Our Last Best Chance Part 4

For the first time, Jordanian planes were allowed to fly over Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and flights from Amman to Europe would thus go over Jerusalem. Although I had visited Jerusalem as a young child, I have not been back since it was occupied by the Israelis in 1967. But on a clear day, sitting on the left side of a pa.s.senger plane, I could now look down and see the sun glinting off the golden Dome of the Rock. One of the three holiest sites in Islam, the ancient shrine of Al Aqsa is also the site from where the Prophet Mohammad first ascended to heaven-in the miracle of Isra and Miraj-when the angel Gabriel took him from Mecca to Jerusalem.

Jordan's treaty with Israel opened the way to increased political and economic cooperation, and a wave of Israeli tourists washed into Jordan, visiting Aqaba and historic sights like Petra and Wadi Rum. An equally curious group of Jordanians began making their way to Israel, many visiting for the first time this neighbor who had played such a large role in our history.

But, like many things in the region, this initial optimism would soon be marred by tragedy.

On November 4, 1995, Israeli prime minister Rabin was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a Jewish extremist at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. The murderer was opposed to the 1993 Oslo Accords and their follow-up, Oslo II, signed at the White House in September 1995, which gave the Palestinians partial control of over 40 percent of the West Bank. Like many from Israel's extreme right, he opposed the withdrawal from the West Bank on religious grounds and decided to take matters into his own hands.

My father would devote the rest of his life to working for a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the only time after 1967 that he visited Jerusalem was for Rabin's funeral. The ruthless warrior of the 1967 war had in later decades been transformed into a soldier for peace. My father believed that had Rabin lived longer, they would have made even greater strides together in bringing about a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement.

At Rabin's funeral, he spoke to honor his friend and former foe, saying: Never in all my thoughts would it have occurred to me that my first visit to Jerusalem and response to your invitation, the invitation of the Speaker of the Knesset, the invitation of the President of Israel, would be on such an occasion. . . . We are not ashamed, nor are we afraid, nor are we anything but determined to fulfill the legacy for which my friend fell, as did my grandfather in this very city when I was with him and but a young boy.

Rabin's tragic death meant that we lost a true partner for peace. And in the years after his death, no Israeli leader would follow his example and succeed in the hardest challenge of all, that of achieving a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

That year, much of our attention was focused on Israel, our neighbor to the west, but we could never forget about our neighbor to the east. In August 1995, Hussein Kamel, one of the most powerful men in the Iraqi government, defected to Jordan following a clash with Uday. His wife, Saddam Hussein's daughter Raghad, came with him, along with her sister Rana and Rana's husband, Saddam Kamel, a senior officer in the Republican Guard and Hussein Kamel's brother. The two families drove five hundred miles from Baghdad to Amman, ostensibly to catch a flight to Sofia for an official visit to Bulgaria. Iraq was then under United Nations sanctions, so there were no international flights out of Baghdad. Once in Amman, they met with my father, who granted them asylum.

Hussein Kamel was responsible for overseeing Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program-and its nuclear program. He was the most senior member of Saddam's regime to defect. My father arranged for him to be debriefed by the United Nations weapons inspectors, and he decided to house the Kamel brothers and their families in the Hashemiyah Palace, a modern palace frequently used to host visiting heads of state and other dignitaries.

The night they arrived, my father called me and said, "Could you please go over and say h.e.l.lo to them and tell them that their safety is guaranteed? Just make them feel at home." So I went and greeted the Kamels. I introduced myself, saying that I was the Special Forces commander and that one of my units was protecting them. They were our guests. But from what I had seen on my visits to Baghdad I knew what type of people these men were, and I kept my distance. Although we were neighbors-at the time Rania and I were living nearby in our new house-I probably saw Hussein Kamel and Saddam's two daughters only three times while they were living in Amman. I believe Hussein Kamel thought he would be embraced by the West, and that the United States would use its power to install him as the leader of Iraq. Clearly he was delusional.

Six months later, in February 1996, Saddam sent a message to Hussein Kamel and his brother that if they returned to Iraq all would be forgiven. Tired of their relative lack of status in Jordan, and proving conclusively that their judgment was fatally flawed, they decided to believe their father-in-law and return, along with their families. My father gave orders that they were to be escorted to the Iraqi border. A Jordanian military convoy drove them east through the desert, while one of my sniper teams watched the handover from afar, in case of trouble.

