King Abdullah: A Look Back At His 10-Year Rule

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who died January 23, began his 10-year reign as a reformer. But the crackdown on activists after the Arab Spring slowed the reform process, according to a new publication by David Ottaway, a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Despite these paradoxes, history may well assess Abdullah to have been the most popular and politically astute of the five sons of King Abdulaziz to have ruled the kingdom since his death in 1953,” Ottaway writes. The following are excerpts from Ottaway’s piece.

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia was widely beloved at home and ranked toward the end of his life as the Arab world’s most respected leader. He will be remembered in Saudi history particularly for his promotion of Saudi women into politics and for sending tens of thousands of Saudi students to the United States and Europe to modernize his challenged kingdom.

Only time will tell whether he moved too slowly in his reforms to save the ruling House of Saud from the hurricane winds of change sweeping the Arab world since the 2011 Arab Spring. But there is no denying his early efforts to rejuvenate a monarchy stuck in an ultraconservative Islamic straight jacket and led by geriatric rulers now dying off at an alarming rate.

Abdullah himself was officially 90 though some scholars put his age at 92 or even older. The new king, Prince Salman, 79, is also afflicted by health problems making another early turnover in Saudi leadership highly likely.

Abdullah was so concerned about a struggle over royal succession that last March he took the unprecedented step of naming a deputy crown prince, a privilege normally left to the incoming king. He chose his half-brother, Prince Muqrin, 69, his former intelligence chief and the youngest son of the kingdom’s founding father, King Abdulaziz al-Saud. His choice makes it unlikely that anyone from the younger generation of grandsons will reach the kingship anytime soon.

Abdullah’s reign was not without paradoxes. It began in August 2005 with a sympathetic ear to liberal demands for an acceleration of political reforms. After the pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world in 2011, however, he abruptly changed course to stifle all debate and dissent within the kingdom. At the time of his death, university-educated Saudi women were still forbidden to drive cars. Elections for a consultative Shura Council, common in other Arab Gulf monarchies, had yet even to be mooted. At the same time, his government was carrying out a major crackdown to silence political and human rights advocates demanding these and other reforms.

Another paradox was his promotion of inter-faith dialogue. He organized various international conferences to promote better understanding among the world’s religions and established the King Abdullah International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna, Austria. At home, however, relations between the kingdom’s majority Sunni population and minority Shia took a turn for the worse, partly because of anti-Shia propaganda from state-supported Saudi clerics.

Abdullah at once detested the Arab Spring and used its uprisings to get even with his enemies. He bemoaned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s downfall in February 2011, denouncing President Obama for abandoning him. But he led the campaign in the Arab world for a UN-backed and NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya that forced Muammar Qaddafi from power.

The king then rallied the Arab League to launch a campaign to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, calling openly for arming the Free Syrian Army to achieve this goal.

Despite these paradoxes, history may well assess Abdullah to have been the most popular and politically astute of the five sons of King Abdulaziz to have ruled the kingdom since his death in 1953. He was also an acknowledged major international figure. Forbes Magazine ranked Abdullah the world’s seventh most powerful leader as well as the most influential Muslim and Arab one. The magazine also ranked him the third wealthiest royal, having amassed an $18 billion fortune.

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