KSA's New Monarch: Abdullah takes over as Fahd passes away
Pakistan Times Monitoring Desk

RIYADH (Saudi Arabia): Saudi King Fahd, leader of the world’s top oil exporter, died after a long period of ill health that saw him hand over the reins of power in the last years of his turbulent rule.

His half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah, de facto ruler for a decade, was swiftly appointed his successor and powerful Defence Minister Sultan bin Abdul Aziz was chosen as crown prince of the ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom.

Medical sources said King Fahd, believed to be aged 84, died in hospital at dawn, 23 years after he took the throne to lead the country through oil crises, wars and the deadly menace of extremism.

“With all sorrow and sadness, the royal court in the name of His Highness Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and all family members—in the name of the entire nation—announces the death of the custodian of the two holy mosques, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz from illness,” an official statement said.

State television interrupted progammes to air verses from the Holy Quran and many members of the ruling family crowded the Riyadh hospital where the monarch passed away, to pay their last respects. An Arab summit due to be held in Egypt was cancelled.

“The kingdom has lost an honourable son and one of its dearest leaders... History will remember the great and numerous achievements he accomplished for the sake of the holy sites, his people and his nation,” Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said. In Riyadh, Saudis received the news calmly. Fahd, who became king in 1982 but was forced by ill health to hand over most powers to Abdullah in 1995, had been admitted to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh in late May for “medical tests”. He was said to have suffered respiratory problems caused by pneumonia.

Announcing the succession, the official statement said: “Members of the family have pledged allegiance to Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz as king over the country. “Then, King Abudullah bin Abdul Aziz... chose Defence Minister Sultan bin Abdul Aziz as crown prince... and members of the family pledged allegiance to his excellency.”

Believed to have been born in 1921, Fahd took charge in 1982 of a vast kingdom which is the world’s largest petroleum exporter and holds a quarter of global oil reserves. He guided Saudi Arabia through the most turbulent era in its history, which saw the kingdom survive two gulf Wars only to have to confront the menace of extremism. Two years of strife perpetrated by extremists has claimed the lives of 90 civilians, 42 security personnel and 113 militants, according to official figures.

Saudi’s alliance with the United States, the cornerstone of Fahd’s foreign policy was sorely tested by the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, in which 15 out of the 19 attackers were Saudi.

Designated as next in line after King Faisal’s assassination in 1975, Fahd was in practical terms running the country under the rule of his ailing brother King Khaled from 1975 to 1982, when he took over the throne. After the stroke in 1995 confined him to a wheelchair, the king delegated most day-to-day business of government to Abdullah.

Fahd leaves behind an economy experiencing its biggest growth in two decades thanks to a spectacular surge in oil prices. Although he did not formally assume the throne until 1982, Fahd was in effective day-to-day control from 1975 on because King Khaled was a sick man. Under the Saudi system the succession goes to the brother who is considered best for the job and when King Khaled died in 1982 there was no dispute that Fahd should take over. A somewhat distant man Fahd had one crucial quality: the ability to keep his nerve in a crisis.

He had shown his mettle early. In 1979 when he was Crown Prince, the Shah of Iran was overthrown and replaced by a virulently anti-monarchist, republican Islamist regime. Saudi Arabia became the prime target for the invective which Iran began hurling at Gulf Arab monarchies. The attacks were damaging enough but worse was to come. The new climate of militancy inspired a rising by home-grown Saudi dissidents who seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca.

With King Khaled still ill, Fahd played a crucial role in bringing the rebellion under control. The bid to overthrow the Royal family failed.

Even before the warren of tunnels beneath the Grand Mosque had been cleared of rebels, there came a further blow: the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Fahd was instrumental in what appeared to be a brilliant manoeuvre helping to support the Afghan Mujahideen resistance fighters. The move, backed by the US and Pakistan, gave Fahd kudos among his own people.

The early years of Fahd’s reign were dominated by the Iran-Iraq war. For six years the Saudis worried that the Iraqi army would crack and that the Iranians would be able to instal a revolutionary Islamist republican government in Baghdad. To forestall this Fahd, backed by most of the Western powers, “lent” the Iraqi regime some $20bn to bolster its war effort. The war ended in stalemate. The Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait in August 1990. The move was embarrassing and shocking for Fahd partly because of the financial support he had lavished on the Iraqi regime and partly because he was forced to invite the US and her allies to come to the aid of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. After US Defense Secretary Dick Cheney flew out and showed Fahd photographs of Iraqi units deployed for an advance into Saudi Arabia, the King agreed to a multinational force of more than 500,000 men, including many Americans, being based in Saudi Arabia. The move exposed the depth of Saudi and Gulf Arab military weakness and the hollowness of official claims to self-reliance.

On the domestic front, many regarded Fahd as a moderate among autocrats. As well as pioneering the Majlis-as-Shura consultative council, he introduced in 1992 the Basic Law, a kind of secular constitution partly directed against unruly militants. It stated that people’s houses could not be entered without the owners’ permission and that the zakat, a religious tax, would in future be levied by the government, not the mosque and paid to legitimate recipients. The aim was to discourage funding of private revolutionary groups.

Economically, the great test for Fahd was the rapid decline of Saudi oil production that started falling almost from the month he assumed power. Exports dropped from the previous level of 9m barrels a day to under 2m barrels in 1985 - at which point the King ordered his Oil Minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, to abandon the OPEC formula and sell oil at market prices. The decision led to a collapse of prices in 1986 with the price of Arabian Light - then the marker crude - going from some $32 to under $9 a barrel. From then on the Saudi government was forced to run a series of budget deficits financed initially from reserves and after 1990 by borrowing.

Whereas under Khaled the thrust of economic policy had been finding ways of spending oil revenues - in particular how to distribute them to the people - under Fahd it was encouraging the private sector to take up the running of the kingdom’s developments. Yet Fahd failed to persuade his people to lower their expectations and, given the non-confrontational character of the King and his family, until the last two years his government never quite managed to balance the books.

Fahd’s own preoccupation throughout his reign was the rebuilding of the great mosques of Mecca and Medina. The projects, which were managed by the bin Laden family construction group, cost billions of dollars and proved an important drain on the Saudi budget, but Fahd regarded the work as the most important achievement of his life.●