Death of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd: All’s Well That Ends Well

Opulent life, simple grave

This morning, the first email I received was from my good friend in South Africa, who asked me my opinion on the legacy of King Fahd and differences between him and the "Crown Prince," Abdullah. At that moment, about 9 am, I hadn’t realized that King Fahd had died (again), and that Abdullah had succeeded him as the latest king of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (We can do du’a that he will be the last.)

You see, in 1995, King Fahd suffered a severe stroke that left him incapacitated, so that instantaneously he resembled the Saudi Arabia he had hemorrhaged into insolvency, increasing instability and impotency. Rumors circulated then that Fahd had in fact died — he certainly looks dead in this picture —  but, because of the succession struggle, between conservatives and liberals (these adjectives have miniscule meaning when applied to Saudi Arabia’s slothlike monarchy), no agreeable successor could be found and so the charade of his "incapacitation" was pursued. (If you think that’s ridiculous, I think Saudi Arabia having an independence day is a similarly ridiculous proposition, but there it is.)

To many, the legacy of King Fahd is mixed; in my opinion, rather negative. (He looks dead in that picture, too. Either that or he just realized how much Gulf War I cost him.) Taking the throne in 1982, he presided over a wealthy, rapidly modernizing but nevertheless devout and insular kingdom, which was seriously challenged by the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Always eager to present itself as a vanguard Muslim nation, among the leaders — if not the sole leader — of the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia was of course thrown off by Khomeini’s radicalism and populism, which Fahd, and the legacy he inherited — especially of close and questionable relationships with the United States — could not dare match. To restore his position, Fahd launched a series of initiatives aimed at retaking the Islamic spotlight, such as boosting aid and cooperation in the anti-Soviet jihad (blessed be the death of Communism), and increasing the influence of conservatives within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and these are, of course, not mild-mannered conservatives, but among the most radical and narrow-minded Muslims one can find. For Fahd, who was a modernizer, and the troublesome legacy of a playboy youth, that was a bad calculation, which would come to haunt him within the decade.

But the most controversial decision taken by the Custodian of the Two Holy White Men was to agree to let US troops into the country, following on Saddam Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of the petty oil-rich racist statelet of Kuwait. (In other words, the US based its troops in one Arab dictatorship, in order to free another Arab dictatorship from the grip of yet another Arab dictatorship, the latter which it had been arming and financing for the previous eight years, encouraging the continuation of a bloody and horrific conflict with Iran, during which time the US, to say the least, looked aside from Iraqi use of weapons of mass destruction. [We couldn’t find them in 2003 because they had used them in the 1980’s, on revolutionary Iran]).

It wasn’t, mind you, just "radical" and "extremist" Islamists who were upset by this decision: That the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia, which holds two of the three Islamic holy cities, Makkah and Madinah, had to appeal for help to an outsider, against an uncertain and, in this blogger’s opinion, unlikely threat — considering Saddam’s military incompetence and his drained coffers, how could he launch an invasion of a huge desert country like Saudi Arabia? — was an unwelcome reminder of the pitiful state of the Muslim world, and the abject subservience of its leadership (remember, Saudi Arabia liked, and to some degree still likes, to tout its "Islamic credentials").

Indeed, of our three holy cities: Makkah and Madinah suffer a dictatorship that has bankrupted what could and should have been one of the world’s wealthiest, most prosperous countries, while (East) Jerusalem is occupied by Israel.

In other words, Arab people, and Muslim people, also have a bruised sense of self-respect, and by agreeing to host American troops in what would become a savage and lopsided conflict, against an already drained and exhausted Iraqi population, forced into wars it probably didn’t want and obviously couldn’t bear to fight — remember how quickly Iraqi soldiers surrendered, even to journalists? — Saudi Arabia assured itself not just the ire of radicals such as Bin Laden, who went on to become a hysterical lunatic and apologist for mass murder, but also bankrupted itself. America agreed to defend Saudi Arabia, if Saudi Arabia paid the bills. As such, Saudi Arabians quickly lost the privileges they had so quickly become used to. Now, Saudi Arabia is a shadow of itself from the 1980s… with ever more members of a top-heavy, disliked and Islamically offensive "royal family", which hides behind supposed interest in the affairs of the Islamic world. ("See, we pay for hajj, and make sure foreign workers in our country, who helped build it for us, are robbed of their rights. Allahu Akbar!")

I did think Abdullah could have produced a much better Kingdom, had he taken over in 1982 after Khaled’s brief (seven-year) reign. But now, in the post-9/11 environment, with Saudi Arabia already so emptied by Fahd’s disinterest in pursuing a reasonable and pragmatic foreign policy — that is, actually building meaningful relationships in Saudi Arabia’s neighborhood, and promoting a productive, educated and participating citizenry — what can Abdullah really get done? How can he improve Saudi Arabia or help it embark on an independent foreign policy? What will he do if Iraq continues to show no signs of improvement? How will he handle threats of extremism, violent rhetoric and violent action within his borders? He can make changes, but baby steps, at best, all competing against oil supplies that will likely be more and more strained as time goes on. (Not to mention, he is only three years younger than Fahd, who died at the age of 84.)

Haroon Moghul, a prolific writer and essayist, graduated New York University in 2002 and is currently doing language studies in Islamabad, Pakistan. His first book, “My First Police State,” is a comedy and a commentary on Saudi Arabia that weaves Islam’s failures, fundamentalism and philosophies into an ever-closer narrative. He is a regular contributor to altmuslim.com, Muslim Under Progress, and more of his writings can be found at his own weblog, Avari-Nameh.