The Boys Take Over

Crowds jammed Amman's King Feisal Avenue six deep last week. Watching from rooftops, veiled women set up the piercing wail of joy called Zaghareed. The object of the outcry, a smiling, slender lad in a slow-moving, blue 1953 Lincoln convertible surrounded by armored cars, replied again & again with precise Sandhurst salutes. The procession moved on to Jordan's Parliament building. There, dressed in the gilded blue uniform of an Arab Legion general, the lad rose from a satin throne and said in a loud, clear voice: "I swear by God to abide by the constitution and to be loyal to the people." Outside, guns hammered 101 salvos into the dusty hills, and a legion bagpipe band swirled music. Hussein Ibn Talal Ibn Abdullah el Hashimi, that day turned 18, was now Jordan's third King.

Five hundred miles to the east, across bare desert and mountain, in fabled Baghdad, another boy just turned 18, faced an elegant, white-tied assemblage of bearded senators, princes, sheiks and emissaries of 33 foreign lands. At the stroke of 8 on the same morning, he swore to "safeguard the constitution and independence" of Iraq. As Feisal became Iraq's third King, cannons also hammered a101-gun salute, and the people of the ancient, reconstituted kingdom (formerly Mesopotamia) cried their delight.

The two young Kings, enthroned the same day, are both Hashemites, and cousins in the same family. Both reign over lands carved out for their grandfathers by the British after World War I. Both are British-educated (at Harrow), both came to rule through family tragedy. Hussein's father, Talal (who himself succeeded the assassinated Abdullah, first King of Jordan), lost his throne because of insanity; Feisal's father Ghazi wrapped his racing car around a light pole when Feisal was a solemn-eyed moppet of three.

Manufactured in Whitehall. Hussein's Jordan is economic nonsense, a state manufactured in Whitehall after World War I to serve Britain's strategic purposes. Its 37,000 sq. mi. are three-fifths desert, with no oil, no industrial raw materials, tortuous roads and one inaccessible port (Agaba). The population, tripled t01,400,000 by the annexation of part of Palestine and the influx of refugees, is divided against itself. Refugee camps are an organized horror of dirt and malnutrition. Jordan scrapes along largely on British handouts, and glories chiefly in its 15,000-man, British-officered Arab Legion, best army in the Arab world.

Self-confident Hussein means to be King. Recently he made a lightning tour of government offices, snorted: "I saw coffee, newspapers, piled official papers and dirt, but I did not see work and efficient officials, and I shall not allow this thing to go on."

Waiting for Trouble. By comparison, Feisal's Iraq (175,000 sq. mi.) is a land of promise. It has resources (an oil reserve of five billion barrels), money ($112 million in oil royalties annually), inherently fertile soil and plenty of water for irrigation. Nevertheless, 90% of its 5,000,000 inhabitants are illiterate, and most of the farms are in the hands of usurious absentee landlords. Communist agitators and nationalist fanatics are riding high.

On his U.S. trip last summer--driving a tank at Willow Run, sitting on the Dodgers' bench, collecting cowboy hats--Feisal showed himself an alert, likable, mechanically inclined youngster, not brilliant, but competent and confident.

On these two fresh, young faces, the ancient and anxious Middle East looked hopefully last week.

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