Chapter 15
When I became king in February 1999, my first challenge was not war or a terrorist attack. It was how to pull Jordan’s economy out of a short-term crisis and put it onto a path of strong and resilient growth.
My father had left the country a rich inheritance of peace, political stability, and a strong international standing, but economically Jordan was struggling. Throughout the 1990s the economy had suffered from the fallout of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Most Gulf countries had perceived his efforts to stop the war as siding with Saddam, and as a result they dramatically cut back on their aid, loans, and investments in Jordan. The return of large numbers of expatriate Jordanian workers from Gulf countries, mainly from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, meant that we no longer benefited from their remittances, and the imposition of sanctions on Iraq hit us particularly hard, since Iraq had been our main trading partner and the principal source of our oil, supplied on concessional terms.
Economic growth slowed, and the government had to rely on foreign borrowing to underpin its spending. By the end of 1998, foreign debt had risen to over 100 percent of GDP. We would soon be unable to service the debt. Jordan turned to the International Monetary Fund, as it had done in the previous debt crisis in 1989, and in the month after I became king we secured new financial support from the IMF, which was followed by a rescheduling of our debt to the Paris Club of international creditors.
The immediate difficulty was resolved, but we needed more than a quick patch. From my time in the army, speaking to soldiers, traveling to their villages, and meeting their families, I knew that many of our people were struggling financially. My priority was, and remains, to secure a decent living for Jordan’s citizens. I set for my government the goal of laying the foundation for the strong and stable economic growth that would make this possible.
This was not an easy task for a small, vulnerable economy. Jordan has no oil and its other natural resources are limited. Both water and agricultural land are scarce. Its industrial base has never been very strong, and with a population of only four and a half million in 1999, it was unlikely to become an economic powerhouse. We would have to learn to compete more efficiently in this new era of globalization, as dismantling the barriers to trade and investment had exposed countries to ever fiercer competition for markets and investment.
I assembled a team of talented economic advisers, including Bassem Awadallah, a former investment banker and economist with a PhD from the London School of Economics, and Samir Rifai, a Harvard and Cambridge graduate and the son of my father’s trusted adviser Zaid Rifai, and asked them to come up with bold, innovative ideas to jump-start Jordan’s economic recovery. “We don’t have time for complex theories and debate,” I told them. “I just want to know the right thing to do.” They came back with a host of proposals that built on the measures the IMF’s structural adjustment program had introduced at the end of the 1980s: privatize state enterprises, downsize the state bureaucracy, end subsidies, improve education, promote innovative industries, remove trade barriers, and get the public and private sectors to work together to promote industries like information technology, pharmaceuticals, and new media.
We had a basic problem. Much of what we would do was going to be very painful in the short term. Many of the benefits would take years to be felt. And we knew all too well that the previous set of structural adjustment measures had triggered riots. Comfortable with the old ways, many people would resist change—or claim that it could not be attained.
The top priority, my advisers all agreed, was for Jordan to gain admittance to the World Trade Organization (WTO), an international organization formed in 1995 to promote free trade between countries by reducing tariffs on imports and exports. By joining, Jordan would be able to export to over one hundred countries and enjoy greatly reduced tariffs. In return, the other WTO members would be able to export to Jordan on the same terms. Jordan had begun its application in 1995, but the process was stalled. I agreed to do everything I could to get it moving again.
In mid-May 1999, just three months after I became king, I made my first visit to the United States in my new role. My father and President Clinton had been very close. Before the trip I wrote the president a letter, telling him how much my father had valued their friendship. I do not know whether it was the letter or his fond feelings for my father, but when we met at the White House, Clinton was in an expansive mood. “What can I do to help Jordan?” he asked with a broad smile.
“Help us become a member of the World Trade Organization,” I said quickly. I do not think he was expecting this at all. Usually countries in dire financial straits simply ask for more direct aid. But I did not want handouts. I wanted us to have a chance to help ourselves. Clinton took note of my request but gave no immediate answer. We continued our discussions of the subject with the U.S. government, which finally supported our application. Eleven months later, in April 2000, Jordan became a member of the WTO.
