While the Arabs were negotiating, U.S. rhetoric became increasingly belligerent. My father was troubled by the risk of internationalizing the crisis and by the senseless loss of life and destruction a new war would bring. He worried about the destabilizing impact of an invasion of a major Arab country by America and her allies, and of basing Western troops in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf. He foresaw that this would set in motion an unstoppable chain of events, leading to retaliation by radical groups and further wars in our region.
A few days after meeting with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, my father traveled to the United States to speak to President George H. W. Bush at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. He firmly believed that the standoff could be resolved without war. “We can get Iraq out of Kuwait without violence,” he said. He tried to explain the risks of a war in the Middle East, and detailed in sharp terms the destruction and misery it would cause, but President Bush would not listen. “I went to Kennebunkport as a friend!” my father would say in exasperation. “I told the president, I’ve got a commitment from Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait!” But the president had already made up his mind.
I was fiercely opposed to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but like my father I did not support a retaliatory war by the United States. My father had been placed in an impossible position and paid a heavy price for trying to arrange a peaceful withdrawal by Iraq from Kuwait. He felt his mediation efforts were willfully misinterpreted by the West, as he was accused of aligning himself with Saddam’s camp. The attitudes of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and President Bush were, to his mind, too black-and-white; there was no middle way. Most of his friends, including many in the Middle East, turned on him. One person who remained supportive was Prince Charles of Great Britain, who, standing out among all others, seemed to grasp that my father’s efforts to slow down the rush to war was not a sign that he was backing Saddam.
In November, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 678 demanding Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. My father asked me in December to join him on a mission to Baghdad. This would be his third and last visit during the crisis. He had arranged to go with Yasser Arafat and the vice president of Yemen, Ali Salem al-Beidh, in an effort to negotiate the release of the Western hostages. We flew the five hundred miles from Amman to Baghdad on my father’s plane in well under two hours, less time than it takes to fly from Washington, D.C., to Boston. Although Baghdad is close geographically, philosophically it was another world. While my father spoke with Saddam in the main hall of the Republican Palace, I waited outside in a courtyard with Qusay and his brother-in-law, Hussein Kamel. They were smoking and in high spirits. By then I was a major in the army. I told Qusay and Hussein Kamel that I had just completed Staff College in England and had a pretty good sense of how NATO armies operated, particularly with airpower. I said I did not think the Iraqis had the capability to stop the coalition forces and asked them how they would survive a multipronged attack. By then it was clear that most Arab leaders would join the international coalition that the United States and the UK were building to take on Iraq.
The Iraqi leadership was isolated from the wider world, and as can often be the case in dictatorships, nobody wanted to tell the leader that his ideas were faulty. So Saddam’s sons had a greatly overinflated—and unrealistic—perception of their military strength.
“We can detect their stealth bombers!” Qusay said triumphantly. “Morale is very high; we want war.” Both men went on to tell me about new types of artillery they had developed, secret radar systems and 20,000-pound bombs. None of it made much sense.
“I’m telling you,” I said, “from what I learned in England, you guys don’t stand a chance.” They did not react. They had tremendous national pride but had badly underestimated the capabilities of their adversary. It was the kind of hubris that can (and soon did) cause the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Shortly after our conversation, my father emerged from the conference hall looking upbeat, and we returned to Amman. The next day, on December 6, 1990, Saddam announced that he would free the hostages. But the preparations for war rumbled on.
Around the New Year, I regularly get together with a group of close friends from the United States and other countries—it has become an annual tradition. That year, given the likelihood of an imminent war on our border, I was not sure any of my friends from outside Jordan would want to come.
As my family and I tried to retain a semblance of normalcy, I could see that my father was exhausted; he was on the phone all day with the Americans, Saddam Hussein, and the Kuwaitis, trying desperately to talk them back from the brink. A few friends and I decided we would try to lift his spirits. We searched through my father’s house at Hummar, and inside an old chest we found a collection of photographs of my father with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the British general Sir John Glubb, and many other historic figures. My father looked through the photos while the family gathered around. He gave us an impromptu history lesson, describing what was going on in Jordan at the time each photograph was taken and telling us about these historical figures, their personalities, and the various conflicts he had lived through.
On New Year’s Eve that year I was in the Jordan Valley with my friend Gig, who came to visit along with some other American friends despite the protests at home. We talked about our families and the old days back at Deerfield, but most of our conversation focused on the impending war with Iraq and what it might mean for Jordan. If things went badly, would Jordan become the enemy in American eyes? The U.S. Army’s 229th Squadron of the 101st Airborne Division, where I had learned to fly Cobra helicopters, had been deployed to Iraq, and it was shocking to think that we might soon be on opposite sides. I was a Jordanian and Gig was an American, but our friendship was stronger than politics.
By January 1991, over half a million troops from a coalition led by the United States and the UK, joined by some thirty other countries, were deployed in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Gulf. Opposing them was Saddam’s army, at around a million strong the largest in the region and the fourth largest in the world. Iraq had obtained weapon systems from all over the world and had been battle-hardened by its long war with Iran, so it was by no means sure that the impending conflict would be a walkover for the Americans.
