Part of the problem lies with the man himself. Hussein Kamel was so closely identified with Saddam – whether building weapons of mass destruction before the gulf war or brutally crushing the uprisings afterward – that few of Saddam’s old enemies feel comfortable supporting him. “He thought everyone would rally around and say, ‘Here’s your white horse’,” said one State Department official. Nothing of the sort happened. “That doesn’t mean he’s not useful,” says the source, “it just means the starring role is not his.”
Enter King Hussein. Jordan’s monarch not only offered the defector asylum, he also became in effect his patron and his bandler: publicly praising Kamel’s intelligence and patriotism, privately deciding who could and could not see him, even providing the official translator from Jordan’s secret service when Kamel meets with officials from other governments. “It’s the king’s political antennae that are guiding [Kamel],” says a Western official who has interviewed the Iraqi defector extensively.
King Hussein is simply doing what he has always done: playing for gain on the margins of a process. For a long time that process was the confrontation with Israel. Then it was the peace process with Israel, and now it’s the process of neutralizing Saddam. His short-term goal is simple: to get the Saudis to sell him oil once again at concessional terms. By making himself the patron of change in Iraq, King Hussein may hope to expunge his record of support for Saddam during the gulf war and strengthen his new image as Israel’s vital friend in the region. With help from Washington, he may also hope to improve his bitter relations with both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the king has moved so quickly that he baffled even his own people, many of whom are still sympathetic to Saddam. And worse, he fueled the engines of paranoia and conspiracy that often drive Mideast politics.
Secret accord: Syrian President Hafez Assad sees the whole affair as part of an effort to isolate him and pressure him into making peace with Israel. In this scenario, King Hussein is not really trying to overthrow Saddam but to forge a secret peace accord between Jerusalem and Baghdad. Saddam reportedly has made secret overtures to Israel in hopes of saving his own skin – and Israel is reported to have rejected them because Saddam can’t be trusted. But Assad is so preoccupied that his aides have told visitors he is devoting himself full-time to the Iraqi question.
Egypt must be concerned that Jordan will usurp its role as the key friend of the West in the region. Within days of the Kamel defection, Assad went to Cairo to discuss the implications with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The complications grow still more arcane when King Hussein’s family ambitions are factored in. His cousin ruled Iraq until 1958; Hussein was technically its viceroy. Although he’s never asserted a claim to the nonexistent throne, he’s never renounced it either. Might Hussein aspire to be king of Iraq himself? Not likely. But suspicion of his ambitions to regain his family’s former dominions continues to poison his relations with the Saudis, who see him as a royal pretender to their own kingdom. With enemies like these, Saddam may not need friends.