Switching from economics to regional politics, I told the president about my recent trip to Damascus and of President Hafez al-Assad’s desire to meet with him. Clinton smiled, thanked me for passing on the message, and said he would see what he could do. True to his word, he met Assad for the first time in Geneva the following year. Syrian-Israeli peace was the main subject of the meeting, which failed to achieve any breakthroughs. Assad insisted on full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights to the borders of June 4, 1967. Israel, in previous talks with the Syrians, had demanded alterations to this border. Clinton’s attempts to change Assad’s position failed and the stalemate persisted.
The U.S. government was a gracious host, but the contrast to my previous visits was striking. I could no longer slip out to catch a movie with a couple of friends. Instead, as I found out when I went to see The Matrix, I would have a six-car Secret Service motorcade in tow, sirens blaring. If I wanted a quiet night at the movies, I would have to shed my security detail and go in secret.
Some Middle Eastern leaders think that dealing with the United States is just about one’s relationship with the president. In our neighborhood, it is essential to know the heads of state personally, as power tends to be highly centralized. If the top man says he wants something, it gets done. But in the United States, political power is much more dispersed. In my time at Deerfield and Georgetown, I had learned a lot about the complexities of the American political system.
I was in the United States on a military course in 1985 when my father met with President Ronald Reagan. I saw him right after the meeting and he was elated, because Reagan had agreed to provide extensive support for Jordan in the form of a defensive arms package. I warned my father that such a proposal was unlikely to get through Congress. But he thought Reagan’s personal agreement would be enough. “I have the word of the president of the United States!” he told me. But the truth was that without the consent of Congress, even the word of the president will not get things done.
A visit to America, done right, takes at least a week. First, you have to meet with the president and vice president, then with the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and, ideally, the national security adviser. Next come senior intelligence officials and military officers. Finally, on the political side, you also have to engage both the Senate and the House of Representatives. I typically spend two long days in Congress, meeting with members of up to ten different Senate and House committees, both Republicans and Democrats. In America, you have got to work the system. It is not just about getting the green light from the White House. The challenge is to have the support of both the White House and Capitol Hill.
Back in Jordan there were many pressing domestic problems to deal with. I was eager to improve the lives of Jordanians, but I suspected that privatizing state-owned industries and holding officials and civil servants accountable to more vigorous sets of performance measures would not sit well with them. First I would try to make more tangible improvements that they could see and understand.
One example of the magnitude of the challenges we faced was the Al Bashir Hospital in Amman. As the largest state-run public hospital in the capital, it was in great demand. But when I visited the hospital in April, it was in an awful state. The wards were crowded and dirty, and none of the elevators in the building worked. Doctors had long lines of patients waiting for them and very little support. I was appalled and told the health minister to fix the situation—quickly.
In the army, when you say do something, it gets done. But dealing with the civilian government ministries, I was learning, required a different approach. First of all, armies march in time, so everything happens on a fixed schedule: you attack at a certain time, you wake up at a certain time, and you expect something to be done by a certain time. With the government, that is not necessarily the case.
I made a follow-up visit a couple of weeks later, and nothing had been done. The elevators were still broken, and the place was still deeply unhygienic. I told the health minister that I was serious about seeing improvements, and made a third visit after that, on returning from my trip to the United States.
With my third visit the hospital management began to get the message, and conditions started to improve. But inefficient public services were a challenge across the whole country, not just in Amman. A lot of information had started to come in to the Royal Court about other problems. To my frustration, many times when I raised these issues with the relevant ministers, they would tell me that the reports were exaggerated and that everything was fine. I quickly understood that I would need to see with my own eyes what was going on.
My father used to tell me how when he wanted to take the pulse of the country, he would wrap a traditional checkered head scarf around his face and drive round Amman at night in a battered old taxi, picking people up. He would ask every new passenger, “How’s the economy going? What do you think of the Palestinian-Israeli situation? What do you think of the king’s new policy?” One time, in order to provoke conversation, my father told his passenger, “You know, this king is rubbish.” The man pulled a knife on him and said, “Listen, you speak badly about the king and I’m going to cut your throat right here!” He was only able to calm the man down by pulling off his head scarf and revealing his true identity.
I decided I would find a way of visiting government institutions discreetly to see what was really going on. I had several disguises made, which, because I still use them, I will not describe in detail here. But suffice it to say that anybody who met me in one of my disguises would never mistake me for a king.
I went to government offices and facilities across the country, from the north to the south, incognito. Accompanied only by a skeleton security detail, I visited hospitals, tax offices, police stations, and many other parts of the bureaucracy. Occasionally my secret visits were discovered by the public, but more often they were not. If I found people were being treated badly, I would raise the matter with the relevant minister back in Amman, and now I knew when they were not telling me the whole story.