When the Kamels arrived at the border, Qusay and Uday were at the other side, waiting to meet them. The sniper team reported that Uday shook hands with both of the brothers, and then Iraqi soldiers grabbed them. As the soldiers hustled the Kamels into a waiting car, Uday and Qusay turned and knelt on the ground in prayer. When I heard this, I called my father and said, "The Kamels are as good as dead." Three days later Hussein and Saddam Kamel were killed by Saddam's men. Both his daughters, Raghad and Rana, lost their husbands, and his grandchildren their fathers.

The disregard for rules I had witnessed in Uday and Qusay on our fis.h.i.+ng expedition in the 1980s had by then begun to mutate into something much darker. The wife of a friend, an Iraqi woman who grew up in Baghdad, told Rania and me that when she was at university, Uday would burst into cla.s.s, surrounded by armed guards, scan the female students, and when he found one to his liking, he would arrange for his men to take her back to his palace. I heard that he kept lions and cheetahs in the bas.e.m.e.nt of his palace, and had garages filled with luxury cars, including a pink Rolls-Royce. The luxurious lifestyles of Saddam's family were in shocking contrast to the misery suffered by ordinary Iraqis as sanctions imposed by the West in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War took their toll.

We had our own problems with Uday. He was in charge of the Iraqi national football (soccer) team, and at times Jordan would play Iraq. If we defeated the Iraqi team, Uday would arrange to have the Iraqi players beaten on return. Although his brother, Qusay, was quieter and less flamboyant, he was the smarter and, I suspected, more dangerous of the two.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Saddam's daughters asked if they could come and live in Jordan, to escape the chaos and danger of Baghdad. We agreed, and they came to live, for the second time, in Amman. One subsequently left Jordan and went to live in Qatar.

Over time, as some senior officers began to retire, I found the army bra.s.s becoming more supportive of my drive to modernize, and I decided that I would make my life in the army. After almost a year as deputy commander of Special Forces, I was promoted to commander and immediately pushed the idea of restructuring our Special Forces along the lines of other leading nations. In November 1996 I created Special Operations Command (SOCOM), based on the model adopted by the French and the Americans. Reporting directly to the chief of staff of the armed forces, Field Marshal Abdul Hafez Kaabneh, SOCOM brought together under one roof Special Forces and a number of elite specialist brigades from throughout the army. We had a unit similar to the British Special Air Service (SAS) or the U.S. Delta Force, a dedicated counterterrorist unit, and two airborne battalions similar to the British paratroopers.

That year we put our parachuting skills in the service of international diplomacy. I had been approached by a group of international Special Forces veterans who wanted to carry out a parachute jump in Jordan. There is an everlasting brotherhood among Special Forces soldiers, and I readily agreed. So in mid-June 1996, a C-130J transport aircraft took off from Zarqa filled with veterans of every war imaginable, including two German soldiers in their eighties who had parachuted into Crete during World War II. I acted as the jumpmaster. The men were lined up in rows of eight, and as they reached the rear door, I slapped each man on the back, sending him out of the plane.

Colonel Shaul Dori, a retired Israeli Special Forces officer, stepped forward. "Go!" I shouted over the roar of the engines, and slapped him on the back. Smiling, he jumped out of the plane, and became the first Israeli soldier to jump with the Jordanian army.

"If someone had told me back in 1973, while I was fighting along the Suez Ca.n.a.l, that one day Israeli paratroopers would be jumping with the Jordanians," said another of the Israeli veterans who jumped with us that day, "I'd have told him to get his head examined." The jump was a great success and reminded all the men, fierce fighters and veterans of countless wars, how much they shared in common. Although today the relations.h.i.+p between Jordan and Israel is strained, at that time there was a sense of a new beginning. We hoped that the peace treaty between the two countries would lead to a comprehensive regional peace and that we were entering a new phase in Middle Eastern politics. There was so much optimism that I can't help but look back on those years with great fondness, as well as with some bitterness at the opportunities that have been squandered.

I asked the French Special Forces and the British Parachute Regiment to come out and train my men. We made quite a few changes. One was to introduce live-fire exercises and to ban the use of blanks. I remembered from Sandhurst how using real bullets increases one's concentration. We have been fortunate that only one soldier has been wounded in the years since we started live-ammunition exercises.

