Our Last Best Chance Part 9

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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 d.i.c.k 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 a.s.sets out of the Mediterranean. That would mean firing Tomahawk missiles and launching air strikes from our carriers across Jordanian airs.p.a.ce 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 airs.p.a.ce?"

Eventually General Franks understood my concerns and agreed to s.h.i.+ft everything elsewhere. To this day I owe General Franks a tremendous debt of thanks-in part because of our personal friends.h.i.+p 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: We have used all our relations with influential countries in order to avert the day in which we see Iraq exposed to this invasion with all that it entails of suffering of innocents and suffering of the entire region. . . .The Jordanian people, and I am one of them, strongly condemn the killing of women and children. . . . As a father I feel the pain of every Iraqi family, of every Iraqi child and father.

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 pa.s.sed 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 attache at the Iraqi emba.s.sy, 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.

I said, "If this is going to risk the life of Jordanians, forget diplomatic immunity. Go arrest them, right now." The intelligence services burst into Iraqi emba.s.sy housing and grabbed the military attache and two of his accomplices. This created an uproar. The public did not know the evidence that we had seen of what the Iraqi regime was planning, and many were critical, saying, "How could you break into emba.s.sy property and arrest Iraqi diplomats?" I told them to trust me, that I was acting on the basis of good information and that Jordanian lives were in danger.

The next day the Iraqi amba.s.sador came to see me. He was furious. "I've got a message from Saddam," he said. "He's really upset that you've done this."

"I am quite willing to come out publicly and say that I've arrested these three people because they were plotting to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of Jordanians," I said. "I am looking beyond the war, Your Excellency. I don't want to have to say anything now that would destroy the long-term relations.h.i.+p between Iraq and the Jordanian people. So please send this message back to Saddam: if this is how you want to do it, I will publicly reveal how your regime is trying to kill Jordanian civilians." The amba.s.sador-to his credit-came back to me and a.s.sured me that he had sent my message back to Baghdad. "Problem solved," he said. The amba.s.sador had told his Foreign Ministry that they had made a mess and that we would go public and cause an international incident if they continued to pursue it. So the issue died. We expelled the three men to Baghdad, and accusations from the Iraqi government stopped. At this point, they had more pressing concerns.

On March 28, after Friday prayers, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Jordan to protest the Iraq War. In Amman, a crowd of eight hundred people gathered near the Israeli emba.s.sy, chanting, "Our beloved Saddam, use your chemical weapons on the invaders!" They then tried to march on the emba.s.sy a few streets away, but the crowd was dispersed by Jordanian riot police, who fired live rounds over their heads.

Many of the demonstrators viewed the war as the West attacking the Arab and Muslim world, continuing a long history of violent Western interaction with our region. This perception had been strengthened when, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush referred to a "crusade" against terrorism. This unfortunate choice of words awakened in many Arabs memories of the violent invasions of the Middle Ages, and the Crusaders' b.l.o.o.d.y seizure of Jerusalem. Now, hundreds of years later, a Western army had again entered an Arab land. Some also believed that the United States was acting under the influence of Israel to destroy a strong Arab country, while the more cynical suspected that it wanted to replace Iraq's leader with somebody more friendly toward American oil companies.

Three days later a group of ninety-nine prominent Jordanians, including four former prime ministers, tried to ride this wave of public opinion and demanded that Jordan support Saddam in the war and do things I knew, and they knew, would not be in our national interests. However popular such rhetoric might be domestically, I did not have the luxury of making my decisions based on emotions. I had to look to the future and to Jordan's national interests once the fighting stopped. From my knowledge of Iraqi and Western forces, I thought it would be a pretty one-sided fight and would be over quickly. But others in Jordan were less certain.

