Lion of Jordan (32 page)

Hussein's five-week visit to the US coincided with a military plot against his regime. Shortly before his departure, Hussein's intelligence service uncovered a plan by some army officers, with outside help, to stage a coup while he was abroad. Major-General Sadiq al-Shar'a was implicated, but there was no hard evidence against him. Hussein decided to take Shar'a with him as part of his entourage in order to keep him under surveillance. While they were in America, news came that thirteen Jordanian officers were arrested at home on a charge of plotting to overthrow the monarchy and to merge Jordan with the UAR. Shar'a showed increasing signs of anxiety and nervousness. During a stop in London on the return journey, he asked Hussein for permission to stay to undergo an operation on his leg. Permission was denied. Once back in Jordan, Shar'a was arrested, court martialled and sentenced to death. Hussein commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. Four years later Shar'a was released from prison and appointed director of the Jordanian passport office.

Like most plots in Jordanian history, this one was rather tangled, with almost as many different accounts of it as there were participants. The evidence produced in court to incriminate Shar'a was flimsy and certainly not solid enough to substantiate Hussein's claim in his autobiography that the culprits planned to fire with heavy guns on the Zahran Palace where his family was living.
⁴
Jamal Sha'er, a medical doctor and a Ba'thist who was working in Beirut at the time, claimed that Shar'a sent him a messenger to say that he was about to make an attempt to overthrow the throne and to ask for his support. Sha'er also suggested that Shar'a and Rifa'i had very close links with the Americans and that
they collaborated secretly against the regime. Shar'a himself admitted that he planned a coup, but he claimed it was directed against the army high command and not against the king. He told Peter Snow that he wanted to make some changes in the army in the interests of efficiency and that this must have led his opponents to denounce him, falsely, to the king.
⁵

The whole affair was part of a wider power struggle that pitted Shar'a and Rifa'i against Sharif Nasser, his sister Queen Zain and the close-knit Majali clan. Queen Zain still wielded considerable power and influence; she was determined to force Rifa'i out of office and to replace him with Hazza' Majali. Majali, for his part, began to flex his muscles even before the king's departure for the US. Shortly after his return, Hussein accepted Rifa'i's resignation and called upon Hazza' Majali to form a new government. Majali was less independent than his predecessor, and his rise to the top had involved a shift in the balance of power between the government and the palace. Majali's entire cabinet consisted of loyalists. Its main goals were to carry out political and social reforms, to reduce corruption in public affairs and to keep the army from intervention in politics. His broader aim was to work towards some sort of a balance within the kingdom between north and south and between the East Bank and the West Bank. In foreign affairs, on the other hand, there was a shift towards a more aggressive policy of confrontation with the UAR.

The policy was part of a broader concept of Jordan as a ‘Third Force' in Arab politics. This was not a realistic aim, given Jordan's size, poverty and fragility. The concept was never formalized in any doctrine or document but it was vigorously promoted by the Sharif Nasser faction, which argued that the split between republican Iraq and the UAR provided an opportunity for Jordan to establish itself as an independent centre of power in the region. In one sense this was simply the latest reincarnation of the old Hashemite ambition to unify the Fertile Crescent under their leadership, an ambition that King Abdullah had bequeathed to his grandson. Sharif Nasser and his colleagues, however, were not content to wait upon events but urged Hussein to seize the initiative and implement the Third Force idea by military means. They enjoyed Hussein's trust, having stood by him in the crises of the previous two years, and they skilfully exploited his impulse to avenge the murder of his Iraqi cousins and his desire to strengthen his regional position. They
persuaded him that the regime in Baghdad could be toppled easily because it faced considerable tribal opposition and that regime change there could have a knock-on effect in Syria and lead to the breakaway of Syria from the UAR. What they proposed was a Jordanian military assault on Iraq, spearheaded by an armoured division. Once Hussein was won over to the idea, the military men began to prepare more detailed operational plans.
⁶