We had a chance to demonstrate our capabilities to our neighbor in 1997, when the Israeli defense minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, visited Jordan. My father asked me to put on a demonstration exercise in Zarqa, and we happily obliged. We began with basic trench work, in which you a.s.sault a fortified position. The soldiers ran toward the trenches, firing as they went, using live ammunition. Then they threw grenades and blasted their way across the barriers. The second exercise involved fighting in built-up areas. My troops a.s.saulted a series of buildings using flamethrowers and Bangalore torpedoes, long tubes with explosives inside that cut through barbed wire. The men cleared a path up to the buildings, tossed grenades through the windows, and then stormed inside.

When they had finished, Mordechai turned to me and said, "I'm very glad your father decided to make peace with us!"

Live-fire exercises were nothing compared to actual missions. Due to the nature of Special Operations, many of our activities remain confidential. One particular mission, however, stands out in my mind.

Chapter 11.

Very Special Operations In 1997, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was deployed to eastern Jordan to help the police combat drug smugglers on the Iraqi border. The smugglers were looking to transit Jordan to access lucrative markets in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. One of Saddam's sons, Qusay, ran a drug-smuggling operation from Baghdad, but the problem was not all foreign-people on the Jordanian side were also known to be involved.

The last Jordanian town before the Iraqi border, Rweished, was a small town with little industry. Most people made their money from trade across the border, both legal and illegal. From there to the Iraqi border was fifty miles of completely flat ground. The smugglers had souped-up General Motors trucks, with the exhausts pointed down so that they would kick up a dust cloud as they drove to prevent identification. They had secure communications, night-vision capabilities, and heavy machine guns mounted on the back of their trucks.

The desert police patrolled at night in old jeeps and didn't have anything like night-vision equipment. The smugglers would roar past at full speed and disappear into a network of tents and buildings on the outskirts of town. It was a bit like facing a wellequipped foreign army, and the police were outgunned. When a policeman was killed while trying to tackle the smugglers, my father asked army headquarters to send me in. Although they were directed from Qusay's headquarters in Baghdad, the smugglers had a long reach. Just how long, I had discovered to my discomfort a few weeks earlier.

Rania and I were living in the Hashemiyah district of Amman, and I would leave for work early in the morning. One day I noticed a pickup truck parked by the side of the road, with a man sitting in it. When I returned from work that evening, he was still there. I noticed him the next day, still sitting there, watching. Worried that he was carrying out surveillance for a terrorist attack, I alerted my guards. The next morning, as I pulled out of the driveway, the watcher gunned his engine and the truck screamed toward me. Thinking it was an ambush, we drew our guns and rushed out of the car, preparing to shoot.

The man jumped out of his truck shouting, "No, no, no!" and brandis.h.i.+ng a briefcase. When he reached me, he said, "I know you're going to get the order to go out to the border. Here's one hundred thousand dollars to look the other way." My heart was pounding. I asked the fellow if he knew who he was talking to, and he replied that I was the commander of Special Operations.

"But do you know I'm the son of the king?"

The man, a Jordanian, said, "Yeah, here's one hundred thousand dollars."

I was shocked by his audacity. My father was renowned for his transparency and open governance, and here was this fellow thinking he could just bribe the king's son and have me look the other way. I had him arrested on the spot. The army can be a little isolated from wider society, and this was my first introduction to the scope of narcoterrorism and the corrupting influence of large sums of money. It is straightforward to guard the border and defend Jordan from our enemies, but this was a much more complex situation. This border operation had suddenly become personal.

We had been there a year before with our regular equipment-pistols, rifles, and machine guns-and could do very little. I went back to my father and said, "Please untie my hands." I asked him for permission to deploy heavier weapons from the Special Operations a.r.s.enal. He agreed, and now we were returning with the firepower we needed to tackle the smugglers head-on. I deployed my troops three days earlier than planned, because I was worried that the smugglers would find out the timing of our operation. The troops were armed with artillery and some anti-aircraft weapons.

That evening, my soldiers took up positions in trenches near the border and waited. It was quiet until about eleven at night, when they saw an Iraqi car at the border, flas.h.i.+ng its headlights. About two miles away, inside Jordan, several cars flashed their lights back. The smugglers were using their headlights to communicate. Soldiers heard the roar of a truck engine and saw a convoy heading across the border. They opened fire. Then all h.e.l.l broke loose. The smugglers began shooting back, using automatic weapons, and there were firefights up and down the border. The first few nights my battalion must have fired ten thousand rounds of amunition. The smugglers did not want to leave men or machinery behind for us to capture, so when we knocked out one of their trucks, others came with grappling hooks to drag the burning wreck across the Iraqi border.

