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Fahd hailed as moderniser of desert kingdom

Douglas Martin

Monarch championed women's education

RIYADH: King Fahd, the absolutist monarch of Saudi Arabia who guided his desert kingdom through swerves in the oil market, regional wars and the incessant tensions between Islamic tradition and breakneck modernisation, died on Monday, the Saudi royal court in Riyadh said.

King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz, the fifth Saudi sovereign, transcended his early reputation as a bon vivant prince to become a leader of Arab states in the Persian Gulf region, a friend to the United States when that was not always easy and, most recently, though in a debilitated state due to repeated and deepening health problems, a principal in the war against terrorism.

King Fahd, who suffered the first of several strokes in 1995, was overweight, diabetic, and long suffered maladies from arthritis to gallbladder surgery to a blood clot in his eye. He used a cane or a wheelchair. He let hundreds of thousands of American troops be based in Saudi Arabia during the first war against Iraq despite heated criticism from other Arab countries.

Religious schools

His influence ranged from helping the Reagan administration orchestrate and finance its complicated, illegal operation to sell arms to Iran while aiding Nicaraguan rebels; to giving hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinians fighting Israel, to establishing religious schools, some of which have been described as breeders of terrorists, throughout the Islamic world.

The power and prestige of controlling the world's biggest pool of oil, a quarter of the planet's reserves, spoke for itself. But depressed petroleum prices during much of King Fahd's reign, which began in 1982, engendered economic pressures unthinkable during the high-flying 1970s. As population surged and employment opportunities dwindled, the kingdom's per capita income sank to a third of what it had been at the time of his coronation.

The King nonetheless used his ability to pump more oil almost at will as a damper on oil prices so as not to damage the world economy. But he understandably worried when prices fell too low to pay the kingdom's bills, and in 1986 sacked his famous Oil Minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, for allowing crude prices to fall to $10 a barrel from $30.

In 1986 King Fahd boldly declared his other source of power by naming himself Custodian of the Two Holy Places, referring to the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina, Islam's most sacred sites. But it was exactly this religious role that was most challenged during the latter part of his reign as Islamic conservatives derided the royal family as corrupt and the Government's closeness to the United States as near-satanic.

It was thus of high significance that in December 2003, an edict in King Fahd's name ordered religious scholars to marshal doctrinal arguments to fight Islamist terrorists.

Action against Osama

In 1994, the King stripped Osama bin Laden of his Saudi citizenship because of his activities against the royal family. The King's other anti-terrorist actions, many probably performed by Crown Prince Abdullah, included removing more than 2,000 radical preachers from their mosques.

Other than the principality of Lichtenstein, Saudi Arabia is the only country named after a family. King Fahd's Saud family has ruled since 1932 when his father, King Abdul Aziz al-Saud, formed what was actually the family's third kingdom on the Arabian peninsula.

Each time, beginning in the mid-18th century, the Sauds claimed religious authority as legitimacy for their rule. This derived from their alliance with the Wahabbi sect of Muslims, led by the Al-Sheikh family. In return for the endorsement of the ultra-strict Wahabbis, the Sauds act as their protectors and enforcers.

Dr. Rashad Pharaon, once personal physician to Saud, compared Fahd to his brothers, saying he came ``nearest to his father in outlook and general qualities wisdom, ambition and the will-power to achieve those objectives for which the Saudi house stands.''

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