"That"s it, to h.e.l.l with the infantry," I thought. "I"m joining the cavalry!" The next day I transferred to reconnaissance and signed up for the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, which later merged with another regiment, the 15th/19th, the King"s Royal Hussars, to form the Light Dragoons. (A few years ago Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth honored me by making me the Light Dragoons" colonel-inchief.) I joined as a second lieutenant, and after two months went for a young officer"s basic course before returning to my regiment. I completed my armor training at Bovington Camp in Dorset, and served a year as an officer in the British army, in the UK and West Germany. At that time, in the early 1980s, the cold war was still at its height, and as an armored regiment one of our missions would have been to repel a Russian advance through the Fulda Gap into the heart of West Germany.
One afternoon I was traveling with my regiment on the M4 highway, the main motorway from London to the west, in Fox armored cars, which, although they have turrets equipped with 30mm cannons, move on wheels, not tracks. To a civilian, however, they look like tanks. These armored cars had a reputation for being fast, so I thought I would test them out. We were barreling along well over the speed limit when I looked out of the turret and saw a police car driving alongside us, siren blaring and lights flashing. I gave the order to pull over, and the convoy stopped at the side of the motorway. The policeman got out and walked over, shaking his head. "I have no idea how I"m going to write this up," he said. "n.o.body would believe me if I told them I"d pulled over five tanks for speeding on the M4!" We were let off with a warning and told to mind our speed and get on our way.
During the Falklands war, which began in April 1982, when Britain and Argentina fought over control of the Falkland Islands, we were given "dog tags" for the first time-metal tags that soldiers wear around their neck with personal information so they can be identified if they are killed in battle. I called my father and told him they were issuing us with dog tags and it looked like we might be deployed. Without a pause, he said, "If they go, you go with them." As it turned out, another unit was sent, and we spent the conflict on a training exercise in Fort Polk, Louisiana.
In June 1982, as the Falklands war was ending, halfway around the globe another war was beginning. On June 6, the Israeli army invaded southern Lebanon-just four years after it had last crossed the border and occupied southern Lebanon with the purpose of destroying PLO bases and expanding the buffer zone it had established where a surrogate force, under the leadership of a renegade Lebanese army officer, was providing support. By June 1978, Israeli forces had been replaced by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), established under UN Security Council Resolution 425. Their mandate was to confirm Israel"s withdrawal and to a.s.sist the government of Lebanon with restoring peace and security.
This time, in contravention of a cease-fire brokered by U.S. envoy Philip Habib in July 1981, the Israeli army, under the command of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, conducted an aggressive campaign-Israel called it "Operation Peace for Galilee"-in pursuit of Ya.s.ser Arafat and his PLO guerrilla fighters. Sharon pushed all the way to Beirut. This was one of the first Middle Eastern wars to be televised, and millions watched in disbelief as for the first time Israeli tanks rolled into the streets of an Arab capital. For me and for all Arabs, this was a tragic, traumatic event. It was a defining moment, and to this day people can tell you exactly what they were doing when the invasion took place. I watched on television in the officers" mess at Carver Barracks in Saffron Walden, just south of Cambridge, as Israeli forces sh.e.l.led Beirut. They were using eight-inch artillery, which are not known for their accuracy, and I knew that there would be many civilian casualties. But what none of us could know was that civilians would be deliberately and brutally targeted.
By the end of August 1982, PLO forces had been evacuated from Beirut. Then, on September 14, the Christian Lebanese president-elect Bachir Gemayel was a.s.sa.s.sinated. Two days later, Israeli forces entered West Beirut, and Sharon authorized a group of Christian militia fighters to go into the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps to settle some old scores. In the resulting tragedy some eight hundred refugees were ma.s.sacred. As stories and pictures began to make their way to a horrified world, gruesome scenes unfolded to match the worst of human history. We saw pictures of bodies piled upon each other in the streets, women and children hacked to death with knives and axes, and old men lined up against a wall and shot. Throughout it all, the Israeli army surrounded the camps, firing flares at night to illuminate the way for the murderers going about their sickening work. I was furious, and for days after that I had trouble sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes I was haunted by visions of mutilated bodies.
Across the globe people were horrified by what had taken place. How could Israel claim to be a democratic, law-abiding nation and let its soldiers stand idly by while such crimes were committed? Ariel Sharon, who supervised the operation as defense minister, was viewed by many as a murderer and war criminal. A subsequent Israeli commission of inquiry into the incident (the Kahan Commission), which was established in September 1982, concluded at the end of its work in February 1983 that Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for failing to prevent the ma.s.sacre and recommended that he be removed as defense minister. Sharon resigned as minister of defense but stayed in the government as a minister without portfolio.