One time I visited a tax office that was in complete shambles. People’s records were lying around everywhere in boxes on the floor. Wanting to see what would happen, I walked over to a box, grabbed a handful of files, and headed for the door. Sure enough, nobody stopped me. I don’t think any of the civil servants even noticed.
The next day I called the ministry and demanded to know why it was handling people’s confidential information in such a sloppy way. One of the bureaucrats argued that I was misinformed. When I pulled out the tax records I had taken, he turned white and went very quiet. That visit was made public. For one thing, I had to return the tax records. And I wanted everyone to know that I was pushing hard for reform. Government employees sometimes get complacent if they feel nobody is watching them. My military training had taught me that expecting a lot from people delivers the best results.
Over time, my penchant for secret visits resulted in “Elvis” sightings. For each visit I actually made, there were reports that I had been spotted in another thirty or forty places. We heard of one such sighting at a tomato-packing plant up in the north of Jordan. A long line of farmers were waiting in their trucks for the plant to process their cargo, which might spoil in the sun. One farmer, as he pulled in to the gate, said he thought he had seen the king in disguise, waiting in one of the trucks. Whether he actually thought he had seen me or was just being cunning, no one will ever know, but the effect was the same. Pretty soon the line started moving at top speed.
Across the country civil servants started panicking. If the next person in line could be the king, they figured, they had better treat everyone like royalty. The message to the bureaucrats was: you are there to serve the people, not the other way around. One newspaper ran a cartoon showing me dressed as a road sweeper, a prisoner, a beggar, and so on. The secret visits were popular with many Jordanians, but I knew that I could not end all inefficiencies and make the kind of changes Jordan needed by myself. The private and public sectors would have to begin working together.
On November 26, 1999, we held our first National Economic Forum, a two-day conference at the Mövenpick Hotel, on the shores of the Dead Sea. Newly opened that year, the Mövenpick had a spa with impressive health facilities, but the delegates had little time for relaxing. They were too busy arguing. We’d invited about 160 representatives from the government and every part of Jordan’s private sector: industrial farmers, IT companies, pharmaceutical companies, and many others. What the business community was asking for from the government seemed like common sense, but when the meetings expanded to include civil servants, the two groups started shouting at each other.
Halfway through the first day, it was clear that this approach wasn’t working. So I tried a different approach. I let the delegates know that nobody would be leaving until they came up with some solutions. I would lock the door and throw away the key until they sorted things out. When they realized that I was serious, and that they would be stuck there for the next two days unless they came to terms, the delegates put aside their differences and started coming up with a plan that would benefit all of Jordan. There was no press, so everybody could speak openly.
The ideas ranged from the simple to the ambitious. One of the simplest was to introduce a two-day weekend. At that time, everyone in Jordan worked a six-day week, with Friday as a holiday. But the question being debated was, if we went to a two-day weekend like most of the world, what should the extra day off be? The Islamic holy day is Friday, so a lot of people wanted Thursday and Friday as the weekend. But many of the businessmen worked with companies in the West, so they wanted the weekend to be Friday and Saturday. After a healthy debate, the delegates settled on Friday and Saturday.
We were not the only ones looking to move our economy more into line with international markets. Four years later, in July 2003, Qatar followed suit, shifting to a Friday-Saturday weekend. They were followed by the UAE, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Bahrain in 2006, and Kuwait in 2007.
The delegates discussed more ambitious goals, including building on the success of Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs). Formed by the U.S. government in 1996, two years after the Jordan-Israel peace treaty was signed, these were manufacturing zones from which the products could enter the United States duty-free so long as at least 20 percent of the content was produced in either Israel or Jordan. The zones supplied U.S. companies such as Gap, JCPenney, and Levi Strauss. Exports from Jordan to the United States had shot up from virtually nothing to $18 million in 1998, and the delegates wondered how we could raise them still further.
By the end of the conference the delegates had agreed on an ambitious economic development plan, including changing laws to make things easier for private companies and encouraging investment, privatization, and educational reform. They also agreed to set up the Economic Consultative Council, which would have representatives from both government and the private sector, to continue the debate and to implement reforms. Unlike many countries in the Middle East, Jordan has no oil and comparatively few natural resources. So the delegates knew that we would have to develop the true wealth of Jordan—our people—if we want to prosper in a competitive global economy.
