Arab moderation non-sequitur
Arnaud de Borchgrave
AMMAN, Jordan.
Is the U.S. winning the war and losing the peace? Affirmative, say moderate Arabs once considered pro-American and who are moderate no longer.
Ninety-nine of Jordan's most prominent personalities, including former prime ministers, army chiefs and heads of intelligence, petitioned King Abdullah to declare the war on Iraq illegal. The king is in a tough spot. Jordan covertly assisted U.S. Special Forces that seized H2 and H3, two desert airstrips in western Iraq near the Jordanian border. The government has repeatedly denied this ever happened, but those involved know better — and the average Jordanian doesn't believe the denials.
The petitioners said, "The current tragic circumstances with a brotherly Arab state that has always been a loyal supporter of its fellow Arab countries and is facing an aggressive war, and its people are threatened by occupation, death and humiliation... oblige all Arab governments, including Jordan's, to clearly denounce the illegitimacy of the aggression on Iraq."
The group of 99, or G99, as they are now known, said they were certain the king "feels the same pain for the destruction and massacres the Iraqi people face and our same pride in their heroic resistance defending the birthplace of human civilization."
There are also grumblings in the Jordanian army, traditionally fiercely loyal to the monarchy. Thirty-three years ago, the late King Hussein almost lost his throne when he appeased the Palestinian Liberation Organization and allowed Palestinian paramilitaries to take over the capital city of Amman while the army was ordered to stay out of town. Sixty percent of the 5 million population are Palestinians who hold Jordanian nationality.
On the eve of what later became known as Black September, King Hussein visited an armored unit and noticed a female brassiere flapping from a tank antenna. This was a signal the army thought he was a weakling. No sooner back in the capital than Hussein ordered the army back into town with orders to kick out the PLO.
The civil war raged for eight days. This journalist — with 116 others — was pinned down in the Intercontinental Hotel with the army on one side and PLO guerrillas on the other, which left the hotel with more than 300 shell holes, looking like a huge slice of Swiss cheese. King Hussein prevailed and Yasser Arafat escaped to Lebanon disguised as a woman.
Things are tense again in this same Intercontinental Hotel. Anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night tell American journalists to get out of town "or you will regret it." Leaflets are instructing stores and restaurants to stop serving American and British nationals and to boycott U.S. products. Mobile phone subscribers are receiving text messages that say: "America is going to lose $8.6 billion if we do not buy their products for a week. Please don't wait. Pass this on to everyone you know."
The rising civilian toll and collateral damage to non-military Iraqi infrastructure have triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism. "Where we had one Osama bin Laden before the war, we will have 100 after Baghdad is occupied," said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Egypt is heavily dependent on $2 billion in annual aid.
King Abdullah is also caught between Iraq and a hard place. Washington announced last week a $1.1 billion aid package which Jordan urgently needs to avoid economic collapse after losing the income of 25 percent of its exports that went to Iraq before the war. It also received half its daily oil needs of 12,000 tons a day free of charge.
Abdullah knows that if he responds favorably to the G99 petitioners, he risks losing U.S. aid that might then be vetoed by Congress.
Jordanian interlocutors remark on the disconnect between what they see on TV and what President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are saying in the same newscasts. The sullen, even hostile, faces of Iraqi villagers do not convey feelings of liberation.
Arab media pickups of British press reports only fuel anti-American sentiments. "Hard to tell friend from foe," according to one dispatch. "Iraqis wave at you as you go past, then shoot you in the back," said another.
The Sunday Telegraph correspondent said it was not at all what American and British grunts had expected. The newspaper has a British colonel confiding: "I had told the lads that within two days of the war starting we would be having a beer in Basra. I told them this would be swift, it would be clean, it would be decisive, it would be welcomed. I told them to forget the antiwar feeling at home, that once the British saw the grateful welcome we received from the Iraqi people they would properly understand the need for this war. Now I'm not sure what to tell them." After two weeks of war, the Brits were still fighting their way through Basra's suburbs.
Contrary to all expectations, Iraqi nationals resident in Jordan, most of them refugees from the Gulf war 12 years ago, are volunteering to return to Iraq "to defend the homeland." Some 6,700 have left in buses chartered by the Iraqi Embassy in Amman that take them as far as the border. There, buses provided by Saddam's son Uday drive them the last 400 miles to Baghdad. The road has been bombed several times by coalition aircraft and one bridge has to be detoured through the desert.
Dribbling back to Jordan are non-suicide-prone human shields from a variety of Western countries who feel their mission to protect strategic targets in Baghdad was a failure.
From Beirut, more volunteers for "martyrdom" left by bus for Baghdad via Damascus. Some wore black bandanas with white lettering — "God is Great."
Syria's response to warnings from Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Powell against helping Saddam was to openly side with Iraq against the U.S. The night vision goggles Mr. Rumsfeld said the Syrian regime was sending to Iraq is now the least of it.
Wannabe president of a liberated Iraq Ahmad Chalabi told his Washington friends before the war that his intelligence network confirmed the cakewalkers' assessment: Saddam and his regime would collapse like a house of cards as soon operation Iraqi Freedom got rolling. The CIA never took Mr. Chalabi's intel seriously.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times and for United Press International. |