I had thought that perhaps after Sandhurst I would go to university in the United States, but somehow life took a different course. After completing a year in the British army, I went to study international relations at Pembroke College, Oxford. I spent a year among the gra.s.sy quads and honey-colored stone buildings of that venerable inst.i.tution, studying Middle Eastern politics. My time was spent mostly working one-on-one with excellent tutors. I learned a great deal about the challenges of the region and the intricacies of its politics, but this was not the kind of college experience I had hoped for. At the completion of the course I returned to Jordan and my army career. By the age of twenty-one I was pretty much a full-time army officer.
One of my few regrets in life is that I never had a chance to enjoy four years as an undergraduate like my friends from Deerfield. My initiation into the responsibilities of adulthood was accelerated. A military education forces you to mature quickly, challenges you to rise to the demands of leadership, and requires you to look after others. Little did I know then how useful those skills would prove to be.
At Sandhurst and during my year in the British army I was treated very much like the other cadets and second lieutenants. That was important, because it meant that when I went back to Jordan I could easily spot when people tried to give me special treatment. I was determined to make the military a full-time career. I did not want to roll up in a Mercedes from time to time and inspect the troops as an honorary colonel of a regiment. I wanted, as much as I could, to be just another army officer, to lead and fight with my men.
Chapter 6.
Qatraneh Nights When I returned home in 1983, I joined the 40th Armoured Brigade, a unit with a proud history. The second oldest armored unit in the Jordanian army, it has fought to the last three times, in 1967, 1970, and 1973. I was based near Qatraneh, a small town in the desert sixty miles south of Amman. In the early years of the twentieth century the town had been a stop on the Hijaz railway, the Ottomanconstructed line that connected Damascus in Syria with Medina in Saudi Arabia. It had not seen much action since then. The first night, I was down at brigade headquarters when I heard a bustle of activity coming from the officers" mess. I went to find out what was going on. All the chairs were lined up outside the mess, the officers had been given a cup of tea, and everyone was preparing to watch the sunset. Frustrated that the only excitement the place had to offer after a long day was a cup of tea at sunset, I went back to my room, put my tracksuit on, and went for a run.
The reason I was so far out in the desert had little to do with my military ability. Some senior officers felt threatened by my joining the military, figuring that in time I might encroach on their established ways, and even on their positions. Throughout my military career I had major problems with some very high-ranking officers whose decisions, in my view, had not served the armed forces well. I believed that we needed to modernize and take advantage of the latest developments in military technology and tactics. Staunch defenders of the status quo, these officers saw no need for change and seemed determined to make my life miserable. I think they figured that by piling on pressure with unreasonable requests and surprise inspections, and by isolating me in the desert, they could convince me to quit the regular army in a few months and a.s.sume a more ceremonial role.
I was determined to prove them wrong. I felt I could not mention any of this to my father for fear he would secretly intervene to make things easier for me. As it turned out, one of the biggest favors anyone ever did for me was to put me out where the real army was. That is where I stayed, usually for months at a time. Many younger officers do not want to spend much time out in the desert and would rather be back at headquarters in the relative comfort of Amman. Those who serve at headquarters make valuable contributions too, but if you want to learn about your service, the best place to do so is out in the field. Part of learning about the army is being a.s.signed to the back of beyond, having to go through the daily routine and dealing with all the difficult and unpleasant problems that arise. It ruins your social life but teaches you a lot about leadership.
As a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant I felt a high degree of responsibility for my men, especially as we were all lumped together in a remote location. I was responsible for their training, for making sure that they were fed and clothed, and, to a degree, for ensuring that their dependents were well taken care of. At that time, our army was a mix of professional soldiers and conscripts doing their national service. As with all conscript armies, we had our challenges. Conscripted men sometimes shot themselves in the foot to get out of their obligations. One soldier even injected kerosene into his leg (I had to cut it open with a knife to drain it). An army is a reflection of a country. In Jordan the army has been a traditional path for advancement, and my men came from all over the country and from all strata of society. They were mainly very poor, and some faced tremendous problems.
One of my fellow lieutenants, who had come up through the ranks, was dealing with a family crisis soon after I arrived. His brother had died. This fellow had a wife and eight children, and his brother also had a wife and eight children, so this one man suddenly had eighteen dependents to take care of on a meager officer"s wages. I gave him half of my salary for the whole time I was there-about a year. At the time the army maintained a high state of readiness-at any time a third of our units had to be ready to go on fifteen minutes" notice for a possible war, which meant a lot of extra duty for our officers. I frequently pulled extra duty for him, allowing him to go home on weekends. Clearly, his burdens at home far exceeded mine. To this day I think of my men and their families whenever I focus on outreach programs for housing, health, and education.
Although my men may have been poor, they were rich in courage and fighting spirit. Many had little formal education but more than made up for it with street smarts and raw intelligence. At one point my unit was equipped with new Khalid/Shir I tanks, predecessors to the Challenger tanks from Britain. Boasting the latest in military technology, these fearsome vehicles were driven by a complex system of electronic wizardry. Yet in under a month my men were handling them as if they had been driving them for years.
