February 7, 1999

Building Modernity on Desert Mirages

By JOHN KIFNER

H USSEIN IBN TALAL, a pivotal and sometimes heroic figure in the

Middle East, will be laid to rest with all the pomp and pageantry of

royalty: the Bedouin desert warriors in their red-checked keffiyahs

and smartly crossed leather ammunition belts; the Circassian palace

guards -- Muslims uprooted from the Caucasus -- in high-booted,

fur-hatted uniforms like cossacks; the crown, the banners, symbols

of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, a dynasty stretching back

through the mists of time to . . . May 25, 1946.

In the Middle East, the Egyptian diplomat Taseen Bashir likes to

say, only Egypt and Iran are real countries, places with a cohesive

history of nationhood; the rest are "tribes with flags." And of all

the artificial countries created by the victorious European powers

who drew arbitrary lines on maps after World War I, none was more

artificial than the tiny, poor, lawless leftover patch of desert

that would become Jordan.

Even the flag was artificial. The green, red, white and black banner that fluttered over Arab

raiders led by the Hashemite family against the Ottoman empire --

the basis for today's flags of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation

Organization -- was designed by a British Foreign Service officer

named Sir Mark Sykes and produced by his army's supply shop in

Cairo.

But he is not remembered as the Betsy Ross of Arabia. He is better

known as half of a secret double-cross -- the Sykes-Picot agreement

of 1916 -- in which the British effectively sold out their Arab

allies by recognizing French interests in the Middle East.

And yet, from this unpromising land, King Hussein and has

grandfather, King Abdullah, forged, largely by sheer force of

personality, the most modern nation in the Arab world. They did it

through dangerous decades of war with Israel and the frequent

hostility of their fellow Arabs.

Even while clinging tenaciously to the old symbols -- Hussein's

personal aircraft is named the Qureish for the tribe of the Prophet

Mohammed, from whom he claims descent -- these unlikely survivors

developed a legitimacy far more in tune with the 20th century, one

that rests on a social contract with the royal family's people.

"It is a social contract that harks back to the monarchy of older

times," said Fouad Ajami, a leading scholar of the region.

"The record of the Hashemites stands out as one of great moderation

and tolerance; they were temperate, merciful rulers.

"It was always a turbulent realm, and when necessary there was an

iron fist in the velvet glove.But there was a legacy of forgiving; even assassins were forgiven

and rehabilitated.

They made a going concern of this modest realm and helped their

people escape the furies of the region around them."

The back story of the Hashemite monarchy begins on the eve of World

War I, in which the decaying Ottoman Empire would be allied with

Germany and Austria-Hungary. At the center of Ottoman rule was the

Caliph, the supreme religious leader of Islam. But in the Arab lands

there were secret stirrings of nationalism, chafing against Turkish

rule.

The British military commander, Lord Kitchener, and his fledgling

Middle East experts wanted to fan the flames of Arab resistance;

they hit on a scheme to create a new Caliph, beholden to them, in

hopes that Britain could control the region after the war. Their

candidate was King Hussein's great-grandfather, Emir Hussein of the

Hejaz, the Sharif of Mecca, or guardian of Islam's holiest places at

the far southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.

He duly declared the Great Arab Revolt in 1916 -- an affair of

machinations, blunders and betrayals all around that is told in

admirable detail in "A Peace to End All Peace" by David Fromkin

(Avon Books, 1989). For the less rigorous, this is the tale told in

the movie "Lawrence of Arabia."

The Arab revolt was actually not all that great, historians now say.

It enlisted only a few thousand tribesmen and its exploits were

inflated by two master storytellers, the American correspondent

Lowell Thomas and Capt. T. E. Lawrence himself.

Nevertheless, the Arab army under Hussein's youngest son, Feisal

(Omar Sharif in the movie), led the victorious allies into Damascus,

the regional capital, on Oct. 1, 1918.

The Arab nationalists planned for Feisal to become King in Damascus

and his older brother, Abdullah, to be King in Baghdad.

But the European powers, carving up the Ottoman remains, had other

ideas.

Feisal reigned in Damascus only momentarily, until the French took

control there under the Sykes-Picot understanding.

Then, with British help, he moved his franchise to Baghdad, where

his family ruled until they were killed in a 1958 military coup.