A few days later, the smugglers stopped trying to sneak goods past us and focused on killing my soldiers. Although they were unsuccessful, at that point I lost patience. I joined the troops and decided to deploy the heavy guns. I brought out the M61 Vulcan 20mm cannon, which is capable of firing six thousand rounds per minute. A company closer to the border was engaged in heavy fire with the smugglers. My brother Feisal, who at the time was in the air force, commanded a squadron of fighters in support of our operation. As F-5 fighters flew past dropping flares, I gave the order to fire. My men opened up with artillery and our Vulcan anti-aircraft guns. Originally designed for use against Soviet jets, these were also pretty devastating on the ground. You could hear a "brrrrrrrrrrrp, brrrrrrrrrrp" as a wall of bullets descended, and see the explosions up and down the border.

After that we had few problems with the smugglers. But as we would soon find out, smugglers were not the only threats to Jordan.

May 25, 1998, was a pleasant spring morning. As it was a public holiday-Jordanian Independence Day-I was at home, working out on the treadmill, when the telephone rang. It was my uncle, Prince Ha.s.san, calling from the Police Crisis Management Center. "How good are you at taking terrorists alive?" he asked. "Not very," I said. "My unit is trained to kill them." "Well, we have a major problem in Sahab," he said, referring to a small town outside Amman. "It's either you or the police." I threw on my uniform and headed for the door.

Early that year, Jordan had been terrorized by a series of brutal murders in wealthy neighborhoods of Amman. In January, eight Iraqis had been killed at a villa in Rabia, and in April three Jordanians had been killed in Shmeisani. A prominent doctor had been killed simply because he showed up at the wrong house when one of these murders was taking place. Rumor varied as to whether the murders were the work of terrorists, drug gangs, or petty criminals. The police had tracked down two of the members of the gang they thought responsible, a hit man and his accomplice, and had them trapped in a house in Sahab. Senior officials thought it was important to capture these men alive. They wanted to know for certain whether the murders were inspired by foreign sources and to a.s.sure a frightened and skeptical public that they had caught the killers. The previous night the police had gone up to the house at 1 a.m. They knocked on the door, and the criminals opened fire, wounding a policeman. The police fired back, and in the exchange of bullets that followed, the hit man's accomplice was killed. Since then the police had kept him trapped in the house.

I activated the 71st Battalion, which was highly trained in counterterrorism operations, and within minutes they were suited up and ready to go. I was accompanied by my aide-de-camp, Nathem Rawashdeh, an officer from the town of Kerak, about ninety miles south of Amman. As the battalion did not have enough body armor, Nathem and I stopped by the office to pick up some newly arrived samples of Russian-made body armor, and then drove at full speed to rejoin our unit. We met up with the rest of the battalion at a roundabout on the outskirts of town and headed into the center. The tires of the jeep screeched as we skidded around the final corner and stopped in the town square, which was crowded with people.

As my troops were piling out of their vans and a.s.sembling their guns and equipment, I asked who was in charge. A short policeman, who was quite aggressive, told me that this was his operation. "Look," I said, "I've been sent by Prince Ha.s.san with orders to take over this operation. He told me I'm to take the terrorist alive. So please stand down." After a heated argument, he finally gave way, and I was now in charge.

Standard operating procedure would have been for the police to clear the area and create a secure cordon even if we were in the middle of a town, surrounded by panicked people and curious onlookers. But this was not done, and I had no choice but to make the best of a messy situation.

"So," I said at last, "how far up the street is this man?" The policeman pointed to a house no more than ten yards away on the other side of the street. There is no way we should have been standing unprotected this close to a known killer. We all scrambled for cover in a sewing shop across the street. It had a large gla.s.s window looking out over the square that made us quite vulnerable. One of my men, Jamal Shawabkeh, who later headed Special Operations Command, was leading the a.s.sault team. He lived in Sahab and had been one of the first on the scene. After briefing me on the situation, Jamal said, "Now that we're in charge, let's storm the building and kill him. It will take five minutes." I told him no, that we had to take the man alive. I explained that those were my orders, so that he could stand trial for his crimes. We would have to try to capture him alive, even if it meant some of us getting killed. This was a very difficult order to give, but Jamal accepted it without missing a beat. "Well then," he said, "I'll be the first man through the door."

