Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1920, 1921 or 1923 – 1 August 2005) was King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia from 13 June 1982 until his death in 2005. Prior to his ascension, he was Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia from 1975 to 1982.
Fahd was the eldest of the Sudairi Seven, the sons of King Abdulaziz by Hassa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi. He served as Minister of Education from 1953 to 1962 during the reign of King Saud. Afterwards he was Interior Minister from 1962 to 1975, at the end of King Saud's reign and throughout King Faisal's reign. He was appointed crown prince when his half-brother Khalid became king following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975. Fahd was viewed as the de facto leader of the country during King Khalid's reign in part due to the latter's ill health.
Upon the death of King Khalid in 1982, Fahd ascended to the throne. He is credited for having introduced the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia in 1992. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995, after which he was unable to continue performing his full official duties. His half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah served as de facto regent of the kingdom and succeeded Fahd as king upon his death in 2005. With a reign of 23 years, Fahd remains the longest-reigning Saudi king.
Early life and education
Fahd bin Abdulaziz was born in the walled town of Riyadh in 1920, 1921 or 1923. He was the eldest son of King Abdulaziz by Hassa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi. Fahd and his six full brothers are known as the Sudairi Seven. Fahd was Hassa's second son; his elder half-brother Abdullah bin Muhammad was his mother's only son from her previous marriage to Prince Muhammad bin Abdul Rahman, Fahd's paternal uncle.
Fahd's education took place at the Princes' School in Riyadh, a school established by King Abdulaziz specifically for the education of members of the House of Saud. He received education for four years as a result of his mother's urging. While at the Princes' School, Fahd studied under tutors including Sheikh Abdul Ghani Khayat. He then went on to receive education at the Religious Knowledge Institute in Mecca.
Early political roles Prince Fahd was made a member of the royal advisory board at his mother's urging. In 1945, he traveled on his first state visit to San Francisco for the signing of the Charter of the United Nations. On this trip, he served under Prince Faisal who was at the time Saudi Arabia's foreign minister. Fahd led his first official state visit in 1953, attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on behalf of the House of Saud. On 24 December 1953, he was appointed as Saudi Arabia's first education minister.
Prince Fahd led the Saudi delegation to the League of Arab States in 1959, signifying his increasing prominence in the House of Saud and his being groomed for a more significant role. In 1962, he was given the important post of interior minister. As interior minister, he headed the Saudi delegation at a meeting of Arab Heads of State in Egypt in 1965. At the beginning of King Faisal's reign, Prince Fahd became a member of the council which had been established by the king to guide the succession issues.
On 2 January 1967, Prince Fahd survived an assassination attempt when an explosion occurred in his private office at the ministry. He was not there during the incident, but the explosion injured nearly 40 staff of the ministry.
Prince Fahd was named second deputy prime minister in 1967 when King Faisal established the office. The post was created upon the request of Crown Prince Khalid due to the fact that he himself did not want to continue to preside over the council of ministers. King Faisal was not very enthusiastic about the appointment of Prince Fahd to the post. Between October 1969 and May 1970, Prince Fahd was on leave which was regarded by Nadav Safran as an indication of major confrontation in the government. One of the reasons for this confrontation was the disagreement between King Faisal and Prince Fahd concerning security policies. King Faisal accused him of being late to implement severe measures to arrest those who had contacts with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP attacked and damaged the Saudi-owned Trans-Arabian Pipeline in the Golan Heights on 31 May 1969 and also was planning a plot against the King. During his absence which was reported by the officials as a medical leave, Prince Fahd stayed in London and then in Spain where he spent the time on gambling and leisure. King Faisal sent him both Omar Al Saqqaf, his envoy, and several letters asking him to return to the country, but Prince Fahd did not follow his request.
Prince Fahd was made the head of the Supreme Council on Petroleum in March 1973 when it was established by King Faisal. However, the relations between King Faisal and Prince Fahd were still strained due to Prince Fahd's gambling visits to Monte Carlo, Monaco. In addition, Prince Fahd was not a supporter of the oil embargo which he regarded as a potential threat to the relationships between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America. Because of these and other disagreements, King Faisal had planned to remove Prince Fahd from the post of second deputy prime minister which was not materialized by the king.
Crown Prince
After the murder of King Faisal in 1975 and the accession of King Khalid, Fahd was named first deputy prime minister and concurrently crown prince. Besides King Khalid, Prince Fahd had three elder half-brothers living at that time: Muhammad, Nasser and Saad. However, Prince Muhammad had denied appointment by King Faisal as crown prince a decade prior, while Princes Nasser and Saad were both considered unsuitable candidates. By contrast, Prince Fahd had served as minister of education from 1954 to 1962 and minister of interior from 1962 to 1975.
