Lion of Jordan (16 page)

Until Faisal II became king, there was a lot of tension between us. The Iraqis had a lot of money and they became Anglophiles and Westernized very quickly, while we had very little money even though we were the senior part of the family and remained much more Arab and Arabian. So they used to look at us as the poor country and we used to look at them as degenerates. But when Faisal II became king, the two branches of the family were brought back together. It is hard to remember how poor we were. I had an aunt who died because of pneumonia and the lack of heating and medicine. Our existence in Jordan was hand to mouth.
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Hussein's visit to Baghdad was frustrating and bore no fruit. He met his cousin and friend Faisal but found him virtually powerless. He tried to reason with Said but was firmly put in his place. Said's attitude was expressed in one sentence: ‘Sir, we are in the Baghdad Pact, that's that, and we are certainly not backing out of it.'
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On his visit to Cairo, Hussein found Nasser in a much more flexible and reasonable frame of mind than his Iraqi rival. In his memoirs Hussein revealed that he had for a long time been impressed by Nasser: ‘I felt in those early days that he was a new element in the Arab world, an element that could bring about much needed reforms… The problems of the Arab world are almost always the fault of its leaders and politicians, not of the people, and so I had a lot of faith in Nasser and tried to support him as much as I could.' Hussein asked Nasser about
the Baghdad Pact, and he replied that the hasty way in which it was conceived, involving only one Arab country, had been most unwise. Now that the pact was a fait accompli, Nasser made it clear that it was not possible to remain friendly with Iraq. Hussein did not raise the possibility of Jordanian accession to the pact. Instead he asked Nasser why he insisted on keeping up his radio campaign against Jordan. Nasser feigned surprise and promised to look into the matter, but nothing was done.
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Nasser's failure to halt the radio attacks on Jordan was taken by Hussein as proof of his duplicity. But on the critical issue of Jordanian accession to the pact, it was Eden who double-crossed Nasser and not Nasser who double-crossed Hussein.

The Foreign Office had a clear policy of neither encouraging nor discouraging Jordan's accession to the pact. This placed Hussein in a Catch-22 situation. He wanted a revision of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty of 1948, especially in order to make the British subsidy payable to the Jordanian government instead of going into a special Arab Legion account that was under the direct control of Glubb. Britain replied that the time for treaty revision would come only when Jordan joined the Baghdad Pact. But the nationalist officers who most resented Britain's control of the finances of the Arab Legion were also the strongest opponents of Jordanian entry into the British-sponsored pact. A visit by Hussein to London in mid June provided no way out of this conundrum. Anthony Nutting, the minister of state at the Foreign Office, expressed the hope of early Jordanian accession. ‘The King replied that he was trying to avoid getting committed to either of the rival groups in the Arab world. He was trying to use his influence to bring them together. He made it plain that for these reasons an early decision by Jordan to accede to the Pact was unlikely.'
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Said al-Mufti replaced Tawfiq Abul Huda as prime minister in May 1955 and, despite the change of government, the question of the pact remained on hold. Mufti, whose parents had fled from Czarist Russia, was a Circassian and a Hashemite loyalist with impeccable credentials. He was an independently wealthy landlord who, unusually for a Jordanian politician, was untarnished by the brush of corruption. Like many politicians from minority groups in Arab countries, he was a great supporter of Arab unity in word if not always in action. Mufti was a steady but unimaginative politician whom Hussein chose to form a new government because he was both popular and pliant. On the Baghdad
Pact, Mufti had no strong sentiments one way or the other. Although several of his ministers were enthusiastic supporters of Jordanian accession, the cabinet itself had no collective position on the matter.