We were concerned that we could be dragged into the war by either the Israelis or the Iraqis. It was possible that Israeli jets would try to fly over Jordanian airspace to attack Iraq, as Saddam had rhetorically tied his action to the support of Palestine, a common battle cry that still rings throughout the region today. It was equally possible that Iraqi troops would enter Jordan to attack Israel. My father told Saddam, “If one Iraqi soldier steps over the border, we are at war.” He conveyed the same message to Israel: if one Israeli fighter flew across Jordanian territory to attack Iraq, it would mean war.
On January 16, 1991, the coalition war on Iraq started. As this was a time of national emergency, my father asked me to be on standby to deploy with the 2nd Battalion of the 40th Armoured Brigade near the border with Israel. A few nights before the fighting started, I was sent one evening to carry out an inspection of a unit keeping guard on the lower Jordan Valley border, down by the Dead Sea. It was the kind of night you find only out in the desert, with a faint light coming from the pale moon overhead. Because there is so little man-made light in the desert, you see many more stars than you do in a city. It feels like you are standing on the edge of the universe, looking in.
Suddenly the darkness was broken by a flash of light as an Iraqi Scud missile blazed across the sky, heading for Israel.
Our air force was on high alert. We worried that the Iraqi air force might try to flee to Jordan. As it turned out, they had gone to Iran to avoid the coalition fighters, and the Israelis held their fire.
Saddam’s army was no match for the coalition forces, and six weeks after the war started it was over. From my knowledge of NATO tactics and of the firepower of the U.S. an
d British militaries, I knew there could be only one outcome, but even I was surprised at just how quickly the Iraqi army was defeated.
There was no love lost between my father and Saddam Hussein. My father was all too aware of the suffering Iraqi forces had imposed on Kuwaitis. But he also wanted to avoid what he believed to be the unnecessary suffering the war would inflict on the Iraqi people. Many Gulf states, including Kuwait, were unable to accept that my father was acting as a mediator seeking to avoid war, and they accused him of siding with Saddam. He was hurt by this. He felt his old allies should have trusted him more and appreciated that he was trying to act in everyone’s best interests. Relations between Jordan and Kuwait remained strained for years, and our relations with other Gulf states deteriorated after the war. The resulting loss of financial assistance, of oil from Iraq, Jordan’s main source of supply, and of remittances from Jordanians working in the Gulf, as many of them lost their jobs and were forced to return home, would together inflict severe harm on the economy.
All of us in the region were deeply saddened by the death and destruction that the Gulf War wrought. And perhaps that was a reason why some began to search more vigorously for peace with our other neighbor, Israel.
Following the end of the cold war and with Iraq out of Kuwait, the United States and the Soviet Union in October 1991 convened a peace conference in Madrid. The peace talks, which became known as the Madrid Peace Conference, represented a landmark breakthrough in the long history of efforts by moderate Arab states and the international community to resolve the wider Arab-Israeli conflict and negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. This was the first time that all Arab parties, including the Palestinians, had gathered to address their differences in a mediated forum. The Madrid process, in its bilateral and multilateral forums, revitalized the stalled peace efforts. As the Israelis said that they were not yet ready to negotiate directly with the Palestinians, Jordan offered a means for them to speak with the Israelis under a “Jordanian umbrella” in a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The goal of the process launched in Madrid was a comprehensive regional peace, and at the beginning of November, Israel began talks with its Arab neighbors on four separate bilateral tracks, with Jordan, the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria.
The implicit understanding among the Arab states was that they would maintain a united front to preserve the interests of the Palestinians, rather than each negotiating on the basis of its own interests. To do this, they agreed to coordinate their positions and keep each other informed of their progress.
But without my father’s knowledge, Israel and the PLO began parallel secret talks in Oslo, Norway, and after eight months unexpectedly reached a historic breakthrough agreement that came to be known as the Oslo Accords. This agreement, which established mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO and self-government for the Palestinians in Gaza and Jericho, represented a turning point in Israeli-Palestinian relations. It established the framework for a final peace agreement and set up stages for its implementation. The Declaration of Principles was signed in Washington in September 1993 by Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat in a ceremony at the White House hosted by President Bill Clinton.
My father was angered that Arafat had not informed him of the Oslo channel and that he had made a separate peace with Israel. “I can’t believe they did this!” he said to me. He was also alarmed that the Syrians were more advanced in their talks than they had told us. Deeply disappointed that the Arabs had not been able to maintain their united front, my father focused more on Jordan’s own peace negotiations with the Israelis.
