Word: bedouins
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...King ordered General Abu Nuwar to come along, jumped into a limousine and raced toward Zerka with an escort of five jeeploads of Bedouin Tommy-gunners. On the road the convoy met the rampaging Bedouins, who went wild with cheers, firing in the air and screaming: "Down with Abu Nuwar! Down with the Communists!" One wild-eyed Bedouin officer charged toward Abu Nuwar with rifle ready. Hussein ordered him to halt, thus saved the cowering Abu Nuwar's life...
Pivot of the shift was Jordan, which in nine years has been transformed from a quiet Bedouin kingdom to a turbulent and strife-torn nation dominated by Palestine Arabs. The crisis in Jordan was misleadingly billed by Arabs and Israelis alike as strictly an "internal" Jordanian affair. It was anything but that. Jordan is an artificial country carved out of the desert, and cannot live without support from somebody. Ever since the British abdicated, King Hussein's chaotic and impoverished kingdom has been open to every neighbor's intervention. During last fall's Sinai war, neighboring Arab...
Armed with Saud money, Hussein hurried back to Jordan, began lining up Bedouin sheiks to sway the Bedouin troops, who comprise nearly half the Jordanian army. He gave them gifts, obtained jobs for sheiks' sons. To offset the proCommunists' control of the street mobs, he approached leaders of the fanatically anti-Western (and antiCommunist) Moslem Brotherhood, and his agents supplied black market weapons bought with Saudi money. Often the young King drove out for secret, late-night meetings with chosen leaders on lonely roads outside Amman. Hussein picked Zerka for his showdown because a crack Bedouin regiment...
...appoint Abdel Halim Nimr as Premier, the army would force him to. Hussein acted. On signal, his men spread word in Zerka that Communists headed by Abu Nuwar were about to seize the royal palace and overthrow the King. The Moslem Brotherhood took charge of the streets; the Bedouin garrison began attacking officers and an infantry unit known to support Abu Nuwar. They fought first with stones and rifle butts, later with bullets. Twelve men were killed or wounded in the melee. Then, as the desert warriors and the mob merged and started a wild surge down the road...
...same time, the Arab Legion, the King's loyal and predominantly Bedouin army, began a roundup of Communists, left-wing leaders and extreme nationalists, in an attempt to snuff out the Red influence which has helped keep this nation in seething ferment...