The Road to Zerka

Out of Jordan, with censorship lifted, came the story of how 21-year-old King Hussein snatched control of his desert kingdom from under the noses of the Redlined leaders of the Palestinian Arabs, who outnumber his Bedouins two to one. It was a wild story that combined the dash of a Latin American army coup with the wile of an Arabian Nights adventure.

The moment of decision came on a Saturday night at Zerka, a town and army camp northeast of Amman. From the outside, the outbreak of fighting among Jordan's troops seemed a nationalist-inspired mutiny. In actual fact, the young King had carefully planned it. For months Hussein had been aware of the dangers of being swept away by Arab nationalist extremists, and made his preparations. He journeyed down to Medina to see Saudi Arabia's King Saud, just before Saud left for his trip to the U.S. Saud, whose fear of Communist penetration of the Middle East far outweighs his old feud with Hussein's Hashemite clan, promised full though secret backing.

Armed with Saud money, Hussein hurried back to Jordan, began lining up Bedouin sheiks to sway the Bedouin troops, who comprise nearly half the Jordanian army. He gave them gifts, obtained jobs for sheiks' sons. To offset the proCommunists' control of the street mobs, he approached leaders of the fanatically anti-Western (and antiCommunist) Moslem Brotherhood, and his agents supplied black market weapons bought with Saudi money. Often the young King drove out for secret, late-night meetings with chosen leaders on lonely roads outside Amman. Hussein picked Zerka for his showdown because a crack Bedouin regiment was stationed there and the Moslem Brotherhood was strong in the town.

Sheiks & Brothers. The crisis came when Army Chief Abu Nuwar, the playboy general and his onetime boon companion, told Hussein that if he did not appoint Abdel Halim Nimr as Premier, the army would force him to. Hussein acted. On signal, his men spread word in Zerka that Communists headed by Abu Nuwar were about to seize the royal palace and overthrow the King. The Moslem Brotherhood took charge of the streets; the Bedouin garrison began attacking officers and an infantry unit known to support Abu Nuwar. They fought first with stones and rifle butts, later with bullets. Twelve men were killed or wounded in the melee. Then, as the desert warriors and the mob merged and started a wild surge down the road to Amman, a loyal officer telephoned Hussein at the palace.

The King ordered General Abu Nuwar to come along, jumped into a limousine and raced toward Zerka with an escort of five jeeploads of Bedouin Tommy-gunners. On the road the convoy met the rampaging Bedouins, who went wild with cheers, firing in the air and screaming: "Down with Abu Nuwar! Down with the Communists!" One wild-eyed Bedouin officer charged toward Abu Nuwar with rifle ready. Hussein ordered him to halt, thus saved the cowering Abu Nuwar's life.

Directing the trembling Abu Nuwar to return and wait for him at the palace, the young King leaped atop an armored car and shouted: "If you do not want me as your King, I will go!" With a tremendous shout, the Bedouins ripped off their headdresses and threw them on the ground--a spontaneous Arab gesture of loyalty and acclaim.

Ordering the Bedouin armor to take over the official duty of guarding the capital, the King sped back to his palace. Confronting Abu Nuwar and ex-Premier Suleiman Nabulsi, he demanded: "Is this what you want? Does this make you happy--to see our country in turmoil like this?" From the palace windows the quaking leaders could see the Bedouins swinging their armored cars into positions outside. The desert warriors had blackened their faces with charcoal--Bedouin war paint that meant they were ready to kill. Inside ex-Premier Nabulsi sat pale and sweating, fingering his prayer beads. On "advice" from the King to take a two-week vacation, Abu Nuwar gathered up his family and took off to Syrian exile.

For the next two days some 300 army officers, desert sheiks and city notables flocked to the palace to pay homage to their King. As each bowed and swore fealty, Hussein murmured: "Allah be praised." By telegram, King Saud turned over to his command the 5,500 Saudi Arabian troops stationed in Jordan; by telephone, Hussein's Hashemite cousin, Iraq's 21-year-old King Feisal, offered immediate all-out military aid. Abu Nuwar's pro-Soviet friends in the Syrian army prudently held off.

But Hussein could not forget that the volatile Palestinian Arab townsmen who backed Premier Nabulsi's leftist coalition far outnumber the loyal tribesmen. To head off urban eruptions, he warned Nabulsi and other party leaders that they would be tried for manslaughter if troops had to fire on their followers. He also broadcast reassuring statements that Jordan would continue to pursue the ideal of Arab unity, reject "imperialism" and foreign alliances, and follow "positive neutrality" as the basis of its policy. Whatever his personal inclinations, it was unlikely that Hussein would dare invite the U.S.'s Ambassador James Richards to discuss U.S. aid until he was assured of firmer control. In due course he named a compromise Cabinet headed by Jordan's first refugee Premier, Dr. Hussein Fahkri Khalidi, 62.

A doctor who once served in the Ottoman Turkish army, Khalidi is an anti-Communist conservative pledged to no political party. Member of an aristocratic Palestinian family, Khalidi was a pre-World War II mayor of Jerusalem, secretary-general of the Arab Higher Committee ("We must make their lives hell," he said of the Jews), and three times Foreign Minister of Jordan.

Few observers predicted a long life for Khalidi's government, in which ex-Premier Nabulsi was kept on as Foreign Minister. At week's end King Hussein's new chief of staff, Major General Ali Hayari, went to Syria and from there telephoned his resignation. Hayari charged the royal palace with having "prepared a plot in cooperation with foreign, non-Arab military attaches in Amman" to "force Jordan out of the Arab liberation policy of Syria and Egypt." Deep in the deadly game of survival, the King formed a five-man army council made up of Bedouin officers who had stood by him unwaveringly in the showdown. Jordan still teetered on the brink of oblivion.

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