Guerrillas on the Run

As dawn broke along a 35-mile stretch of the Jordan River and its tributary the Yarmuk last week, Israeli soldiers gaped in disbelief. In ones and twos or even in whole squads, scores of bedraggled Arabs broke from the concealment of reed beds on the Jordanian banks and splashed across the 30-yard-wide, green-flecked rivers with white undershirts tied to their rifles in a sign of surrender. Many also held up green I.D. cards certifying them as fedayeen, the Palestinian "men of sacrifice" who are sworn to destroy Israel.

By week's end, 96 tired, hungry guerrillas had given themselves up to Israeli patrols. Blindfolded and carted off in buses, one of which had a VISIT ISRAEL poster on its side, the fedayeen were confined in Nablus. Their status was uncertain, since they had committed no hostile acts in Israel. Still, they were the fortunate few. Back in Jordan, tough Bedouin legionnaires were killing or capturing nearly 2,500 of their comrades as King Hussein sought to end, once and for all, the fedayeen threat to his throne. One guerrilla who made it to the Israeli side said angrily: "Better to die by Israeli hands than to be killed by an Arab brother."

Othman's Shirt. To history-minded Arabs, the shirt-waving guerrillas recalled a major battle in Islamic history. Thirteen centuries ago, a Damascus governor named Mu'awiya, vowing to avenge the murder of the Caliph Othman, carried Othman's bloody shirt as a battle flag. Actually, Mu'awiya hoped to make himself Caliph. Ever since, Arabs have described self-aggrandizement in the guise of vengeance as "waving the shirt of Othman." As Hussein's neighbors leaped to the guerrillas' defense last week with words--but little else--that is what they seemed to be doing. Iraq expelled the Jordanian ambassador and demanded Jordan's ouster from the Arab League. Egypt's Anwar Sadat in effect called Hussein a liar, while a spokesman in Cairo said that the events were "a black mark on the forehead of the Jordanian government." No government, however, did anything tangible to help the guerrillas.

Hussein has already withstood considerably more than mere words. Last September, when the guerrillas were openly defying Hussein, the King's army ran them out of Amman in a fierce battle. Ever since, he and Jordanian Premier Wasfi Tal have been planning a final showdown with the guerrillas, holed up at bases near 'Ajlun and Jerash in the hills of northwest Jordan.

Hussein felt compelled to act because the guerrillas continued to pose a greater threat to him than to Israel. Equipped with new M-16 rifles, tanks, armored personnel carriers and F-104 Starfighters from the U.S., the King was well prepared for an all-out war against what Premier Tal described as guerrilla "terror, brutality and sabotage." The government ordered the fedayeen to move to a stretch of flat, waterless desert toward the Iraqi border. The fedayeen stayed put--as the government expected--and the army moved in.

Barred from the battlefield, correspondents were told by laughing officers, under blue skies, that what sounded like the booming of artillery was really thunder. "Soon it will rain," grinned one of the officers, squinting in the blazing sunshine.

The outcome was never in doubt, particularly after neighboring Syria avoided involvement. During last September's fighting, Syria nearly precipitated a wider war by sending an armored column over the border to aid the guerrillas. But when unopposed Jordanian planes attacked the tanks, the man who then commanded the Syrian air force, General Hafez Assad, indicated to Amman that he was not interested in helping the fedayeen and was keeping his Russian-built jets grounded. Assad, who took over the Damascus government last November in a coup, last week sealed off the border with Jordan, thereby preventing guerrillas in Syria from reinforcing their beleaguered comrades.

Going Underground. The battle was brief but brutal. All together about 200 fedayeen were killed, and 200 more evaded the dragnet. But 2,300 were taken prisoner by the Jordanians and hauled to the town of Mafrak for screening. Of these, 1,550 were disarmed and allowed to return to their homes in Jordan, Syria, Iraq and other Arab countries. They were judged to be "good" guerrillas, mostly members of Yasser Arafat's Al-Fatah, who would not fight the King again. The 750 who remained under arrest, explained Wasfi Tal, were "bad" commandos who belonged to George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P.) or similarly militant groups that urge the violent overthrow of nonradical governments.

Only a year ago, the guerrillas were a formidable factor in the Middle East. Now, said the Israeli daily Hatzofeh, "the crushing defeat of the terrorists in Jordan spells their absolute end as a factor in the region." Others were not so sure. Hussein's victory virtually destroyed the guerrillas' base of operations in Jordan. Yet the routing of the fedayeen could ultimately make the King more vulnerable.

Hussein was able to crush the guerrillas because he finally stopped worrying about criticism from fellow Arab rulers. But even though Jordan has been cleared, there are still 20,000 commandos in Syria as well as 2,500 operating in Lebanon. Many fedayeen, embittered by lack of support from Arab governments, are likely to adopt the Habash route by going underground now and launching a campaign of assassination and terror. If that happens, no Arab monarch or moderate ruler can feel secure.

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