One policeman, overhearing our planning session, came up to me and said, "I don't think you should use explosives to blow the side wall or windows out. He's got explosives in there." At that moment, looking out the window of the sewing shop, I saw that there were policemen standing all over the roof of the house and, exasperated, I said, "Then b.l.o.o.d.y well get those men off the roof!"

We resumed planning the a.s.sault. A middle-aged man in civilian clothes stood next to me. I thought he was a plainclothes intelligence officer. When I caught his eye he said, "Would anybody like tea?" It turned out he was an enterprising falafel seller who had left his cart out in the street and come in to see what was going on. It was a surreal moment. Here we were in a life-and-death situation-with bystanders taking it all in like a soccer match. Although it seemed comic, we knew that at any moment the situation could turn into a tragedy.

The police were failing to keep a secure area around the building. "We've got to get some order here! Throw this guy out and cordon off the street," I told Nathem, but the general chaos continued.

Once we had blocked off the area, I told Jamal to lead the a.s.sault. He readied his team of crack operatives, including a huge Special Forces officer by the name of Abu Khasheb, who was a real character. Special Forces used to test new equipment like Tasers and pepper spray on him to make sure they worked. Neither one could stop him, so he was the ideal man to a.s.sault a hardened killer. Onlookers held their breath as Jamal walked through the square and made his way to the house. He pushed the door open and poked his head through.

"Keep out!" shouted the hit man. "If you come in, I'll take as many of you with me as I can."

"Listen," said Jamal in a low voice, "we're not the police. We're Special Forces. You know what that means. Either you give up or I'm going to roll a grenade into the room and that will be the end of you." Then Jamal sprinted back across the square to brief me. "If we're going in, it has to be now," he said.

I gave the order for Jamal to lead the a.s.sault. He went back to the front door at the same time as an a.s.sault team crept around the side of the house. Then he stepped inside and confronted the terrorist one-on-one without raising his weapon, distracting him while the rest of the team stormed into the house through a side window.

Seven minutes later, there was a commotion inside the house. Jamal came back out the door, followed by Abu Khasheb, who was carrying the hit man. Running over, I said, "What happened?"

"I walked through the door slowly," Jamal said, "so he could see I was dressed in civilian clothes. He pointed his gun straight between my eyes. I told him not to be stupid and said we weren't going to kill him, he would get a fair trial." Breathing heavily, Jamal continued, "Then the team burst into the rooms and rushed him." He looked sheepish and apologized for the blood running down the man's face. Considering the fact that Jamal had stared this vicious killer down, I felt that a few sc.r.a.pes were more than acceptable!

When the crowd understood what had happened it rushed into the square-policemen, civilians, falafel sellers-and everyone began to shout, "Special Forces! G.o.d is great!" Many tried to attack our man, so we had to get him into a van and out of there quickly. Not wanting to take credit, I asked the officials on the scene to tell everybody it was a police operation, and that they should receive the plaudits.

The police later rounded up four other accomplices, but one escaped and fled to Europe. In total, there were seven members of this gang. They turned out to be criminals who were targeting wealthy businessmen for extortion.

The next morning, as I walked into my office, I saw a couple of my men shaking their heads and smiling. I had not realized it at the time, but television cameras had captured the whole thing. The story had made headlines on the next morning's news, and my team and I found our names plastered across the front page of the newspapers. So much for my attempts to keep the whole thing quiet.

My father had been advised that the operation was taking place, but he had not been briefed in detail, so he was quite surprised to see me on the morning news. I was summoned to the palace. When I arrived, my father was standing by the breakfast table, frowning. Picking up a copy of a newspaper and waving it at me, he said, "What on earth were you doing yesterday? You put your life in danger." I explained that although I had commanded the operation, the media had exaggerated my role. "Jamal and his people went into the house. They're the ones who took the risks," I said. "Well," he said, "don't let me catch you pulling a stunt like that again!" Although he pretended to be angry, I later learned from family members that he was very proud of my role in the operation.

My military training had prepared me for being shot at. What it had not prepared me for was a life in politics. When people are shooting at you, it is evident who the enemy is. This is not so clear when they are smiling and paying compliments.

PART III.

Chapter 12.

