Saudi King Abdullah dies at 90
Western ally in al-Qaida fight sought to modernize religious kingdom
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the powerful U.S. ally who joined Washington’s fight against al-Qaida and sought to modernize the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom with incremental but significant reforms, including nudging open greater opportunities for women, has died, according to Saudi state TV. He was 90.
More than his guarded and hidebound predecessors, Abdullah assertively threw his oil-rich country’s weight behind trying to shape the Middle East. His priority was to counter the influence of rival, mainly Shiite Iran wherever it tried to make advances. He and fellow Sunni Arab monarchs also staunchly opposed the Middle East’s wave of pro-democracy uprisings, seeing them as a threat to stability and their own rule.
A Saudi state TV presenter said the king died at 1 a.m. Friday. His successor was announced as 79-year-old half-brother Prince Salman, according to a Royal Court statement carried on the Saudi Press Agency. Salman was Abdullah’s crown prince and had recently taken on some of the ailing king’s responsibilities. Salman is a veteran of the country’s top leadership, versed in diplomacy from nearly 50 years as the governor of the capital, Riyadh, and known as a mediator of disputes within the sprawling royal family.
Abdullah was born in Riyadh in 1924, one of the dozens of sons of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King AbdulAziz Al Saud.
Abdullah was selected as crown prince in 1982 on the day his halfbrother Fahd ascended to the throne. Thed ecision was challenged by a full brother of Fahd, Prince Sultan, who wanted the title for himself. But the family eventually closed ranks behind Abdullah.
Abdullah became de facto ruler in 1995 when a stroke incapacitated Fahd. When Fahd died in 2005, Abdullah officially rose to the throne.
His aim at home was to modernize the kingdom to face the future. But he trod carefully in the face of the ultraconservative Wahhabi clerics who hold near total sway over society.