Abdullah bin Abdulaziz

From AICbackground

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz

King of Saudi Arabia

Quotes:

"The Government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques spares no effort and energy to put the Palestinian question at the forefront of international issues."

"Saudi Arabia warns everybody that if the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no other option but war."

"It must be said that patience can't last forever, and if the brutal Israeli military continues to kill and destroy, no one can foresee what may happen."

Background

You were born in the city of Riyadh in August 1921, the tenth son of the late King Abdul al-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. Raised as a royal prince, you have received a court education in religion, calvary, and politics. You received your religious training from the Ulama (religious scholars). The lifestyle of the tribal bedouin appeals to you, and you have nurtured a taste for the old, conservative ways. As a young man you spent of your time living with the Bedouin allies of the Saudi tribe, and observers still feel you are a product of the desert—traditional, austere, and naturally reserved.

After your brother, the late King Faisal, succeeded to the throne in 1963, you were appointed Commander of the National Guard, an important sector of the Saudi armed forces. The National Guard, which is separate from the Saudi Army, acts as the main security force within the country's borders, protecting main cities, oil fields, telecommunications, and ultimately insulating the royal family from coups. This sector of the military also can join with the regular army in case of emergency to strengthen the overall defense. However, with 35,000 troops, the Saudi Arabian National Guard directly and intentionally counterbalances the strength of the 40,000 troop army.

You also served as Second Prime Minister from 1975-1982. In 1982, after the death of King Khalid, you became the First Deputy Prime Minister and the Crown Prince to your brother, King Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz. Your appointment as crown prince lent credibility to King Fahd's administration by appeasing the powerful Ulema, or religious authority, of the Saudi Kingdom. Fahd was rumored to lead a secret playboy lifestyle that did not fit with the restrained Wahhabi code of the Kingdom. By appointing you to be his deputy prime minister and successor, Fahd deflected this criticism, since your own religious credentials are impeccably Wahhabi. As Fahd’s deputy you served as his personal envoy in sensitive situations around the world, and became especially good at pressing Saudi interests at the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) and the Arab League. You were less adroit at relations with the west, largely due to the fact you are a much more reluctant subscriber to the Saudi-American alliance than some of your technocratic siblings, including Fahd.

Crown Prince and Regent

Fahd suffered a debilitating stroke in 1995, and even though the media suppressed the gravity of his condition (in true Saudi fashion), in this year you became the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Owing to convention, Fahd remained king during this entire period, until his death in 2005, but by that time you had truly been running the country for almost 10 years. The largest issue you grappled with during this period, and continue to deal with, is the pace of modernization in Saudi society. While many Saudi princes are famous for their western leanings and high-modern lifestyle, you view oil wealth, and its applications in society, with much more trepidation. You are a modernist, in that you do not feel Saudi Arabia can truly avoid entering the globalizing world, but you are much more willing t view development from a long term perspective, to avoid doing irreparable damage to the native culture of Saudi Arabia. By way of example, you have declared that democracy in Saudi Arabia already exists in a satisfactory form, because as king you maintain the old Bedouin tradition of allowing any Saudi citizen to approach you with their needs or concerns: properly speaking, this is what theorists of government call “Patronage,” which indeed creates a bond between ruler and subject, but does not necessarily imply that the subject has any legal method of challenging the ruler, a crucial facet of democracy in the western sense. You have taken an equally roundabout stance on the rights of women: you have declared that equal rights for women are an important goal for the Kingdom to reach, but such a goal must be implemented gradually to avoid the unhinging of society as a whole. This has not endeared you to western human rights advocates, but might be a pragmatic policy to take as ruler of a country which has literally modernized 500 years since the 1930s.

King

Fahd died in 2005, and the world finally acknowledged you as the legal ruler of the Saudi Kingdom. You have many challenges in front of you, which you have confronted with your typical mix of religiously-minded conservatism and restraint. Regarding the American invasion of Iraq, and relations with the United States in general, you seem to have kept continuity with the policies of Fahd, despite the fact that you are widely renowned to value the “Special Relationship” much less than your modernist kin. All the same, the current state of world affairs demands that you engage the US constructively. On Iraq, you have been a de facto supporter of the American occupation, though acknowledging such a fact is of course impossible for an Arab leader at this juncture. You have been able to sell this support to other regional leaders in very pragmatic terms: as long as the Americans occupy Iraq, the country cannot devolve into a complete civil war. You have clearly warned Americans about the danger should they leave, however: in December 2006 you clearly told US Vice-President Dick Cheney that the Saudis would be forced to openly support Sunni militias, to defend against what you claim will be Iranian attempts to sponsor Shiite death squads that would try to exploit the ensuing power vacuum. For a naturally tightlipped person, such a statement has convinced that you are treating the deteriorating Iraqi situation with the utmost seriousness.