In the Footsteps of a Legend As King Hussein's firstborn son, I started out life as the crown prince, but in 1965, when I was just three, my father decided to remove me from the line of succession. There had already been some eighteen doc.u.mented a.s.sa.s.sination attempts on his life, most during the turbulent 1950s, when radical Arab nationalism was on the rise, and it seemed unlikely that he would survive long enough to see me reach adulthood. My father asked parliament to amend the Const.i.tution, and named his brother, Prince Ha.s.san, as his new heir.

As a young man I believed my mission in life was to be a soldier, acting as my father's s.h.i.+eld and sword. But there was one attacker from which I was powerless to protect him. In the summer of 1992 he went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent surgery and the operation was successful. The family, and the nation, breathed a sigh of relief. But in July 1998 he again began to feel unwell, and he returned to the United States for medical evaluation.

At the time, I was attending a short course at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. With me on the course was Abdul Razaq, a Jordanian general who had been my battalion commander in my first army posting. He was a great mentor to a young second lieutenant still trying to learn the ropes. He had heard the news of my father's return to Mayo, and in a quiet moment between cla.s.ses he took me aside and said, "Without your father, Jordan will not survive."

The graduation ceremony was the day after my father's arrival at Mayo. As soon as it ended, I went straight to Minnesota with Rania and the children to be by his side. My son Hussein was very close to his grandfather. Sharing more than a name, they both had a deep love of aircraft. After work, my father would often stop by our house. He would ask me if Hussein was in the house, and if Hussein was not, he would not even come in. "Okay, bye," he would say in a rush, before heading off on his way. From the age of two, Hussein began to memorize the names of various types of planes, and my father delighted in showing him small Corgi models and hearing his little voice cry out "Stuka" or "Jumbo." Once, when we traveled to London, my father flew his TriStar himself and called Hussein, then two and a half, into the c.o.c.kpit as he landed at Heathrow. To the amazement of the crew and my father's delight, he correctly identified a Concorde and a Boeing 747 sitting on the tarmac as we came in to land.

After the laughter and joy of our little family reunion in Minnesota, my father asked to speak to me alone. Placing his hand on my arm, he said, "The cancer has come back." I had never given serious consideration to the possibility that my father might die. I thought he would defeat his cancer, as he had done before. But something about his tone of voice told me this time might be different.

We stayed two more days, and then he asked me to go back to Jordan and carry on my army duties. In 1996 I had been promoted from leading Special Forces to heading Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and I was focused on modernizing our tactics, facilities, and equipment. But I would soon have much more to think about than military training.

In late July 1998, my father released a televised public statement from the Mayo Clinic saying that his cancer had returned and that he was undergoing chemotherapy. That summer in Amman was hot and tense. The air was thick with rumors and gossip. It was then that Crown Prince Ha.s.san inadvertently added fuel to the fire.

I was at my brigade headquarters, sitting at a long oak table with some army officers discussing the weekly training program, when I was told that the crown prince would join our meeting. Prince Ha.s.san was acting as regent in my father's absence. We all stood when he entered the room. Motioning us to sit, he asked us what we were working on and, after I had explained, said that there was an urgent matter he needed to discuss. He then began telling us how he had just heard that King Hussein was in dire straits and didn't have long to live. "It is irreversible, just a matter of time," he said. We sat in stunned silence. It is a harsh moment when a son is told that he may soon lose his father. And it is sobering for a soldier to be told he may soon lose his king and commander in chief. A hundred thoughts were going through my mind about what I had just heard and what the terrible news, if true, could mean for my country and my family.

After my uncle left, the other officers and I looked at one another in confusion. We did not know whether the news could possibly be true. But if it were, it would mean a change of king, with a possible shake-up of the army to follow. Still reeling from my uncle's visit, I headed off to a previously scheduled lunch in Amman. At the lunch were General Samih Battikhi, the head of the General Intelligence Department (GID), responsible for both internal and external security, and Field Marshal Abdul Hafez Kaabneh, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces. They had both also just been told by the Crown Prince that my father was terminally ill, and they looked pale, concerned for my father and uncertain as to what exactly was going on. I told them I would call my father to find out the truth.

After lunch I spoke to my father's aide-de-camp, Colonel Hussein Majali, who was with my father at the Mayo Clinic. I asked him if the news was true. He did not answer my question directly but said he would have my father call me back. Two long hours later, my father called and angrily asked me who was spreading this rumor. I told him that the crown prince had told me and a few others that his condition had deteriorated.