The U.S. and British forces had some quick military successes, taking the southern town of Basra a few days into the conflict. But then the media, especially Arab satellite TV channels, began to report that they were facing difficulties. Their a.n.a.lysis was so convincing, bringing in retired generals to a.n.a.lyze the war's progress, that a lot of people, including many politicians, began to think the war would last a very long time, and even that Iraq had the upper hand. A week into the war, the U.S. advance on Baghdad was hampered by terrible dust storms. My wife had been watching television, which was reporting that the war was going badly for the Americans. But I knew that you did not get a good sense of a war from watching satellite television. I had traveled to Baghdad with my father before the first Gulf War and knew how the Iraqi regime had a tendency to overestimate its own military capabilities. I knew that the Iraqi army was no match for the United States and its allies, given their superior resources and military capabilities.

On April 9, U.S. forces captured Baghdad, and the world watched live as jubilant Iraqis toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. I felt a mixture of both sadness at the needless death and suffering the war had caused and hope as I looked at the many Iraqis celebrating the promise of a better future. When the statue fell, it was like a switch had been thrown across the Arab world. The images flashed on TV from the Arabian Gulf to Morocco and around the world. Even before it hit the ground, my phone began ringing. On the other end were many of the ninety-nine prominent Jordanians who had questioned our position. They were calling to congratulate me on "my wisdom and judgment" in keeping Jordan out of the conflict. "We knew Saddam would not last," they said. "We were with you all along." I was amazed how easily some of the elite would change their colors to win favor.

I was sure that the United States and its allies would win the war, but I had no idea how badly they would handle its aftermath.

Chapter 20.

"We Will Be Greeted as Liberators"

Conventional wisdom in Was.h.i.+ngton held that removing Saddam Hussein and imposing a new Iraqi government would be as simple as replacing a lightbulb. In an interview shortly before the war, Vice President d.i.c.k Cheney said: I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.... The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.

Once the war ended, this rosy view began to look more and more misguided. "It's going to be a bloodbath," I had told my friends in America. In my conversations with friends in the region, we almost universally shared a sense of foreboding about the aftermath of the war in Iraq. I remember several conversations with Egyptian president Mubarak in which we both expressed concerns that the invasion would lead to unforeseen negative consequences that we would be dealing with for decades.

In June 2003, two months after the fall of Baghdad, Jordan hosted a meeting of the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea, and during the conference I met L. Paul Bremer, the newly appointed head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the interim Iraqi government established by the United States. The previous month, on arriving in Baghdad, Bremer had issued two now infamous orders: to pursue an aggressive de-Baathification policy, and to dissolve the Iraqi army.

I pleaded with Bremer not to dissolve the army, and warned him that it would blow up in all of our faces. I told him that I understood the rationale behind the process of de-Baathification, but that it needed to apply only to those at the top with blood on their hands. To be a taxi driver or a teacher in Saddam's Iraq, you had to be a member of the Baath Party. I said I hoped he understood that if he was going to de-Baathify across the board, he would be setting himself up for major resistance and would create a power vacuum that someone would have to fill.

The army was one of the only functioning inst.i.tutions inside Iraq. Together with other security networks, it guaranteed Saddam's survival. But it was also in large part responsible for social stability. Disbanding it was crazy-like deciding to fire all the cops, firefighters, and ambulance drivers in New York City all at once because you do not like the mayor. You would have hundreds of thousands of people with military training and access to small arms and explosives, sitting at home with no jobs in a desperately poor and brutalized country that had just come through a war. Baathists, feeling vulnerable, would organize and strike back. How would these people feed their families? It was a recipe for anarchy and chaos.

"I know what I'm doing," Bremer said brusquely. "There's going to be some sort of compensation. I've got it all in hand, thank you very much."

But despite Bremer's supreme confidence, things started to fall apart quickly. The Sunnis felt isolated and threatened, because they believed they were being shut out of the new Iraqi government. They started organizing military operations against coalition forces. At the same time, ideologically motivated Iraqi Islamists opened the door for foreign Arab jihadists. If anybody rejoiced at the chaos in Iraq after the American invasion, it was Al Qaeda, as they quickly realized that they could s.h.i.+ft their operations from Afghanistan into the heart of the Arab world.