Two days after the conference ended, the World Trade Organization held its annual meeting in Seattle. While protesters raged outside, tossing insults and brickbats at baton-wielding riot police, inside the convention center the Jordanian delegation lobbied hard to be allowed to join. While some in America were violently rejecting globalization, we were rushing to embrace it. The next month, WTO members voted on our application, and Jordan joined on April 11, 2000. Our efforts to modernize our economy were gaining momentum.
In January 2000, I went to Davos, Switzerland, for a meeting of the World Economic Forum, the yearly get-together of leading businessmen, politicians, academics, charity workers, and international bureaucrats. This was the first time I had attended the forum, and I had invited some young Jordanian businessmen and -women to travel with my delegation, hoping they would be able to benefit from the connections they were sure to make among the three thousand delegates.
The guest list was as refined as the mountain air. President Clinton and UK prime minister Tony Blair were there, as well as South African president Thabo Mbeki and the leaders of some thirty other countries. There were leaders from the business world too, such as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates; John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems; and AOL chief executive Steve Case.
I hosted a breakfast meeting on Sunday, January 30, with some of the leading technology executives present, and also met privately with Bill Gates, whom I invited to visit Jordan. At a session later in the day I spoke about the challenges facing the Middle East, the terrible pressure of unemployment, and how technology could help. Even in the Swiss Alps I couldn’t escape neighborhood politics. Yasser Arafat was there, meeting on the side with President Clinton. And two Iranian exiles were arrested for throwing paint bombs at the Iranian foreign minister. In 2003, Jordan hosted the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, a regional meeting that we have since hosted every other year in the summer. And that year, Rania was invited to join the board of the World Economic Forum Foundation, as the only member from the Arab world.
Davos was a beautiful place in which to carry out the important task of persuading global executives to consider investing in Jordan. But not all my work that first year took place in such elegant settings. A few months after becoming king, I paid a visit to Sudan. It was quite a contrast.
As we were about to touch down at Khartoum airport, I looked down from the plane and could not see any welcoming committee. But out of the corner of one eye I caught a glimpse of an old T-55 tank rumbling toward us with soldiers clinging to its side. I was momentarily alarmed until we landed and saw the welcoming committee and I realized that this was the presidential guard, sent to patrol the area and ensure security. President Omar Al-Bashir invited us to join him in an aged Mercedes saloon car. I sat in the back with the president, the faded leather seat covered by polished wooden beads, and my brother Ali, at the time the head of my personal security detail, sat in the front, next to the driver. As we sped off to the heart of Khartoum, Ali pointed to two bullet holes in the passenger window and asked the driver what they were from. “Ah, that’s from the last assassination attempt,” he replied. He did not elaborate.
The Sudanese were gracious hosts, and on my return to Jordan I sent them an official gift: a new armored car. A few days later I got a message from the royal protocol staff that the Sudanese had sent a present of their own: a C-130 transport aircraft had landed at Amman’s airport with two lion cubs inside. They also had sent a warden, who explained how to care for the animals and then went back to Khartoum.
Valuing the symbolism of the gift but not quite knowing what to do with the animals, I had them put in a tennis court outside my house. When Rania noticed that they had begun to show an interest in our children, Hussein and Iman (who was born in September 1996), then five and two, she put her foot down and insisted that the lions must go. I “regifted” them to a close friend who liked to collect exotic animals.
Back in Amman, I learned that one of my fellow delegates from Davos, John Chambers, had announced that he was so impressed by the potential opportunities in Jordan that Cisco would invest $1 million here in a venture capital fund for high-tech companies. Cisco, a manufacturer of the infrastructure that powers the Internet, subsequently became a key partner, helping us to increase Internet access throughout the country. Chambers has been an outstanding friend to Jordan, donating computer equipment and opening an office in Amman, and has been very vocal in promoting our country, telling other business leaders about the opportunities in Jordan.
But we could not rely only on outsiders to develop our information technology industry. Soon local entrepreneurs started to spring up. In 1994, Randa Ayoubi founded Rubicon, an education software company. Using venture capital investment, she expanded into animation, creating a multimillion-dollar company with offices in Amman, Los Angeles, Dubai, and Manila. Rubicon produced a children’s cartoon series, Ben & Izzy, about two boys—one American, one Jordanian—who go on adventures together through history. She signed a deal with MGM to promote the Pink Panther cartoon in the Middle East and received a further multimillion-dollar investment from a Gulf buyout firm.
