Jordan: The Battle Ends; the War Begins

SELDOM has a newly arrived diplomat presented credentials under conditions as bizarre as those that faced U.S. Ambassador L. Dean Brown in Amman last week. Brown, who had been pinned down for seven days in the beleaguered American embassy as civil war raged outside, clambered aboard a Jordanian armored personnel carrier and was whisked to Al-Hummar Palace on the fringe of the city. There, King Hussein accepted the envoy's credentials and discussed emergency U.S. assistance for Jordan. The fact that the King was on hand and receiving ambassadors indicated how the struggle was going. During ten days of battle, between the Jordanian army and the guerrillas of the Palestine liberation movement, the army seized several fedayeen strongholds in and around Amman, practically destroyed a guerrilla redoubt not far from the capital at Zerka, mauled a larger force of Syrian tanks and troops, and laid siege in the north near Syria to guerrilla-held Irbid, Jordan's second-largest city after Amman. The royal army said it had captured an estimated 5,000 prisoners, including the two top aides to Yasser Arafat, head of Al-Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which includes eleven major guerrilla groups. Among the army's captives were twelve Syrians, who said they had been told before moving into Jordan that they were about to fight Israelis; they seemed stunned to find themselves facing other Arabs.

Hussein's victory, however, was bought at an enormous cost. Two years ago, in the midst of a less sanguinary struggle with the fedayeen, the tough little monarch warned: "If I don't rule this country, then I shall burn it." He still rules, but much of his country is already in ruins; and the Palestinians, who account for approximately two-thirds of his 2,200,000 people, are not likely to forget how he cracked down on the guerrillas.

The army estimates civilian casualties at about 1,800; the guerrillas claim 10,000 are dead. "God is my witness," said Arafat in a letter to Arab heads of state. "A massacre has been committed. Thousands of people are under the debris. Bodies have rotted. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless. Our dead are scattered in the streets. Hunger and thirst are killing our remaining children, women and old men." Only reluctantly did the guerrillas agree at week's end to a cease-fire arranged by Sudanese Strongman Jaafar Numeiry and pressed by Arab leaders meeting in Cairo (see following story). The truce had hardly taken effect before Numeiry and other Arab leaders were accusing Hussein of breaking it.

Battle in Amman. The bloodletting began two weeks ago when Hussein gave his troops permission to tackle the guerrillas once and for all. The King was in a predicament that had been aggravated for years by the same Arab leaders who last week were castigating him for brutality. It was to Jordan that the bulk of the Palestinians fled after Israel was created in 1948, and it was in Jordan's sprawling refugee camps that the guerrilla movement flourished--and began undermining the government. Other Arabs, to keep on the good side of the fedayeen, supported them and ignored Hussein's problem. Nevertheless, having decided on a showdown, Hussein was badly advised by army leaders under Field Marshal Habes Majali. They assured the King that the fighting would be wrapped up in 24 hours at the most. How wrong they were quickly became evident in Amman (once named Philadelphia, or City of Brotherly Love, by conquering Greeks).

With advance warning that the army was about to move against them, the guerrillas fortified their strongholds round the refugee camps. Countless snipers took up positions on rooftops and at windows throughout the city. Once Hussein's armored units had battled their way into the capital, the fighting turned into a street-by-street encounter. Caught in the middle of the battle, Amman's 600,000 residents endured a week of agony. Most took refuge in their cellars, but many were buried alive when artillery began to pound the city. Quickly, electricity failed and the water supply was cut off. Though city dwellers were running out of food, Majali threatened that anyone found out of doors would be shot on sight. The few who ventured out found the streets cluttered with wrecked vehicles and littered with land mines.

Grimly the army's Bedouin soldiers stalked the streets, seeking guerrillas and occasionally looting shops. Many had their faces blackened, a traditional means of preventing identification and forestalling later feuds with the families of their victims. Amman became a city of sordid sounds--the crumbling of limestone buildings under the artillery barrage, the snap of rifle fire and the whoosh of shells, the cries of the wounded, and the wailing of women who had seen their families slain. In two of the biggest camps for Palestinian refugees, guerrillas insisted that at least 7,000 people had been killed by army shelling.

