On August 2, 2005, Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz was laid
to rest in an unmarked grave. Wrapped simply in a brown
robe, his bier borne by family after the briefest of funeral
services, Fahd's end gave no clue to his life. He had been
one of the world's most opulent rulers, his largesse the
stuff of legend. Fahd also possessed powers as monarch that
would have impressed Louis XIV. His reign and his wrestle
with the challenges that threatened his kingdom tell us much
about Saudi Arabia's past, and, perhaps, even more about its
future.
Fahd was born into circumstances unimaginable in his later
life. He was one of over forty sons sired by a desert chief
who married a hundred times. Fahd and his six other
siblings (the Sudari seven) would benefit from their
mother's status as the favorite wife. The future king grew
up in what old-time writers used to call "oriental
splendor," luxurious compared to commoners but primitive
compared to European standards: Plenty of servants but no
indoor plumbing; mobility by donkey, camel, or horse; no
electricity or refrigeration (fresh meat or no meat);
physical prowess prized, especially in combat; sexual
prowess essential.
The state Fahd would inherit did not yet exist. His father,
the legendary Abdul Aziz was then assembling the pieces
through conquest and guile. Warrior and statesman, he had
learned the lesson of the earlier 18th and 19th century
failed Saudi realms. One could rally the warring tribes of
the Arabian peninsula (the Nejd) against the corrupt
Ottomans under the green banner of a purified Salafi (or
Wahabi) Islam but the declining empire still had enough
military might-or could hire it-to ensure defeat. This time
around, the Saudis would work carefully with the strongest
outside power and, instead of confronting it, make it an
ally.
In Fahd's youth, his father's strategy succeeded beyond
expectation. Abdul Aziz managed to switch from the Ottomans
to the British; then in the 1920's, he displaced his rival,
the Hashemite Sharif Hussein of Mecca (whose descendants
still rule Jordan), as London's peninsular ally. This
allowed the Saudis to seize the Red Sea coastline known as
the Hijaz; and on the Persian Gulf, a Shiite-populated area
unknowingly sitting atop a treasure of oil. Chief among his
conquests Abdul Aziz counted Islam's most prized cities,
Mecca and Medina, and the revenue brought by the pilgrims to
their mosques. The holy places were now controlled by the
Wahabi sect, regarded by most other Muslims as extreme.
Gaining a kingdom and holding it were two different things.
When Fahd reached his twenties, his father was preparing
another switch. Although still mindful of the British,
Abdul Aziz already saw the United States as his future ally.
The Americans were developing the oil that was providing
increased revenues. Better still, unlike London, Washington
had no empire and no territorial ambitions. Americans could
help and then they would go home.
On February 14, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt met the
King aboard an American warship initiating the formal
political association. Roosevelt sought the King's support
for Zionism; the King refused; both agreed to be friends and
that they should consult with each other before taking new
steps. Roosevelt left with some rich presents and, at the
King's request, gave him his reserve wheel chair which
became one of Abdul Aziz's favorite trophies. The visit
overall, complete with live sheep, as FDR wrote his cousin,
had been "a scream."
As a favorite son, Fahd was inducted into the American
connection at an early age. He accompanied his older
brother Faisal to the international conference that founded
America's grand project for post-war peace, the United
Nations. He also got a brief and sweet taste of American
life.
When Abdul Aziz died in 1953, the kingdom went to his eldest
son, Saud. Under his unsteady and inept hand, Saudi Arabia
was nearly lost to the storms of Nasserism and Arab
nationalism. Whereupon, in 1963, he was deposed, the al-
Saud having learned a new lesson: one had to know how to
survive. The ascetic Crown Prince Faisal took matters in
hand.
Faisal guided the realm into a closer association with the
United States, close enough to survive both the 1967 and
1973 wars despite American support for Israel and the oil
embargoes. Common antagonism to Nasser and the Soviet Union
plus economic ties provided the sinews that bound together
two very different countries. And, after 1974, when the
American-sponsored peace process flourished and the
petrodollars gushed, the Saudi situation was transformed.
Both diplomatic pivot and economic mecca, the Kingdom became
a necessary prop to American security. Saudi influence came
to be seen as essential if not always in the political
maneuvering but certainly with respect to the price and
supply of oil.
THE REFORMER
When Fahd came into his first post, Minister of Education in
1953, the general rules of Saudi government were congealing.