Regionally, you have successfully maintained the Saudi policy of “checkbook diplomacy,” whereby Saudi Arabia retains it role as Arab leader by funding humanitarian and religious organizations around the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon, Egypt, and North Africa. You have been very successful in diplomacy with the Turkish government, which until recently had oriented itself almost entirely towards Europe. Your other big success story has been with the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora and Saad Hariri, who have relied heavily on Saudi investment to help rebuild Lebanon after the disastrous invasion of Israel in July 2006.

You have been active in promoting a solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially since 2002, when you publicly advanced what has since been named the “Abdullah Plan,” a very simple yet well-received attempt to reinvigorate the flagging peace process. In a nutshell, as leader of the Arab League and self-appointed guardian of the Muslim world, you proclaimed that the Arabs would be willing to make peace with Israel following the Jewish State’s complete withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. This plan was very well received at the time, but did not progress at the time, due to internal complications on the part of both Palestinian and Israeli politicians. As the peace process has reached an all time low since the election of Hamas in January 2006, the “returning to the Abdullah Plan” has been a popular cry internationally. You have made great efforts to see this proposal enacted, going so far as to hold unofficial talks with Israeli leaders and refraining from publicly castigating the Israelis for their July 2006 invasion of Lebanon, despite the fact this placed you squarely in opposition to the prevalent mood in the region. Most recently, as of January 2007 you have devoted yourself to making peace between the Hamas and Fatah factions of the Palestinian government, inviting both Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh and Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas to the holy city of Mecca in the hopes of cobbling together a new government capable of effectively arguing for the rights of the Palestinian people.

The one challenge you have not been so adroit in facing is the rise of Iran. The Islamic Republic has been seriously strengthened by the toppling of Saddam Hussein, which enables Tehran to directly influence not only Iraq’s Shiite majority, but also Iran’s allies in Syria and Lebanon. On the Iranian nuclear issue you have been taciturn, but a recent string of sppeches, including your aforementioned pledge of support to Iraqi Sunnis in the event of an American withdrawal, seem to indicate that you have drifted into the Saudi camp led by your nephew prince Bandar bin Sultan, which seeks a direct confrontation with Iran, backed by American support, to forestall the creation of the rumored “Shiite Crescent” stretching from Lebanon to Afghanistan, ruled by the Shiite ayatollahs of Iran.

Roleplaying Hints

You were born the tenth son of the man who created Saudi Arabia with nothing but a sword in his hand and god at his back. Your father, Abdul Aziz al-Saud, cobbled the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia together by fusing Bedouin fighting prowess with the conservative religiosity of Wahhabi Islam. As the inheritor of his kingdom, which includes the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, you are thus obligated to defend both the Bedouin culture of the Arabian Peninsula and the faith of one billion Muslims worldwide. This task is both made possible and radically complicated by Saudi Arabia’s almost absurd amount of oil-derived wealth. To maintain your kingdom’s prosperity, and deliver the vast of array of social services to which your people now feel entitled, you must necessarily keep Saudi Arabia deeply entwined in the international economy, which is fueled by petroleum. This makes your country susceptible to non-Muslim influence, which infuriates the Wahhabi clergy and troubles you as a conservative Muslim king. To offset the necessary cultural compromises your people have been forced to make, you try to use as much of this oil wealth as possible to promote Islam on the world stage. Internally, this means you want to see oil change the country slowly, without sacrificing the purity of desert life or the faith of your fathers. Internationally, this means you feel honor-bound to defend Islam against what you perceive to be an increasing cultural and military onslaught from the west, up to and including funding Sunni militants if you feel the safety of the world’s Muslims demands it. So far you have been able to strike a balance between pragmatism and faith, but only time can tell if your conservative nature will ever truly reconcile itself with the cold political mind required of a billionaire king.

References

http://english.pravda.ru/comp/2002/06/25/31090.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_of_Saudi_Arabia

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/13/saudi.sunnis/index.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070127/wl_nm/saudi_iran_dc_1

http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/articles/2006/ioi/060808-saudi-turkey.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/saudi_king

http://www.time.com/time/pow/article/0,8599,213774,00.html

http://saudiembassy.net/Publications/MagFall98/Abdullah.htm

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/print?id=1214706

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/01/africa/web.0831prince.php