Lion of Jordan (28 page)

Democracy was certainly not one of the principles of this Hashemite restoration. But before rushing to condemn Hussein for killing democracy in Jordan, we ought to place the events and the actors in the 1957 drama in their proper historical perspective. A number of questions suggest themselves to which there are no clear-cut answers even half a century later. Were Nabulsi and his colleagues responsible politicians with a sound programme for tackling the country's social and economic problems? Their supporters thought that they were, but their critics, not entirely without reason, saw them as a bunch of demagogues and loose cannons. What did the people of Jordan want above all at that time? This question is very difficult to answer. Some yearned for democracy and freedom; others placed security and stability above these values. If the monarchy had been overthrown, what would have replaced it? Again, it is impossible to say with any certainty except to note that the prevailing model in the Arab world at the time was not liberal democracy but military dictatorship. Egypt and Syria were military dictatorships and Iraq would become one following the Free Officers' Revolution in 1958. A coup staged by the Free Officers in Jordan would have in all probability followed the same pattern.

To be sure, Hussein was an autocratic ruler, and his triumph over the opposition consolidated his autocracy. But he was more tolerant and more benign than most of the rulers who captured power in the Arab world in later years, especially in Syria and Iraq. His method of dealing
with political opposition was not to cede power but to defend his prerogatives, to stand his ground and, whenever possible, to co-opt his opponents. All the officers who conspired against him in 1957 were subsequently forgiven, and allowed back to Jordan from their places in exile; they became loyal servants of the monarchy. The list included Ali Abu Nuwar, Ma'an Abu Nuwar, Ali Hiyari and Natheer Rasheed. Some of these men became
plus royaliste que le roi
. Forgiving and co-opting opponents became an enduring part of Jordan's political culture.

In foreign policy the main trend in the second half of 1957 was a realignment of forces in the Arab world, with Jordan drawing closer to the three pro-Western Arab states – Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Hussein kept in close contact with his fellow monarchs. In early June, King Saud visited Amman and later in the month Hussein led a ministerial delegation on a visit to Baghdad. One Saudi brigade remained in Jordan after the withdrawal of all the other foreign forces, as a token of Saudi Arabia's political and moral support for Hussein. Relations with Iraq also improved, despite the usual squabbles about the size of its subvention to Jordan. A conservative coalition began to emerge in the region as a counterweight to the Egyptian-led coalition. In November, Hussein began to float the idea of a confederation between Jordan and the neighbouring monarchies. He was vague about the details because this was essentially a political gesture ‘to steal the Arab unity bandwagon away from Egypt and Syria'.
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Internal and external policies were closely interconnected. Having outmanoeuvred the internal opposition to his regime, Hussein was emboldened to embark on a more assertive regional policy. As we shall see, success in surviving the successive challenges to the monarchy at home rekindled old Hashemite ambitions of dominance in the Arab world. The British ambassador designated 1957 as the year of King Hussein. His Majesty, he wrote, knew where he was going:

It is significant that in his speeches he seldom refers to his grandfather, King Abdullah, but constantly to his great-grandfather, King Hussein of the Hijaz. He clearly sees himself as the heir, not of the Transjordanian Amir, but of the leader of the Arab Revolt. Despite the consolidation of his own power in Jordan, he envisages himself not as a static local sovereign, but as the dynamic leader of Arab unification. Unfortunately his impoverished Kingdom is ill-equipped to lead a movement in favour of Arab unity. True, it has certain affiliations with the
Kingdom of Prussia in the period before German unification: the primitive virtues, the martial tradition, the unnaturally inflated army, the sandy wastes. But the sandbox of Europe had advantages which so far at least are lacking to the sandbox of the Levant: notably the strong state-structure, and the position of relative power among its neighbours.
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There was one other major impediment to the realization of Hussein's grandiose Hashemite ambition: his junior status as a client of Western imperialism, which undermined his legitimacy in the Arab world. Swapping a British patron for an American one did not resolve this underlying problem, to which in fact there was no solution. The Amirate of Transjordan had been created by Western imperialism, and it could not survive in a hostile environment without continuing Western support. King Hussein was fundamentally and structurally a client-king. The Arab Revolt was an illustrious Hashemite achievement, but for all practical purposes the Hashemite legacy that Hussein had inherited from his grandfather was one of continuing dependence on the West. Hussein had little prospect of holding on to his throne without outside help. That was why he took the precaution of lining up an American patron before his government ended the treaty relationship with Britain: he realized that even a short interval unaided could be fatal. There was thus never any real prospect of establishing for Jordan the kind of regional dominance to which Hussein began to aspire in the latter part of 1957. Events in Iraq in the following year were to reveal in the cruellest fashion the full extent of Jordan's weakness, vulnerability and dependence on Western protection. And it was only with great difficulty that Hussein himself managed to cling to his throne following the defenestration of the royal family in Baghdad.