First came the importance of holding the family together, a
consensus that began with "l'Etat c'est nous;" no Royal
Family, no state; no unified family, no government. Second
came the blessing from the Ulema, the Salafi clerisy, with
their emphasis on early Islamic practice, public austerity,
male prerogative, female seclusion, and the dangers of
foreign seduction. Third, the blessing of the people to be
secured through an improvement in their conditions of life.
Fourth, the alliance with the strongest external power,
America in this case. And fifth, not taking sides in Arab
disputes-if possible. Instead, the Saudis could conciliate
or consolidate among disputants. These five principles were
the essential duties of Saudi rulers from that day until
this. And it would be Fahd's task to balance them and alter
them when necessary for the sake of the House of Saud's
survival.
Fahd associated himself early with the Kingdom's
modernizers. He is credited with the creation of the
country's public school system including the university
level. Given the haphazard tribal arrangements and general
lack of literacy, this was an expensive and revolutionary
undertaking. The curriculum, however, left largely to the
Ulema, would result in a literacy badly short of both
technical skill and knowledge of the outside world. This
was not so obvious in 1953 but when it did become obvious,
Fahd seemed oblivious to the consequences.
Fahd was also a prime mover in developing the 3-5 year plans
initiated under King Faisal. These plans were intended to
do for Saudi Arabia's economy what education had done for
literacy: equip the Saudi state with the tools to become a
modern technological society without departing from the
religious mores that underpinned its legitimacy. Following
Faisal's murder at the hands of a deranged nephew in 1975,
Fahd became Crown Prince under King Khalid, an older brother
more interested in falconry than government. In reality, it
was a test of the ebullient Fahd's capacity to govern. The
Crown Prince would have to live down his personal reputation
as a reckless womanizer, drinker, and gambler.
In those years, the Arab-Israeli conflict monopolized Saudi
diplomacy. Fahd ranged the Saudis alongside the Carter
Administration's so-called comprehensive approach which
emphasized a consensus of the whole rather than the 1973-
1977 Kissinger era state-by-state negotiation.
Domestically, Fahd began to spend the huge revenues produced
by the rapid rise in oil prices. He launched the breakneck
development of Saudi infrastructure that turned the urban
areas into one vast construction site. Then a series of
unexpected events showed the limits of Saudi power.
In only two years (1978-1980), the consensus approach was
shattered by Sadat and the Camp David Accords; the Shah of
Iran was overthrown by an aggressive Shiite theocrat,
Ayatollah Khomeini; the Soviets seized Afghanistan; and
Moscow's ally, Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq, invaded
Iran. Above all, and worst of all, Saudi opponents seized
the Grand Mosque in Mecca on November 20, 1979. After a
bloody, futile effort to secure the Holy place, Fahd had to
call upon the French Special Forces to recover the building.
THE DANGEROUS DECADE
Fahd's reactions to these challenges was multifold. He
would brook no delay in the development program, increasing
spending on the military and raising Saudi Arabia's
"minimum" annual budget to about $55 billion.
Simultaneously, he reinforced the Saudi role as "swing oil
producer," prepared to use its reserve capacity to prevent
prices from damaging the economies of the major oil
consumers, especially the United States. Oil prices and
military procurement brought him powerful allies in
Washington and elsewhere. Saudi Arabia's purchase of AWACS
aircraft in 1981, against strong pro-Israeli opposition in
Congress, was a case study in such influence.
The King also faced a severe religious challenge. There
were internal complaints about lax royal behavior.
Khomeini's Iranian pilgrims disturbed the pilgrimage with
political demonstrations and violence to embarrass the
Wahabi guardians.
Fahd took several fateful decisions. The Saudis would
counter Shii propaganda abroad with Wahabi missionary
activity on a large scale, especially through subsidized
education (the madrasas) in South and Southeast Asia. As
the Saudi economy now relied on large numbers of Pakistani
and other workers, this had the double effect of protecting
against internal subversion. Fahd also began severe
controls over the Haj pilgrims. It would take several
dramatic incidents before the Saudis and the Ayatollah
finally agreed to put the two Mosques outside their quarrel.
Fahd himself marked his new zeal for Islam in 1986 by taking
on the title, "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques."
