Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril (31 page)

J
anuary 12, 2003, was a sunny winter’s day in Portsmouth. A crowd of ten thousand people packed the docks and streets of this historic British naval city, waving good-bye to the
Ark Royal
, the Royal Navy’s 20,000-ton flagship aircraft carrier. As the ship moved slowly out of the harbor, the sailors on deck stood at attention, listening to the shouts and cheers of the crowd.
Ark Royal
was heading up a naval task force of sixteen vessels, carrying three thousand Royal Marines. Although the fleet was officially headed for “exercises” in Asia, its course would take it through the Arabian Gulf and, it was widely believed, to Iraq. As soon as I heard that the Royal Navy had set sail, I knew war in Iraq was imminent. From my time at the Staff College in the UK and in the British army, I knew that Her Majesty’s Treasury would never spend that much money unless war was inevitable.

I was against the war, though deeply sympathetic to the continuing suffering of the Iraqi people. I thought then, and still think now, that the Iraq war was a big mistake for the United States. I was alarmed by the prospect of another conflict on our borders, but there was little I could do to stop the war. Part of my responsibility as head of state was to anticipate the likely turn of events, and I was convinced that there could only be one outcome: the United States would win. I did not want Jordan to be damaged afterward by appearing to have sided with Saddam. From my father’s experience in the first Gulf War, I had seen the adverse impact on Jordan when we were perceived to be taking Iraq’s side against the West. We had been frozen out by the Americans and British, as well as by a number of Gulf countries. I was determined to keep Jordan out of this fight while ensuring that we not be punished for our position.

This was probably the most difficult time I have faced in the last eleven years. Some people wanted me to side with Saddam Hussein, but I did not think that was the right thing to do. I was determined to do the right thing for Jordan no matter how unpopular our position would be. I felt that was what my father had expected me to do when he had given me this responsibility.

I was determined to fulfill my responsibility toward Jordan to the best of my ability. And, as ironic as it may sound, to be able to do this job well you have to come to terms with the fact that, more often than not, the right decision is not necessarily the popular one. Often the job of a leader is to resist the temptation to give in to widespread and strongly held popular sentiment. A leader has to make decisions based on reason and judgment, and on the long-term interests of his country.

The train was coming down the tracks and I was not going to be able to stop it. The best I could do was get Jordan out of the way.

I tried to walk the tightrope of opposing the war and staying out of it. But I was certain of one thing: the longer the war lasted, the more terrible the consequences would be and the more intense the pressures on Jordan would become. Adding to the complexity, at this time I came under sustained pressure from the American administration to allow U.S. troops to be based in Jordan. In the months before the Iraq war, Jordan began to be dragged into the debate about the staging of ground forces. Our long land border with Iraq was attractive to American planners, who saw it as an ideal strategic location from which to launch an attack into western Iraq.

The looming conflict was an emotionally charged topic, both in Jordan and in the wider Middle East. Throughout January, tens of thousands of people demonstrated from Ankara to Beirut, expressing enormous hostility to what they believed was an unnecessary war. On February 1, around five thousand protesters, organized by opposition parties, marched in Amman against war in Iraq, waving pictures of Saddam and chanting, “Terrorist Bush, get out of our lands.”

We were determined to keep our borders sovereign and not to allow any of the potential combatants to cross over into Jordanian territory. During this period, one night an unidentified aircraft flew over Jordan without permission. It flew fast and low to avoid being spotted, but we picked it up on our radar and sent two Mirage fighter jets to intercept it. The plane was heading toward Iraq and our fighters intercepted the aircraft as it was approaching the Jordanian-Saudi border. They flew up next to it and identified it as a C-130 military transport plane, flying in the dark with no lights. It refused to answer repeated requests for identification.

As part of the coalition’s military buildup, there were many C-130s and other transport planes in the air near our borders, and we wanted to know what this plane was and why it had entered Jordanian airspace covertly. We called coalition headquarters, as well as the Israeli military, but no one would admit to ownership of the mystery plane. The Jordanian pilots radioed my brother Feisal, who was the commander of the air force, and asked whether they should shoot it down. If we made the mistake of shooting down a coalition transport craft, it would create a major international incident. As the plane approached the Saudi border, Feisal told his men to hold their fire.

The next day Feisal followed up with the American military, who assured him that it was not a coalition plane. The United States agreed to try to track where the plane had gone after leaving Jordan. We subsequently learned that after entering Saudi airspace, it had landed in Israel.

The chief of staff of the Israeli air force at the time, Dan Halutz, called Feisal to assure him that it was not an Israeli plane. He said that it was most likely a cloud of chaff. A couple of days later a senior Israeli officer was visiting Jordan. I asked Feisal to go speak to him and to set out Jordanian policy clearly and directly. Feisal did not mince his words. “We know it was a C-130, and we know it was yours,” he said. “I want to make it very, very clear that the next time this happens we will pursue it very aggressively. We will not allow anybody to fly through our airspace. Anything that crosses the border will be shot at.”

During this period, General Tommy Franks was in charge of war planning. I had gotten to know General Franks when he took over at CENTCOM in 2000. One of the finest soldiers I have ever met, he was hard-bitten, no-nonsense, and profane. We hit it off right away. When I was commander of Special Operations, we went out in the field on military exercises together, and I learned that he, like me, was an enthusiastic biker. On my last visit to Tampa, where CENTCOM has its headquarters, he served me an amazing beef brisket. Although I had gone to school in New England, I understood enough about Texas to know that it is almost impossible to get a Texan to share a barbecue recipe. After lots of wrangling, he finally relented, and I now serve his beef brisket to official guests in Jordan.