Although it is hard to determine the origin of these two policies-Bremer denied responsibility in his memoir and said they came from the White House-I believe the ideas originated from the Iraqi emigre politician Ahmad Chalabi and his supporters. When he lived in Jordan in the 1970s and 1980s, Chalabi was an active businessman and a close friend of Crown Prince Ha.s.san. One of his most notorious ventures was the Petra Bank, founded in Jordan in 1977. In the late 1980s, the Petra Bank ran into financial trouble, and the government began to investigate, suspecting financial fraud. Investigators believed that Chalabi had been illegally taking funds from the bank. When they began closing in on him in 1989, he smuggled himself out of the country to Syria. He was tried in absentia and in 1992 was convicted of embezzling $70 million and sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. There is still an active warrant for his arrest in Jordan. After he left, his name was connected with the controversy surrounding the collapse of a Lebanese bank and a financial inst.i.tution in Switzerland.

After an unsuccessful career as a businessman, Chalabi tried his hand at politics. During the 1990s he was one of the leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, the main opposition group dedicated to toppling Saddam Hussein. He was supported by the Clinton administration, and also became close to neoconservatives Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. When Bush came to office in 2001, Chalabi increased his efforts to push his ideas for influence and cash. He is said to have secured substantial amounts of both from the U.S. State and Defense departments.

I warned President Bush about Chalabi when I saw him in 2002, telling him that he was the worst person possible to be giving advice to the United States. Bush said that he would "deal with Chalabi." But Chalabi's star continued to rise.

Chalabi's grandiose schemes may have been popular in Was.h.i.+ngton, but on the ground in Baghdad, a grim reality began to take hold. As one of the first Arab countries to reopen our emba.s.sy in Iraq, Jordan was soon drawn into the chaos. On August 7, 2003, a truck pulled up outside our emba.s.sy. As the driver walked away, the truck exploded, killing at least seventeen Iraqi civilians. None of our emba.s.sy staff were killed. Later investigation showed this to be a strike by the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who would later become the leader of a new group called Al Qaeda in Iraq. In pursuit of a wider goal, Zarqawi and his followers wanted to ride on a tide of violence and brutality, and struck at Jordan to discourage others from helping the nascent Iraqi government.

The looming chaos in post-invasion Iraq called for a coordinated approach by all of its neighbors. And one neighbor in particular was positioning itself to play a dominant role in Iraq's future. In early September 2003, I traveled to Tehran to meet with the Iranian leaders.h.i.+p. This was the first trip to Iran by a Jordanian head of state since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. My father had been close to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and I remember visiting Tehran as a young teenager. We went to a holiday camp on the Caspian and explored the resort island of Kish, in the Arabian Gulf.

I remembered Tehran from my childhood as a grand imperial city, edged by mountains like Amman, but as I drove into the city in 2003 I found it looking a bit run-down. Little seemed to have changed since the revolution. I met Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, at the Sadabad Palace northeast of the capital, and after inspecting the honor guard and the requisite formalities, we began to discuss business. Khatami was quite relaxed and jovial. He pointed to his defense minister, who was an Arab Iranian, and said jokingly, "This fellow is an Arab; we have to keep a close eye on him." We discussed possible areas of economic and cultural cooperation between Iran and Jordan. After the meeting was over, he took me on a tour of the Iranian defense industry.

The Iranians did have some serious business to conduct. Some Iranian officials wanted to reach out to the Americans and knew I would shortly be going on a scheduled visit to Was.h.i.+ngton. So they asked me to act as an intermediary. They said they wanted to discuss cooperation over the future of Iraq. They also said they were holding under house arrest or some kind of detention around sixty to seventy Al Qaeda members who had escaped from Afghanistan into Iran. They asked me to tell the Americans that they were ready to talk about handing over these individuals to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. They were also prepared to discuss their nuclear program, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I agreed to relay the message to President Bush.

The morning after my meeting with Khatami, I met with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, the most powerful man in Iran. We pulled up to a walled compound and were handed over by our escort to the supreme leader's personal guard. Unsmiling, serious, and barefoot inside the compound, they led us to the room where we would meet Khamenei. In contrast to the grandeur of Sadabad Palace, the supreme leader's residence was austere, with a simple table and chairs and a few carpets.

While President Khatami had been open and friendly, Khamenei was reserved. "Welcome to Iran," he said as we shook hands. "As a Hashemite, you are very important in our branch of Islam."

We discussed common challenges facing Muslims and the need to coordinate our efforts. We each play a leaders.h.i.+p role in our branch of Islam, and we spoke about the problem of the takfiris, extremists who denounce as infidels those who don't follow their rigid interpretation of Islam. Although our two countries had not been close, we had a common interest in combating the takfiris, who have been inciting sectarian strife throughout the Muslim world.

After the meeting with Khamenei ended, I returned to Amman, hoping that this visit would mark the start of improved relations between Jordan and Iran, not least around a common approach to the growing problems in Iraq. Relations did not improve, however. Differences in our positions on regional politics and the peace process, as well as Iran's interference in the affairs of the Arab countries, would prevent that from happening.

Since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2005, Iran has been at the top of the agenda in many Western capitals. But it is too easy to blame a people for the actions of their government when in fact the two are quite separate. Iran is a great nation with a tremendous historical heritage and a remarkably educated and sophisticated population. Most Iranians feel no hatred toward America and the West and would like to see a peaceful resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is common in the West to portray the Iranian government as a single structure, with all elements following the same rationale and motivation for action. But the truth is that the Iranian political structure is complex and opaque, even to those of us in the region. The only certain truth about the Iranian government is that anybody who tries to give a simple explanation is certain to be wrong.

Rather than a monolith, Iran is a mosaic, formed of numerous interlocking political elements. There are those who are deeply religious, and whose motivation toward iconic Islamic causes, such as the liberation of Jerusalem from Israeli occupation, is sincere and deeply felt. But there are others who, acting out of political motives, adopt the banner of Jerusalem merely as a rallying cry for their own illegitimate purposes, exploiting the legitimate frustrations of young Arabs over continued occupation. Many people in Iran and the rest of the region are tired of this manipulation.

A few days after my visit to Tehran, I met with President Bush at Camp David. We drove out to the president's famous weekend retreat high in the mountains of northern Maryland on September 18, 2003. Outside the windows of the wooden lodge, the heavens darkened as Hurricane Isabel thundered inland from the Atlantic Ocean. I asked the president why, despite repeated promises that the money would stop, Chalabi was still being paid $350,000 a month by the U.S. Defense Department.

Bush, dressed casually in a gray jacket and light blue s.h.i.+rt without a tie, was furious. He leaned across the wooden table and said, "You can p.i.s.s on Chalabi." Members of my delegation were not exactly sure what the president meant, but they dutifully wrote down his comment in their notes of the meeting. There was an uncomfortable silence from the president's advisers, as his mood matched the skies outside.

We then began to discuss Israel and Palestine. Although this was the same spot where Barak and Arafat had come so close to an agreement only three years earlier, peace seemed farther away than ever. The road map, a concept that Jordan had put forward the previous year to provide a set of specific steps toward peace, now seemed to be in disarray.

But Bush continued to blame Arafat for the deadlock in the peace process. "The road map is darn specific!" he said, raising his voice. "Palestinians failed the first test. Arafat does not want peace."

Demonstrating that Sharon's campaign to link Israel's conflict with the Palestinians to the wider American "war on terror" had in large part succeeded, the president said he was still in a war frame of mind and that part of this war on terror is in the Palestinian territories. Stressing his view that Arafat was unable or unwilling to make peace, the president made it clear he believed that Arafat was a failed leader and said he would no longer deal with him. He would spend political capital on winners, not losers, he said. Then, angry at Arafat's inability to control Palestinian violence, he added, "What we asked of him is doable, and he did not do it!"

The U.S. administration seemed to have a very one-sided view of the situation. Bush was sincere, but appeared not to have been receiving the best, or most impartial, advice. I tried to give him a more comprehensive view of the situation. I defended Arafat and told him that Arafat was the leader of the Palestinian people. You may or may not like him, I said, but he is viewed by the Palestinian people as their legitimate representative.

s.h.i.+fting gears, Bush asked about my recent trip to Iran. I told him that it had been positive, and relayed the Iranian offer to hand over the Al Qaeda prisoners they were holding and to embark on a wider, more comprehensive discussion on their nuclear program and on cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq. He told me his staff would follow up. I never heard any more about the matter, but I know that custody of the Al Qaeda members, including a number of senior leaders, was never transferred.

Although we made good progress on several issues, I emerged from Camp David convinced that the peace process would not be moved forward this time around.

A few months later the Iranians would receive some welcome news from Baghdad regarding their old enemy, Saddam Hussein. On December 13, 2003, Saddam was captured by U.S. forces at a farmhouse near Tikrit, around one hundred miles north of Baghdad. The next day satellite news stations showed pictures of a bearded, disheveled Saddam and his underground hiding place. It was a surreal moment. Many Arabs felt let down, almost humiliated, by the way Saddam had capitulated so meekly. Even those who really hated him had expected him to face his enemies with courage and determination and to go out fighting, like his sons Uday and Qusay, who had been killed in July 2003 in a shootout with U.S. troops in Mosul, in northern Iraq. But when he was captured without a fight, his mythical, fearsome image was damaged.

I remember talking to the king of Saudi Arabia that day, and we were both shocked to see this man, who had been one of the most powerful leaders in the Middle East, hiding underground in a hole. It was humbling. Saddam Hussein had been a powerful Sunni Arab leader who had stood up to both the United States and Israel, and by doing so he had gained popularity throughout the region. I had met him in Baghdad with my father when he was at the height of his power. To see him diminished, with gray unkempt hair, blinking on television, was sobering. Those across the region who had looked to him as a modern-day Salaheddin felt badly let down.

But Saddam's capture did not bring an end to Iraq's troubles. For the most part, things continued to deteriorate. Some of the strife was caused by historic tensions and hatreds that had been brutally suppressed by Saddam's regime. But some of the problems that drove the insurgency were entirely of America's own making.

In late April 2004, the American television news program 60 Minutes 60 Minutes revealed that American troops had abused Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib military prison. The graphic images of hooded and shackled prisoners caused an uproar inside Iraq and across the region. On May 5, President Bush gave an interview to the Middle Eastern television station Al Arabiya in an effort to control the damage. "I want to tell the people of the Middle East that the practices that took place in that prison are abhorrent, and they don't represent America," he said. revealed that American troops had abused Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib military prison. The graphic images of hooded and shackled prisoners caused an uproar inside Iraq and across the region. On May 5, President Bush gave an interview to the Middle Eastern television station Al Arabiya in an effort to control the damage. "I want to tell the people of the Middle East that the practices that took place in that prison are abhorrent, and they don't represent America," he said.

The next day, May 6, I arrived in the United States for a previously scheduled visit to the White House, and the controversy was raging. Although the president had decried the actions at Abu Ghraib, the Arab world noted that he did not apologize for them. Bush took the meeting, accompanied by Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, his secretary of defense. After some pleasantries, he turned to me and said, "I'm really upset about Abu Ghraib. What do you think?"

