“Nobody’s invincible. Nobody’s going to be here forever,” says the king as he finishes posing for photographs. He looks comfortable in his sports coat and cowboy boots, “cured,” as he says, of the cancer that cost him a kidney and ureter less than three months ago. But the monarch knows he must return to Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic in mid-December for a checkup. He should have taken better care of himself, he says. “Unfortunately, in dealing with the last two or three years of crises in this area, it was impossible. Maybe if we had done that regularly we might have been able to stop the problem of…” He stops himself and starts over. “It was detected at a very, very early period of its development, and it was tackled very efficiently and early. But it was major surgery.”
After the king gave a speech on Nov. 5, speaking of his life in the past tense, many of his subjects thought he might be saying farewell. No chance, he told NEWSWEEK. “Whenever I feel it is time for a change, sir, I’ll be the first to let everybody know about it.” But in an exclusive interview, he allowed himself to think out loud and at length about what lies ahead. “There is one thing that I want to concentrate on. That is to ensure that this country is not known in the future as a country that began with me … and ended with me,” says the king. “I want to consolidate the foundations for it to continue [by] giving people a right to rule themselves, for the monarchy to be just the symbol and the unifying factor.”
By envisioning himself and his heirs as constitutional sovereigns, Hussein sets himself apart from his own past and from the rest of the regions princes and dictators. Although strongmen like Libya’s Muammar Kaddafi and Syria’s Hafez Assad have been around for more than 20 years, neither has begun to prepare for a credible succession. The most likely thing to come after them is chaos. Saudi Arabia has had several kings since it was founded in the 1920s by the fecund Abdel Aziz ibn Saud, but all have been his sons. The dynasty has yet to make the delicate move to the next generation. Coups and assassinations remain the standard way to change regimes in the Arab world. At any moment the death of a single leader could throw the region into turmoil. “When we speak of democracy, human rights, pluralism, I would like to say there is something similar in this part of the world,” concedes the king, “but we haven’t seen it yet.”
If this monarch who has controlled every aspect of his country’s life for the past 40 years now talks about democracy with the zeal of a convert, there are reasons. His vision has already paid practical returns. Support for democracy sounds sweet to American ears, after two years of relations soured by the gulf war. And such comments also help distance the king from his erstwhile ally in Baghdad. “What do we wish for Iraq?” asks the king. “We wish for the breaking of a new dawn.” He emphasizes “pluralism.” Translation: the end of dictator Saddam Hussein.
But the real payoff for Jordan’s monarch has been at home. Never has King Hussein been so popular. When he returned to Jordan on Sept. 24 after his operation, as many as 1 million people thronged the streets: a quarter of the population cheering, chanting, waving flags and posters. “I always prayed that maybe long after I’m gone the generations that came would say, ‘This guy did his best within his lifetime,’ and that the judgment would be for me, not against me,” said the king. “But I never thought that in my lifetime I would see the kind of feelings that I saw.”
Only 20 years ago Hussein was despised by Jordan’s Palestinian majority. After the Palestine Liberation Organization challenged his control of the country, the king held onto his throne by force, crushing Yasir Arafat and his supporters in the 1970 bloodbath known as Black September. Jordan then stumbled from crisis to crisis-sidestepping the 1973 Yom Kippur war but left out of the 1978 Egyptian-Israeli peace-its economy propped up by gulf states that increasingly resented the burden. Only three years ago the king’s bedrock constituency, the Bedouins (who backed his grandfather Abdullah when Jordan was established in 1921), rioted against the monarchy. Crown Prince Hassan, the king’s younger brother and heir apparent, went to quell the disturbances. The crowds stoned him.
Suddenly King Hussein seemed vulnerable. Even his American-born queen was criticized. And so, having tried virtually everything else to keep his country together, the king opted at last for limited democracy, holding parliamentary elections and curtailing censorship. To the surprise of many of his advisers, both the freedoms and the constraints seemed to work. During the gulf war, Jordans pro-Saddam masses could voice their feelings without forcing the king into a suicidal military alliance. Today, what the king calls democracy remains a very controlled experiment. Just last week two fundamentalist Muslim members of Parliament who challenged corruption among the king’s top aides were sentenced to 20 years of hard labor on dubious charges of armed conspiracy. Four days later, on the occasion of his birthday, the king pardoned them along with 800 other prisoners. The king gives freedom; the king can take it away.
But the experiment continues, if only because it may be the sole way Hussein can keep his Hashemite dynasty in place. Jordans Palestinian majority is bigger than ever. Saddam’s invasion forced more than 380,000 Palestinians out of Kuwait and other gulf states. The influx increased Jordan’s population by 10 percent. But unlike earlier refugees, these Palestinians brought money, skills and political sophistication. Their wealth has sparked a construction boom that includes hospitals, colleges and factories. And the most educated and influential among them find the stability of Jordan a welcome alternative to the chaotic politics of the PLO or the exclusionary policies of Kuwait. “I’ll take the king over Yasir Arafat any time,” says one well-heeled factory owner.
If peace talks move forward and an autonomous West Bank eventually enters some form of confederation with Jordan, the Palestinians’ presence in the kingdom will only grow stronger. “It’s done, let’s face it: Amman is the capital of Palestine,” a young businessman declares matter-of-factly among friends. Twenty years ago such talk would have been treasonous. For the moment, it’s an exaggeration. But if King Hussein, who has so often bent with the wind, has judged it right once again, he and his heirs may keep their throne-whatever the country is called.
