[Mb-civic] King Fahd, Man of Maddening Contradictions - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

King Fahd, Man of Maddening Contradictions

By Thomas W. Lippman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, August 1, 2005; 6:36 AM

King Fahd ibn Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, who died Monday, was a man of 
maddening contradictions who ruled a country of maddening contradictions.

By turns profligate and abstemious, corrupt and correct, energetic and 
lazy, dedicated and indifferent, he demonstrated both voracious 
appetites and undoubted abilities. Fahd, believed to be 83, was admired 
as a forward-looking modernizer and loathed as a corrupt autocrat, 
sometimes by the same analysts.

His greatest accomplishment was to hold his country together and 
preserve his family's rule in an era of immense pressures both domestic 
and external.

<>Slowed by illness in the past several years, he became largely a 
figurehead, appearing on television on ceremonial occasions but leaving 
most key decisions to his younger brothers. After suffering a stroke in 
late 1995, Fahd officially transferred his authority to his half-brother 
and heir apparent, Crown Prince Abdullah. The transfer was ostensibly 
temporary and Fahd officially reclaimed his power several weeks later, 
but he has exerted little direct control over the kingdom's day to day 
affairs. His official title, by which he was always identified in the 
Saudi media -- was "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" in Mecca and 
Medina. Fahd adopted that label in 1986, during a time when the kingdom 
was still recovering from its greatest domestic trauma, the 1979 seizure 
by religious fanatics of the Great Mosque at Mecca, the holiest site in 
Islam and Fahd was polishing his credentials as the protector and 
guarantor of the faith.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR2005080100241.html?nav=hcmodule 

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