Chapter 6
When I returned home in 1983, I joined the 40th Armoured Brigade, a unit with a proud history. The second oldest armored unit in the Jordanian army, it has fought to the last three times, in 1967, 1970, and 1973. I was based near Qatraneh, a small town in the desert sixty miles south of Amman. In the early years of the twentieth century the town had been a stop on the Hijaz railway, the Ottomanconstructed line that connected Damascus in Syria with Medina in Saudi Arabia. It had not seen much action since then. The first night, I was down at brigade headquarters when I heard a bustle of activity coming from the officers’ mess. I went to find out what was going on. All the chairs were lined up outside the mess, the officers had been given a cup of tea, and everyone was preparing to watch the sunset. Frustrated that the only excitement the place had to offer after a long day was a cup of tea at sunset, I went back to my room, put my tracksuit on, and went for a run.
The reason I was so far out in the desert had little to do with my military ability. Some senior officers felt threatened by my joining the military, figuring that in time I might encroach on their established ways, and even on their positions. Throughout my military career I had major problems with some very high-ranking officers whose decisions, in my view, had not served the armed forces well. I believed that we needed to modernize and take advantage of the latest developments in military technology and tactics. Staunch defenders of the status quo, these officers saw no need for change and seemed determined to make my life miserable. I think they figured that by piling on pressure with unreasonable requests and surprise inspections, and by isolating me in the desert, they could convince me to quit the regular army in a few months and assume a more ceremonial role.
I was determined to prove them wrong. I felt I could not mention any of this to my father for fear he would secretly intervene to make things easier for me. As it turned out, one of the biggest favors anyone ever did for me was to put me out where the real army was. That is where I stayed, usually for months at a time. Many younger officers do not want to spend much time out in the desert and would rather be back at headquarters in the relative comfort of Amman. Those who serve at headquarters make valuable contributions too, but if you want to learn about your service, the best place to do so is out in the field. Part of learning about the army is being assigned to the back of beyond, having to go through the daily routine and dealing with all the difficult and unpleasant problems that arise. It ruins your social life but teaches you a lot about leadership.
As a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant I felt a high degree of responsibility for my men, especially as we were all lumped together in a remote location. I was responsible for their training, for making sure that they were fed and clothed, and, to a degree, for ensuring that their dependents were well taken care of. At that time, our army was a mix of professional soldiers and conscripts doing their national service. As with all conscript armies, we had our challenges. Conscripted men sometimes shot themselves in the foot to get out of their obligations. One soldier even injected kerosene into his leg (I had to cut it open with a knife to drain it). An army is a reflection of a country. In Jordan the army has been a traditional path for advancement, and my men came from all over the country and from all strata of society. They were mainly very poor, and some faced tremendous problems.
One of my fellow lieutenants, who had come up through the ranks, was dealing with a family crisis soon after I arrived. His brother had died. This fellow had a wife and eight children, and his brother also had a wife and eight children, so this one man suddenly had eighteen dependents to take care of on a meager officer’s wages. I gave him half of my salary for the whole time I was there—about a year. At the time the army maintained a high state of readiness—at any time a third of our units had to be ready to go on fifteen minutes’ notice for a possible war, which meant a lot of extra duty for our officers. I frequently pulled extra duty for him, allowing him to go home on weekends. Clearly, his burdens at home far exceeded mine. To this day I think of my men and their families whenever I focus on outreach programs for housing, health, and education.
Although my men may have been poor, they were rich in courage and fighting spirit. Many had little formal education but more than made up for it with street smarts and raw intelligence. At one point my unit was equipped with new Khalid/Shir I tanks, predecessors to the Challenger tanks from Britain. Boasting the latest in military technology, these fearsome vehicles were driven by a complex system of electronic wizardry. Yet in under a month my men were handling them as if they had been driving them for years.
Conditions were more basic than in the British army, but I liked our ways better. In the officers’ mess at the 13th/18th Royal Hussars we came down to dinner in a coat and tie and ate off a table that had been captured from Napoleon in the battle of Waterloo. In the Jordanian mess we ate food that was sometimes well past its expiration date off plastic tables and chairs, but the true essence of an army is not its formal trappings and fancy weapons. It is the ability of its men to face the prospect of death without flinching. And my men were the most courageous soldiers I had ever met.
The 40th Armoured Brigade was commonly referred to as “God’s Brigade,” a reference to its historical role in defending Jerusalem in 1967 and its record of fighting to the last. The first occasion was in 1967 when, heading to cut off the Jenin-Nablus axis, it encountered two Israeli brigades advancing from the northern coastal plain. In 1970, against heavy odds, it took on better-equipped Syrian troops advancing into Irbid to support Palestinian guerrillas (by the end of that engagement, my unit, the brigade’s 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, had only three tanks left, but it stopped the Syrian invasion). In 1973 it fought the Israelis in the Golan Heights, launching an offensive up the slopes of Tal El Harra, a 3,000-foot volcanic mountain. It came under heavy Israeli fire from both flanks and had to withdraw. A motivation for my men was to one day reclaim land lost in 1948 and 1967. From the banks of the Dead Sea, we could see the walls of Jerusalem. Though the Israeli armed forces were much better equipped than us, my men never feared the prospect of facing a heavily armed enemy.
