Jordan and the Gulf Crisis

Stanley Reed

From Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990/91

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Stanley Reed is Business Week's Middle East specialist. He recently returned from a month in Jordan and Iraq.

Jordan has carefully nurtured a reputation as the most consistently pro-Western Arab state. Thus, it came as a shock to many to find most Jordanians taking the side of President Saddam Hussein in the gulf crisis, and Western leaders are disturbed by King Hussein's reluctance to join forces against the Iraqi ruler. Given Amman's growing dependence upon Baghdad, however, neither surprise nor irritation is warranted; the gulf crisis has simply thrown into stark relief the extent to which the futures of these two countries have become intertwined, as well as the precariousness of the king's position in his desert land.

Public support for the Iraqi leader is extensive across Jordan and encompasses a wide spectrum of society. Pro-Saddam demonstrations, of which there are often several a day, are even advertised in the once-tame local newspapers. The sponsors of these gatherings run the gamut from the leftist Jordan People's Democratic Party to the extremist Islamic Jihad, but the rallies themselves do not vary much. Speakers vilify the deposed Kuwaiti ruling family, the al-Sabahs, for squandering Arab wealth on gambling and prostitutes; Kuwait's supporters, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are jeered as traitors; American flags are burned; the crowd chants, "Oh Saddam, we are willing to die for you!"

While more circumspect than his constituents, King Hussein has given the impression that he, too, sympathizes with Saddam. Days after the Iraqi invasion the king told NBC News that Saddam was "a person to be trusted and dealt with." And he called the Iraqi president "an Arab patriot in the eyes of many." The king was also slow to comply with U.N. economic sanctions against his neighbor. While the truck traffic across the Jordanian-Iraqi border is now down to virtually nothing from its pre-invasion 1,000 vehicles a day, Jordan still imports its oil from Iraq, contending that to do anything else before a replacement source is located would be to commit economic suicide. Additionally, Jordan continues to allow daily Iraqi Airways flights from Amman, which is now the carrier's only regular destination, in apparent violation of the U.N. ban on commercial and financial transactions with Iraq.

Since the beginning of the crisis King Hussein has busied himself flying about the Arab world, Europe and the United States trying vainly to rally support for an "Arab solution" to the crisis. The king's formula would reportedly trade an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait for a package of concessions to Saddam. This deal would include a pullout of Western troops from Saudi Arabia, an unspecified "privileged" relationship between Iraq and Kuwait, and the convening of a Middle East peace conference to consider the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Such proposals have estranged Amman from Washington and its Arab friends. The Bush administration rejects Hussein's ideas, saying they would reward Saddam for his invasion. American officials also worry that the king's efforts will undermine the U.N. embargo by giving the Iraqis hope that more Arab states will eventually rally to their ...

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