The plan for a Jordanian military assault on Iraq encountered firm British opposition. Anyone who knew anything about military affairs realized that to invade a large country like Iraq without air cover (the Jordanian air force was tiny) was an act of insanity. But the British considered that action against Iraq risked not just a military disaster but the end of the regime in Jordan. Britain's ambassador in Amman, Sir Charles Johnston, warned that the most probable beneficiary of such military action would be Nasser, and, not for the first time, he found an ally in Queen Zain. Zain also regarded Nasser and his Syrian stooges as inherently more dangerous to Jordan than Abd al-Karim Qasim, the prime minister of Iraq. She told Johnston: ‘The snake's head is nearer than its tail,' meaning that Damascus was nearer than Baghdad. The issue was eventually settled not by argument but by Britain's refusal to allow its advisers to the Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF) to participate in the operation. In mid October, Hussein felt he had little choice but to call off the invasion. As a result of this decision, the Jordanian trigger-finger was brought under control, but there was a risk that it might not be the next time a crisis blew up in Iraq. The obvious course was for Hussein to sit back and watch the tug-of-war between Nasser and Qasim. But, as Johnston noted, there were other forces at play: ‘The King, who has inherited his Mother's flair for
Realpolitik,
sees this clearly, but in time of crisis a combination of Iraqi émigré optimism, Bedouin pugnacity, Hashemite
revanchisme
and his own boyish exuberance could easily obscure his better judgement and send him down the road to Baghdad. How to stop him may well be one of our major preoccupations in 1960.'
⁷

As it turned out, one of Britain's major preoccupations in 1960 was to stop Hussein from attacking Syria rather than Iraq. On 29 August 1960 Hazza' Majali and twelve other Jordanians were killed by a bomb planted in Majali's desk by UAR agents. Twenty minutes later there was a second explosion that Hussein surmised was intended for him.
Hussein was not surprisingly enraged by the assassination of his prime minister and friend, and his first impulse was to avenge his death. He also came under strong pressure from Sharif Nasser, Habis Majali and their supporters in the army to retaliate. On Hussein's orders, three brigades were assembled in the north for a lightning strike against Syria. One problem with the plan to march on Damascus, as with the earlier plan to march on Baghdad, had been that the ground forces could not be given air cover; another was that it exposed Jordan's western flank to hostile action from Israel. Hussein needed an understanding with Israel, and he therefore initiated his first direct contact across the battle lines. On 14 September, Lieutenant-Colonel Emil Jamian, a confidant of the king, met secretly in Jerusalem with General Chaim Herzog, Israel's director of military intelligence. Jamian told Herzog, ‘We shall have to thin out our forces on the border with Israel, and we are asking that you not take advantage of the situation by moving against us.' Herzog promised to give an answer as soon as possible. After consulting prime minister David Ben-Gurion, Herzog gave Jordan a positive reply. The message from West Jerusalem to Amman said, ‘You may rest assured. You have our pledge.'
⁸

It took the combined pressure of the Western powers to prevail on Hussein to abort the operation. Queen Zain, who was on a visit to London, was asked by British officials to call her son and urge him to reconsider his decision. Charles Johnston, who was on the spot in Amman, gave avuncular advice to the king. In a private letter home, dated 25 September, Johnston wrote: ‘We have had some uphill work here over the last three weeks. The locals concentrated about a division in the desert facing the Syrian frontier, and everything seemed ready for a dash to Damascus to avenge the PM's murder. I have had to see our neighbour [the king was also Johnston's neighbour] at all hours of the day and night and tell him… that you can't win in that sort of thing, that we tried at Suez and look where it got us, etc., that Jordan has a good case before the UN and it would be a pity to spoil it by committing suicide.'
⁹
The Americans had their own reasons for discouraging Hussein. Their policy in the Middle East in the late 1950s and early 1960s consisted primarily of accommodating the populist pan-Arabism of President Nasser. The cornerstone of this policy was to maintain the regional status quo by opposing the pan-Arab ambitions of the Hashemites in Amman.
¹⁰
In line with this, the American ambassador
urged Hussein to weigh carefully the consequences of his action. Hussein realized he could not defy both Western powers, and he gave the order to cancel the plan for the march on Damascus. The episode served to underline to him the limits of Jordan's power, and it led him to abandon the concept of a Third Force.