General Franks was famous for his ability to chew out people using colorful and imaginative phrases. In fact, there should be a book written about his use of expletives. Provided the cursing is not being directed at you, it is pretty hilarious to watch.

He visited Amman to brief me on the war preparations, hoping to get my permission to deploy U.S. troops. Pulling out a huge board, he said, “I want to bring twenty-five thousand troops into Jordan.” Then he proceeded to outline a detailed plan for the operation. He had a list of military units he wanted to deploy inside our country. He wanted to bring a Joint Special Operations Command, logistics units, Patriot batteries, and many other units.

I have the highest regard for General Franks, but in this case I could not give him what he wanted. We went down the list one by one. I pointed to the logistics unit and asked, “What’s this group?” He said, “We need them to take trucks and equipment from Aqaba into Iraq after the war is over. The idea is to send supplies in once we move toward Baghdad. We have the transportation corps coming with a large number of drivers and trucks.”

“Well,” I interrupted, “it seems to me the Jordanian army could do that. I mean, if we are going to be working together, you will have to trust us, so you don’t need to bring those men. We will ship the stuff to the border.”

He continued, describing how he wanted to put a Special Operations headquarters and helicopter transport hubs inside Jordan.

“Look,” I said, “headquarters can be put anywhere, don’t put them in Jordan. And I really don’t want helicopters flying from our border. I don’t want an attack launched from Jordan into Iraq.”

He agreed to move the headquarters and to shift the Chinook helicopters and other air transport elsewhere, to places like Qatar. After a lengthy debate, soldier to soldier, we agreed that only a few Patriot air defense batteries would be placed in Jordan to defend against Iraqi Scud missiles that could be fired over our territory.

With this agreement, General Franks left, and I continued to prepare for the coming conflict. But no military plan can remain intact for long in the shifting politics of the Middle East. The United States wanted to move an infantry division through Turkey, in preparation for a strike into northern Iraq. But on March 1, the Turkish parliament voted no. The Turkish vote disrupted the U.S. war plans, and shortly afterward I received a call from Vice President Dick Cheney, who asked me to respond positively to requests that Tommy Franks would make during a meeting that had been scheduled between us the next day.

“Mr. Vice President,” I said, “Tommy Franks and I have a very good relationship and a lot of trust. Let us two military men work something out between ourselves.” Cheney agreed, and we ended the conversation. I made sure to try to have breakfast with the vice president whenever I went to Washington. Sometimes we would meet alone, while at other times he would be joined by a member of his staff or his daughter Liz, who was then a State Department official. Cheney was a tough character, dead set in his views but always very supportive of Jordan and sympathetic to our financial problems. Because he was so influential within the administration, I would often make the points I wanted to drive home on subjects such as the peace process and Iraq to him a day or so before my meeting with the president. His reaction would give me an early warning of the arguments I was likely to hear in the Oval Office.

The next day General Franks was back in Amman. “We’re not looking at moving troops into Jordan at this stage,” he said. “But we would like to base some of our assets out of the Mediterranean. That would mean firing Tomahawk missiles and launching air strikes from our carriers across Jordanian airspace into Iraq.”

“Tommy,” I said, “why do you want to mess with a friend? If you want to launch over somebody, launch over a different country. Why put us in the line of fire? And can you even guarantee that Israel would not slip in and attack Iraq through our airspace?”

Eventually General Franks understood my concerns and agreed to shift everything elsewhere. To this day I owe General Franks a tremendous debt of thanks—in part because of our personal friendship forged over the years. During his visit he willingly listened to my objections and concerns and agreed to change his plans. If the United States had pushed to fly over Jordan, I would have continued to say no and that would have put Jordan in a tremendously difficult position.

 

Shortly after the debates over basing ended, the fighting began. On March 20, 2003, the war started with cruise missile strikes. As dawn broke over Baghdad, U.S. Tomahawk missiles slammed into a bunker where Saddam Hussein was thought to be staying. Later that day, around 8 p.m., the ground invasion began. American and British tanks poured across the border from Kuwait, heading for Baghdad and Basra.

The invasion was covered live on satellite television. Like many Arabs, I watched these images with a mixture of sadness and alarm. I was no friend of Saddam, who was the leader of a brutal regime, but I was saddened to see so many innocent Iraqis paying the price for his ambition. The Iraqis are a great people and Baghdad is one of the historic seats of Arab culture, famous for its House of Wisdom, which preserved and translated the works of many Greek philosophers. Iraq produced many famous Arab scientists, musicians, writers, and poets, including Al Mutanabbi, known as the “Arab Shakespeare.” It was heartbreaking to see this ancient city pulverized by American missiles. Many Arabs were alarmed at American forces invading a brethren Arab country. Across the Middle East, we felt plenty of shock, but little awe.

Knowing the concerns that were uppermost in many Jordanians’ minds, I spoke about the efforts I had made to stop the war, saying in an interview with the Jordanian press:

I spoke my heart, yet the war had begun and my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do to reverse it. The best I could do was rely on my instinct that I was doing the right thing for Jordan.

Although the conflict was hundreds of miles away, it did not take long before its tremors were felt inside Jordan. I was sitting at home watching the news on television when the telephone rang. It was Saad Khair, the head of my intelligence services (who very sadly passed away in late 2009). “We have discovered an Iraqi plot to poison the water supply in Zarqa and other locations,” he said. “The leader is the military attaché at the Iraqi embassy, and he is planning to strike soon. What should we do?”

The poisoning of our main water supply would have killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent Jordanians. Dealing with the plot would not be easy—as “diplomats,” Saddam’s men had immunity, and arresting them could cause an international incident. I went through the evidence and decided it was too conclusive not to act.