Man on a Precipice

In the capital city of Amman last week, where young King Hussein shakily reigns with the backing of his army and his devoted Bedouins, swift raids by spike-helmeted police rounded up all known Nasser sympathizers, as well as some 200 suspect politicians and civil servants. Who could be sure of anyone, any more? Seventy officers of the King's army are in jail, including Hussein's former close companion, Colonel Rahdi Abdullah. Anyone caught listening to Radio Cairo or to the vicious noise of the clandestine "Jordan People's Radio" was hustled off to prison.

But still they listened: "Now King Hussein, the enemy of his people, the enemy of Arabs, the enemy of humanity, brings back the British so they can stomp on the dignity of the Arab people in Jordan as they did in the past. What kind of a King is this? What kind of blood flows in his veins? This is surely not Arab blood."

The Hostile Streets. Along the heavily traveled road from Amman to Jerusalem there are eight police checkpoints. Jordanian passengers in cars and buses are searched to the skin for arms. Almost all the Palestinian refugees (there are half a million in Jordan) are hostile to Hussein's government. Taxi drivers and civil servants, businessmen and doctors (first looking cautiously over their shoulders) admit to being pro-Nasser and anti-Hussein. A government censor scans the Amman newspapers to be sure they contain nothing critical of King Hussein; yet he also smilingly taps a picture of Egypt's Nasser and observes: "A good man." Surrounded by his Circassian bodyguards, King Hussein meets with Bedouin chiefs from the north, tells them that he is ready to sacrifice his life for his country if necessary. In a voice shaking with emotion, he adds that Jordan has "offered lessons in nationalism to those who brag about nationalism."

U.S. Presidential Envoy Robert D. Murphy flew into Amman airport from Lebanon, called on Hussein at his heavily defended palace. Hussein asked for sufficient aid to withstand the revolutionary fires being fanned from Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, pleaded that the U.S. not recognize the new Iraqi regime "at least, for the time being." It was Murphy's unpleasant duty to inform Hussein of two hard facts: 1) no U.S. troops will be sent to Jordan; 2) U.S. recognition of Iraq was already decided upon. Then Murphy bid his host goodbye, drove off to Jerusalem and passed through the Mandelbaum Gate into Israel.

King Hussein did not stay locked in his palace. Once, he flew over the city in a helicopter. Another time he visited the airport where some 3,000 British paratroops represent his final bastion of strength. The young King rode in his bulletproof Cadillac surrounded by nine soldier-filled Land Rovers topped with machine guns. The motorcade sped through streets closed to all other traffic and along a route lined with Legionnaires armed with Tommy guns. As the King stood at attention watching a parade of red-bereted paratroops, a bomb went off in the city behind him--the seventh in a week. Hussein took a flight in his personal Beechcraft with his onetime flying instructor, Wing Commander Jock Dalgleish, now back in Jordan as R.A.F. commander of the British airlift. As King Hussein brought his Beechcraft down for a perfect landing, one veteran British officer said companionably to another: "Just like old times, isn't it?"

Land Without Peace. In the growing night, the clandestine radio boasted: "Hussein and his treacherous supporters are now living in a state of hell." There was no peace, neither for the plucky, 22-year-old King nor for his restless kingdom. The threats were likely to remain verbal so long as British troops remain in Jordan, but in London there was increasing talk of a "villa at Lausanne" as a suitable reward for Hussein. For Jordan, a melancholy excuse for a nation, is unable to support its people without subsidy, unable to protect its government without outside help. If it continued to exist, it would only be because everyone, at the summit or elsewhere, decided that its eradication would be worse.

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