In 1997, two young Jordanians, Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury, started an Arabic-language Web-based e-mail service. Named Maktoob (“it is written” in Arabic), the company became one of the region’s largest online Web portals, with over sixteen million users, and attracted millions of dollars in venture capital investment. In August 2009, Maktoob was acquired by the American Internet company Yahoo!. For a high-tech start-up to be bought by a technology giant may be nothing new in Silicon Valley, but this was a first for Jordan, and for the Arab world, and I was immensely proud of the founders for showing that we could compete on a global stage.
One of the benefits of information technology is the impact it can have at all levels of society. From my time as an army officer, I knew how quickly my soldiers could learn to operate a Challenger I tank with its computer-aided firing system. I was tremendously proud of their intelligence and adaptability and knew that they would be successful in any environment, given the right opportunities. A lot of these people had entered the army as enlisted men because that was the only route of advancement open to them. Many had the potential to go to university, but they could not afford the cost.
Many of these talented men left the army when they were young, in their late thirties and early forties, and still had much to contribute. So through the Royal Court we provided scholarships for all retired servicemen who wanted to learn computer skills. These men were extremely dedicated students, and almost all graduated. Many went on to work as technical experts in schools, training teachers in the latest computer technologies.
We also instituted sweeping educational reforms, making it mandatory for computer skills and English to be taught in all schools across the country from the first grade onward and increasing standards in math and science. Our efforts have paid off. Every four years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving education, conducts an international assessment of science and math teaching. In 2007, Jordan’s eighth graders ranked the highest in the Arab world—in science they came out ahead of Malaysia, Thailand, and Israel.
Our first public university, the University of Jordan, was founded in 1962, and our first private university, Al-Ahliyya Amman University, in 1990. There are now twenty private universities and ten more public universities attended by 243,000 students across the country. A large number of students from both the public and private institutions graduate with technical and engineering degrees, providing a skilled pool of employees for foreign companies investing in Jordan, local start-ups, and high-tech businesses across the region. We also began to set up IT skills clinics in remote areas across the country where local people could learn about computers free of charge.
Information technology and education are both key to improving a nation’s economy, but to develop further we would have to continue opening up to the world. Joining the WTO was only the first step.
In June 2000, I returned to the United States and met with President Clinton, who congratulated me on our membership in the WTO. Again, he asked what he could do to help Jordan. And again I think he half expected me to ask for an increase in aid. This time I said, “I want a free trade agreement with the United States.” Going far beyond the general terms of the WTO, a free trade agreement (FTA) reduces tariffs on trade between two countries to the lowest practical level. FTAs are extremely prized for the access they give to the American market. At that time the United States had FTAs with only three countries: Canada, Mexico, and Israel.
Though somewhat taken aback, President Clinton said he would provide his full support. We began negotiations on June 6, 2000, and the U.S.-Jordan FTA was approved by the U.S. Senate on September 24, 2001. Jordan became the first Arab country to sign an FTA with the United States. Boosted by the reduction in tariffs, total exports from Jordan to the United States rose from $18 million in 1998 to about $1 billion by 2009—outstripping the level of our total exports worldwide when I took office.
Remembering our conversation from the previous year, President Clinton told me that he had met with President Assad of Syria in Geneva a few months earlier, but the meeting had been disappointing. No progress was made and it did not look likely that Syrian-Israeli negotiations would resume.
Domestically, we continued the effort to make Jordan attractive to foreign investors by creating a special economic zone in the southern port of Aqaba in May 2001. The economic zone had zero customs duty and greatly reduced tax rates, and it aimed to attract $6 billion of investment by 2020, an ambitious target. The incentives were more popular than we ever imagined, and by the end of 2008 we had already attracted over $20 billion in foreign investment, including funds from the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Lebanon.
The Kuwaitis, and in particular Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, have been some of Jordan’s strongest supporters, and among the largest investors in our economy. Rania was born in Kuwait, and the emir always refers to her as his daughter. Every time we meet, he treats me like a member of his family. “How is our daughter?” he asks.
Building on the success of Aqaba, we set up additional special economic zones, offering reduced tax and customs duties in Mafraq, Maan, Irbid, the Dead Sea, and Ajloun. These zones have also begun to attract major foreign investment, including from Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Lebanon.