In 1958 a revolutionary tide was unleashed by pan-Arabism throughout the Middle East, and it seemed all but unstoppable, threatening to engulf pro-Western regimes like those of Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. If in 1957 King Hussein concentrated on fending off internal challenges to his regime, in 1958 he desperately struggled for survival against much more powerful external challenges. On 1 February of that year the United Arab Republic (UAR) was established by the merger of Syria and Egypt. On 14 July a bloody military coup destroyed the monarchy in Iraq and transformed the country into a radical republic, which was expected to join the UAR. Jordan and Lebanon teetered on the brink of collapse. For a moment the enemies of Arab nationalism seemed to be on the run. Many observers thought that the countries allied to the West were about to fall one after the other. It was a revolutionary moment in the Middle East but in the end the revolution did not spread. With hindsight, 1958 had the potential to be a great turning point in Middle Eastern history, but history failed to turn.

The unification of Egypt and Syria into the UAR had two major effects. In the first place, it escalated the ‘Arab cold war', the contest that pitted the ‘revolutionary', pro-Soviet states of Egypt and Syria against the ‘reactionary', pro-Western states of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan.
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Second, the birth of the union inspired great hopes among radicals that it would herald the realization of the pan-Arab dream. The conventional version assumes that the union was directed primarily against Israel, that it was forced on a reluctant Nasser by Syrian officers of the Ba'th Party in a move to head off their communist rivals, and that the United States was opposed to it, fearing it would strengthen the pro-Soviet camp in the Arab as well as the global cold wars.

Recent scholarship, however, has called all these assumptions into question. Elie Podeh, an Israeli historian, wrote a comprehensive and well-documented revisionist account of the rise and fall of the United Arab Republic that challenges the received wisdom on at least three crucial counts. He shows that the Israeli threat played a negligible role in the process that led to the formation of the union. In addition, he rejects the notion that Nasser was compelled to enter the union by his Syrian allies, arguing that Nasser intervened in Syria to gain a stronger foothold against the Hashemites in Iraq and Jordan and that he initiated secret contacts with America in order to secure its backing for his move. In a message to John Foster Dulles, Nasser said that he had become too deeply involved with the USSR and that he desired ‘true neutrality'.He also dangled the danger of a communist takeover in Syria in order to justify his intervention in its domestic politics. Even more arresting is Podeh's discovery that Dulles gave Nasser the ‘green light' to operate in Syria and that he welcomed Egyptian action designed to impede communist penetration there, provided it did not harm American interests.
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The merger between Egypt and Syria gave Nasser a foothold in the Fertile Crescent and a new base for the pursuit of his subversive activities. Not surprisingly, it caused great consternation in Baghdad and Amman. Policy-makers in the two capitals saw the merger as a dire threat to their interests and were disappointed by the American reaction. Crown Prince Abd al-Ilah's attempt to enlist American support for an Iraqi operation in Syria was politely rejected. Hussein feared that nearby Damascus would replace faraway Cairo as the main centre of pan-Arab agitation. Both men were unaware that the formation of the UAR dovetailed with America's regional interests and more specifically with its desire to counter the communist danger in Syria.
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Hussein assumed the lead in organizing the Hashemite response to the UAR challenge. This took the form of the short-lived union between Jordan and Iraq. The idea was to pit a Hashemite model of unity against the Nasserist model. Hussein had been exploring for some time avenues of cooperation with other Arab countries that were opposed to communism. The British ambassador observed that Hussein had an idealistic attachment to the cause of Arab unity as such: ‘He saw himself as the principal heir of his great-grandfather, Hussein Ibn Ali, who initiated the Arab Revolt against the Turks. King Hussein was indeed quite
possessive about the ideal of Arab unity; he regarded it as a sort of Hashemite heirloom; and within the Hashemite family he seemed to regard himself as the one pre-destined to carry on the task of his namesake.'
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Hussein had hoped to attract Saudi Arabia into a tripartite union with Jordan and Iraq. Iraq supported Hussein's bid both in order to strengthen the anti-Nasser camp and in the hope that Saudi Arabia would share the burden of economic aid to Jordan. King Saud, however, was leery of a constitutional link with Iraq while it was a member of the Baghdad Pact. He also told the Jordanians that he was not in a position to pay them the £ 5,000,000 subsidy for 1958/9 that he had promised in signing the Arab solidarity agreement. With this rebuff from Riyadh, Hussein was forced to scale down his ambitions to a union between the two branches of the Hashemite family.