Conditions were more basic than in the British army, but I liked our ways better. In the officers" mess at the 13th/18th Royal Hussars we came down to dinner in a coat and tie and ate off a table that had been captured from Napoleon in the battle of Waterloo. In the Jordanian mess we ate food that was sometimes well past its expiration date off plastic tables and chairs, but the true essence of an army is not its formal trappings and fancy weapons. It is the ability of its men to face the prospect of death without flinching. And my men were the most courageous soldiers I had ever met.
The 40th Armoured Brigade was commonly referred to as "G.o.d"s Brigade," a reference to its historical role in defending Jerusalem in 1967 and its record of fighting to the last. The first occasion was in 1967 when, heading to cut off the Jenin-Nablus axis, it encountered two Israeli brigades advancing from the northern coastal plain. In 1970, against heavy odds, it took on better-equipped Syrian troops advancing into Irbid to support Palestinian guerrillas (by the end of that engagement, my unit, the brigade"s 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, had only three tanks left, but it stopped the Syrian invasion). In 1973 it fought the Israelis in the Golan Heights, launching an offensive up the slopes of Tal El Harra, a 3,000-foot volcanic mountain. It came under heavy Israeli fire from both flanks and had to withdraw. A motivation for my men was to one day reclaim land lost in 1948 and 1967. From the banks of the Dead Sea, we could see the walls of Jerusalem. Though the Israeli armed forces were much better equipped than us, my men never feared the prospect of facing a heavily armed enemy.
We would go on maneuvers and exercises all across the country, and it was then that I began to appreciate the extraordinary beauty and diversity of Jordan. Jordan is a small country, but in one day you could go from the mountains and pine forests of Ajloun in the north, down through the Roman ruins at Jerash to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. Continuing south along the historic King"s Highway, you pa.s.s the Crusader castles of Shobak and Kerak, the home of the French knight Raynald de Chatillon, who was beheaded by Salaheddin Al Ayyoubi (known in the West as Saladin) in the twelfth century. Stopping in Wadi Rum, one of the most beautiful desert valleys in the world, and at the ancient ruins of Petra, you would arrive at the beach resort town of Aqaba in the evening.
In the summer we sometimes went on exercises in the Jordan Valley, along the eastern bank of the river. To avoid the blazing heat and huge mosquitoes, we would get up at 4 a.m. and try to finish any strenuous tasks before the sun rose. The earth there is very fertile and reddish brown, and in the evening the setting sun glimmering off the rocks produces a range of brilliant red hues. Red has always been my favorite color: it is the color of the Hashemite flag, of the kouffiyeh, the traditional Jordanian headdress, and of the heart.
One afternoon I thought I would try out some of the new tactics I had learned at the armor school at Bovington, so we went out on an exercise. I had been taught how to perform a "fighting withdrawal"; that is, how to withdraw gradually when you are being attacked by a superior army, inflicting casualties as you retreat. After I had reconnoitered the first position with my noncommissioned officers (NCOs), we reconvened to discuss our approach to the battle. I said, "Right, let"s go to the second position." One of my NCOs looked at me and said, "Sir, there"s no need for a second position. This is where we are going to fight and die if necessary. We are not going to retreat!" I was impressed by his courage but a little startled by his tactics. He had been trained in the old school, where retreat meant dishonor. This fighting spirit had served Jordan well in 1948, when we preserved Arab control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank; in 1968, when we beat back an Israeli incursion at the battle of Karameh; and in 1970, when our army pushed back a Syrian invasion from the north. But with the increased firepower of modern weaponry, and the devastating combination of air strikes and longrange artillery, holding the line could be suicide.
I was determined to make my men more effective by supplementing their fierce courage with some tactical cunning. If we moved a few positions farther back, I argued, following standard NATO doctrine, we could kill more of the enemy as we retreated. The men looked at me quizzically and went into a huddle. Finally they emerged and said that killing the enemy was more important than holding the line; they agreed to retreat to the next position. That was my introduction to the fighting spirit of the Jordanian soldier. Nothing at Sandhurst had prepared me for this eagerness to die fighting. My men"s pa.s.sion reflected the temperament common in the dangerous neighborhood in which we lived. At that time, Jordan was still in a state of cold war with Israel, and although the shooting had stopped, we had to be ready to face a threat from our nuclear-armed neighbor at a moment"s notice.
In March 1984, Queen Elizabeth II came to Jordan on a state visit. Security was extremely tight, as two days before the queen"s arrival terrorists had set off a bomb at a hotel in Amman. My father asked me to serve as military equerry (a sort of aide-de-camp) to the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. It was an honor, and particularly exciting as I had fairly recently graduated from Sandhurst and served in the British army. Due to the security concerns, my father also asked me to be the queen"s personal bodyguard. I went to Special Forces to receive extra training. As the day approached I asked my father: if somebody fires at me I"ll fire back, but how far do you want me to go?
