Why India and Pakistan will be closely watching political developments in Jordan

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Palace intrigues are often riveting, but the week-long drama within the Hashemite Royal family in Jordan is making Indian diplomats sit up, even if quietly and discreetly. For 54 years, Pakistan’s influence and role in Jordan has been a matter of concern for successive Indian Prime Ministers.

Just when it seemed Jordan had shed its heavy Pakistani baggage, a left-over from its history and the kingdom’s blue-blooded ties with Islamabad, the now-open rift between King Abdullah II and his half-brother, the deposed Crown Prince, Hamzah bin Hussein, has provided an unexpected opening for Pakistan to potentially play a role in restoring the status quo ante in Amman. On April 3, Hamzah said in a video that he was under house arrest.

Prince El Hassan bin Talal, uncle to both King Abdullah and Prince Hamzah, has been entrusted the job of mediating between these two top members of the royal household and bringing peace between the feuding half-brothers. “I decided to deal with the matter of Prince Hamzah within the Hashemite family, and I entrusted this to my uncle, His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal,” King Abdullah said on April 7 night in his first comments on the rift which has shocked Jordanians.

Hassan was once the Crown Prince and was all set to succeed Hussein bin Talal, whose reign lasted 47 years. Hussein was the longest-reigning monarch in the Arab world when he died of cancer in 1999. Hassan, who married into one of Pakistan’s most prominent families — the Suhrawardys and the Ikramullahs — in 1968, was removed as Crown Prince just three weeks before he was to become king, in one of the most gripping palace intrigues in the Arab world’s recent history.

Calcutta-born Sarvath Ikramullah El Hassan, was a heartbeat away from becoming the Queen of Jordan when King Hussein, from his death bed, appointed his son Abdullah as the Crown Prince and paved the way for his succession as the next king.

Amman is a city of perennial rumours and gossip. But even by this city’s standards, stories about Sarvath’s influence on her husband, then heir apparent to the Hashemite Crown, were the stuff of epics during the long years when Jordan was the most important factor in the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum. Princess Sarvath's father, Mohammad Ikramullah, was Pakistan's First Foreign Secretary. Her uncle, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, was the fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Enter Zia-ul-Haq, a young brigadier in the Pakistan Army who earned the trust of King Hussein, ostensibly influenced by his brother Hassan and his Pakistani wife. The year was 1968 when Hassan married Sarvath after a 10-year courtship: the two met in London in 1958, according to chroniclers of Hashemite folklore.

Those were the years when Pakistan’s Army, in mercenary missions, protected several royal families in the Arab world, including the Saudi Arabia’s King and members of the Royal Court. Zia, who eventually became Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff and President, amassed so much of Hussein’s trust that he was in charge of Jordan’s defence in a conflict with Syria when he was stationed in Amman.

The turning point in the Jordanian royal family’s ties with Pakistan came in ‘Black September’ 1970, as that eventful month is known in Arab history, when Palestinian forces led by Yasser Arafat nearly overthrew the Hashemite monarchy. Zia personally led the Pakistani contingent stationed in Jordan against the Palestinian putsch and saved the monarchy. It is a cruel twist of irony that a grateful Hussein later persuaded Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to appoint Zia as Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff with consequences that were fatal for Bhutto.

Like Indira Gandhi who tried to wean the Shah’s Iran away from Pakistan, Rajiv Gandhi attempted to counter Islamabad’s influence in Amman. Hussein and Rajiv Gandhi, both pilots, developed a good chemistry. Rajiv Gandhi visited Amman in 1988. By then he had already become embroiled in the Bofors scandal and was a lame duck. Instead of the pioneering initiative that it had the potential to be, Rajiv Gandhi’s friendship with Hussein became mired in a controversy over a Mercedes car that the monarch gifted to the Prime Minister.

By that time, India needed Jordan more than Jordan needed India. In a blunder of monumental proportions, Rajiv Gandhi accorded diplomatic recognition to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), which was not a de facto state. Within five minutes of New Delhi’s recognition, Morocco, whose territory is claimed by SADR broke off relations with India. Almost overnight, India faced a fertiliser shortage. Morocco had been India’s biggest source for phosphates.

Later, PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, as reformer Prime Ministers, created the architecture for an economic relationship with Jordan based on phosphates and potash, which India needed. The Jordan-India Fertiliser Company, a joint venture between the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited and the Jordan Phosphates Mining Company, endures as the showpiece of this economic diplomacy. India is now the biggest market for Jordan’s phosphate and potash.

Jordan’s stability, rocked by the royal spat, is of interest to India in multiple ways. That was the logic behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Amman three years ago — and that of President Pranab Mukherjee in 2015. In the divisions within the Hashemite family, Pakistan sees a chance to claw its way back into Jordan, its role steadily reduced since Hassan was removed as Crown Prince. One reason for Hassan’s removal was his attempt as Regent in Hussein’s dying days to change the structure of Jordan’s military and bring in Pakistani ‘advisers’.

This week, Pakistan was the first country to comment on Jordan’s royal rift. “We stand in solidarity with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan… Pakistan fully supports the right of Jordan to preserve its security, stability and sovereignty.” India is watching and waiting.