"Well," he said, "it is not true at all. I've got better things to do over here than worry about this nonsense. But thank you for letting me know."

Our conversation put my mind at rest. He sounded like the same upbeat fighter I had always known. But rumors and speculation continued to abound, strengthened by my uncle's statement.

Prince Ha.s.san had served loyally as crown prince for more than three decades and believed he had earned the right to be king, as did those around him. But some in the country had begun to believe that my father, in his last days, would name somebody else as crown prince. And there were those who had a candidate in mind. A group of people, including my father's head of security, the chief of protocol, and the head of the GID, were pus.h.i.+ng for Prince Hamzah, the king's eldest son by his fourth wife, Queen Noor, to head the line of succession. Only eighteen at the time, and a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Hamzah was innocent of the plotting going on around him. He and I were very close, as I was with all four of my brothers. Sensing an opportunity, the two groups competed behind the scenes to promote their candidate and discredit the other. Rumors in Amman were rife.

Adding to the gossip was Crown Prince Ha.s.san's decision not to visit my father in America. His supporters argued that he was just doing his job as regent, providing much-needed stability in the country at an uncertain time. But Field Marshal Kaabneh later told me that while my father was in the hospital Prince Ha.s.san gave orders for some officers to be given early retirement and others to be promoted. Kaabneh refused. Prince Ha.s.san had said, "I am the supreme commander now."

"No, sir," was Kaabneh's reply. "n.o.body has told me that. I only take my orders from His Majesty King Hussein. The king is in America, but we can call him at any time." The crown prince was insistent, but Kaabneh stood his ground. Military affairs were strictly under the control of the king, and it was unprecedented and unconst.i.tutional for the crown prince to issue orders directly to the military. Prince Ha.s.san may well have had good intentions, hoping to provide leaders.h.i.+p and continuity in the face of a growing power vacuum and to quell the many rumors flying around Amman. But his attempt to bypa.s.s inst.i.tutional structures only added to the mounting apprehension.

I still hoped for the best, and prayed that my father would win his struggle.

In early October I took time off and went back to the Mayo Clinic to visit my father. He loved j.a.panese food, so as a treat I had some Kobe beef flown in fresh from j.a.pan. I reached the clinic in the evening and met up with my sisters Aisha and Zein, who had also come to visit. We found him watching Patton Patton, one of his favorite movies (he was a big fan of movies and would watch one every night if he could). The opening scene always brought a gleam to his eye. Patton addresses his men under a huge American flag, saying as he sends them off, "Now, I want you to remember that no b.a.s.t.a.r.d ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d die for his country."

While my father, sisters, and other family members watched the film, I prepared the Kobe beef teppanyaki style, one of his favorites. The conversation turned to the situation back in Jordan, and some family members started repeating a few of the rumors circulating in Amman. At this point I lost my temper and asked to speak with them outside. "Listen," I said, "we're here to keep his morale up, not to sit around and peddle nasty gossip." Going back inside, we enjoyed the meal and watched the rest of the movie before retiring for the evening.

The next morning I came back early to apologize to my father for losing my temper. He told me to sit down, and we had a long personal talk that lasted almost three hours. Although we talked often, we mostly spoke about affairs of state, military matters, the family, cars, and motorbikes-rarely about personal feelings. Educated at boarding schools in Egypt and England, he could be reserved, and he encouraged his children to act the same way. But this conversation was different.

He told me he was really proud of the work I had done in the military, and said he was proud of me as his son. He told me that although I may have felt at times that he was neglecting me, in fact it was the opposite. He had been watching my career very closely. He had wanted me to make my own way in the military. So he had withheld his support many times, hoping that I would overcome challenges on my own. But, he conceded, he might have gone too far. "I feel I've let you down as a father," he said, "because at many times during your military career I knew that you were getting the short end of the stick, and I didn't step in. You must be angry that you didn't get your father's support."

With a smile I told him that, frankly, there were a couple of times over the previous twenty years when I could have done with some help. But in hindsight, I could not thank him enough, because it was during the hardest times that I had learned the most. Then he went on to say that he was expecting a lot from me, and that when he got back to Jordan he had some major changes he wanted to make. I thought he was talking about changes in the government, or a new approach to jump-starting the economy, which had been slowing in part because of the king's deteriorating health. I still hoped and prayed that he would have many years left ahead of him. Was my father telling me that he was dying? If so, I was not ready to face that possibility.