We would go on maneuvers and exercises all across the country, and it was then that I began to appreciate the extraordinary beauty and diversity of Jordan. Jordan is a small country, but in one day you could go from the mountains and pine forests of Ajloun in the north, down through the Roman ruins at Jerash to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. Continuing south along the historic King’s Highway, you pass the Crusader castles of Shobak and Kerak, the home of the French knight Raynald de Chatillon, who was beheaded by Salaheddin Al Ayyoubi (known in the West as Saladin) in the twelfth century. Stopping in Wadi Rum, one of the most beautiful desert valleys in the world, and at the ancient ruins of Petra, you would arrive at the beach resort town of Aqaba in the evening.
In the summer we sometimes went on exercises in the Jordan Valley, along the eastern bank of the river. To avoid the blazing heat and huge mosquitoes, we would get up at 4 a.m. and try to finish any strenuous tasks before the sun rose. The earth there is very fertile and reddish brown, and in the evening the setting sun glimmering off the rocks produces a range of brilliant red hues. Red has always been my favorite color: it is the color of the Hashemite flag, of the kouffiyeh, the traditional Jordanian headdress, and of the heart.
One afternoon I thought I would try out some of the new tactics I had learned at the armor school at Bovington, so we went out on an exercise. I had been taught how to perform a “fighting withdrawal”; that is, how to withdraw gradually when you are being attacked by a superior army, inflicting casualties as you retreat. After I had reconnoitered the first position with my noncommissioned officers (NCOs), we reconvened to discuss our approach to the battle. I said, “Right, let’s go to the second position.” One of my NCOs looked at me and said, “Sir, there’s no need for a second position. This is where we are going to fight and die if necessary. We are not going to retreat!” I was impressed by his courage but a little startled by his tactics. He had been trained in the old school, where retreat meant dishonor. This fighting spirit had served Jordan well in 1948, when we preserved Arab control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank; in 1968, when we beat back an Israeli incursion at the battle of Karameh; and in 1970, when our army pushed back a Syrian invasion from the north. But with the increased firepower of modern weaponry, and the devastating combination of air strikes and longrange artillery, holding the line could be suicide.
I was determined to make my men more effective by supplementing their fierce courage with some tactical cunning. If we moved a few positions farther back, I argued, following standard NATO doctrine, we could kill more of the enemy as we retreated. The men looked at me quizzically and went into a huddle. Finally they emerged and said that killing the enemy was more important than holding the line; they agreed to retreat to the next position. That was my introduction to the fighting spirit of the Jordanian soldier. Nothing at Sandhurst had prepared me for this eagerness to die fighting. My men’s passion reflected the temperament common in the dangerous neighborhood in which we lived. At that time, Jordan was still in a state of cold war with Israel, and although the shooting had stopped, we had to be ready to face a threat from our nuclear-armed neighbor at a moment’s notice.
In March 1984, Queen Elizabeth II came to Jordan on a state visit. Security was extremely tight, as two days before the queen’s arrival terrorists had set off a bomb at a hotel in Amman. My father asked me to serve as military equerry (a sort of aide-de-camp) to the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. It was an honor, and particularly exciting as I had fairly recently graduated from Sandhurst and served in the British army. Due to the security concerns, my father also asked me to be the queen’s personal bodyguard. I went to Special Forces to receive extra training. As the day approached I asked my father: if somebody fires at me I’ll fire back, but how far do you want me to go?
“If somebody fires at the queen,” he said, “you will put yourself in the way. And if it means losing your life to protect our guest, you bloody well do it. Otherwise I’ll shoot you myself!” I knew he was choosing his words for effect, but for my father, duty and honor came first, even before his own family.
I stayed by the queen’s side for the duration of her five-day visit, and, thankfully, was not required to take a bullet for her. Although he could at times sound tough, my father and I bonded over our shared passion for the military. We enjoyed watching old movies together and often swapped notes on the latest military equipment produced in different countries and whether we should use it. It seemed that my military career earned me a newfound respect in my father’s eyes as, slowly, he began to ask me to undertake extra duties and responsibilities.
Since the time of my great-grandfather, King Abdullah I, and the Arab Legion, the Jordanian army has been one of the best-trained, most disciplined, and most professional armies in the Middle East. But I was determined to make our army one of the best in the world. “Don’t compare us to other armies in the region,” I would argue, “compare us to NATO.” To achieve this, I knew that we had to modernize. Although my soldiers were talented and courageous, they were being let down by a system that at times failed to provide advanced equipment. I learned to cope with what we had, to be resourceful, and to find innovative solutions. I would beg, borrow, or steal to get my men the equipment and supplies they needed.
Like all young men, I was impatient for change. But frustration mounted as I saw how far some of the most senior officers would go in defending the status quo.