TRANS-JORDAN'S FUTURE
By KENNETH WILLIAMS
COMPARISONS in Arab affairs are generally things to avoid, but it is safe to say that no treaty which Britain has made with an Arab country has been negotiated with more smoothness and good will than that with Trans-Jordan, which, when the treaty is ratified in a few weeks' time, will enter upon that era of independence to which it has so long and patiently looked forward. For this cordiality there ate some obvious reasons. First, the Emir Abdullah has given a wise, restraining lead to his subjects. His anchor has always rested on Britain, and the various Ministers who have served the Emir have trusted his direction implicitly. His judgement has been vindicated, for it was Britain which, without outside prompting, took the initiative in making this State independent. Secondly, British officials in Trans-Jordan have been phenomenally enlightened, pursuing nicely and sympathetically a policy of identifying British with Transjordanian interests. This Emirate has never been burdened with " Blimps " in the service either of the Emir or of the Colonial Office. British officials in Trans-Jordan have never treated the Arabs as " wogs," but as equals whose knowledge of their own people more than compensated for initial technical backwardness; and the Trans-Jordanians have been exceedingly quick to learn.
Thirdly, there has been in Trans-Jordan no large class of dis- gruntled politicians, seeking to make party capital and to nullify or to minimise the efforts of those who happened to be in power. Last, the community of Trans-Jordan—it would be more accurate to speak of communities, although the country has, mercifully, no minority problems—is essentially a simple one, comprising mainly merchants, fellaheen and tribesmen, who, provided that they are satisfied that minimum practical justice is done, generally turn a deaf ear to agitators. (It is true that at times the people have been pro- foundly stirred by events in Palestine, but their anxieties have not been turned to violence.) Between Moslem and Christian Arabs there has been no discrimination ; even the Moslem Circassians, introduced into Trans-Jordan last century from the Caucasus by the Ottomans have, after some initial trouble, adapted themselves to the felicitous atmosphere of the land. To such considerations one might perhaps add that Trans-Jordan is not given to the publication of newspapers, the people relying for their reading of the news on external sources.
It is, then, the moral fibre, serene and sagely handled, of the peoples of Trans-Jordan which is primarily responsible for the con- tentment of the land. But material progress has by no means been lacking, especially in recent years. For example, the trade in beasts with Saudi Arabia has been increasing considerably. Merchants from the Hejaz and Nejd have trekked up to the capital, Amman, with their camels, sheep and goats, not to take back the money they have received for them, but to spend it in the shops of Amman, and thereby to delight their families on returning to the southern regions. That in itself represents a notable sum for a country the Budget of which was but a few years ago only £300,000, and has since risen to over Li,000,000. Curiously, too, the transit trade in uncrated Palestine oranges for Syria has tended largely to proceed through Trans-Jordan—a phenomenon not to be expected.
Students might well claim, indeed, that modern Trans-Jordan has resumed the role of the Nabateans, those exceedingly prosperous Arab merchants who flourished a century or two before and after the birth of Christ, and who left for the wonderment of mankind the rock city of -Petra, wrongly depicted by Dean Burgon, a Newdegate Prize-winner who had not visited the place but had only read Burckhart's description of it, as " a rose-red city half as old as time." Trans-Jordan has to-day the entrepen trade for Arab goods from north, south, east and west. It is a remarkable repetition of an historical role. Some of this trade is still, as in past centuries, done by camel, but the modern state has, of course, its single-track Pilgrim Railway and the lorry to supplement its trade. I have never heard in Trans-Jordan the complaint once made by a motor- transport company in Syria, which, apologising in one of its annual reports for poor dividends, spoke of "la concurrence deloyale des charneaux." For Trans-Jordan has achieved a very workable balance between the old and the new.
How the country will develop materially is a matter of some con- jecture. Four-fifths of it is desert, and seems likely to remain so. Drillings for water have been made, but without great success ; and the frontier between desert and sown is very nearly what it was in Roman times. But there are possibilities in the cultivable part. Bananas can be grown in the Jordan Valley, and oil may be found there and elsewhere. Moreover, the port of Aqaba, where a lighter- basin was constructed during the war (though it has since been put to no commercial use), may become the port of Trans-Jordan. It is known that the company exploiting the salts of the Dead Sea is considering the possibility of utilising Aqaba for the goods which it sells in Eastern markets as an alternative to the much longer and more expensive route by way of road from Dead Sea to Jerusalem, train to Haifa and thence by ship through the Suez Canal, in which, incidentally, it pays dues of five shillings a ton. The Phosphate Company of Trans-Jordan, again, could much more conveniently us: Aqaba than any other port.
But it is well to be cautious about estimates in Trans-Jordan. Numerous grandiose schemes have been mooted, and almost all have been blown away with the dust of the desert. Nor are Arabs the only dreamers. During the war the Royal Engineers supervised the building of a new road southward to Aqaba. For part of the route, the stretch between Guweira and Wadi Ithm (well remem- bered by readers of T. E. Lawrence), the bed of a dry water-course was chosen. The rains came and washed it away, and it is still, I am informed, in ruins. It is no novel experience, this. When I was last in Aqaba I found that the repairing of the road northwards was one of the main occupations of certain of the inhabitants of this lovely lotus-like town, and the cynics were wont to say that the townspeople used to pray for rain in, order that they might get a job of work.
Trans-Jordan is essentially a romantic land, and, since so much of it is desert, it must be incorrigibly so. For the West, this tinge of the romantic is heightened by the glory of the Arab Legion, that peace-time police force of 2,000 men which during the war was used for military ends and expanded to its present strength of to,000 men. This force, founded by Peake Pasha and now commanded by Glubb Pasha, has the proudest of records. It belongs to, and is primarily recruited from, Trans-Jordan, yet, unlike the Trans- Jordan Frontier Force, an Imperial body founded in 1926, it has been willing to serve outside the borders of Trans-Jordan and Palestine. How much the ejection of the enemy from Iraq and Syria in 1941 owes to the Arab Legion is a matter of as yet in- completely recorded history. Now, presumably, if the world remains at peace, the Legion will revert mainly to its task of policing, though almost certainly its military potential will be preserved at high pitch. Nor, incidentally, is it wise to presume upon an indefinite vista of settled conditions in Arabia itself. There are plenty of indications that, given weakness in central governments, the nomads might care to revert to raiding, to indulge, that is, in what has been called their national pastime. It must be hoped that this will not be so ; but should inter-tribal raiding recur the Arab Legion is certain to play a Large part in controlling it.
As for the political future of this Emirate, shortly to become a kingdom, it is premature to speculate. There has been talk of its forming a loose federation with Iraq, of its having closer relations with Syria, or forging more intimate bonds with Palestine, or part of Palestine. But these are all conjectural matters to be decided not by Trans-Jordan alone but after the Arab League, of which Trans- Jordan is a member, has been consulted. Suffice it to say for the moment that all Arabs, like Britons, are rejoicing over the treaty which was signed in London last week, and that, for the time being, the reality of independence is enough to overshadow the dreams, possibly realisable, possibly insubstantial, of a much wider, closer, political Arab unity.
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