"If somebody fires at the queen," he said, "you will put yourself in the way. And if it means losing your life to protect our guest, you b.l.o.o.d.y well do it. Otherwise I"ll shoot you myself!" I knew he was choosing his words for effect, but for my father, duty and honor came first, even before his own family.
I stayed by the queen"s side for the duration of her five-day visit, and, thankfully, was not required to take a bullet for her. Although he could at times sound tough, my father and I bonded over our shared pa.s.sion for the military. We enjoyed watching old movies together and often swapped notes on the latest military equipment produced in different countries and whether we should use it. It seemed that my military career earned me a newfound respect in my father"s eyes as, slowly, he began to ask me to undertake extra duties and responsibilities.
Since the time of my great-grandfather, King Abdullah I, and the Arab Legion, the Jordanian army has been one of the best-trained, most disciplined, and most professional armies in the Middle East. But I was determined to make our army one of the best in the world. "Don"t compare us to other armies in the region," I would argue, "compare us to NATO." To achieve this, I knew that we had to modernize. Although my soldiers were talented and courageous, they were being let down by a system that at times failed to provide advanced equipment. I learned to cope with what we had, to be resourceful, and to find innovative solutions. I would beg, borrow, or steal to get my men the equipment and supplies they needed.
Like all young men, I was impatient for change. But frustration mounted as I saw how far some of the most senior officers would go in defending the status quo.
Chapter 7.
A Secret Mission I was relaxing at my army base in Qatraneh one evening when the phone rang. My father asked me to come to Amman to see him immediately. I drove to meet him, wondering why he had to see me so late at night, and arrived around ten o"clock. was relaxing at my army base in Qatraneh one evening when the phone rang. My father asked me to come to Amman to see him immediately. I drove to meet him, wondering why he had to see me so late at night, and arrived around ten o"clock.
Pulling me to one side, my father told me he intended to go to Aqaba tomorrow night. From there, he would take a boat to meet with the Israelis to press them to agree to a solution that would end their occupation of the land they had seized in 1967 and bring peace to the region. "I want you to be my driver and bodyguard," he told me. Although Jordan shared a lengthy border with Israel, it was very foreign territory for us. To enter Israel would be like a West Berliner sneaking over the wall for a visit to East Berlin during the height of the cold war. I said it would be an honor to be at his side. He told me to meet him at the airport the next morning. Heading home, I felt excited, but also nervous. I was a captain in the army, and escorting my father on a secret mission into enemy territory was a weighty a.s.signment. For the first time I would not just be an observer of Arab-Israeli history-I would play a small part in it myself.
I have decided to tell this personal story because it offers a glimpse of the huge risks my father would take for peace. With his pa.s.sing, I feel it is important to describe how dedicated he was to bringing about a regional peace that would ensure an Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories, especially Jerusalem, which had a special place in his heart. He believed that peace was a right for all peoples of the region, Arabs and Israelis. You make peace with your enemies, not your friends, he would say. Nothing good would come of refusing to engage them. My father met many times with Israelis to discuss proposals, but he always held to the idea of full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as the basis of a solution. Jordan shared a 375-mile border with Israel and he felt discussions were needed to prevent war. We had already experienced one disaster in 1967 and needed to avoid another. One of my father"s greatest virtues was that he was trusted and admired by everyone, even by those who disagreed with him. He was far too well-mannered to point out that many of the Arab leaders who criticized him publicly for engaging Israel were asking him in private to intercede on their behalf.
My father and I flew from Amman south to Aqaba, accompanied by the prime minister, Zaid Rifai, and by Sharif (later Prince) Zeid bin Shaker, the chief of the Royal Court. The plan was to take a clandestine nighttime trip in a small fishing boat across the Gulf of Aqaba into Israel. When we reached Aqaba we found our boat and waited for nightfall. Around 9 p.m. the four of us boarded the thirty-three-foot fishing boat and sailed out of the harbor. We headed for the border, then crossed into Israeli waters. Proceeding cautiously, we flashed a light from the bow of the boat and saw a light flash back. Out of the darkness came a small dinghy with Efraim Halevy, a member of the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, onboard. Halevy, a British-born lawyer who would go on to head the Mossad, was not much for conversation that night, and beckoned for us to follow him. We began to pull in closer to Israel. A location for the meeting had been agreed, but the dinghy changed course. Sharif Zeid was very concerned. "This is not what we agreed on," he said. My father motioned for me to come with him to the top of the boat. When we were out of hearing, he said, "Well, what do you think?"
As a young man on his first secret mission, I urged my father to go ahead. He looked at me and smiled. We went back to the others and my father told Sharif Zeid, "It"s okay, we"re going to do this."
