Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [109]
The train was coming down the tracks and I was not going to be able to stop it. The best I could do was get Jordan out of the way.
I tried to walk the tightrope of opposing the war and staying out of it. But I was certain of one thing: the longer the war lasted, the more terrible the consequences would be and the more intense the pressures on Jordan would become. Adding to the complexity, at this time I came under sustained pressure from the American administration to allow U.S. troops to be based in Jordan. In the months before the Iraq war, Jordan began to be dragged into the debate about the staging of ground forces. Our long land border with Iraq was attractive to American planners, who saw it as an ideal strategic location from which to launch an attack into western Iraq.
The looming conflict was an emotionally charged topic, both in Jordan and in the wider Middle East. Throughout January, tens of thousands of people demonstrated from Ankara to Beirut, expressing enormous hostility to what they believed was an unnecessary war. On February 1, around five thousand protesters, organized by opposition parties, marched in Amman against war in Iraq, waving pictures of Saddam and chanting, “Terrorist Bush, get out of our lands.”
We were determined to keep our borders sovereign and not to allow any of the potential combatants to cross over into Jordanian territory. During this period, one night an unidentified aircraft flew over Jordan without permission. It flew fast and low to avoid being spotted, but we picked it up on our radar and sent two Mirage fighter jets to intercept it. The plane was heading toward Iraq and our fighters intercepted the aircraft as it was approaching the Jordanian-Saudi border. They flew up next to it and identified it as a C-130 military transport plane, flying in the dark with no lights. It refused to answer repeated requests for identification.
As part of the coalition’s military buildup, there were many C-130s and other transport planes in the air near our borders, and we wanted to know what this plane was and why it had entered Jordanian airspace covertly. We called coalition headquarters, as well as the Israeli military, but no one would admit to ownership of the mystery plane. The Jordanian pilots radioed my brother Feisal, who was the commander of the air force, and asked whether they should shoot it down. If we made the mistake of shooting down a coalition transport craft, it would create a major international incident. As the plane approached the Saudi border, Feisal told his men to hold their fire.
The next day Feisal followed up with the American military, who assured him that it was not a coalition plane. The United States agreed to try to track where the plane had gone after leaving Jordan. We subsequently learned that after entering Saudi airspace, it had landed in Israel.
The chief of staff of the Israeli air force at the time, Dan Halutz, called Feisal to assure him that it was not an Israeli plane. He said that it was most likely a cloud of chaff. A couple of days later a senior Israeli officer was visiting Jordan. I asked Feisal to go speak to him and to set out Jordanian policy clearly and directly. Feisal did not mince his words. “We know it was a C-130, and we know it was yours,” he said. “I want to make it very, very clear that the next time this happens we will pursue it very aggressively. We will not allow anybody to fly through our airspace. Anything that crosses the border will be shot at.”
During this period, General Tommy Franks was in charge of war planning. I had gotten to know General Franks when he took over at CENTCOM in 2000. One of the finest soldiers I have ever met, he was hard-bitten, no-nonsense,