Although we had our differences over policy, President Bush and I had by that point formed a strong personal rapport, which allowed me to speak candidly when needed. Some in the Middle East may be surprised to hear this, but in person he is quite different from the caricature painted by the media. He is a very sincere person who strongly believed that what he was doing was right. I think he was badly misled by some of his advisers, however. I knew he would want to hear the truth from me, even if it would upset some of his staff.

"Mr. President," I said, "you're the leader of the strongest and most powerful nation in the world. I think it is very easy from a position of strength to apologize, and I think an apology from you, because you are the president of the United States, would go a long way."

The president looked at me and scowled for a second, and then he said, "You're right." He turned to Condi and Rumsfeld and said, "I'm going to listen to my friend here." I guessed that some of his senior staff had been telling him not to make a public apology out of fear that it would make him seem weak. But there is also strength in humility.

After the meeting, we went outside the White House to the Rose Garden for a press conference. We stood side by side at podiums in the early afternoon sun as the president said: We also talked about what has been on the TV screens recently, not only in our own country, but overseas-the images of cruelty and humiliation. I told His Majesty as plainly as I could that the wrongdoers will be brought to justice, and that the actions of those folks in Iraq do not represent the values of the United States of America.I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was equally sorry that people who have been seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America. I a.s.sured him Americans, like me, didn't appreciate what we saw, that it made us sick to our stomachs.

After the press conference I went to the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell. We discussed Abu Ghraib again, and Powell said the pictures hurt the image of the United States all over the world, and even at home. He said these images created a major problem that the president knew he needed to deal with and do more about than just appear on Arab networks. This implicit criticism was only the most visible sign of the infighting that had begun to break out in the Bush administration.

On one side were the neocons-Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Elliott Abrams-and on the other the moderates, led by Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage. Although I typically would not meet with Wolfowitz and the others in person, my senior staff in Was.h.i.+ngton, who did, told me that they were dogmatic and inflexible. Like many politicians who are ideologically driven, they had little time for compromises. If you are dealing with a pragmatic decision-maker, there is scope for give-and-take. But if you are dealing with an ideologue, it can be very hard to find common ground.

My staff said Feith and Abrams were impossible to deal with. The minute they walked into the room there was a feeling that this would be yet another awful meeting. They acted as if they were superior to everyone else. They had a plan, and they would see it implemented-no matter what.

The next month, after a year in existence, the much-hated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was finally dissolved, and Bremer handed over power to an Iraqi government headed by Ayad Allawi, a prominent Iraqi s.h.i.+a politician, in antic.i.p.ation of national elections scheduled for January 2005. Allawi was a strong leader who had a chance to succeed in Iraq. Educated, worldly, and well rounded, he believed in a unified Iraq, but because some people in Was.h.i.+ngton were still backing Ahmad Chalabi, he did not get the undivided support of the American government.

The know-it-all att.i.tude among some in Was.h.i.+ngton was perfectly ill.u.s.trated during a visit I made to the United States in September of the following year. While in New York to attend the annual United Nations General a.s.sembly meeting, I was invited to a dinner given by Lally Weymouth, a senior editor at Newsweek Newsweek magazine and the daughter of the late Katharine Graham, publisher of the magazine and the daughter of the late Katharine Graham, publisher of the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post. One of the other guests, as I recall it, a female American news anchor, asked whether I thought women's rights were better or worse in Iraq since the war. "They're ten times worse," I said. "When you had a secular regime under Saddam, men and women were pretty much equal." Liz Cheney, the vice president's daughter, who was also present, leaned over to Ba.s.sem Awadallah, my chief of the Royal Court, and told him that I should not say those kinds of things in public. She had a smile on her face, so he was not sure how serious she was.

The next day Ba.s.sem received an unexpected follow-up call from Liz Cheney, saying that she had discussed my comment with Paul Wolfowitz, who had recently become president of the World Bank, and they had both agreed that I should not be expressing such opinions. When Ba.s.sem told me about the conversation, I suggested that he tell Wolfowitz to get stuffed. What I had said over dinner was true. I was shocked that some members of the administration and their supporters seemed to feel that there could be no dissent on Iraq-and that in America, a country that prides itself on opinionated self-expression, they would try to muzzle inconvenient news.

