Lion of Jordan (70 page)

The other twenty members of the Arab League attended the meeting in Baghdad from 2–5 November. At the summit Hussein positioned Jordan at the heart of the new Arab consensus. In his speech to the delegates he outlined a framework for joint action to protect the Arab world against Israeli expansionism and to secure the peaceful recovery of the occupied territories. All their resources had to be mobilized, he argued, to meet the common danger. The meeting resolved to suspend Egypt's membership of the Arab League and to transfer the headquarters of the Arab League from Cairo to Tunis. It declared Camp David to be in contradiction to the resolutions of the Arab summit in Rabat and confirmed Arab support for the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. It also voted to extend financial support over a period of ten years to Syria, Jordan and the PLO. Jordan was allocated a third of the total – $1,250 million over ten years. This financial support by the Arab oil-producing countries for the Eastern Front was intended to correct the imbalance of power caused by Egypt's defection.
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The Baghdad summit marked the beginning of a close personal friendship and political partnership between the Hashemite king and Saddam Hussein, the young vice-president of Iraq. Saddam was the strongman of the Ba'th regime who within a few months was to take over the
presidency from the ailing Ahmad Bakr. At the summit Saddam played a major part in persuading the wealthy Arab states to extend financial aid to the remaining confrontation states with a common border with Israel. Hussein was most impressed with the energetic Iraqi leader, who spoke eloquently about the need for unity among the Arab states and their collective responsibility to make sure that no Arab went hungry. Saddam treated Hussein with great courtesy and showed real understanding and sympathy for his predicament. Later on Saddam would reveal himself as a dissembling psychopath, but on this occasion all the members of the Jordanian delegation found him to be a perfect host and a man of considerable charm. Like other members of the Hashemite royal family, Hussein viewed Iraq with a mixture of admiration and loathing: admiration for its power and wealth and loathing for the savage massacre of their relatives in the revolution of 1958.
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Hussein's fledgling friendship with the Iraqi leader tilted the balance in favour of admiration and helped him to overcome the bitter memories of the past. But the personal friendship was to assume growing political significance. Hussein always looked for an Arab regional order that would be conducive to the survival of the Hashemite dynasty. Iraq was to become the anchor of this political order during the following decade.

America reacted aggressively to Jordan's rejection of the Camp David Accords. The Carter administration intensified the pressure to compel Jordan to change course and to join in the Camp David negotiations. It cut economic aid and advised its allies in the Gulf not to help Jordan. Jordan experienced difficulty in obtaining grants for development projects from the World Bank, and there were times when it was unable to pay the wages of the army. In March 1979 Zbigniew Brzezinski visited Amman and threatened to restrict arms supplies if Jordan did not change its attitude towards the American-sponsored peace process. Jordanian officials thought that he also implied that unless there was a change of attitude, America might not protect Jordan against a future Israeli attack. The explicit threat met with a cool response from Hussein, who said that Jordan would have to look around for alternative sources of military equipment. Hussein also accused America of double standards in encouraging Islamic resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan while portraying the Palestinians as criminals for resisting the occupation of their land by Israel. Relations between Jordan and America sank to an all-time low. Jimmy Carter cut aid to Jordan from $40 million in 1978
to $20 million in 1980. Jordan's request to buy F-16 aircraft was ignored. The House of Representatives approved a military aid bill denying Jordan any funds until it played the role assigned to it in the Camp David Accords. In Jordan this bill was regarded as blackmail. The Americans attached so many conditions to their offer to sell 300 M60A3 Main Battle tanks that Hussein ended up buying 274 British Chieftain tanks with the help of Saudi Arabia. Hussein's personal relations with Carter also suffered. Carter described Hussein as ‘a slender reed' on which to rest the prospects of peace.
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On 17 June 1980 Hussein visited Washington for talks with Carter. Hussein explained the importance of the arms denied by Congress in view of Jordan's vulnerability. But he also repeated his objections to the Camp David Accords, and stressed the need to convene an international conference under UN auspices, to provide for Palestinian representation and to address the question of Palestinian self-determination.
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The entire saga of the peace process revolved round the tension between a comprehensive settlement and a separate settlement. The accords that were eventually concluded at Camp David were incompatible with the basic principles of Jordanian foreign policy. Hussein understood that Israel and Egypt ranked much higher than Jordan on the list of America's allies in the Middle East. But he felt that, in his desperate search for a foreign policy success, Carter made the Arabs pay the price for Israel's intransigence. There was no way that Jordan could negotiate on the basis that the West Bank was Israeli-liberated territory. Nor could Jordan afford to play the dangerous and humiliating role spelled out for it in its absence: to act as Israel's policeman in the occupied territories and to safeguard Israel's security while it pursued its expansionist project. After a long period of sitting on the fence, Hussein therefore finally decided to come down on the side of the Arab rejectionists. Hussein's Arab opponents habitually portrayed him as an American stooge. In 1978, however, he defied strong American pressure to make peace on Israel's terms. Paradoxically, from his point of view, the one good thing that came out of Camp David was the breaking of the taboo on direct peace negotiations with Israel.

