A Royal Price for Princely Errors in Jordan

In the final hours before he left Jordan again last week, a sick and frail King Hussein toiled late into the night, feverishly scribbling a long stream of thoughts that ended in the summary dismissal of his brother as crown prince.

The king’s fitful musings were interrupted by an unplanned trip to the hospital, his fifth in five days, when doctors informed him that he had to return urgently to the U.S. for more of the cancer treatment that had sustained his life.

Back at his palace, Hussein dashed off the final sentences of his 14-page missive. It was nearly 1 a.m. Tuesday. The letter was faxed to state television, where an employee dutifully read the words to any of the king’s subjects who were still awake.

Hassan, the loyal younger sibling who for more than three decades had waited in the wings for his chance to assume the throne, was out. Abdullah, the king’s eldest son, was in.

The downfall of Hassan stunned Jordanians, but it was in fact the precipitate denouement of a long-evolving drama of rivalries and jealousies, misunderstandings, ambition and, most fundamentally, the wishes of a dying monarch.

As reconstructed through interviews and through the king’s own words, the story that one commentator called “part Shakespeare, part Dallas” really began years ago but was hastened to its concluding act by mortality and psychology.

On Jan. 19, it is now clear, Hussein returned to Jordan from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., on an explicit mission to replace Hassan. His very human motive was to return the line of succession to his direct descendants by installing one of his own sons as crown prince.

But Hassan had made plenty of mistakes and miscalculations during his tenure as regent, and there were plenty of relatives and associates eager to capitalize on them. The king was armed with the ammunition he needed.

“He’s probably wanted to do this a long time, but he was hesitant,” said a prominent Jordanian diplomat who has known and worked with the king for years. “The king is known for his patience. He has a very romantic view of himself and his relation with his brothers. . . . It became personal and political.”

Hassan had resisted Hussein’s entreaties through the years to change the line of succession so that one of the king’s sons would eventually ascend to the throne, and a final such plea late last year was similarly rebuffed. To add to this, Hussein had received troubling reports about Hassan during the king’s six months of chemotherapy in Minnesota.

Hassan’s Errors Were Ammunition for King

Based on the reports, Hussein accused Hassan of scheming to take over as monarch prematurely and of acting as though the king was already dead. Hassan had met with military commanders to prepare for Hussein’s death; he had ordered the firings of senior military, intelligence and diplomatic personnel.

And, finally, he had encroached on Hussein’s domain where it really hurt: Hassan had ordered the army chief of staff, Abdul Hafez Mureii Kaabneh, to relinquish to the state an enormous mansion built for the officer with the kingdom’s money.

Hassan purportedly saw this as the kind of corruption that a modern state could not tolerate; for Hussein, however, building the house for the army chief of staff was part and parcel of a perks system crucial to ensuring the loyalty of the military in this largely tribal country.

These accusations and other startling observations were contained in Hussein’s letter, which was eventually disseminated in Jordanian newspapers as well as on television. Even as he wrote, many of his closest aides did not know exactly what the king was thinking. A few hours after he finished writing, he boarded a jet for the Mayo Clinic, where this weekend he completed another round of chemotherapy and where he is scheduled for two more bone marrow transplants, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The letter is a rambling document that drifts oddly from discussion of family intrigue to worries about the ozone layer and the development of biological weapons. Its contents have made some in Jordan question the king’s frame of mind as he wrote it, but his attacks on a too-eager Hassan and “parasites” within the family are clear, if surprising.

“All of this has given me many sleepless nights while I was on my sickbed, on top of my personal suffering,” Hussein wrote. “[There are] parasites who want to reach for the summit, and when the fever was getting high, some people thought it was their chance.”

Monarch Defends Queen Noor and Son

The king goes on to write resentfully that his American-born wife, Queen Noor, and their first son, Hamzah, have been the target of jealous gossip. He passionately defends both.

“Hamzah, may God give him long life, has been envied since childhood because he was close to me, and because he wanted to know all matters large and small, and all details of the history of his family.”

He scarcely mentions Abdullah until the third-to-last paragraph, when he appoints the 37-year-old army officer the new crown prince.

Most of Hussein’s aides had thought that the king, sitting at the Mayo Clinic for six months with Noor and, often, Hamzah at his side, had decided to select the 18-year-old as his heir.

Once back in Amman, however, under fresh counsel and less under the near-exclusive sway of Noor, the king decided otherwise. He may have realized that he would not live long enough to groom Hamzah as he would have wished.

On Jan. 22, he sent two aides, including the army chief of staff, to inform Hassan.

In the sometimes vicious finger-pointing of Jordanian society, many blame Hassan’s demise at least partly on his wife, Princess Sarvath, the daughter of a onetime Pakistani foreign minister, whom Hassan met in London during his studies. They married in 1968 and have one son and three daughters.

The elites look down on the princess, and she is described as someone who has put on airs, attempted to dominate her husband and insisted on retaining Pakistani dress and habits. She reportedly ordered renovations to her liking in the king’s palace at a time last fall when his cancer treatment was not going well.

Many believe that it is she whom Hussein was singling out as a parasite and social climber. Moreover, she and Queen Noor are said to despise each other and to have sparred in the past over whose son should become heir to the throne.

With embellished rumors the norm in Amman, other theories about Hassan’s fall abound. Among them: The Americans, afraid that he’d be too soft on Iraq, wanted him removed, or the military would have staged a coup if he had assumed the throne. Those theories are grist for novels but lack evidence.

Several people who know the king but who are sympathetic to Hassan say any abuses committed by Hassan may have become exaggerated in the mind of a sick man obsessed with his legacy. Hassan faced the dilemma of having to run a country while being obliged to maintain a low profile.

“What one man saw as rational behavior, a sick man saw as conspiracy,” said a former senior official and aide to Hussein. “Misinterpretations by both sides created a tragedy. And the sentiment was nourished by people who were anxious to feed certain behavior.”

Ahmed Obeidat, a senator and former intelligence officer who knows the king, said the bottom line is that Hussein wanted his son to succeed him.

“I don’t think what Hassan was doing was wrong,” Obeidat said. “But his timing was wrong.”

King’s Brother Has No Plans to Leave Country

Some Jordanian analysts have speculated that the depth of hurt and animosity is such that Hassan will not be able to remain an active part of the kingdom’s leadership. But others disagree, noting that the senior tier of the Hashemite family dynasty consists of only a dozen or so men.

Obeidat and another politician paid a visit to a dejected and downcast Hassan a few days ago. Hassan told Obeidat that, despite his fate, he plans to remain in the country, and Obeidat said he believes that Hassan will eventually be brought back into the fold as a valued counselor.

“He is a tough person, but you could tell he was surprised. It is not easy for a man, after 33 years, to find himself out of it completely,” Obeidat said.

“We asked him to forget and to look to the future because the country is in a critical situation. He said he was a soldier, and [that] since his majesty wanted this, what can he do? We encouraged him not to close his doors. This is not an easy period for the country.”