saudi conspiracy theories were not supported by any concrete evidence, and they were denied by Hussein with some vehemence. ‘Somehow it turned out that our position had been undermined in the Arab world,’ he said. ‘There was talk of Jordan conspiring with Iraq. Totally unfounded! We had never done it and if we had done it, we would have done something much better than that. It is against our nature. All we were trying to do is to avert the human disaster, the economic disaster, the breaking of bones… in the region… And all we wanted was a chance. If we had been given that chance and Iraq had proved that we couldn’t succeed, we probably would have been amongst the first troops to enter Iraq… But we weren’t given the chance.’ Hussein went on to describe the mood in Jordan on the eve of the war:

  The pressure built up on us in such a way that we were totally isolated but we mobilized and that was another one of the best moments I have ever seen in Jordan. Our people came together and we of course received 400,000 refugees from the bidun, those who had no citizenship rights, from Kuwait and from the Gulf on top of all the other problems we had to cope with. We were encircled. We mobilized almost a quarter of a million Jordanians and through that we controlled the situation. We made it very clear to Iraqis, we spoke to the Israelis, we spoke to everybody else who might attack us, we said: ‘We may be small, but we will cause a lot of damage. We are not saying we are invincible, we are not. But neither our land nor our air space can be used by them.’ We had our forces deployed facing Iraq and facing Israel, facing north and facing south.41

  Israel did not fail to pick up the signs of the state of high alert in Jordan. In Israel too the mood was tense as 1990 turned into 1991 and the crisis approached its climax. With war looming on the horizon, Jordan assumed ever greater importance as a buffer or potential battleground between Iraq and Israel. Likud leaders suddenly discovered the value of having a stable country under a moderate ruler on their eastern border. The change of tune was unmistakable. Instead of issuing threats, the government began to send, through third parties, soothing messages to Amman to assure the king that they had no plans to attack and to urge him not to allow the entry of Iraqi troops into Jordan.42 As soon as the crisis erupted, Shamir wrote to Bush to warn that the entry of Iraqi forces into Jordan would be a ‘red line’ from Israel’s point of view. Shamir also made it clear that Israel had no hostile intentions towards Hussein and asked Bush to discourage the king from serving the Iraqi dictator’s aggressive purposes.43

  At the start of 1991 there were worrying signs that Jordan was concentrating forces east of the Jordan River and that the king was losing control of the situation. A more direct channel of communication with Amman was needed. Efraim Halevy, the deputy director of the Mossad, took the initiative in trying to arrange a meeting. The purpose of the summit meeting was to prevent Iraq from using Jordanian facilities to attack Israel in the event of war. Hussein agreed to a meeting but doubted whether Shamir would be interested, given the differences that emerged at their one and only meeting in July 1987. When Halevy asked Hussein whether he would come to a meeting if Shamir came, the immediate reply was ‘Yes!’ On his return to Israel, Halevy sounded out Shamir on a face-to-face meeting with their neighbour. Shamir welcomed the idea but doubted whether Hussein would accept the risk of a leak that would damage his standing with his Palestinian subjects and upset his delicate relationship with Iraq and with Saddam Hussein in particular. Halevy reported that the king had already agreed and that the summit meeting could indeed take place. But he did not underestimate the risks involved. The failure of the meeting could provide the anti-Jordanian lobby in Israel with a powerful boost for its policy. At the previous meeting the basic positions of the two leaders were irreconcilable. If they parted again without agreement, the consequences could be serious.44

  The meeting took place at Buckhurst Park, Hussein’s secluded and well-protected country residence in Ascot. The guests arrived before sundown on Friday, 4 January 1991, and left after the end of the Sabbath on the following day. Shamir was accompanied by Elyakim Rubinstein, the cabinet secretary, Yossi Ben-Aharon, the director-general of the prime minister’s office, and Major-General Ehud Barak, the IDF deputy chief of staff. The royal party included Sharif Zaid bin Shaker, the chief of the royal court, Adnan Abu-Odeh, Hussein’s political adviser, and Colonel Ali Shukri, the director of Hussein’s private office. For Abu-Odeh, a Palestinian originally from Nablus, this was the first encounter with Israeli officials on state business. The king did not brief him about the previous meetings, and he did not wish to appear inquisitive by asking. As far as he was concerned, the principal purpose of the talks was to preserve Jordanian neutrality in the coming conflict. In this respect the meeting with the Israelis was a logical sequel to the king’s recent mission to Baghdad.45

  Ali Shukri was born in 1950 and entered the king’s service in 1976, after receiving a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Cardiff University and serving briefly in the Jordanian Signal Corps. When Shukri entered the king’s service he was a lieutenant and
when he left in 1998 he was a major-general. Among the various aides, Shukri was the king’s closest confidant: he travelled with him everywhere and attended most of his meetings with foreign leaders, including sixty-one meetings with Saddam in the 1990s. Shukri was entrusted by the king with the sensitive task of arranging the clandestine meetings with the Israelis and of maintaining the contact in between meetings. Another task that usually fell to Ali Shukri, as the junior member of the Jordanian party, was that of note-taker. Although the king had little patience for paperwork, Shukri took copious notes at the meetings with the Israelis and produced typed reports in English that he gave to the king after each meeting. Because of their special sensitivity, these records were not kept in the royal court but taken home by the king and kept with the rest of his private papers.46

  Shamir was sympathetic to Jordan’s predicament. He understood that Jordan’s geopolitical situation ruled out participation in the coalition against Iraq because Iraq could hurt Jordan. Hussein’s success in keeping his country out of the October War of 1973 was an encouraging precedent in this respect. According to Shamir, Hussein began with a survey of his difficulties: the Americans had abandoned him; the Saudis were hostile to him; and he was isolated in the Arab world. At home the Palestinians were liable to cause riots if he publicly dissociated himself from the actions taken by Saddam. He did not want war: he feared its destabilizing effects, and his sole desire was that Jordan should not be turned into a battleground between Israel and Iraq. He asked for an Israeli promise not to infringe the territorial integrity of Jordan by land or by air, and he hoped that this would help him to procure a similar promise from Iraq.47