The appointment of Prince Fahd as both crown prince and first deputy prime minister made him a much more powerful figure in contrast to the status of King Khalid when he had been crown prince during King Faisal's reign. However, King Khalid had an influence over Fahd's activities and limited his powers, probably due to Fahd's very clear pro-Western views and hostile approach against Iran and the Shia population of Saudi Arabia. During this period, Crown Prince Fahd was one of the members of the inner family council led by King Khalid, which included Fahd's brothers Muhammad, Abdullah, Sultan and Abdul Muhsin and his uncles Ahmed and Musaid.
Reign
When King Khalid died on 13 June 1982, Fahd succeeded to the throne being the fifth king of Saudi Arabia. However, the most active period of his life was not his reign, but when he was Crown Prince. King Fahd adopted the title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" in 1986, replacing "His Majesty", to signify an Islamic rather than secular authority.
Unlike the reigns of King Faisal and King Khalid, his reign witnessed significant decrease in the oil price which sharply reduced the oil revenues of Saudi Arabia. Due to this, Madawi Al Rasheed described the reign of King Fahd as the era of austerity in contrast to the period of affluence experienced under his two predecessors.
Foreign policy
Fearing that the 1979 Revolution in Iran could lead to similar Islamic upheaval in Saudi Arabia, Fahd spent considerable sums, after ascending the throne in 1982, to support Saddam Hussein's Baathist Iraq in its war with Iran.Obituary: King Fahd, BBC News, 1 August 2005. Retrieved 10 June 2008. In fact, according to United States Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Fahd told Haig in April 1981 that he had been used as an intermediary by President Jimmy Carter to convey an official U.S. "green light to launch the war against Iran" to Iraq, although there is considerable skepticism about this claim.
Fahd was a supporter of the United Nations. He supported foreign aid and gave 5.5% of Saudi Arabia's national income through various funds, especially the Saudi Fund for Development and the OPEC Fund for International Development. He also gave aid to foreign groups such as the Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav Wars, as well as the Nicaraguan Contras, providing "a million dollars per month from May to December 1984". King Fahd was also a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and an opponent of the State of Israel. Towards the beginning of Fahd's reign, he was a staunch ally of the United States. However, Fahd distanced himself from the US throughout parts of his reign, declining to allow the US to use Saudi air bases to protect naval convoys after the attack on the USS Stark, and in 1988 agreed to buy between fifty and sixty nuclear-payload-capable CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles.Geoffrey Kemp. (2010). The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia's Growing Presence in the Middle East. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Print.
King Fahd developed a peace plan in order to resolve Arab differences particularly between Algeria and Morocco. In 1981, he formulated a peace plan for the Middle East to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict, which was adopted by the Arab League the following year. The initiative, which offers peace to Israel in exchange for the return of Palestinian territories, was revived in almost the same form at a meeting of the League in 2002. He also actively contributed to the Taif accord in 1989 that ended conflict in Lebanon. In addition, he led the Arab world against the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. He developed a special bond with both Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Egyptian President Hosni Mobarak during his reign. Due to King Fahd's support to Hafez al-Assad, Arab countries did not manage to realize their decision to end Syrian presence in Lebanon in the summit of the Arab League held in Casablanca, Morocco, in May 1989.
Islamic activities He supported the conservative Saudi religious establishment, including spending millions of dollars on religious education, strengthened separation of the sexes and power of the religious police, publicly endorsed Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz's warning to young Saudis to avoid the path of evil by not traveling to Europe and the United States. This further distanced him from his inconvenient past.Paul Wood. (1 August 2005). Life and legacy of King Fahd, BBC News, Retrieved 10 June 2008.
Gulf War, 1991
In 1990, Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, placing the Iraqi army (then the largest in the Middle East) on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. King Fahd agreed to host American-led coalition troops in his Kingdom and later allowed American troops to be based there. This decision brought him considerable criticism and opposition from many Saudi citizens, who objected to the presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil; this was a casus belli against the Saudi royal family prominently cited by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. His decision was also objected to by his full brothers or the Sudairi Seven. Another cause for criticism came when during an event with the British Royal Family, King Fahd was seen wearing a white decoration in the shape of a cross; in 1994 Bin Laden cited this as "abomination" and "clearly infidelity".
Reform and industrialization King Fahd showed little tolerance for reformists. In 1992, a group of reformists and prominent Saudi intellectuals petitioned King Fahd for wide-ranging reforms, including widening political representation and curbing the royal family's wasteful spending. King Fahd first responded by ignoring their requests and when they persisted, reformists were harshly persecuted, imprisoned, and fired from their jobs.