On 27 September 1955 Nasser announced a landmark Soviet – Egyptian arms deal, the so-called ‘czech' arms deal. Nasser first approached the Americans to sell them arms, but when they did not respond he turned to Moscow. Though Czechoslovakia negotiated and supplied some of the arms, the deal was principally with the Soviet Union. One of the reasons given by Nasser for his decision to buy arms from the Eastern bloc was the Baghdad Pact. As Hussein noted in his memoirs, a bombshell fell on the Arab world: ‘In an instant everything changed.' The Czech arms deal dramatically increased Nasser's popular appeal throughout the Arab world and played a decisive part in turning Jordanian public opinion against the pact. ‘Hundreds of thousands of Jordanians, listening avidly to the propaganda on Radio Cairo, saw in Nasser a sort of mystical saviour… and their best bet for the future against Israel… he was the first Arab statesman to really throw off the shackles of the West.' Hussein later admitted that he himself sympathized with that point of view to a great extent.
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Within the ranks of the Jordanian Army there was much excitement about Nasser's success in breaking the Western monopoly over the supply of arms to the Middle East. Politicians from all ends of the political spectrum praised Nasser's move. The Jordanian parliament cabled its congratulations to the Egyptian president, and Jordan's ambassador to Cairo described the deal as ‘the greatest Arab step in decades'. Even the reticent Jordanian prime minister suppressed his suspicions of Russia and welcomed the move as a boost to Arab selfdefence.
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Radio Cairo intensified its propaganda with emotional appeals to the Jordanian people, calling on them to get rid of the British officers in the army and the king who was keeping Jordan as a tool of the West. The Czech arms deal, despite all the public praise it received in Jordan, was thus turned into a challenge to the legitimacy of the Hashemite dynasty. It also helped to turn Jordan into a major battleground in the cold war between the Arab radicals and the Arab moderates.

Nasser followed up the arms deal with the Eastern bloc by signing bilateral defence pacts with Syria and Saudi Arabia in October. By providing for a joint command of the armed forces of the three countries,
these treaties created the beginning of an Arab counterweight to the Baghdad Pact. Jordan was now the missing link in the Arab front surrounding Israel, and the three countries offered Jordan a subsidy in an obvious attempt to lure it away from the British-led grouping. There were rumours that Britain was considering the withdrawal of its subsidy in the event of Jordan refusing to join the pact. The tripartite offer was intended to supplant British influence and to reassure Jordan that it would have an alternative source of income in case the British government withdrew its support.

Fearful of an increase in Nasser's power and Soviet influence in the Middle East, the Turks made a determined effort to persuade Hussein to join their pact with Iraq. Turkish President Çalal Bayar and Foreign Minister Fetim Zorlu arrived in Amman on 3 November and used every conceivable argument to convince the king and his ministers of the advantages of joining the pact. Membership, they said, would secure Turkey as an ally against Israel, it would secure Turkish assistance in countering any military threat from Syria, and it would speed up the revision of the treaty with Britain. Hussein replied that he understood the advantages of joining, but that Jordan needed economic aid as much as a military alliance. The visitors urged the king to write to the British government to explain his needs, and they promised to write at the same time to support his case.
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Hussein told the British ambassador, Charles Duke, that he was ready to join, provided Jordan received ‘the necessary backing' from Britain. On 16 November Hussein handed Duke a note explaining Jordan's difficulties and needs. Although the note did not say so explicitly, it implied that Jordan would consider joining the pact if its demands were met. Duke recommended to his government that Jordan's wavering should be ended with a firm commitment to treat it generously. Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan wrote to Anthony Eden, ‘I very much fear that if we do not get Jordan into the Baghdad Pact, she will drift out of our control.' Macmillan felt that Britain's prestige as a Middle Eastern power was being put to the test, and he persuaded his cabinet colleagues that Jordan's adherence was in Britain's interest. The Defence Committee accepted his recommendations and decided to send to Amman the chief of the imperial general staff, General Sir Gerald Templer. Templer's instructions were clear and simple: ‘Jordan must be made to join the pact.'
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It was thought that the choice of a man of such exalted military rank as the bearer of the foreign secretary's views would appeal to Hussein's vanity. Templer was told that, according to Glubb, ‘the king fancies himself, in view of his Sandhurst background, as a military expert.' Hence it was suggested that Templer might wish to adopt the line of ‘speaking as one soldier to another'. Templer was also empowered to inform the king privately that Her Majesty's Government proposed to appoint him as an honorary air vice-marshal in the Royal Air Force once Jordan had joined the pact.
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The wisdom of choosing Templer for this delicate diplomatic mission was open to doubt. He was a tough and incisive soldier who had made his name by crushing a communist insurgency in Malaya, but he was not noted for his patience or diplomatic skills. It was also a mistake to focus only on the king during the visit without trying to win over the government, parliament and public opinion.

On 6 December, General Templer arrived in Amman on a visit that lasted just over a week. At a series of meetings with the king and his officials, Templer tried hard to get a firm commitment from them to join the Baghdad Pact. Templer presented Britain's offer of money and arms to strengthen the Arab Legion and to meet Jordan's additional defence needs as a member of the pact. He also expressed readiness to replace the 1948 Anglo-Jordanian treaty by a special agreement under the pact, similar to that concluded with Iraq. The king was soon convinced of the advantages of joining. The cabinet, however, was deeply divided between East Bankers and the Palestinian ministers from the West Bank. The latter insisted that Egypt be consulted before any decision was made. Said Mufti, the prime minister, ‘never a strong man or one to take responsibility if he could avoid it, gave his Cabinet nothing of a lead in spite of the King's efforts to encourage him'.
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The sudden resignation of the four Palestinian ministers, who were generally believed to have been bribed to do so by the Egyptian government, deepened the crisis. Hussein was prepared to sign the Letter of Intent, which committed Jordan to the pact, himself, but Templer advised him against such a rash move. Templer realized that the king needed the endorsement of his ministers for a decision that was as critical as this one. But the cabinet was divided. Said Mufti lost his nerve and on 13 December hastened to the palace to tender his resignation. With the collapse of the government, the negotiations came to an abrupt end. The following morning Templer
flew back to London to report on the failure of his mission. The offer he had brought with him turned out to be too little, too late.

Another reason for Templer's failure to move Jordan into the Baghdad Pact was the concerted campaign of propaganda and subversion unleashed by Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Egyptian and Syrian agents stepped up their support for the opposition parties. The Saudi Embassy in Amman disbursed lavish bribes to journalists and politicians who came out against Jordanian membership of the pact. Radio Cairo broadcast anti-Western tirades and denounced Jordan as the puppet of the imperialists. In his memoirs Hussein represented the Egyptian propaganda offensive as the betrayal of a promise by Nasser. He claimed that he had reported to Nasser about the progress of the talks with Templer and that he understood that Nasser had given him his blessing. Then suddenly everything changed. ‘I cannot recall another incident in history,' wrote Hussein, ‘where a statesman has made such a volte-face. That was the end of Jordan and the Baghdad Pact. It was not the end of Nasser's double-crossing.'
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A more plausible explanation of Nasser's volte-face, however, is that he himself was double-crossed by the British government. As the British ambassador to Cairo candidly confessed, what he had been told by Whitehall to tell Nasser was not a fair statement of the purpose of the Templer mission.
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Sir Humphrey Trevelyan had been instructed to say that General Templer's mission had not been to press Jordan to join the pact but to discuss the supply of arms.

Hussein's next move was to charge Hazza' al-Majali, the young and vigorous deputy prime minister and minister of the interior, with forming a government. Majali came from the southern town of Kerak from a family of tribal shaikhs. He was a staunch Hashemite loyalist and a man of courage who, unlike his predecessor, was not afraid to shoulder responsibility. On the external front, Majali was pro-British, close to Iraq and intent on forming a regional grouping against Nasserism with these two traditional allies. Majali had a high opinion of Glubb Pasha and shared his belief that the alliance with Britain was crucial to Jordan's national security and stability. The two men also believed that membership of the Baghdad Pact would bolster Jordan against the radical Arab challenge and help the kingdom defend its western border against attacks from Israel.
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Majali formed a government on 15 December with the publicly declared object of taking Jordan into the pact. His closest ally at home
was Wasfi al-Tall from the northern town of Irbid, who was to play a major part in Jordanian politics in the 1960s. Tall was appointed as director of the Department of Publications. He believed that the Arab world did not possess the intrinsic power to sustain a neutralist posture and advocated cooperation with the West against Arab radicalism.
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He argued that the treaty with Britain restricted Jordan's freedom of action, whereas membership of the Baghdad Pact would increase its freedom and enhance its security. He also felt that Jordan had no chance against Israel if it stood alone and that the pact provided at least the potential for an Arab line-up against the enemy in their midst as well as the distant enemy to the north. Both Majali and Tall spoke clearly, forcefully and without any ambiguity in favour of Jordanian membership of the pact. According to Mreiwad al-Tall, Wasfi's younger brother, Hussein did not like strong men, preferring to surround himself with ‘yes men'; he brought in Majali only when he felt that his survival was at stake.
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