We went all the way to the Israeli city of Eilat, a short distance from Aqaba, and anch.o.r.ed in front of a naval hangar, some 325 yards from sh.o.r.e. My father, Zaid Rifai, and Sharif Zeid boarded the Israeli dinghy and went ash.o.r.e, and I was left alone to guard the boat.
I turned off all the lights and scanned the beach with my binoculars, looking for Israeli soldiers. Everything seemed quiet. I saw a campfire and a couple of hippies sitting next to it, playing the guitar. I caught a glimpse of a glowing cigarette b.u.t.t next to the hangar and focused on it with the binoculars. It was an Israeli sniper, watching me. I had no means of communicating with my father and realized how isolated I was, sitting alone on a fishing boat outside an Israeli port. So I took my hand grenades and rigged them up along the side of the boat with a pulley system. One pull of the string would set the whole lot off.
It must have been ten o"clock at night when we arrived, and hours went by while I waited for my father and the others to return. At one point I thought, "In about five hours, the sun will come up. I"m all alone on a boat in an Israeli harbor, loaded to the gills with guns and grenades, and n.o.body knows I"m here. If my father doesn"t come back, what will I do?" Fortunately, I did not have to storm the beaches single-handedly or return to Jordan and explain how I had managed to misplace the king. Shortly before sunrise my father came back via that same small dinghy, and we all sailed back to Aqaba. Although my father never spoke of what had taken place that night, meetings such as this one laid the groundwork for the peace treaty that would eventually be signed between Jordan and Israel.
Over the years I progressed through the ranks, occasionally leaving Jordan for brief periods of training, then returning to the army. One memorable trip was a six-month company commander training course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in the United States in 1985 to study armor strategy and tactics. Although we were closing the gap with the NATO armies, we still had a ways to go, particularly in obtaining the most advanced military equipment. One afternoon I was pulling on my kit when a colonel in the Israeli army who was attending the same course walked up next to me. Seeing the patch on my shoulder, he said, "40th Armoured Brigade, eh? You Jordanians are tough." He was obviously referring to the strong fight the brigade had put up against the Israeli army in the 1967 war.
When I returned to Jordan I was made a company commander in the 91st Armoured Brigade, which was based in Zarqa, to the northeast of Amman. The second largest city in Jordan, Zarqa was known for its military garrison, as well as for some heavy industry. Unlike towns with large military bases in England, such as Aldershot, where there could sometimes be tensions between the soldiers and the locals, in Zarqa the soldiers felt very much part of the community. People from all over Jordan serving in the army had moved there along with their families, so the inhabitants were diverse, with strong links to the military.
On the base, officers and soldiers would eat in separate mess halls, but once off base these distinctions disappeared. At that time there were very few restaurants in Zarqa, so my friends and colleagues would invite people to their houses to eat traditional Jordanian food. A particular delight was mansaf mansaf, boiled lamb served on a bed of rice, with a yogurt sauce garnished with roasted pine nuts. We would eat in the traditional way, using our hands.
One of the less pleasant aspects of life in Zarqa was the industrial pollution. There was an oil refinery to the north of town and a tannery to the south, neither of which was kept to modern environmental standards. When the wind blew in a certain direction, the fumes from the two factories mixed together, creating an unpleasant sulfuric smell. For a change of scene, we would sometimes head to the nearby town of Ruseifa, known for its gardens and citrus trees, to sit and eat in a restaurant, watching the world go by.
Although personally I was having a very good time, professionally it was tough. I still had not resolved my differences with some of the senior army officers who were determined to derail my career. Word had come down from the top bra.s.s to make life difficult for me, and during the year or so that I was in Zarqa my company was always getting extra duties and surprise inspections. I was friends with a group of other company commanders, with whom I would hang out to pa.s.s the time. I had a more formal relationship with another company commander, who was from a bedouin background and always respectful, but kept his distance.
Every year there was a general inspection, which required a lot of hard work and preparation. You had to lay out all your equipment, and the inspectors would go through the books to see if anything was missing. If you had lost even a spanner there would be big trouble, so all the companies would exchange notes and swap equipment before the big event. Normally the annual inspection was for the entire brigade, but one night the bedouin company commander came up to me and said, "They"re going to have a surprise inspection tomorrow, just for your company. They want to catch you out, so they can send a bad report up to headquarters." This was unprecedented.
The other company commanders, whom I had thought were my friends, abandoned me and left me to my own devices, but the commander who had kept his distance said, "I"ll give you anything you need." We worked together all night to make sure my company would be ready in the morning. I apologized to my soldiers, telling them that the extra scrutiny was imposed because of who I was, but that unfortunately we had no choice but to put up with it.
The battalion commander came in with his team the next morning and carried out the surprise inspection. We pa.s.sed. But then an incident occurred the likes of which I have never seen before or since. The battalion commander walked up to my senior NCOs, who were standing in a line, and said, "Your boots are not good enough." My men had been up all night, and their boots were gleaming. While looking him straight in the eye, the battalion commander ground his boot into the sergeant major"s. Another senior NCO did not answer a question fast enough, and the battalion commander, breaking all the rules, slapped him across the face, which in my culture is incredibly insulting.