The most momentous event in the private life of Hussein in 1978 was his marriage to Lisa Halaby in a simple ceremony in Amman on 15 June. She was a highly intelligent, cosmopolitan and strikingly beautiful blonde: slim, athletic and tall. She was considerably taller than the man she married and younger by sixteen years. She was born into a prominent Arab–American family, raised in privilege and sent to exclusive private schools. Her father, Najeeb Halaby, was a successful businessman and an aviation executive. Lisa Halaby joined the first class at Princeton to accept women, graduating in 1974 with a degree in architecture and urban planning. After graduating, she worked in the urban planning field in Australia and Iran before joining Royal Jordanian Airlines as director of planning and design projects.

In 2003 Lisa Halaby published a revealing and engaging autobiographical book.
Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life
is the story of her remarkable journey into Hussein's heart and of the twenty-one years of their marriage, ending with the king's death in 1999. For the king it was evidently love at first sight. Following her move to Jordan, Lisa had several fleeting encounters with Hussein, usually in Amman airport. For the young and independent-minded American woman, the courtship involved some doubts and hesitations. The king was a widower with eight children from three previous marriages and a reputation as a playboy. ‘I will not deny that the idea of being his fourth wife, or anybody's fourth wife, was troubling to me,' she writes.
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But the king was an assiduous suitor; he would even sing to her.

Having accepted the royal proposal of marriage, Lisa Halaby changed her name to Noor Al Hussein, the ‘Light of Hussein'. She also converted to Islam and began to learn Arabic in earnest. She became a stepmother to Hussein's eight children, including his very young children with Alia.
In the early years of their marriage, Noor gave birth to four more children: Hamzah, Hashim, Iman and Raiyah. Her love affair with Hussein developed into a love affair with his desert kingdom. As well as being an intimate portrait of a marriage and motherhood,
Leap of Faith
conveys a deep commitment to the people, culture and natural beauty of Jordan. ‘I had found myself spellbound,' writes Noor, ‘by the serene expanse of desert landscape washed golden by the retreating sun at dusk. I was overwhelmed by an extraordinary sensation of belonging, an almost mystical sense of peace.'
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There was precious little peace, however, inside the royal palace. Noor realized that she had to make adjustments to her new environment, but she found the lack of privacy irksome and unsettling. Court officials were ubiquitous and constantly intruded into what she regarded as her private space. Noor also had to fight to carve out a meaningful role for herself. Many in Jordan thought a queen should be a glamorous figure on a pedestal, perhaps engaged from a distance in charity work. Noor had no intention of being a mere figurehead and spending her time simply opening bazaars and exhibitions. On the contrary, she wanted to be involved in tackling real problems.

Through the United Nations and other organizations Noor became involved in issues that were important to her, such as global peacekeeping, refugee assistance and the Land Mine Ban Treaty. Most of her time and energy, however, were taken up with work in the areas of women's and children's welfare, human rights, health, education and the environment. She became acutely aware that all of these problems, which were tackled in isolation by individual ministries and charities, were fundamentally interrelated. Her role, as she saw it, was to serve as a catalyst for consensus-building and action. In 1985 the Noor Al Hussein Foundation was established. Its aim was to provide strategies for sustainable development in Jordan and to integrate efforts to tackle these various problems in a concerted manner.