Hussein's conflict with the UAR continued, however, in terms of both ideology and propaganda. Radio Cairo denounced him as the ‘Judas of the Arabs' and as nothing but a cog in the machinery of Western imperialism; he denounced his critics as the servants of Moscow. More unsettling were the repeated attempts by his enemies to have him assassinated. So numerous, cunning and varied were the plots against his person that he sometimes felt like the central character in a detective novel. In his own mind he divided the plots into two categories. The first consisted of major coups aimed at overthrowing the monarchy and the downfall of Jordan. The second consisted of plots aimed at killing him. One such plot involved replacing the medicated nose drops that Hussein used for his sinus trouble with acid strong enough to dissolve the chromium in a bathroom washbasin. Another weird plot resulted in a large number of dead cats being found in the palace grounds. An investigation revealed that an assistant cook had been recruited by the Syrian Deuxième Bureau to poison the king. As the cook was not an expert in poisons, he experimented on the local cat population. This led to the arrest and imprisonment of the cook, until Hussein responded to a plea from the cook's daughter by releasing him to celebrate a Muslim feast with his family.
¹¹
Plots and conspiracies were to dog Hussein for the rest of his life. He was always aware of the danger but he did not allow it to intimidate him. Like his grandfather, he had a rather fatalistic, typically Muslim attitude to death. But the risk and uncertainty were always there, reflected in the title of his autobiography,
Uneasy Lies the Head
.

Most of the plots against Hussein and his regime were hatched by the UAR. The collapse of the union between Syria and Egypt therefore came as a great gift to him. On 28 September 1961 a group of officers overthrew the regime in Damascus and declared their country's independence from Egypt. The rebellion took Hussein by complete surprise, but he welcomed it with enthusiasm and reacted with great speed. He immediately extended official recognition to the new government, and urged Britain and America to follow suit. At the same time he mobilized
troops on the border with Syria and got ready to intervene to prevent a counter-coup by Nasser. To the American ambassador, William Macomber, Hussein made it clear that if Nasser did make a move against the new regime, Jordan would intervene militarily to assist it. Macomber was an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘Brave Young King', but on this occasion he was instructed by his superiors to warn Hussein that military intervention could engulf the whole area in conflict and that it might jeopardize America's political and economic support for Jordan. Macomber reported back that, while Hussein was deferential to American views, he could be stubborn and defiant if he thought that his own long-term survival was at stake. Hussein, added Macomber, had long been convinced that his regime could not survive indefinitely in Jordan unless there was a break in the chain of hostility that surrounded him. He clearly viewed the Syrian rebellion as such a break and was determined to help the insurgents if Nasser moved against them.
¹²
Nasser broke off diplomatic relations with Jordan, but he did not resort to force to reassert his authority in the northern province. Consequently, the crisis subsided to a point that permitted Hussein to withdraw the troops from his northern frontier.

The British pursued a clear and consistent policy of supporting Hussein in the early 1960s. They had invested a great deal in him, and did all they could to help him overcome the internal and external threats to his regime.
¹³
They sided with Hussein against Nasser following the break-up of the UAR. The effects of the crisis were aptly summarized in the annual review of the new British ambassador to Jordan, John Henniker-Major. First, the standing threat of invasion from the north had been removed. ‘Less tangibly, the Syrian defection has given a big psychological boost to King Hussein and his supporters. It was Nasser who chose by his attacks on “the dwarf King” to personalize his quarrel with Jordan. Goliath is still on his feet; but he is distinctly groggy, and David is correspondingly confident. Jordanians are able to breathe more freely and to look more closely at their internal problems.'
¹⁴

The fading away of the threat from the north also provided Hussein with a respite to enjoy his recent marriage to an English girl: Antoinette (‘Toni') Gardiner. After the collapse of his marriage to Dina in 1957, Hussein enhanced his reputation as a playboy with a zest for life, a passionate nature and a penchant for dangerous sports such as aerial acrobatics, car-racing and water-skiing. He was frequently pictured in
the press in the company of glamorous women, including models and actresses, both in the Middle East and on holiday in Europe. In his memoirs, however. Hussein painted a much less glamorous picture of life in the fast lane during those years: