Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril

by King Abdullah II

  That fall, the speculation surrounding the succession intensified, and the gossip was no longer confined to Amman. “Jordan’s Feuding Queens Fight Over Succession,” proclaimed a headline in the London Sunday Times. “King Hussein Ails; His Brother Waits,” said the New York Times. Papers all over the world joined the game. In Canada the Calgary Herald ran a story headlined “Princes Jostle for Hussein’s Crown,” which alleged a feud between Queen Noor and Crown Prince Hassan’s wife, Princess Sarvath, accusing both women of trying to manipulate the succession. It was very painful to read all of this in the press and to see details of my father’s illness and our family dynamics debated openly in public. I was dismayed to see our private grief splashed over the front pages.

  A rare spot of good news came in late November, when we heard that my father had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a curious anomaly, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin had received the Peace Prize in 1978 for ending the state of war between Egypt and Israel, and President Yasser Arafat, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres had shared the prize in 1994 for their work on the peace process. But my father and Yitzhak Rabin would not be similarly honored for signing a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan that same year.

  In early January 1999 my father left the United States for London. On January 7, I landed at Heathrow and drove through the freezing rain to his house near Ascot, some fifteen miles southwest of the airport. The house was bustling with family. I could tell he wanted to speak to me privately, but it was hard to find a quiet moment. Every time I went to see him another family member would show up. Even so, we had that comfortable feeling that fathers and sons have when not saying much and just enjoying the closeness of each other’s company. On my last day in London I had hoped at last to speak to him privately, but my uncle Crown Prince Hassan paid a surprise visit. He had been facing quite a bit of criticism back home for not visiting my father at the Mayo Clinic. Although my father was still seething about Prince Hassan’s army overreach, he managed to hide his anger during the visit. I finally succeeded in finding a few moments alone with him that night. “Stay here for a couple of days,” he said. “Sir,” I said—I never stopped calling him that—“I have really got to get back to Jordan.” I told him that I was in charge of a major element of security for his arrival. He sighed and said we would catch up in Amman.

  Back in Jordan I began making arrangements for my father’s return. He had been away from the country for almost six months, and hundreds of thousands of Jordanians wanted to welcome him home following what they believed was a successful cancer treatment. The plan was for him to travel by car from the airport through the streets of Amman to his home in the Hummar district, northwest of the city. His house was called Bab Al Salam, which means “gate of peace” in Arabic. It was named after one of the entrances to the Grand Mosque in Mecca, which my family had ruled for many generations, until Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud of the Nejd took over the Hijaz in 1924 and went on to found present-day Saudi Arabia.

  Over the next ten days speculation continued to mount that my father had decided to change the line of succession. Several people came up to me and hinted conspiratorially that I was a candidate. I really felt it was none of their business. Over the years I had avoided meddling in politics and had devoted myself to my military career. I was not about to change that now.

  On January 19, 1999, my father landed at Marka airport near Amman. He had flown his aircraft, a Gulfstream IV, all the way from London. Dressed in a dark suit and wearing the kouffiyeh, the traditional Jordanian red-checkered head scarf, he stepped out of the plane. The scene on the tarmac was emotional, with hundreds of people gathered to welcome my father and thousands more lining the streets of Amman. The night back in July when he had told me his cancer had recurred, I had a dream that he would return to his country and our people would turn out in the thousands, as they had in 1992 after his first illness. That dream came true, but in real life there would not be a happy ending.

  There were tears streaming down my wife Rania’s face, and I was trying as best I could to keep my emotions in check. But not all emotions on display that day were genuine, as family members, politicians, and members of the Royal Court lined up to welcome their king home. The way my father handled the welcoming line was a quiet lesson in statecraft. Some people he kissed, some he hugged, some he shook hands with, and some he walked straight past, not even acknowledging. He knew who had been loyal while he was away—and who had not. One family member tried to kiss him as they shook hands, and my father pushed him away. Realizing my father knew of his hypocrisy, the man broke down in tears.

  When he reached me, my father completely ignored me. He did not even look me in the eye. He just shook my hand and walked straight past. Oddly, that was when it hit me. He did not want to focus attention on me because he wanted to make me crown prince. If he had given me a more effusive greeting, the watching courtiers would have taken it as a sign that I had risen in his favor, and would accordingly have begun jostling for influence. And those with ill intentions would have begun working against me.

  The next day the crown prince of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, came to pay their respects. My father ordered me to go and meet them at the airport. Normal protocol demanded that the crown prince greet them, but my father said, “I want you to meet these two. They are your friends, and you should bring them in.” I welcomed the two guests, drove them to meet my father, and then took them back to the airport.

  A few days later, on January 22, my father called the house and said, “I want to see you.” I immediately drove out to Hummar, winding up the steep hill that rises above Amman. I found my father waiting in the dining room and shut the door behind me. He looked a lot worse than he had in London. I had heard from the guards that he had had several blood transfusions, and I was scared for him. He took my hand and said, “I want to make you crown prince. This is your right. You are the most capable, and you are the one out of all of them who can take the country forward.” I sat in stunned silence. Then, finally, I said, “What about my uncle, Prince Hassan?”

  He said that one of the reasons he had chosen me was that I always thought about everybody else, and he knew that I had the ability to lead the country and to keep the family together through this difficult time. At the end of the day, Hassan was still his brother and my uncle. My eyes misted up as I realized that my father was telling me he was dying. He would be heading back to the United States in a few days, he said, to try a bone marrow transplant. It was his last chance. The strength in his eyes seemed to dim a bit with that, and a cold sensation crept into my stomach. I think that was the first instant I truly felt alone. I felt like breaking down in tears and telling him how much he meant to me, but I knew that was not my father’s way. The best way I could show my love and affection was to focus on the consequences of his decision and to take my new responsibility seriously. So although it was an emotional conversation, we continued to talk about practical matters.

  The most immediate question was whom I should name as crown prince. According to the Constitution, the succession would pass to my son Hussein, but he was only five. I asked my father for his advice. “It is up to you who you choose as your crown prince,” he said. Overtaken by emotion, he paused. At this point, the tone of his voice changed. “For your own safety, I’d advise you to make Hamzah crown prince,” he said in a low voice, “but in the end it is up to you. Be very careful.” It was then that I realized just how aware my father had been of the political intrigues back in Amman.

  After we finished speaking I went home, struggling to control my sadness. When I walked through the front door I found Rania sitting on the floor of the living room surrounded by a pile of photos. We had a cupboard full of family pictures that she had been saying for years needed to be organized, and she had decided to go ahead
and get started. I looked down at my wife, surrounded by pictures of happy family moments, and told her my father was making me crown prince. “His health is really, really bad,” I said. “I don’t think he has long left.” She looked at me with an expression of fear and sadness, tinged with foreboding. All too soon we would be thrust into the spotlight in a way neither one of us could ever have imagined. And there were a lot of wolves out there, waiting for us to stumble.

  The morning of January 25, I was sitting at home when the phone rang. It was the chief of protocol, who let me know that King Hussein wanted me and my uncle to come to the palace that afternoon at four o’clock. So this was the transition, I thought. It was still early, so I went to my mother’s house in the hills outside Amman to wait. I walked across the walled lawn where I had played as a child and where I had watched Israeli jets flying overhead during the 1967 war. Inside the house my family was waiting, gathered to help support each other. My brother Feisal was there, my older half sister Alia, my younger sisters Zein and Aisha, my cousins Talal and Ghazi, and my mother. We talked about happier times, sharing memories of our father. I waited until four o’clock, but just as I was about to leave I was told that there had been a delay. I later learned that my father was struggling to finish the final draft of a letter to Prince Hassan about his decision. Late in the evening, the phone rang again. The chief of protocol asked me to come immediately.

  When I arrived at my father’s house, Bab Al Salam, I was brought into his office, where my father and Prince Hassan were waiting. My father told Prince Hassan that he had decided to change the line of succession, and that I would now assume the responsibility of crown prince. Prince Hassan handled the situation with great grace and dignity. He handed me his personal flag, the standard of the crown prince. Passing it back to him, I said, “Please, Uncle, keep it. It is your flag.” We went outside after that and stood in front of the waiting cameras, the three of us shaking hands, while my father announced the news to the nation.

  That same day my father made public a strongly worded letter to Prince Hassan in which he was sharply critical of his brother, and in particular of the political infighting in Jordan, saying:I have lived through many experiences and I noticed at an early age how some climbers climb onto the branch to ruin the relation between brothers and between father and son, and I swore to myself that this would not happen here in my lifetime. But surely, this has become the objective of every declared or hidden enemy, and all of those have used all means at their disposal to weaken confidence between leadership and people, but they have not succeeded.

  Their plan at this stage, together with those who want to destroy Jordan, was to instigate infighting in the ranks of the leadership after they failed to dismantle the base, and they find in my being alive an impediment to all their designs, forgetting that Al Hussein has lived only to gain the blessings of God, to have a clear conscience and to achieve the best for all his people, regardless of their origins, who cooperate in holding the banner high and carrying the message of Jordan with their heads held high, not bowing except before God.

  My father then referred specifically to Prince Hassan’s attempts to interfere with the army, saying, “I have intervened from my sickbed to prevent meddling in the affairs of the Arab Army. This meddling seemed to be meant to settle scores, and included retiring efficient officers known for their allegiance and whose history and bright records are beyond reproach.”

  Many in Jordan were stunned by the letter’s tone. But they trusted their king implicitly and knew him as a wise and insightful ruler. If King Hussein had taken the decision to change the line of succession, Jordanians knew there were good reasons. For his part Prince Hassan wrote a letter on January 28, replying to some parts of the king’s letter and asserting his unwavering loyalty to his brother and king and his full support and backing for me as the new crown prince.

