Growing up as an ethnic minority in the UK in the
1990s, I developed a great pride in being part of the “Overseas Chinese”
community. My pride stemmed from the fact that “MY” people had the great talent
of being able to make everything from nothing. From where I stood, the Chinese
were what you’d call a necessary people. Singapore and Hong Kong had become
bywords for building everything from nothing and Chinatown in any Western city
was an oasis on sanity. These were pockets of prosperity built by people who
came to the country without a penny to their name and without speaking a word
of the native language and yet they built things for themselves. I used to
enjoy baiting my friend by telling them that “MY” people could build something
in their country from the ground up whereas “THEIR” people could only come to “MY”
country if they were part of a big company.
In a way, you could say that I got sold on Singapore’s
propaganda even though I hadn’t really grown up in Singapore. It’s become
something of religious mantra to talk about how Singapore was a fishing village,
with no natural resources or hinterland to speak off and yet prospered within a
generation. It’s often repeated that we are an oasis of stability in a chaotic
region and our “Great Leader,” Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was a master strategist in navigating
troubled waters.
There is no doubt that Mr. Lee was an amazing national
leader who was able to do the necessary with the circumstances that he had to
face. However, Mr. Lee did do a good job with poor circumstances, he is not
actually the master of creating everything from nothing. If you were to look at
our history beyond what the PAP government tells you, you’ll find that Singapore
did have a few things going for it. For a start, we were not exactly a fishing
village. Our colonial masters set us up as a port and we had an administrative
infrastructure. Furthermore, whilst we did face real threats of invasion in our
early days (Both the Malayan Communist Insurgency and Konfrantasi were real but
we were helped by the British), the region, and in particular our immediate
neighbours of Malaysia and Indonesia stabilized, thanks to the rise of Mahathir
and Suharto. As one Indian expat said “Singapore and Malaysia have creative
competition – you build a port, I build a bigger one as opposed to destructive
competition of India and Pakistan – you build a bomb, I build a bigger one).
The real master of building everything was from
nothing is not from Southeast Asia. He was from the Middle East. That man was
the late King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan, who reigned from 1952 until his death
in 1999. Unlike Mr. Lee who was 32 and with a successful law career when he first
entered politics, King Hussein was thrust onto the throne before his 17th
birthday when his father, King Talal was forced to abdicate due to his health.
I will leave the analysis of the late Jordanian King’s
life to the better qualified. One can get an overview of his life and achievements
from the following Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_of_Jordan
What I will say is that the biggest miracle of the
Jordanian monarchy was the fact that it survived and whilst Jordan may not have
the GDP per capita of one of the Asian Tigers or one of the Petro-States in the
Arabian Gulf, it has become an oasis of calm in a really rough neighbourhood.
Sure, Malaysia and Indonesia may seem chaotic when
compared to Singapore. However, the last armed conflict between states in the
ASEAN region was in the 1970s during the conflict in Vietnam and Cambodia.
States in the ASEAN region have pretty much kept to themselves and whilst there
have been a few skirmishes like during the liberation of East Timor (or Timor-Leste
as it is now known) there’s not been a major conflict that has driven masses
dispersed.
It’s a different story in the Middle East. Jordan’s
immediate neighbours include Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, Iraq and Syria,
all of which in seemingly never-ending state of conflict. Yet, despite this, Jordan
has managed to keep these conflicts out of its borders. One of King Hussein’s
major achievements was to drive the PLO from Jordanian soil so that they would
not use Jordan as a base to launch terrorist attacks against Israel, thus
making Jordan a target for Israeli aggression.
Then, there’s the issue of population management. Jordan
has been in a position where its had to absorb waves of refuges from his its
neighbours since the 1948 and as at 2016, Jordan is the largest refugee hosting
nation in the world. Nearly a quarter of the accepted refuges have since been
given Jordanian citizenship and whilst the influx has caused a strain on the
Jordanian economy, Jordan still manages to accommodate them and integrating
them into Jordanian society.
With the possible exception of Saudi Arabia, Jordan
does not have a “Must be in” trade partner in the same way that Hong Kong has
China and Singapore has Indonesia.
In Singapore, we’re lucky in the sense that whatever waring
parties are out there, they seem to understand that they have to behave in
Singapore. We’ve hosted the most unlikely of pairings. There was the Trump-Kim
Summit and we even hosted Taiwan and China.
This hasn’t been the case for Jordan. The influx of
refugees brought emotions about conflicts beyond its borders into the country.
One of the largest groups of refugees are the Palestinians, who had been kicked
off their home land by Israel. The Jordanian government has needed to be sensitive
to domestic passions. One of King Hussein’s more harrowing moments came in the
aftermath of the Gulf War to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Jordan stayed
out of the coalition, which displeased the Western Powers and the Gulf Arabs
did not take kindly to it either. However, domestic sentiment in Jordan was “Pro-Iraq”
and there was no way the King could have joined the coalition without causing
domestic disturbance.
Yet, the late king managed to get his country through both
foreign and domestic turmoil’s. He was the second Arab leader to sign a Peace
Treaty with Israel. Yet unlike Anwar Sadat who got frozen out of the Arab League
after signing the Camp David Accord, King Hussein remained a respected figure.
When King Hussein died in 1999, the world mourned. Old
enemies like Yasser Arafat paid tribute. Four US Presidents attended. Enemies
like Israel, Syria, Iraq and Iran all turned up at the funeral. A more complete
attendance list can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_King_Hussein
How did a monarch of a small nation with no natural
resources to speak of, managed to become so respected by the rest of the world?
He was what you’d call a “Zen Master in an Asylum” and his status as such was
clearly seen when leaders of the world powers flocked to his funeral. The world
should miss this Zen Master of international diplomacy.
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