Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [77]
I knew a little about Assad and what kind of man he was. In the late 1980s, when tensions between him and Saddam Hussein were running high—Saddam was entrenched in a lengthy, violent war with Iran, and Assad was siding with the Iranians—my father, working through back channels, persuaded the two men to meet, following Winston Churchill’s advice that “to jaw jaw is always better than to war war.” The site he chose was Al Jafr, a remote desert village about 140 miles south of Amman. At that time, I was a military officer flying Cobra helicopters and my unit was part of the aerial security. The Royal Guard cordoned off the meeting site, stationing armed troops along the perimeter and around the landing strip. We separated the compound into two halves, one side for the Syrians and the other for the Iraqis, and prepared accommodations.
Once preparations were completed, my father beckoned me to join him. “Stay with me and watch what happens,” he said. Looking back, I realize that he wanted me to have a glimpse into international diplomacy, a world far removed from my duties as an army officer.
Both Syria and Iraq were then ruled by the Baath Party, which espoused a form of secular Arab socialism. In the late 1960s, the Baath Party, which was formed in Syria, split. The party’s founders were driven into exile—moving to Iraq, where they soon drew a following and took over the government in 1968. Relations between Baathist Syria and Iraq fluctuated over the years between high tension and collaboration, and by the mid-1980s, when my father brought them together, these two strong military powers were jockeying for regional primacy.
Late in the afternoon of the appointed day, the sound of an aircraft engine floated across the desert, and then several jets with Syrian flags on their tails landed and taxied down the makeshift runway. Accompanied by around fifty soldiers carrying AK-47 assault rifles, Hafez al-Assad emerged from his plane. My father greeted him and escorted him and his delegation to the Syrian half of the compound.
About half an hour later several more planes landed, this time bearing Iraqi colors. Saddam Hussein marched out of the lead plane, accompanied by some fifty heavily armed Iraqi soldiers. My father welcomed Saddam and showed him to the Iraqi delegation’s area.
I watched the proceedings with Dr. Samir Farraj, my father’s personal physician. As dusk fell, our soldiers set up bright spotlights to illuminate the whole area like daylight. We did not want any confusion caused by shadows in the night.
Saddam and Assad went into the meeting room my father had prepared, while my father waited outside with the rest of us. Several hours passed, during which he kept sending in more coffee and food. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, the meeting ended. My father took Saddam to one side and asked how it had gone. Saddam wearily said that he had spoken for no more than fifteen minutes during the whole time. Relegating someone with Saddam’s massive ego almost entirely to listening was not a good idea. Despite all my father’s efforts, he could not persuade the two men to reconcile, and they left the desert meeting still on hostile terms. But both leaders respected my father’s attempt to act as a peacemaker. And I had learned a valuable lesson about the need for patience in diplomacy.
I had been invited to visit President Clinton in Washington in May, and when I saw President Assad in Damascus, he asked me to relay a message to Clinton. He said he was ready to talk to the Americans. I told him I would convey his message and we discussed the peace process and water rights. We also talked about his son, Bashar, whom I met on