I had been warned by others in Was.h.i.+ngton, including a prominent journalist who had covered the Middle East for years, to tread with caution. "You've got to be really careful with some in this administration, because they're vindictive," he told me.

Thankfully, there were still some people in D.C. who were more interested in results than ideology and petty politics. One was William Burns, the a.s.sistant secretary of state responsible for the Middle East. A fluent Arabic speaker, Bill had once been the U.S. amba.s.sador to Jordan. At that time I was still in the army, and Rania and I had invited him and his wife to our home for dinner. A kind, softspoken, and gentle man, Bill is everything that you would want from a diplomat: worldly, nuanced, knowledgeable, and extremely intelligent. We have remained good friends ever since. Another person I came to know well was George Tenet, the CIA director. George had worked closely on the peace process, and subsequently developed a plan for a cease-fire and security arrangements between the Israelis and Palestinians. He was later used as a scapegoat for some American policy failings, but I always found him considerate of our views and as dedicated to finding an equitable resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli issue as anyone in Was.h.i.+ngton.

George and Bill both helped me to navigate the rough waters of Was.h.i.+ngton politics, giving me an inside sense of when to try to push policy in a better direction and when to hold my breath.

PART V.

Chapter 21.

My Islam I remember the first time I saw Mecca as if it were yesterday. I was almost fifteen when I accompanied my father on Umra (the lesser pilgrimage, which, unlike Hajj, can be made at any time of the year). Years later I performed the Hajj, one of the five Pillars of Islam. There were well over a million pilgrims that year, each clothed only in a white sheet tied around the waist with a piece of rope. I felt an amazing sense of community and brotherhood as I stood with these pilgrims gathered from all over the globe, all dressed alike, signifying our equality before G.o.d. remember the first time I saw Mecca as if it were yesterday. I was almost fifteen when I accompanied my father on Umra (the lesser pilgrimage, which, unlike Hajj, can be made at any time of the year). Years later I performed the Hajj, one of the five Pillars of Islam. There were well over a million pilgrims that year, each clothed only in a white sheet tied around the waist with a piece of rope. I felt an amazing sense of community and brotherhood as I stood with these pilgrims gathered from all over the globe, all dressed alike, signifying our equality before G.o.d.

We performed the tawaf, walking counterclockwise round the ancient Kaaba, the most sacred site in all Islam, and the place toward which all Muslims turn when they pray. My father had taught me about our ancestry, and the historical role the Hashemites had performed as guardians of Mecca, but to actually be there and to touch the Kaaba left me speechless. I sat down, humbled and overwhelmed, waiting to begin the afternoon prayer. I could hear a faint hum, and felt that I was present before G.o.d.

Islam is a religion that requires believers to perform daily rituals that act as a framework for the exercise of faith. But its deeper meaning lies in the spiritual values it awakens within its faithful, and the way believers come to manifest these values in daily life. The five Pillars of Islam consist of the Shahadatayn, or the acknowledgment of G.o.d and of Mohammad as G.o.d's messenger; prayer, which Muslims are instructed to perform five times a day, symbolizing their attachment to G.o.d; Al Zakat, giving alms to the dest.i.tute and the poor, a sign of detachment from the world; fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, to reveal detachment from the ego; and performing the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca.

I am troubled by the way in which many today view Islam, as a strict system of rules, instead of reflecting on the deeper meanings of our faith. We should think about how we can help a neighbor who is in trouble, a colleague at work who needs our advice, or a family member who needs our love and support. I feel at peace when I say my prayers, but I am also comforted when I can help others and show compa.s.sion and kindness. Islam stands for justice, equality, fairness, and the opportunity to live a meaningful and good life. These virtues have unfortunately been corroded by empty adherence to reactionary interpretations of our sacred texts.