Two years earlier, in May 1996, the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu had a.s.sumed power in Israel. Netanyahu was no supporter of the Oslo Accords, which the Palestinians had signed in 1993 with his Labor predecessors, s.h.i.+mon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. A few months after Netanyahu came to power, the opening of a tunnel in Jerusalem in the vicinity of Al Haram Al Sharif triggered Arab anger and violent protests in the West Bank. It also ran counter to the peace treaty Israel had signed with Jordan in 1994, which included a clause recognizing Jordan's special role in overseeing Jerusalem's holy shrines. Relations between Israel and the Palestinians deteriorated precipitously after that. Against this backdrop of tension, U.S. president Clinton invited Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian president Ya.s.ser Arafat to join him on October 15, 1998, for a four-day summit at the Wye River Plantation, a compound on Maryland's eastern sh.o.r.e. The talks were going badly, and on October 18 Clinton asked my father to come and energize both parties. Two days later the sight of my father, gaunt and nearly bald, having painfully risen from his hospital bed to plead for peace, helped inspire the feuding parties to resolve their differences. After days of prolonged negotiations, the two delegations endorsed a breakthrough land-for-peace agreement under which Israel would redeploy from a further 13 percent of the West Bank. Although they were thrilled that their king had come to fight for peace, many Jordanians watching the proceedings on television were shocked to see the change in his condition. Two months before, he had been much st.u.r.dier; by now he had lost weight and looked very frail. His rapid deterioration fueled speculation in Amman that perhaps my father was sicker than people had realized, and that the country might soon need to prepare for a new king.

The Wye River Memorandum, signed on October 23 at the White House, restarted the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians that had been stalled for a year and a half. In exchange for control over additional land in the West Bank, the Palestinians agreed to prevent "acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities" against Israel and to amend the Palestinian National Charter, removing provisions calling for the elimination of the state of Israel. In return, the Israelis agreed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, open the Gaza airport, and provide safe pa.s.sage for Palestinians moving from Gaza to the West Bank. Both sides, it seemed, were at last moving toward tackling the most difficult final status issues, including political control of Jerusalem, the return of refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars, and the final borders of a Palestinian state.

My father asked me to come and be with him in America, so I flew to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., from Jordan on October 22, the day before the signing ceremony. I arrived in the evening and received word on arrival that my father wanted to see me. From the airport I jumped into a waiting car. Driving to my father's home in Maryland, I watched the sun glinting on the Potomac River and wondered what was in store. When I arrived, my father called for me to join him in the study. I stood at attention until he motioned for me to sit. I never lost sight of the fact that although he was my father, he was also my king. I was a bit shocked to see how frail and thin he had become, but I found that he still had that rea.s.suring look of strength in his eyes.

He told me he had missed me and said he had heard good things about me since we had last met. It was clear he had heard about a lot of the intrigue going on back home, and he knew I was not part of it. Then, in a low voice, he described his anger at hearing reports that Prince Ha.s.san had attempted to bypa.s.s the military chain of command and issued orders to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I told him that the chief of staff was holding the armed forces in complete and utter loyalty to him. He would have resigned rather than follow orders given by anyone but the king.

My father told me that he had been thinking about the matter a lot. Then he said, "I have decided to change the line of succession." I nodded, and he continued, "I hope you understand that this will be difficult for many in Amman, but I believe you will be up to the task. I will be expecting things from you." He didn't specify who he intended to choose, and I didn't press him. My father was tired from his treatments, and this was clearly a very difficult conversation for him. He left it at that and said, "Why don't you go out and have a good time."

My head was spinning as I headed to Morton's restaurant in Georgetown with a family friend for a steak. Perhaps my uncle's prediction was about to come true. If my father intended to change the line of succession, then clearly my uncle would not become king. But then who? If he was planning to make Hamzah crown prince, why hadn't he told me? I was not yet ready to accept that my father was dying, let alone that he might intend to choose me as his successor.

The signing ceremony between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Ya.s.ser Arafat was scheduled at the White House late in the afternoon of the next day. My father spoke a few words at the ceremony.

"We quarrel, we agree; we are friendly, we are not friendly," he said. "But we have no right to dictate through irresponsible action or narrow-mindedness the future of our children and their children's children. There has been enough destruction, enough death, enough waste. It is time that, together, we occupy a place beyond ourselves, our peoples, that is worthy of them under the sun . . . the descendants of the children of Abraham."