Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [52]
“If someone had told me back in 1973, while I was fighting along the Suez Canal, that one day Israeli paratroopers would be jumping with the Jordanians,” said another of the Israeli veterans who jumped with us that day, “I’d have told him to get his head examined.” The jump was a great success and reminded all the men, fierce fighters and veterans of countless wars, how much they shared in common. Although today the relationship between Jordan and Israel is strained, at that time there was a sense of a new beginning. We hoped that the peace treaty between the two countries would lead to a comprehensive regional peace and that we were entering a new phase in Middle Eastern politics. There was so much optimism that I can’t help but look back on those years with great fondness, as well as with some bitterness at the opportunities that have been squandered.
I asked the French Special Forces and the British Parachute Regiment to come out and train my men. We made quite a few changes. One was to introduce live-fire exercises and to ban the use of blanks. I remembered from Sandhurst how using real bullets increases one’s concentration. We have been fortunate that only one soldier has been wounded in the years since we started live-ammunition exercises.
We had a chance to demonstrate our capabilities to our neighbor in 1997, when the Israeli defense minister, Yitzhak Mordechai, visited Jordan. My father asked me to put on a demonstration exercise in Zarqa, and we happily obliged. We began with basic trench work, in which you assault a fortified position. The soldiers ran toward the trenches, firing as they went, using live ammunition. Then they threw grenades and blasted their way across the barriers. The second exercise involved fighting in built-up areas. My troops assaulted a series of buildings using flamethrowers and Bangalore torpedoes, long tubes with explosives inside that cut through barbed wire. The men cleared a path up to the buildings, tossed grenades through the windows, and then stormed inside.
When they had finished, Mordechai turned to me and said, “I’m very glad your father decided to make peace with us!”
Live-fire exercises were nothing compared to actual missions. Due to the nature of Special Operations, many of our activities remain confidential. One particular mission, however, stands out in my mind.
Chapter 11
Very Special Operations
In 1997, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was deployed to eastern Jordan to help the police combat drug smugglers on the Iraqi border. The smugglers were looking to transit Jordan to access lucrative markets in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. One of Saddam’s sons, Qusay, ran a drug-smuggling operation from Baghdad, but the problem was not all foreign—people on the Jordanian side were also known to be involved.
The last Jordanian town before the Iraqi border, Rweished, was a small town with little industry. Most people made their money from trade across the border, both legal and illegal. From there to the Iraqi border was fifty miles of completely flat ground. The smugglers had souped-up General Motors trucks, with the exhausts pointed down so that they would kick up a dust cloud as they drove to prevent identification. They had secure communications, night-vision capabilities, and heavy machine guns mounted on the back of their trucks.
The desert police patrolled at night in old jeeps and didn’t have anything like night-vision equipment. The smugglers would roar past at full speed and disappear into a network of tents and buildings on the outskirts of town. It was a bit like facing a wellequipped foreign army, and the police were outgunned. When a policeman was killed while trying to tackle the smugglers, my father asked army headquarters to send me in. Although they were directed from Qusay’s headquarters in Baghdad, the smugglers had a long reach. Just how long, I had discovered to my discomfort a few weeks