At that point, I snapped. I followed the battalion commander back to his office and said, "If you ever touch another one of my soldiers again, I swear to G.o.d I"ll shoot you." I think that got his attention. I am not someone who easily loses his temper, but his behavior toward my soldiers made me so angry. And although my outburst protected my company, that was not one of my proudest moments.
For the rest of my time in that company, which was around six months, I stayed in my room in the evenings. I never went back into the officers" mess. My fellow company commanders had let me down, and I elected to distance myself from them. This was the lowest point in my army career, and I gave serious thought to quitting. I badly wanted to talk about my problems with my father, but I didn"t want to get special treatment. So I turned instead for advice to my uncle, Prince Ha.s.san. After we discussed the difficulties I was facing, he suggested that I should wait out the end of my tour and see how I felt.
In 1987, I took a break from my military career and spent a year at Georgetown University in Washington as a mid-career fellow in the Master of Science in Foreign Service program. I studied international relations and got to know the U.S. capital well. When I got back from Georgetown, I again discussed my army career with my uncle, and said I was thinking about choosing a different career. Prince Ha.s.san said, "Why give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds the satisfaction?" Although we did not always see eye to eye in later years, my uncle was a source of support and wise advice then, especially over problems that I felt I could not speak to my father about.
After leaving Zarqa, I continued in the armored corps and learned to fly attack helicopters.
In the late 1980s I was invited by General Norman Schwarzkopf, who had recently taken over as commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, to spend a week on a training mission with the U.S. military in the Arabian Gulf. The Iran-Iraq war was drawing to a close, but oil tankers pa.s.sing through the strategically important Strait of Hormuz would occasionally be attacked, so the U.S. Navy had extended its protection to all neutral ships. Special Forces troops, based on a floating barge in the Gulf, provided extra support, searching for hostile ships.
At that time, the Gulf was a very dangerous place to be. In May 1987 a friendly Iraqi F-1 jet fired two Exocet missiles at the U.S. frigate USS Stark Stark, killing thirty-seven sailors and nearly sinking the ship. The Iraqis said that the attack was an accident. In April 1988 the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts Samuel B. Roberts was badly damaged when it hit an Iranian mine; one American helicopter was lost in the U.S. response, and both of its crew members were killed. Then, on July 3, 1988, the American cruiser USS was badly damaged when it hit an Iranian mine; one American helicopter was lost in the U.S. response, and both of its crew members were killed. Then, on July 3, 1988, the American cruiser USS Vincennes Vincennes mistook an Iranian civilian airliner as an attacking military aircraft. Tragically, the Iranian Airbus was shot down and all 290 civilians...o...b..ard died. mistook an Iranian civilian airliner as an attacking military aircraft. Tragically, the Iranian Airbus was shot down and all 290 civilians...o...b..ard died.
When I arrived in the Gulf, things were very tense, and the narrow waterways were crowded with American, Iranian, Iraqi, NATO, and even Soviet ships. Over the previous several decades control of the Gulf had been one of the major strategic issues in the Middle East. At Georgetown I had discussed such topics in abstract terms, a.n.a.lyzing the politics of the Middle East like a giant chessboard. But here the chess pieces had surface-to-air missiles and could fire back. I was seeing the larger political issues playing themselves out in real time and understanding both what it meant in practical terms to prevent the Iranians from blocking the Gulf and how small incidents had the potential to escalate quickly.
Although a civilian career has many strengths, some things you get only through serving in the military. If I had been a lawyer in Amman, I would have had a very different perspective of the conflict. But here I was, an army officer observing helicopter missions protecting neutral shipping. It gave me an up close and personal understanding of regional power struggles that would prove to be increasingly useful in the years to come.
I spent three days on the frigate USS Elrod Elrod. Although I was well looked after, bunking in the captain"s quarters, it did not make me want to join the navy. After three days, I transferred to a large barge called the Hercules Hercules, which was bustling with action. It was interesting to see so many different branches of the military-U.S. Delta Force teams, Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land teams), and regular soldiers, sailors, and airmen-all working seamlessly together. The experience helped shape my enthusiasm later for creating our own Special Operations Command in Jordan.
Not long after that, in January 1990 and almost a year after I was promoted to the rank of major in February 1989, I returned to England for further military training. I spent nearly a year attending Staff College. It was next to Sandhurst, and as I drove through the ornate gates I remembered my time as a cadet, and my old color sergeant predicting that none of us would ever see the inside of the place. His taunt had worked.
As part of our introduction to international politics, we were scheduled to go on a trip to East Berlin, which was canceled at the last minute because of the dramatic changes then taking place. The previous November my fellow students and I had watched in amazement as the Berlin Wall fell and the old world order we had known was swept away. The confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union had divided the globe into two competing blocs. Old certainties would all too soon be replaced with new, shifting alliances.