Our companies were now playing on a global stage. A few of our larger businesses, such as Aramex, a courier company, and Hikma, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, were successfully competing internationally. Our membership in the WTO opened new markets for them. But many smaller companies were struggling. We needed to build on our local advantages, and began to devise mechanisms to help. The King Abdullah II Fund for Development provides capital and infrastructure to promising Jordanian entrepreneurs. And we soon found exactly the type of project we were looking for.
In the mountains of Ajloun, in northern Jordan, are some of the oldest olive trees in the world. But many farmers were using fiftyyear-old equipment to produce olive oil, and a few were employing methods that had not changed for millennia, using small presses and selling their wares locally in old glass jars. The rest of the crop would be sold for pennies to foreign companies, including Italian and Spanish ones, which, using the most modern equipment, processed our olives into expensive oils and sold them for a large profit. The fund invested in advanced pressing, bottling, and packaging equipment and set up a specialist company to help with branding and marketing. The resulting product is now sold in some of London’s most exclusive department stores.
One of my priorities has been to strengthen the Jordanian manufacturing and industrial base, particularly in the area of military technology. The King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau (KADDB), founded in 1999, has been a key part of this strategy. Through KADDB, Jordanian tanks and armored vehicles have been upgraded and new projects initiated (many of which are classified). We have expanded our collaboration with other nations’ armed forces, including those of the United States, Brunei, and Azerbaijan. Deals have been signed with European defense companies to maintain F-16 aircraft, develop military vehicles, and manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles. Working with a Russian partner, KADDB developed a new and extremely powerful shoulder-launched antitank missile, the RPG-32. Our products have been sold to Yemen, Libya, and Oman, among other countries.
One new project with enormous ramifications is the development of Jordan’s significant but unexploited uranium deposits. Although we had long known that our country had considerable uranium deposits, we had not moved to explore their commercial potential. In 2008 we set up the Jordanian-French Uranium Mining Company, a joint venture with the French power company AREVA. After initial surveys revealed a large quantity of uranium in the central desert, estimated at some 4 to 6 percent of the world’s total uranium reserves, we began working on setting up Jordan’s first uranium mine. We have signed additional exploration agreements with the Chinese firm Sino Uranium and the Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto. Under the guidance of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, we are developing a nuclear energy program, which would reduce our dependence on costly imports of oil and gas. A domestic nuclear reactor, provisionally planned to be built in the south, could supply up to a third of our country’s energy. But that is only the first step. The large amount of electricity it is expected to generate would allow us to power desalination plants, providing affordable water and thus achieving two goals at once.
Jordan is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). We are more than just a signatory, in fact; we have committed to cooperating fully with these organizations, with complete transparency. We want to be a model of how to develop a nuclear energy program.
In 2009 I gave an interview to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, saying that Jordan intended to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and adding, “I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction.”
The nuclear power issue is particularly sensitive in the Middle East. Israel, the only nuclear power in the region, continues to refuse to join the NPT or to allow inspection of its nuclear facilities. The international community has taken little or no action to pressure Israel to joint the NPT or to open its facilities for inspection. Lately, the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program has become a global concern, as the international community is adamant on preventing Iran from developing its uranium enrichment capacity, fearing that its real intentions are to develop a military nuclear program. Israel’s “privileged” nuclear position has led public opinion in the region to again point to double standards in applying international law.
Our nuclear program is not seen in that controversial context. Jordan’s credibility as a force for peace in the region and the transparent approach to developing nuclear energy in cooperation with international organizations and compliance with international standards have won our program the endorsement and support of the international community.
As important as negotiating trade agreements, reforming our educational system, boosting our domestic industry, and reducing our energy dependence have been in putting Jordan on the path of sustainable economic growth, sometimes our economy has been boosted in less expected ways.
In 1988, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came to Jordan to film scenes for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They were accompanied by the stars of the film, Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. My father asked me to meet them when they arrived in Aqaba and to take them to Petra, eighty miles to the north, where they would begin filming. Built by the Nabateans over two thousand years ago, the ruins at Petra are among the most spectacular ancient monuments in the world. Spielberg thought the massive temples, carved from living rock, would be the perfect location for the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, where the movie’s final scene takes place.