  The next day, Rania and I drove my father to the airport. He was headed back to the Mayo Clinic for further treatment. My father and I sat in the front, with Queen Noor and Rania in the back. My father had bad hiccups as a result of his illness, and was extremely jaundiced so that even his eyes were yellow. I tried to make light conversation but failed dismally. As we drove out of Amman, he stared at the countryside as if for the last time. I placed my hand on top of his, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

  At the airport we found a receiving line of relatives waiting to say farewell. I struggled to keep my composure, and for a brief moment lost control of my emotions. I felt a hand on my arm. “Get a grip on yourself,” one of my aunts whispered. “People will be looking at you.” It was a sharp reminder of how much my life was about to change. I had never been so miserable or felt so alone in my life. Jordanians do not like to see grown men cry, and from then on my face remained a mask. I walked onto the airplane with my father, doing my best to assume an air of military correctness, and when he turned around our eyes met in silence. He too was having a hard time controlling his emotions. Before I could hug him good-bye, he gave me a nod, turned, and continued down the aisle into the plane. That was the last time I saw him conscious.

  The week after my father’s departure was very tense. I had been thrust unexpectedly into the very center of Jordanian politics and had to begin operating in my new role. I had had very few contacts with senior Jordanian political and private-sector figures and was moving into uncharted territory. Some of the existing leaders, including the prime minister and the chief of the Royal Court, had been appointed by Prince Hassan. Others, including the chief of protocol and the chief of royal security, were quite close to Queen Noor. There were a lot of people who hoped I would stumble, so I fell back on those closest to me, my colleagues in the army and in Special Operations.

  Prince Hassan had been reaching out to several of his constituencies, and reports reached me that he had invited many senior political leaders to his house, including some of the senior tribal leaders. Wanting to get a better understanding of the situation, I asked Mohammad Majed, who was my number two in Special Operations, to gather some of my key officers at my house that evening. These were men I trusted implicitly. When the group had assembled, around 7 p.m., I told them that I had heard reports that Prince Hassan was being very active. I did not want to get blindsided by something stupid, however unlikely. My time in the military had taught me to protect my flanks. It would be prudent, I told them, to put some units on alert, just in case. As I was speaking, some of my commanders began to chuckle. Annoyed and tired, I said that this was serious and asked them what they thought was so funny. They told me that they had placed Special Operations Command on alert days before. They had already been in touch with the 3rd Division, and both the 40th and 60th Brigade commanders and their units were on standby. I looked into the faces of my unit commanders, and for the first time in a week I felt confident that things would turn out well.

  Just over a week later we got word that my father’s treatment had failed. He would return to Jordan to die in the land he loved. He landed on February 5, 1999, and was brought out of the airplane on a stretcher, unconscious and on life support. The family met him at the airport and accompanied him to the King Hussein Medical Center. Thousands of people from all across the country had gathered outside, praying, crying, and lighting candles. They waited in the street all night, saying their last good-bye. Senior Jordanian officials, old warriors, were weeping, and many were looking to me to see how I would handle it. “We always believed he was bigger than Jordan,” one said to me. “We thought he would be here forever.” At the hospital we spent the night taking turns standing by my father’s bed. Only the immediate family was there: Noor, my mother, my wife, my brothers and sisters, and some of our cousins.

  The following evening, with the family still gathered around, one of the doctors asked to speak to me privately. The cancer had spread much more quickly than anybody had expected, and there was nothing further anybody could do for him. For a second I broke down, overcome by grief. Then I wa
lked back into the room and informed the family, and together we said good-bye to a brave man with an extraordinary force of will whom we loved so much. The doctors said the end would come that evening, but he lasted until late the next morning. Everyone had always remarked on what a great heart my father had, and it was the last part of him to give up, still beating strong as the rest of his body failed.

  The funeral was the next day, on February 8, 1999. It was an overcast day and a light rain began to fall. People said that even the sky was crying for King Hussein. Most Jordanians had known no other king, so for the country his death was intensely personal, more like losing a member of their family than a head of state. Hundreds of thousands of distraught mourners lined the streets as an armored car carried his coffin, surrounded by flowers and covered by the Jordanian flag, to Raghadan Palace, his final resting place. As the car passed by, people surged forward, sobbing and wailing, trying vainly to seize a last glimpse of my father or to touch his coffin. The car was followed by an honor guard and a man leading my father’s favorite white horse. Out of respect for my father, the horse, named Amr, would never be ridden again.

  In the palace grounds an extraordinary collection of world leaders had come to pay their respects. Dubbed the “funeral of the century” by one observer, it brought together perhaps one of the most disparate groups of world leaders ever assembled. Some of the mourners were at war with each other, and one or two had even tried to kill each other in the past. But they were all united by their shared respect and admiration for my father. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria had come, joined by Crown Prince Mohammed of Morocco, President Yasser Arafat, and Saif al-Islam, the son of the Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. There were President Clinton and three former U.S. presidents, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. Russian president Boris Yeltsin was there, as were Prince Charles and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had come, as had Khaled Meshaal, a leader of Hamas, whom Netanyahu had tried to assassinate the year before. In all, representatives of some seventy-five countries came to Amman to honor my father. Inside the palace, my father lay in state, watched over by the Royal Guard. The Circassians, a Muslim people from the Caucasus who immigrated to Amman in the nineteenth century, provide the Royal Guard for Jordan’s kings. They had served my father loyally for many years. Now they stood by him as he took his final journey.