While Hussein supported his wife's domestic initiatives, he himself remained mainly preoccupied with foreign affairs and with his quest for peace in the Middle East. International politics thus became a constant companion to Queen Noor throughout the years of her marriage. One theme that crops up again and again in the narrative of
Leap of Faith
is the frustration and anger she feels in the face of American double standards towards the Middle East. From Jordan she began to see the
land of her birth through new eyes – and the image that she saw of America was not a positive one. Noor had grown up believing in America's commitment to freedom, justice and human rights, but she gives many examples of Washington's failure to uphold these principles in its treatment of Jordan. She complains, with justice, that America's support for Israel has too often been at the expense of Arab human rights and in violation of international law and United Nations resolutions. During the 1980s Noor undertook several intensive speaking tours in America, gruelling two-week marathons of speeches and interviews. She was uniquely placed to educate her fellow Americans about the problems of the region and did her best to do so, but Israel had a magical hold on the American media and the American political psyche generally. A Jordan Information Office was established in Washington, but it was no match for the Israel lobby.

Whereas in foreign affairs Noor was a valuable source of advice and support to her husband, in domestic politics being a foreigner often counted against her. On at least one issue Noor was at odds with her husband and the leaders of her adopted country: press freedom. From the first years of their marriage, she started lobbying her husband and his key officials to reconsider their restrictive attitude towards personal and institutional freedoms. The press in Jordan, though privately owned, was effectively government controlled. Truly independent reporting did not exist. A combination of conservatism and insecurity made the government apprehensive about allowing the people to read dissenting opinions and about the destabilizing impact of free political reporting. By her own account, Noor's pleas fell on largely deaf ears.
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The early years of Hussein's marriage to Noor coincided with considerable turbulence in the region, beginning with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and ending with the Lebanon War. The shah of Iran was an old personal friend and ally, and his fall from power on 1 February 1979 was to Hussein a deeply worrying event. The designation of the shah as ‘the policeman of the Gulf' reflected his country's importance in American eyes for maintaining regional stability. Now the policeman was gone and his place was taken by Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shi'ite cleric and the leader of the Islamic Revolution. Hussein's friendship with the shah did not stand him in good stead with the new rulers of Iran, who referred to him as ‘Shah Hussein'. The new rulers also threatened Jordan by their support for the PLO and the Palestinian revolutionary groups. Hussein
feared that an alliance between the two revolutionary movements would have a radicalizing effect on the Palestinian refugees. But beyond his immediate concerns, Hussein could see the danger that this new regime posed to the security and stability of the entire Gulf. Khomeini openly declared his ambition to export his version of the Islamic Revolution beyond Iran's borders and to topple the corrupt Sunni monarchies of the Gulf. So, following the inauguration of the reign of the ayatollahs in Iran, Hussein and Crown Prince Hassan redoubled their efforts to present Jordan to the West as a bastion of stability in a turbulent region. They emphasized Jordan's reasonableness and moderation and its rejection of all extremist doctrines, be they of the Islamic or the communist variety. But while Jordan could serve as an example, it could not match the Islamic Republic of Iran either in power or in popular appeal. An effective counterweight to balance Iran was needed, and the Arab country best qualified to play that part was Iraq.

The Gulf states also looked to Iraq for protection against Iran because they were weak and vulnerable, even virtually defenceless, and certainly no match for Iranian military power either individually or collectively. Oman was still preoccupied with domestic affairs after suppressing an insurgency in Dhofar. Qatar had a population of 150,000. The United Arab Emirates were tiny. So was Kuwait. Saudi Arabia was an economic giant but a military dwarf. Gulf stability rested essentially on the balance of power between Iran and Iraq. Khomeini was deeply hostile to Iraq and openly incited Iraq's Shi'ite population to rise up and overthrow their secular Ba'thi oppressors. On 17 September 1980 Saddam, who was by now president, launched a full-scale attack on Iran. Hussein went to Baghdad to find out from Saddam the reasons for this attack. Saddam replied that Crown Prince Fahd had encouraged him to do so. Prince Fahd had allegedly told Saddam Hussein that if he attacked Iran, the Saudis would support him financially. Saddam also thought that the internal upheaval in Iran provided Iraq with a unique chance to regain the strategically vital Shatt al-Arab Waterway, which was his declared war aim. Iran was in disarray following the revolution, and there was fear that the revolution would indeed begin to spread. This, said Saddam, was the golden opportunity to neutralize Iran.
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