I was an army officer at the time, and my father offered to take Spielberg, Lucas, Connery, and Ford to Petra by helicopter so that they could view the dramatic scenery from the air. I got the job of pilot. As we were strapping ourselves in, my copilot leaned over and, pointing to Sean Connery, said in Arabic, “Who’s that guy? He looks familiar.”
“That’s Sean Connery,” I told him. “He played James Bond.”
“Right,” my copilot said with a chuckle as we took off. “We’ll show him who’s the real James Bond!”
We flew low out of the airport, barely clearing a fence at the end of the runway, and headed north up the valley toward Petra, hugging the ground. After about twenty minutes, Spielberg, his knuckles white from holding on to the seat, leaned over and asked if we really had to fly so low.
I decided to play along with my copilot’s joke. “Sir,” I replied, “we could go higher, but we are flying along the Israeli border, and there’s no telling what they might do. . . . Of course, if you are willing to take the risk, no problem.” Spielberg nodded, and we increased our altitude a nudge and flew a little higher.
We landed near the ruins, and the cast and crew soon set to work transforming the narrow, winding gorge that opens onto Al Khazneh, a temple carved out of the valley’s sandstone wall, into the Temple of the Sun, the film’s mythical hiding place for the Holy Grail.
I was not able to attend the movie’s premiere the following year, but my brother Feisal was there. He met Harrison Ford and introduced himself, saying, “My brother was the helicopter pilot who flew you up to Petra.”
“That guy scared the crap out of us!” Ford said.
Years later, after my father died, I met Steven Spielberg again, and he still remembered that ride. “Why did you do that to us?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “sooner or later I figured you were going to make a film about helicopter pilots. And you would have remembered those two crazy pilots in Jordan!” Many other movies, including Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Hurt Locker, and The Mummy Returns, have been partially filmed in Jordan since Spielberg’s Last Crusade.
Spielberg and I remained in touch, and when I became king I approached him for help in developing the Jordanian film industry. Thankfully, he had forgiven my youthful antics, and he introduced us to the dean of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, the oldest film school in America. With help from USC, we founded the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts in Aqaba, a graduate school devoted to teaching filmmaking. The institute opened in September 2008 with its first class of twenty-five students.
Creative industries such as film, media, and information technology hold the keys to Jordan’s future economic development—even if the path toward growth will sometimes be a little unexpected.
We can now look back on eleven years of progress. Opening up our economy to global trade has allowed our exports to rise sixfold between 1998 and 2008, the rate of unemployment to fall from 15.3 percent to 12 percent, and GDP per head to double. A UN survey in 2007 ranked Jordan 6th highest in the world in attracting foreign investment relative to the size of its economy, up from 132nd in 1995. The 2008 annual survey by the World Economic Forum rated Jordan the 48th most competitive economy in the world, ahead of Italy, Russia, Brazil, and India.
Jordan has not been immune from the impact of the global economic crisis. Growth slowed dramatically and the 2009 budget deficit, which stood at about 8.5 percent of GDP, is almost unprecedented in the history of the kingdom. Like countries the world over, Jordan had to take tough measures in 2009 to reduce its spending. But unlike many other countries, we did not have the means to offer financial stimulus packages that could get the economy moving again. We had to review policy, improve our investment environment, and ensure a more efficient management of the economy.
The global economic crisis was a challenge, but it also offered opportunities. Many international companies, especially those based in the rich neighboring Gulf region, were examining means to reduce their costs and improve their competitiveness. I was determined to put Jordan on their radar screens. Our highly educated professionals, strong infrastructure, strategic position in the heart of the region, and access to some of the biggest global markets and an open business environment give us a valuable competitive edge. So we began identifying specific opportunities that could attract investors and modernizing our economic legislation. In the past when I met investors, I would tell them that Jordan was a great place to invest. Now I can refer to specific projects and point to clear advantages to encourage companies to do business in Jordan.
We have embarked on a number of “mega-projects” to secure our food and water needs and develop our infrastructure and our position as a regional energy and transport hub. The government has been directed to better manage these vital resources. But political events have sometimes hijacked our economic growth. The only thing that can bring lasting prosperity to our region, replacing bombs and bullets with tourists and entrepreneurs, is a lasting solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the root cause of much of the violence and instability in our region.