Hussein's soldiers had been instructed to search for the 54 Western hostages held by the fedayeen since their jet airliners were hijacked three weeks ago. Moving through the battered New Camp, a detachment suddenly heard shouts from a locked house: "We are foreign hostages. Help, help! Don't shoot!" Eight Britons, six Swiss and two West Germans were freed. Soon afterward the guerrillas, on their own accord, released 32 more hostages, leaving six Americans still unaccounted for at week's end.

Even as the street fighting continued in Amman, Hussein's generals turned their attention to a different kind of war in the countryside. Three days after the fighting began, a force of armored vehicles crossed the border from Syria at Ramtha, moving at night. The Syrians insisted that the force, numbering close to 5,000 men and including almost 250 tanks, belonged to the guerrillas' Palestine Liberation Army. Indeed, the vehicles did bear the red and olive-green emblems of the P.L.A. Actually, the emblems had been hastily painted, and most of the equipment and troops belonged to the Syrian army's reserve in Damascus. They were rolling into Jordan not only to help the fedayeen but also to embarrass the rival Iraqi Baathist government. Baghdad, which keeps a 12,000-man division in Jordan for the war with Israel, refused to order its troops to move against Hussein.

The Syrian tank column was challenged near Ramtha junction by a smaller force of Jordanian armor whose vehicles carried the black, white, green and red Hashemite flag along with pictures of the King. Hussein's order to his troops, the best in the Arab world, was to "stand fast and teach the heretic leaders of Syria a lesson in heroism." His 40th and 60th armored brigades did just that. First they blunted the Syrian invasion by knocking out 40 tanks. In an armored tactic known as "the loop," the 40th hit the Syrians head-on while the 60th rolled around their flank. Operating with precision, the two brigades were also supported by Hawker Hunter jets of the King's air force. The planes alone, according to Hussein, knocked out ten tanks and later harassed the Syrians as they retreated across the border after the 16-hour battle. Altogether about 100 Syrian tanks were disabled, while Hussein's army lost about 20.

The Jordanian flyers had the sky almost to themselves. The Syrian air force never showed up, probably because Damascus was worried about Israel and was also feeling pressure from Moscow to withdraw. Furthermore, once its planes entered into combat, Syria could no longer disclaim responsibility for the invasion. But from time to time a flight of eight Israeli Mirages showed up over the battlefield near Irbid. The Israeli jets took no part in the battle; they were there to take pictures of the fighting--as were a number of U.S. photo-reconnaissance planes. An Israeli source said that the Mirages were also trying to throw a scare into the Syrians. "In this kind of fight," acknowledged one Israeli air force officer, "we are with Hussein." The Israelis also helped their unusual temporary ally by massing tanks and other military equipment along the Jordan-Syria border, and by letting it be known that if they entered the war, they would need no more than four hours to reach Damascus.

Preoccupied as the Israelis were with events in Jordan, they also kept a close watch on the Egyptian cease-fire line. New reconnaissance photos, Jerusalem claimed, revealed that nine more missile sites had been constructed in the standstill zone west of the Suez Canal in violation of the terms of the seven-week-old ceasefire. That brings the number of illegally emplaced SA-2 and SA3 batteries to 40, totaling 220 missiles. Despite the violations, however, the Suez remained quiet, and there were indications last week that it might continue that way. Egyptian Ambassador to the U.N. Mohammed Zayyat maintained in a Face the Nation telecast that all the missiles had been in the zone when the cease-fire began. But he suggested that Cairo would be willing to pull them back in return for a U.S. guarantee that Israel would never launch a pre-emptive attack on Egypt.

Strange Departure. At week's end Sudan's Numeiry and the six-man delegation that accompanied him to Amman to arrange a truce finally got both sides to agree to a ceasefire. As the truce was going into effect, word reached Amman that Jordan's Premier Brigadier General Mohammed Daoud, who was named to that post only two weeks ago when Hussein set up an all-military Cabinet, had abruptly resigned. Daoud, in Cairo to attend the Arab summit, disappeared from his Nile Hilton hotel room, leaving a note for Hussein explaining that he was making way for a government of "national unity." His resignation, however, was due to personal as well as political considerations.