In the Middle East, countries that had long looked to the Soviet Union as a patron were slow to adjust to a changed world, one in which there was now only one superpower. Opportunists and predators began to make different calculations about war and peace than when the region was divided into Soviet and Western spheres, and a small flashpoint could trigger a global conflict. What none of us at Staff College knew was how soon we would have to confront the new dangers of a changed world.
Chapter 8.
"You Guys Don"t Stand a Chance"
On my return from Camberley Staff College in October 1990, I rejoined the Jordanian army and became the representative of the armored corps in the office of the Inspector General. It was my job to ensure that there were common standards of training and equipment across all sectors of the Jordanian military. After Staff College, you are expected to serve at headquarters in a staff posting for at least a year, so I was posted to Amman.
Two months earlier, Iraq had invaded Kuwait. It was a terrible time for all of Iraq"s neighbors. We share a long border with Iraq to the east, and we had to wonder whether Saddam Hussein would stop with Kuwait. My father was shocked at Saddam"s action and had a tremendous sense of foreboding. As bad as the invasion was, he felt it was the beginning of something much worse. I was with my father at the offices of the Royal Court, known as the Diwan, the day after the invasion. We listened together to the first reports of the Iraqi incursion.
That fall, Saddam Hussein became public enemy number one in the United States. But he had not always been regarded as a villain. A few years earlier he had been viewed as an ally against Iran. Although my father was no friend of Saddam, he had developed a close relationship with him in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War, when Jordan was a transit point for Western weapons and intelligence to Baghdad.
Swept to power by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini called for the overthrow of governments in the region and for their replacement by Islamic republics. Saddam Hussein feared the threat posed to the regional order by the new radical Iranian regime and believed that the Iranians were preparing to attack Iraq. In September 1980, just one year after he became president of Iraq, he launched a preemptive attack on Iran. But the new Islamic Republic fought back fiercely, and for eight years Iran and Iraq were embroiled in a bitter conflict.
Whatever the rationale behind the war, the United States, concerned about Iran"s potential to destabilize the region and angered by the seizure in November 1979 of American hostages at the U.S. emba.s.sy in Tehran, gave a.s.sistance to Saddam. Iraq, which already had the backing of the Soviet Union, was thus supported in its war effort by both superpowers. The United States covertly provided Iraq with satellite imagery of the movements of Iranian forces, which helped Iraqi military operations and ensured the success of Iraq"s decisive 1988 offensive. By July 1988, Iran had accepted a cease-fire.
My father thought it was a good idea to expose younger members of the family to international diplomacy, so one morning over breakfast in the mid-1980s he announced that he would be making a visit to Iraq and he wanted some of us to accompany him. The next day my younger brother Feisal and I and two of our cousins, Talal and Ghazi, gathered at Nadwa Palace, a two-story building inside the Royal Court compound, and set out for Baghdad on my father"s plane.
We landed at dusk and were met at the airport by Saddam Hussein, accompanied by his two sons, Uday and Qusay. Ever conscious of security, he had brought along several dummy convoys, all of which left in different directions as we made our way to Radwaniyah Palace, which was not far from the airport. My father"s home, with its ten or so rooms, was decidedly modest by comparison. Radwaniyah was built on a grand scale, with hundreds of rooms paneled in ornate marble, gold faucets in every bathroom, and imitation Louis XIV furniture. This gaudy display was not what one would expect from the leader of a proud country that had given us the wonders of ancient Babylon and had once been the seat of the caliphate.
After pleasantries were exchanged, my father announced that we would stay the night. This was unplanned, a gesture of solidarity now that Iraq was mired in a long and b.l.o.o.d.y war. Saddam announced that, in that case, the next day the youngsters would all visit Habbaniyah, a large lake in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, to go fishing and swimming. Saddam was ruthless but charismatic and radiated a strange kind of personal energy. He combined the impulses of a traditional tribal leader with street smarts. He was a fascinating character to observe.
Early the following morning we duly a.s.sembled in the palace lobby. "We"d love to go fishing," I said to Qusay, "but we didn"t bring our swimsuits."
"Don"t worry," he said. "We"ll provide you with everything you need." We flew from Baghdad to Habbaniyah and went to a palace near the lake to get changed. In the dressing room, Talal, Ghazi, and I found garish Hawaiian shirts waiting for us. Although Iraq and Jordan shared a common language, we clearly did not share a common sense of fashion. We were guests and didn"t have much choice, but our security detail burst out laughing when we walked out in our new costumes.
All six of us boarded a small motorboat, the type you might use to pull a water-skier, and headed out to the middle of the lake. At this point Feisal said, "Where are the rods?"