As King, Fahd also waged two wars. He swung behind Saddam
in the decade-long battles with Iran, thereby creating a
dependent in Baghdad, or so a reasonable man would have
thought. He encouraged the United States to see in the war
an opportunity to hurt the Iranians and wean Iraq from its
Soviet allies. Another initiative, again through Pakistan,
was the jihad against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. The
Saudis supplied both money and volunteers, the most
notable-and notorious-being Osama bin Laden, scion of the
Royal Family's favorite contractors, the bin Ladens from
Yemen.
Fahd regarded Camp David as a huge mistake and grievously
disappointed the Carter Administration's expectation that
Saudi Arabia would support Sadat's separate peace. While
not formally joining the Rejectionist Front organized by
Saddam, Assad of Syria and Arafat's PLO, the King sought to
undermine the process by reviving the comprehensive, unified
Arab approach. Thus, in August 1981, he launched the Fahd
plan, a set of principles that would grant peace to Israel
contingent on withdrawal to the pre-1967 War lines and the
settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. After
Sadat's murder on October 6, 1981, the plan seemed to engage
the Europeans but the Reagan Administration sidestepped it.
Fahd saw another chance to promote it when the Israelis
invaded Lebanon in June 1982. In the tangled diplomacy
aimed at extricating Arafat from Beirut, the Saudis played a
delicate role. Khalid died unexpectedly in the middle of
the war and Fahd was crowned King on June 13. During the
condolence visit of American officials, including Vice
President Bush and Secretary of Defense Weinberger, the
Saudi side gained the impression that American policy on the
crisis (dominated heretofore by Secretary of State Haig) was
about to change. Arafat was signaled to wait, collapsing
the negotiations for his departure. He was now in Saudi
debt.
When Haig resigned on June 26, the new King exerted a strong
effort, aided by his half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah, to
turn U.S. policy against the Israelis and back to the
comprehensive approach. But Reagan would not abandon the
Egyptian-Israeli treaty and his own initiative, launched on
September 1, 1982, proved stillborn partly because Fahd's
plan became the basis for the Arab League's subsequent Fez
Declaration, which contradicted it. Worse yet, the new
American Secretary of State George Shultz discovered that
the Saudis could not, or would not, deliver Syria to U.S.-
sponsored negotiations over withdrawal from Lebanon. For
the rest of the decade, the United States was loath to touch
either issue, especially after the Marine disaster in 1983
at Beirut Airport.
Fahd eventually returned to the Lebanon problem, brokering a
deal called the Taif Accords in 1989. These confirmed
Syria's domination of the country and changed Lebanon's
constitution to allow a larger Muslim role vis--vis the
previously dominant Christians. Put in place as Prime
Minister to guarantee the Saudi interest while rebuilding
the country was Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese subcontractor grown
rich in the Saudi construction boom and therefore by
definition a business associate of the Royal Family.
SUCCESS AND CRISIS
After a decade of these exertions, Fahd's Saudi Arabia
appeared to enter the nineties a good deal more secure than
the eighties. The Kingdom could take some satisfaction from
the failure of Khomeini's Iran to expand more than its
Hizbollah outpost in southern Lebanon; the Iranians had also
been outflanked in South and Southeast Asia; and the Soviets
driven from Afghanistan, on their way to oblivion.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian intifada (1987) revived American
interest in diplomacy while shaking Israeli confidence.
Lebanon was rebuilding, and oil prices were steady.
But Fahd's reign was not destined for repose. The
"dependent" in Baghdad, Saddam, opened a gratuitous quarrel
with Kuwait over war debts and oil revenues. The King
offered mediation. Joining President Mubarak of Egypt and
King Hussein of Jordan, Fahd urged President George Bush to
stay low. An "Arab solution" would be found. On July 31,
under Saudi auspices, the Iraqis and Kuwaitis met to find
one.
Two days later, Saddam seized Kuwait.
Would Saudi Arabia be next? Saddam offered assurances but
his troops were on the offensive and there was nothing to
stop them except the Saudi's own forces. Moreover, the King
had offered refuge to the Emir of Kuwait and his family who
had barely escaped Saddam's men.
Saudi Arabia's ultimate defense had always been what was
called the "over the horizon" deterrent. The Americans (and
others) presumably would not allow Saudi Arabia to be
overrun by hostile powers. After the Shah's fall, President
Carter proclaimed the defense of the Gulf to be in America's
vital interest. But the forces to do so had never been
stationed on Saudi ground. There were only training
missions and temporary technicians.