Back home in the Hejaz, the Hashemite dream of ruling as Caliphs

failed too. Sharif Hussein proclaimed himself Caliph on March 5,

1924, two days after the secularizing Young Turks now ruling

Istanbul abolished the office. But Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, who bore

Hussein's family many grudges, led the Wahhabis -- the Muslim

fundamentalists of their day -- out of the desert and kicked Hussein

out in 1925, seizing the guardianship of the holy places and

creating Saudi Arabia.

Many years later, when King Hussein would not line up against Iraq

in the Gulf War against the Saudis, he would refer to himself as the

Sharif, in echo of his great-grandfather's claim.

Meanwhile, another wartime promise -- the Balfour Declaration of

1917, anticipating a Jewish homeland in the British mandate in

Palestine -- would shape events in the region for decades.

I N early 1921, Abdullah turned up in the unpromising sands in the

eastern part of the mandate with an armed entourage, announcing he

was on his way to conquer Syria. Abdullah had been the original

architect of the alliance with the British, but Captain Lawrence had

shunted him aside as charming and wily -- "a tool too complex for

such a simple purpose" -- in favor of Feisal.

It was the beginning of the process by which Abdullah and his

grandson, King Hussein, would remain in the desert and create the

Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Winston Churchill, then Colonial Secretary, claimed he created

Jordan "in an afternoon," by splitting off the territory in the

Palestine mandate east of the Jordan River into Transjordan in 1923

(although it continued to be administered as a mandate territory

until independence in 1946).

This split avoided confrontations with France over who would rule

Damascus. And by naming Abdullah Emir, or Prince, and later King,

Churchill said, the British could "repair the damage done to the

Arabs" and the Hashemites.

More important, Transjordan could serve as a safety valve for Arabs

who might leave the Palestine mandate as Jews streamed in. The

British subsidized Transjordan with millions of dollars, and

organized, trained and officered its army, the Arab Legion.

This force became the strongest in the Arab world. In 1948, it alone

held against the nascent Israelis, crossing the Jordan River to take

the West Bank and the holy sites in East Jerusalem.

For both Abdullah and Hussein, ruling Jordan was always a complex

and potentially deadly balancing act. They had to satisfy their

Western patrons (first Britain, then the United States) while

keeping at bay their enemies (mostly Arab) and, above all, coping

with the vexing problem of the Palestinians.

Urbane by upbringing and nature, they nevertheless appeared at home

among the desert tribes who formed the backbone of their army and

their political base.

As King, Hussein would find the balancing act even more difficult.

He was only 15 in 1951 when he saw his grandfather gunned down next

to him on the steps of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by a Palestinian

nationalist.

He struggled, more than his grandfather had, to balance his own

modern and Western impulses with Arab traditions and, often, anger.

Still, in a land without natural resources, he was able to build an

educational system that turned the population into a resource, able

to work abroad in the oil states.

Under his rule, Jordan did not evolve into a full democracy but it

built a freewheeling Parliament and a relatively open press, in

sharp distinction to its Arab neighbors. King Hussein commanded an

effective intelligence service, or Mukhabarat, but ruled by a kind

of mass popularity rather than the fear of the secret police that

characterizes Syria and Iraq and is mitigated in Egypt only by

inefficiency and corruption. Palestinians numbered two-thirds of the

population of his country, swollen by refugees from the wars in

Israel and the Gulf.

Sometimes the decisions were costly: joining in the disastrous Six

Day War against Israel in 1967 and choosing not to join the fight

against Iraq in the 1991 gulf war.

Mr. Ajami believes that "history will judge these survival calls,"

for the King could not withstand the mood of his own subjects.

But in 1967 he lost the valuable West Bank and holy sites, and in

1991, the desperately needed subsidies and support from the oil-rich

Gulf countries, compounding his economic difficulties.

A T other times, there was raw, physical courage, as when he led his

army to expel the Palestinian commandos in the Black September of

1970, earning him the nickname of "P.L.K.," which stood for Plucky

Little King.

There were secret meetings over the years with Israel's leaders.

There were assassination attempts; once Syrian jets tried to shoot

down his private plane.

And, at the end, he struggled most of all to find some peace for the

Middle East.