Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah dies

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the careful reformer, dies at 90


King Abdullah, the monarch who lead Saudi Arabia through a period of wrenching change in the Middle East – keeping the oil-rich country stable as the region convulsed around it and critics demanded urgent reform – died late Thursday, a statement from the royal palace in Riyadh said.

The death, while immediately mourned in the Arab world, was hardly unexpected. The 90-year-old Abdullah had been seriously ill for several weeks, suffering from pneumonia and breathing only with the help of a tube.

Abdullah became king after the 2006 death of his half-brother, Fahd, but with Fahd in ill health, he had been de facto regent for a decade before that. He led the country through the worst years of the Iraq war, kept the kingdom intact through the upheaval of the Arab Spring, and in recent years built an informal Sunni Arab coalition that confronted what he saw as Iran’s rising influence across the region, particularly in Syria.

Saudi Arabia’s role in Syria will remain a controversial part of Abdullah’s legacy. Saudi Arabia gave money and weapons to jihadi groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, helping give birth to the force now known as Islamic State.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday that he had a “genuine and warm” friendship with Abdullah, whom he described as a “candid” ruler who “had the courage of his convictions.”

The early signs from Riyadh were that there would be a smooth succession to Abdullah’s half brother, Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. The palace statement said that the 79-year-old Salman was now King, and his own 69-year-old half-brother Muqrin – whom Abdullah elevated last year to the newly created post of Deputy Crown Prince – was now Crown Prince and next in line to the throne.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Dies

But insiders say King Salman is also not well, and his reign may feature a power struggle between conservative members of the royal family – a camp the new king is said to belong to – and younger princes who want to see the country make political reforms.

“I don’t know to what extent Salman is competent mentally and physically. There are many stories about him having early signs of dementia. Many people who have seen him in the past few years say that he starts the first minute of a conversation in a good way, and then he keeps repeating himself and forgets part of the conversation,” said a veteran Arab diplomat who regularly advised Abdullah.

The diplomat, who spoke to The Globe and Mail on the condition of anonymity, described King Salman as an “arch-conservative,” and said he was worried conservatives would move to oust the more reform-minded Muqrin from the post of Crown Prince.

Others predicted that reforms that were introduced by Abdullah would stall under King Salman.

“Domestically, Prince Salman would be an extreme zealot [as King]. He is a big supporter of the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia,” said Ali Alyami, founder of the U.S.-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Alyami predicted that the limited democratic and women’s rights reforms introduced by Abdullah would come to a halt. “He thinks in the past, like 250 years ago. … He’s totally opposed to any political reform. He has never even used the word reform in public.”

Abdullah’s reign was routinely criticized by human-rights groups, but he oversaw breakthroughs in the field of women’s rights. While women in Saudi Arabia still lack the right to drive – or to sit in the same side of a coffee shop as single men – Abdullah made history in 2011 by naming 30 women to the country’s powerful Shura Council that advises the country’s government.

Less was done in the field of political reform, with the kingdom retaining its top-down political system even as the Arab Spring was toppling dictators in other parts of the Mideast. Abdullah’s token reform was to introduce elections for town councils that hold little real power.

Jane Kinninmont, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, said King Abdullah’s death, and the transition to Salman, was taking place at the most sensitive possible time for the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is already grappling with falling oil prices, rising extremism both inside the kingdom and neighbouring states, and a signs of a Western rapprochement with the country’s historical rival, Iran.

The Arab diplomat forecast that – under such circumstances – the royal family would rally together and maintain a united front, at least as far as the outside world could see. Previous succession battles, he said, had been avoided by “buying off” princes whose ambitions might have threatened the kingdom’s stability.

“I think it is paramount in whatever they do, they have to keep the house together, they need to keep the family together. Or else, everything will be lost.”

Cr.The Globe and Mail