Baghdad's response to Hussein's urgent appeal was mixed. His cousin King Faisal II was nominally head of state, but real power lay in the hands of Nuri as-Said and Prince Abd al-Ilah, and both men had reservations. Said felt that Jordan would be an economic burden and a military liability in the event of a war with Israel. Abd al-Ilah regarded Jordan's large Palestinian population as a cause of instability that might spill over into Iraq. He said that ‘Hussein's trouble stemmed from the fact that 70 per cent of his subjects were Palestinians with no loyalty to the throne; the balance of 30 per cent were tribesmen who would sell their swords to the highest bidder.'
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Abd al-Ilah was a nonentity who owed his elevated position in Iraq to an accident of birth rather than to any qualifications, talents or skills of his own. He was not particularly bright, not at all able, rather lazy and lacking in any social graces. He was born in the Hijaz to Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the eldest son of Hussein, the sharif of Mecca. Ali himself became king of the Hijaz in 1924, but a year later his kingdom was conquered by Ibn Saud. Abd al-Ilah moved to Baghdad with his father. In 1939 he became regent of Iraq on behalf of the infant King Faisal II after the death of his cousin King Ghazi. When Faisal ascended the throne in 1953, Abd al-Ilah became crown prince. By this time he had developed a taste for both power and its trappings, with a particular proclivity for plots and intrigues. He was never popular in Iraq, and his close association with the British counted against him among the masses. He and Nuri al-Said collaborated closely in promoting a pro-British
agenda in Iraq. Said was the real mover and shaker and the supreme manipulator of Iraqi politics. He once told Glubb Pasha that a dog could not bark in Baghdad without his hearing of it. In Abd al-Ilah, Said found a pliant figurehead who could hardly do anything on his own. The two were regarded by anti-Western Iraqis as the arch representatives of reaction and subservience to the foreigner.
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Hussein deeply disliked Abd al-Ilah and resented his arrogant and condescending manner. Hussein also blamed him for breaking the spirit of Faisal and preventing him from coming into his own as king. During the preliminary unity talks Faisal came to Amman without the crown prince, and everything went smoothly. Faisal and Hussein agreed to take it in turns to be head of the union. When the crown prince arrived, however, he strongly objected to this arrangement on the grounds that Iraq was the senior partner. Hussein felt humiliated but eventually agreed to let his cousin be the permanent head of the union.

Under the agreement, each country retained its separate national status, but they were required to pursue a common foreign policy and to place their armed forces under a joint command. The economies of the two members were also to be united, with Iraq contributing 80 per cent and Jordan 20 per cent to the budget of the union. A federal government was to be created and a legislative assembly elected by the existing houses of representatives of both countries, an equal number from each state. Baghdad and Amman were to alternate every six months as the union's capital.