When I pray, I often ask for protection for my loved ones and family, my government, my soldiers, and my country. As the head of a country, I pray for my people, for improvement in their standard of living and health. Sometimes I pray for specific things, like creating more jobs for young people. And sometimes I even pray for rain.

One of the things in the last two decades that has saddened me the most is the misinterpretation of a great faith as a result of the misguided actions of a very few. An example is the meaning of the term "jihad." Many a.s.sociate this term with violence and war, yet jihad literally means "struggle" and refers primarily to the internal struggle to better oneself. It is a struggle for self-improvement but also a wider struggle to improve the lives of others around you. Victory does not come as the result of a single battle, but as the result of many small triumphs throughout the day, some of which may be so small as to be almost invisible to others.

I am pained by the twisting of my religion by a small band of misguided fanatics. Such people embrace a deviant form of Islam. While claiming to act in its name, they are in reality just murderers and thugs. They const.i.tute an unrepresentative minority of the 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, but they have had a disproportionate impact on how the faith is perceived. These people are called takfiris, which in Arabic means "those who accuse others of being heretics." They rely on ignorance, resentment, and a distorted promise of achieving martyrdom to spread their ideology, turning their backs on over a thousand years of Quranic scholars.h.i.+p and commentary in the name of what they presume to be the authentic ways of seventh-century Arabia.

Takfiris are a small part of a larger fundamentalist movement, the Salafi movement. Salafi ideology (Salafi in Arabic means "going back to the past") proposes to go back to the "fundamentals" of the early faith, but the majority of Salafis do not condone terrorism or the killing of innocent civilians. They declare total war on their enemies and believe that people who kill themselves in suicide attacks go straight to heaven. For them there are no limits on how war can be waged against their enemies, and they disregard traditional Islam's moral codes, enshrined in the Quran and in the Hadiths. Almost all Muslims are aware of the tradition set in the early days of Islam in the seventh century by the first Muslim Caliph, Abu Baker Al Sediq, whose instructions to his armies were to not kill women or children or elderly people and to not cut any tree that bears fruit. In what can be considered the Muslim "Geneva Conventions," Abu Baker's first act as Caliph said: Do not betray; do not carry grudges; do not deceive; do not mutilate; do not kill children; do not kill the elderly; do not kill women. Do not destroy beehives or burn them; do not cut down fruit-bearing trees; do not slaughter sheep, cattle, or camels, except for food. You will come upon people who spend their lives in monasteries, leave them to what they have dedicated their lives.

The actions of the takfiris have nothing to do with Islam and its message. Islam celebrates life; they seek to destroy it.

Takfiris have turned their back on this tradition of clemency and compa.s.sion. They aim to overthrow governments across the Arab world by violent means in order to declare a worldwide "Islamic" republic. For the sake of what they imagine to be Islam, they are killing Muslims and corrupting Islamic ethics, and they also seek to destroy the world embraced by 99.99 percent of all Muslims.

The takfiri movement, which can be traced back to the revival of a doctrinaire jihadi tendency in Egypt in the 1970s and had connections to the 1979 uprising in Mecca, would sp.a.w.n many violent terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. Takfiris are drawn to wars where Muslims are under attack, and they swarmed into Afghanistan. Many, including Osama bin Laden, learned about war, strategy, death, and terror while fighting the Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s. After that conflict ended in the early 1990s, large groups of these fighters returned to their native lands, bringing their new "skills" with them.

In Jordan we have been following the activities of these takfiris for many years. A large number of them flocked to Afghanistan in the 1980s and to Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990s. After France and the UK, Jordan was the largest contributor of troops to the UN forces in the former Yugoslavia, sending three battalions, or over three thousand troops, from 1993 to 1996. A Jordanian general even commanded UN forces in Croatia. We saw takfiri fighters coming to take part in the conflict, and we knew we were facing a new and lethal combination of nationalism, religious extremism, and violence.