Uday smiled and pulled out a plastic bag filled with dynamite from the bottom of the boat. Grabbing a stick while puffing on a Cuban cigar, he drew a knife and began to cut slashes in the fuse. The idea was that, as the fuse burned down, it would fizz when it hit the knife marks, allowing you to see how close it was to exploding. Grinning, Uday raised the dynamite and lit the fuse with his cigar. The fuse began to sputter and then stopped. "Must be a dud," he grunted. He threw the stick into the bottom of the boat and grabbed another one.
Feisal and Ghazi were talking and looked on unconcerned, but Talal and I had handled explosives as part of our army training and knew this was beyond dangerous. Any professional soldier will tell you that even if a fuse seems to have gone out, it could still be burning. We pressed as far back into the boat as we could, our faces white as sheets, and prayed the "dud" would not go off.
The second stick did not work either. Finally Uday found one that did, and he hurled it into the lake. The idyllic scene was broken a second later by a huge explosion. "Okay, let"s go get them," said Qusay, and he suggested that we dive into the water to collect the dead fish that were floating to the surface.
Talal laid his hand on my arm and whispered, "Let"s let them get into the water first. Our family hasn"t had the best of luck in Iraq." King Faisal II of Iraq and my father were first cousins. They had attended Harrow at the same time and were very close. In 1958, King Faisal was overthrown in a military coup and brutally executed together with the Regent, his uncle Prince Abdel Ilah, and all members of the Hashemite family who were in Iraq at the time. The attackers threw the body of the crown prince out of a window, at which point it was seized by an angry mob and dragged through the streets of Baghdad. The political instability triggered by the coup led to the rise of the Baath Party, and eventually to Saddam Hussein"s ascent to power in 1979.
Finally, Qusay jumped overboard and began grabbing fish and throwing them into the boat. On our return from our "fishing trip" we met my father at the palace. By then, he was ready to go home.
Back in Amman, Saddam"s sons would from time to time send me requests through the Iraqi amba.s.sador for the latest machine gun or rifle, knowing that my position as a Jordanian army officer gave me access to advanced weaponry. Usually I complied, as in Arab culture it is traditional to exchange weapons, and I could not easily refuse a request from another Arab leader"s son. One time I got a request for a gun with a silencer attached. I politely refused, as by then I had heard rumors that Uday and Qusay would test their guns on unfortunate Iraqis in the bas.e.m.e.nt of their palace. The last time I saw Uday he had recently emerged from prison for killing his father"s valet. And the next time I would see Qusay was in Baghdad in January 1991, just before the beginning of the first Gulf War.
On August 2, 1990, after weeks of mounting tension, Saddam Hussein"s army invaded Kuwait. Iraqi troops rampaged through Kuwait City, setting homes on fire, seizing goods, and attacking civilians. The emir"s younger brother, Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, fought heroically in defense of his country before he was shot by Iraqi soldiers and his body was run over by a tank. Caught up in the turmoil were around four thousand Westerners, including thirteen hundred British citizens and nine hundred Americans. Some of the British and American hostages were used by Iraq as "human shields," held at strategic military sites across the country in the event of an attack. Sixteen days after it adopted Resolution 660, which demanded that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait, the United Nations Security Council pa.s.sed Resolution 664 on August 18, calling for Iraq to let all third-state nationals leave Kuwait. It soon became clear that the United States was organizing a military response in the event that the Iraqi army refused to retreat.
Over a million people poured across our eastern border, fleeing the conflict. This was a ma.s.sive influx for such a small country, around a quarter of our entire population at that time. People were camping out in downtown Amman. Jordanians responded with their customary hospitality, coming out onto the streets with gifts of food and clothing. Some even welcomed our unexpected visitors into their homes.
My father strongly opposed Iraq"s invasion and annexation of Kuwait, and reiterated Jordan"s recognition of the government of the emir. But he thought this was an Arab problem and that it should be dealt with by the Arab states. Throughout the crisis he did his utmost to work for a diplomatic solution to end Iraq"s occupation of Kuwait. A white paper subsequently published by the government in August 1991 highlighted those efforts in order to clarify Jordan"s position, which was misinterpreted by some at the time.
Working in close coordination with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, my father flew to Baghdad on August 3 to meet with Saddam Hussein. After heated discussions, he managed to persuade Saddam to attend a mini Arab summit in Jeddah on August 5 to solve the crisis within an Arab context. Saddam agreed to withdraw his troops from Kuwait on the condition that the Arab League did not condemn Iraq. He actually announced that Iraq would begin to pull back its troops from Kuwait on August 5. My father believed that he was about to succeed in brokering an Arab solution to the crisis within the forty-eight hours he had requested in his consultations with King Fahd and President Mubarak. But the Arab League rejected this proposal. That evening, the League pa.s.sed a resolution condemning Iraq"s aggression and calling for an unconditional withdrawal. My father"s attempts at diplomacy collapsed.
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 att.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ya.s.ser 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 multip.r.o.nged 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.