Spare, smiling General Daoud was a career officer dedicated to the King and to Jordan. But the general was also a Palestinian who hoped for the eventual creation of a homeland. He soon discovered that he had little authority; Field Marshal Majali held the real power as military governor. Daoud was so insignificant that he was met at Cairo airport by Egypt's Minister of Irrigation. At the summit meeting he was ostracized by other representatives. He was even losing the loyalty of his own family. His daughter Mona loudly backed the fedayeen and badgered her father by letter to leave the government. When Daoud, aghast at the extent of the carnage in Jordan, finally did resign, the guerrillas announced that they would hold him, among others, responsible for the fighting. A bitter, forlorn figure, the general decided to go into exile in Libya.

Poisoned Relations. Bitterness, if not unalloyed hatred, is likely to poison relations between the two sides for years. Hussein last week angrily complained that his government was infiltrated by guerrillas, and that even his cook and chauffeur turned out to be terrorists. Newsmen who had been trapped in the Jordan Intercontinental Hotel (see THE PRESS) told of seeing Bedouins shooting a wounded fedai to death. Both army riflemen and fedayeen snipers fired on ambulances, and on one occasion guerrillas stole two Red Cross vehicles and converted them into ammunition carriers. The fedayeen lobbed mortars at Amman airport as planes landed to evacuate wounded Jordanians as well as U.S. and British women and children.

Amman's Palestinian majority was angered mainly, however, by the savagery of the Bedouins. "A sea of blood separates us from them," cried Arafat. This anger spread among Arabs elsewhere. In Jerusalem one day last week, 200 Arabs suddenly rushed out from noonday prayers at Al Aqsa mosque and ran through the streets screaming "Kill Hussein! Kill Hussein!"

Outlook for Hussein. For the King, his clouded victory in the civil war could well prove a Pyrrhic one. The fedayeen are too strongly entrenched throughout the Arab world for Hussein to eliminate them. Never a favorite among his fellow Arab rulers, the King has now lost almost all support. Palestinians living under Israeli occupation on the Jordan's west bank last week talked proudly of "our revolution." Algeria and Libya, at one point during the civil war, made moves to join on the side of the fedayeen. Libya also cut off its annual $25.2 million subsidy to Jordan and so did Kuwait, which was contributing $39.2 million. Even Hussein's lukewarm friends, like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, can no longer be counted on for support. After Guerrilla Chieftain Arafat skipped out of Jordan and met with Nasser in Cairo to brief him on the battle, Egypt's President fired off a scathing protest accusing Hussein of lying, breaking promises and perpetrating "a horrible massacre."

Many Arab and Western observers agreed last week that Hussein's position as King may be barely tenable. "The battle in Jordan is over, but Hussein's war has just begun," said an Israeli foreign ministry official. "He had a chance to transform the monarchy into a presidency and become the leader of a Palestinian republic, but what can he be King of now? He can never rule the Palestinians again in any meaningful sense--only the Bedouins." What if he agreed to permit the establishment of a Palestinian state within Jordan's borders? Skeptics doubted that he would. "You're asking a King who's won a war over the guerrillas to sign away his victory," said a British official in London. Abdication? "I can't see him sunning his days away at Estoril with those other ex-kings," said the same official, "or living off a Swiss bank account for the rest of his life."

Hussein apparently intends to try to repair his torn kingdom, a courageous but possibly foolhardy decision. Last week he appointed a new government, half civilian, half military, with former Chief of the Royal Court Ahmed Toukan as Premier. But the King is left with few foreign friends, surrounded by implacable foes and plagued by a shortage of funds. A majority of the people in his kingdom are potential antagonists, and a sizable portion of his country is in Israeli hands. During the fighting in Amman, the 34-year-old monarch kept a helicopter standing by at Al-Hummar in case he lost the battle and was forced to flee after 17 years on a troubled throne. In the days to come, Hussein may regret that he never gave his pilot the order to fly.

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