Jordan had actually encouraged direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since 1988, when my father made the historic decision to sever Jordan’s legal and administrative ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank. When it was occupied by Israel in 1967, the West Bank was part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Palestinians in the West Bank were Jordanian citizens and the government in Amman had remained responsible for their affairs and for sustaining Palestinian schools, the judiciary, and other institutions throughout the occupation. Civil servants in the West Bank were employees of the Jordanian government, even after 1967, and half of the seats in the parliament were allocated for the West Bank. The disengagement decision meant that Jordan would no longer be in charge of these institutions. Only its responsibility for the holy sites was excluded from the decision. My father felt that were he to relinquish his responsibility for the holy sites in Jerusalem, a vacuum would be created that Israel would use to assume control of the sites. So he held on to this responsibility, which was later recognized by Israel in the peace treaty it signed with Jordan in 1994.
My father’s formal break with the West Bank meant that the Palestinians could assume responsibility for their own political future in the Occupied Territories. In an address to the nation on July 31, he said that he believed this was the logical response to the conclusion of the Rabat Summit of 1974, when all Arab states had decided to designate the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The decision was also prompted by many failed attempts to coordinate strategy with the PLO and by the outbreak in December 1987 of civil revolt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against Israel’s occupation—the first Palestinian intifada. Palestinians had made clear their intention to pursue their political aims independent of Jordan. My father was not going to stand in their way. His decision was crucial to Palestinian ambitions for statehood: the West Bank would now form the core of a future Palestinian state.
Another unintended consequence of the 1991 Gulf War was the flood of Iraqis into our country. Before, during, and after the war many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and people from other countries who had been living in Iraq sought refuge in Jordan. Most Jordanian and Palestinian expatriates in Kuwait also made their way back to Jordan. And although I did not know it at the time, a chance meeting with one of them would soon change my life.
Chapter 9
A Royal Wedding
In August 1992 I was a battalion commander of the 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment. We had been carrying out field exercises and my men and I had been camped out in the desert for two months straight, sleeping in tents. Our accommodations were pretty basic. To take a hot shower, I had rigged up a contraption with a storage tank that heated the water using the sun. The exercises went well, so the brigade commander told me and the other officers to take the night off.
I changed out of my army uniform, threw on a T-shirt and sneakers, and drove to Amman. I had just arrived home when my sister Aisha called, saying, “I hear you’re in town, come over for dinner.” I told her I really just wanted a proper shower and a comfy bed, but she had not seen me in some time and promised the get-together was not going to be anything fancy. I had been living on beans and tinned spaghetti for the last two months, so the prospect of a real dinner was too good to turn down.
I headed over to Aisha’s house, my face like a lobster from weeks under the desert sun. Not realizing she was having guests over, I was still wearing the same clothes I had tossed on at the army camp. One of my sister’s friends worked at Apple Computer in Amman, and he had brought along a colleague, Rania Al Yassin. As soon as I saw her, I thought, “Wow!”
Nearly twenty-two at the time, Rania had not been in Jordan for long. She came from a Jordanian family of Palestinian origin and had grown up in Kuwait. She and her family had moved to Jordan during the Gulf War. Her father had long planned to retire in Jordan and had built a house in Amman, but the war sped up the family’s plans.
After studying business at the American University in Cairo, Rania had worked at Citibank in Amman, and then at Apple, where she met my sister’s friend. We spoke only briefly at the dinner, but I was struck by how poised, elegant, and intelligent she was. I was smitten and knew I had to see her again. It took me a little while to track her down, but I finally managed to get her number, and I called her at work. I introduced myself and said that I was hoping to see he
r again. “I’ve heard things about you,” she said. She did not finish the sentence, but the implication was that what she had heard was not entirely favorable. “I’m no angel,” I replied, “but at least half the things you hear are just idle gossip.” She was not convinced and said she would need to think about it.
I would not be so easily dissuaded. I got a mutual friend, Tawfiq Kawar, to stop by her office and assure her of my good intentions. Rania was still not convinced; she thought he was not objective. Tawfiq returned from his mission saying that he had not secured a date for me, but he had found out that Rania liked chocolate. So I sent him back bearing a box of Belgian chocolates. After that, she accepted my invitation to dinner. It was November by the time she came to my house, and I decided to surprise her and cook.
I first learned to cook out of necessity in the army, but later I came to enjoy it. I find it a great way to relax and unwind. I had a Japanese teppanyaki table made locally, and an iron griddle on which I prepared traditional Japanese dishes of chicken, shrimp, and beef in the style of a Benihana restaurant. The meal went well, and we saw each other once or twice more before the end of the year, and talked many more times by phone. We had to be discreet. Amman is a town that loves to gossip, and neither one of us wanted to be the source of speculation.
Just after the beginning of the new year, I met up with Gig. By then I could no longer contain my excitement. I told him that I had met an amazing woman in Amman, and I thought she was the one.
My birthday was on January 30, and I invited Rania to the celebration. My father sat himself down next to her and they began to talk. He was stunned by her intelligence, charm, and beauty and did not take long to uncover our secret. After the guests had left, Rania and I were sitting in my house when the phone rang. It was my father, who loved to play matchmaker. “So,” he said, “when can I meet her parents?”
Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril Page 9