My dream is that we will link the economies of Israel, Palestine, and Jordan in a common market—patterned on Benelux in western Europe. We could combine the technical know-how and entrepreneurial drive of Jordan, Israel, and Palestine to create an economic and business hub in the Levant. The potential for joint tourism is massive, as is that for foreign investment. The possibility for cooperation is immense. The Israelis are world leaders in agriculture but lack land and workers. We could work together to make the desert bloom.
But such visions of economic cooperation are a mirage in the absence of political leaders with the courage to make peace. For the sake of all of us in the region, we must pray that we can overcome the hatreds and suspicions that have kept us so long divided.
We have done a great deal in the last eleven years, but I will be the first to admit that there is still a long way to go. Political reform could have progressed faster, and we could have done a better job of explaining some of the reasons for what we were doing. Economic reform has been a priority for me because of the direct impact sound economic policies have on the quality of life of Jordanians, but I have always believed that it will not reach its full potential unless it is part of a broader agenda of political, social, and administrative reforms. Unfortunately, political development has sometimes been two steps forward and one step back. Resistance to change has come from different camps for different reasons. Some have resisted change out of fear of losing privileges they have long enjoyed, while others simply lacked imagination, preferring a status quo that they knew and accepted. On many occasions, I found some officials did not have the courage to push forward with difficult changes or were more concerned with promoting their own interests than with the wellbeing of the people they were appointed to serve. Another factor that has slowed the modernization process has been the terrible regional situation, which often poses challenges that make security and stability the priorities. But we are determined to address these shortcomings. I know that Jordan’s future dictates that we move forward with democratization, to ensure that all Jordanians feel they have a a larger say in their government and a stake in their country’s future.
In November 2009, I called for new parliamentary elections, and a few days later I designated a new prime minister to form a new government. Many Jordanians were expressing a growing dissatisfaction with the performance of the lower house of Parliament. Many members of the house were impeding essential economic and social legislative reforms. Political bickering and pressure to win personal perks created a dysfunctional relationship between the two branches of government, hindering efforts to address broader economic and social issues. Approval rates of the house were so low that, according to polls, over 80 percent of the population welcomed its dissolution. It was time for change, not just in persons but also in approach. In my letter of designation to the new prime minister, Samir Rifai, the Harvard graduate who had worked with me on economic reform when I first assumed office, I laid down a set of economic, social, administrative, and political reform objectives that government must work toward achieving in accordance with clear timelines. I made it clear that a new Parliament must be elected as soon as possible and that the holding of free, fair, and transparent elections must top the government’s agenda. I instructed the new government to amend the election law, and to reform all election procedures in a way that would make it easier for people to vote and for civil society organizations to monitor the election process.
I also asked the government to implement a decentralization program, which would allow people to elect their own local councils and to play a major role in running affairs in their governorates, especially in setting out development priorities.
Sixty days after it was sworn in, the new government presented me with a detailed working plan, with each ministry outlining clear objectives and projects that it would be implementing within specific timelines. The performance of the government will be measured by its progress toward meeting these objectives, which have to be posted on all ministries’ Web sites. The government also committed to a new code of conduct inspired by international best practices and identified major reforms, including measures to fight corruption, increase transparency, protect the rights of women and children, and remove all obstacles to the development of a free and professional media industry.
The government’s plans are geared to achieving progress in seven key areas, in the form of well-identified initiatives. These are: strengthening government performance and accountability; encouraging political and civic participation; enhancing the business and investment environment; empowering Jordanian citizens with the skills to succeed and enter the labor market; feeding and fueling growth and security through mega-infrastructure projects; expanding the middle class and empowering the underprivileged; and improving citizen services. I have long believed that the presence of a robust and stable middle class is a key driver for social development. By focusing on economic programs that will expand our middle class, we will strengthen the bases for the emergence of civil society organizations that can challenge the government, hold it more accountable, and pressure it to be more transparent.
As this book went to press, Jordanians were preparing to go to the polls to elect their new representatives in Parliament under a new election law. Major changes that better protect the rights of women and children were introduced to the penal code, and a few people are now facing trial on corruption charges. The budget deficit has been reduced and newspapers are reporting some good news about the economy. I believe we are on track in what will be a lengthy reform process that will take much more hard work to finish, and will have its good and bad days. From the beginning I knew that we would have to invest more in the skills of Jordan’s main national asset: our people. That means providing the best education possible to our young people. I have given much thought to the subject, and having been educated in Jordan, England, and America, I’ve brought some unconventional views.