We have American accounts of the critical meeting on August
6, 1990, when a U.S. delegation offered American troops to
defend Saudi Arabia and ultimately to reclaim Kuwait. The
King and the Crown Prince seemed at odds, with Abdullah
exclaiming that Kuwait, although occupied, was still there,
the implication being that some combination of threat and
bribe might force Saddam out. But Fahd had been double-
crossed. And if Saddam wanted money, he could have gotten
it through negotiation. As for Kuwait, the King archly
observed that "Kuwait"-meaning the Royal Family-was then
living in Saudi hotels. For a Saudi ruler, the affairs of
state were always personal.
Fahd welcomed the Americans to defend the Kingdom, and urged
them to evict Saddam. In Washington this produced the
interesting spectacle of Prince Bandar joining with the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-the main
opposition to the AWACS sale ten years earlier-to lobby
congressional support for the war.
Fahd's policy toward Iraq was complex. He opposed the
breakup of the country or the breakdown of the Sunni-
dominated regime. But he did want Saddam eliminated. To do
otherwise would be to leave a man thirsting for revenge.
The Americans, however, failed to do so. And this time they
could not go home lest Saddam be tempted to strike again.
The U.S. presence carried a steep price. Saudi critics
could charge that there were now armed infidels in the land
of the two mosques. Many Saudis could not understand why it
was necessary, or why the hyper-expensive Saudi military
could not defend the Kingdom.
In the war's aftermath, pressure mounted for political
change. Some of it Fahd could deflect. He had been a
modernizer in his day. He would reform once more,
introducing a new Basic Law in 1992 to govern the
succession, reviving the moribund Consultative Council and
changing rules for provincial governors and ministers.
Some, however, could not be persuaded of change. Osama bin
Laden concluded that the Royal Family were infidels in
disguise. His preachments earned him expulsion and then the
loss of citizenship. There are still unexplained parts of
the Osama-Saudi connection, especially about his move to
Afghanistan, but that would carry us beyond the Fahd story.
REIGN, NOT RULE
On November 29, 1995, the King was felled by a massive
stroke. A year later, it became clear that he would never
recover his former vitality. Crown Prince Abdullah, a
figure reminiscent of Faisal, became the de factor ruler.
Fahd's reign would last another decade. The Royal Bulletins
pretended that his routine continued. Occasionally, he
would be turned out to greet important visitors, a few words
exchanged, photographs snapped, his bulky figure shrinking
over the years.
The King always had his detractors. A true royalist, he
never let government interfere with his schedule. He made
up for tardiness through sudden marathon bouts of work, to
the consternation of the otherwise inert Saudi bureaucracy.
Fahd's palace mania, including a never occupied replica of
the White House, was extravagant even by Gulf standards.
The King had never been careful with money and his
development program did not prepare his people for a future
without oil, or for that matter, a present with a low oil
price. Construction and war ate up the surplus and even
current revenues will not resolve the problems of a rapidly
growing but idle population, its work and bills paid by
someone else.
Fahd proved a fallible judge of character. Saddam betrayed
him; so did Arafat who refused urgent Saudi advice in 2000
to settle his conflict with Israel. He made an even more
serious miscalculation through indulgence of Wahabi
extremism, which hit America with a vengeance on 9/11 and
then two years later, came home through violent rebellion in
Saudi Arabia itself. The U.S.-Saudi alliance, his most
cherished international relationship, nurtured so well for
so long by his flamboyant nephew, Prince Bandar, was fraying
just when both sides most needed each other.
Still, Fahd's record needs perspective. Born when the
Kingdom was but a gleam in his father's eyes, bred to
rapidly expanding wealth and power, he took his country
successfully through an extraordinary series of life-
threatening events, of the kind never seen by his
predecessors. Profligate though he may have been, Fahd
never forgot that Saudi Arabia was a rich place with a small
army in a region full of ghastly predators. He proved
forceful even with a weak hand. Fahd was a king.
Fahd's methods and his legacy can only go so far. His
notions of reform clearly belong to an earlier era. The
religious, political, economic, and military pressures
bearing down on his successor demand change at a more rapid
pace than the infamous inchmanship beloved of the al-Saud.
Fahd's half-brother, now King Abdullah, prayed on his
coronation for "strength to continue the march begun by the
founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the great Abdul Aziz
al-Saud." Abdullah's march, however, must be to a markedly
different beat than Fahd's if the Kingdom is to survive.