Saudi King Fahd, Western ally, 84
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, a crucial US ally in the Arab world whose ties to the West invited a backlash among Islamic fundamentalists, died yesterday in King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh. He was 84, according to Saudi television.
Crown Prince Abdullah, the king's half-brother and the de facto Saudi leader since King Fahd suffered a stroke a decade ago, was named by the royal family to succeed him. King Fahd's funeral is scheduled for today in the capital.
''Saudi Arabia has lost one of its dutiful sons, a leader among the most dear of its leaders and men," said President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
A portly man who wore a goatee, King Fahd was generally thought to be the most pro-Western member of the Saudi royal family. He was considered personally amiable and politically cautious, with a penchant for consensus-building, all of which worked to moderate his Westernizing tendencies.
Yet the most dramatic moment of his reign contradicted that reputation for unhurried deliberation. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, King Fahd immediately requested US military assistance and allowed US forces on Saudi soil, something he had previously declined to do.
''In the end, King Fahd was America's man," said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland. ''He steered Saudi Arabia to an even more pro-America stance than in the past."
President Bush yesterday called King Fahd ''a friend and strong ally of the US for decades."
Osama bin Laden, a former Saudi citizen, made the presence of ''infidel" soldiers on the same soil as the two most sacred sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, the foundation of the ''declaration of war" against the United States by his terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. (The US military withdrew combat forces from Saudi Arabia in 2003.)
Over time, Al Qaeda grew into a multinational network that sent Saudi and other Arab militants on terrorist missions against the United States and, eventually, the Saudi regime itself. King Fahd had initially tolerated the group and the Saudi fund-raising network that supported it. Years later, Crown Prince Abdullah would declare war on Al Qaeda as a mortal threat to the royal family.
In his final years, the sickly King Fahd was mostly a figurehead as the close relationship he nurtured with Washington deteriorated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and many in the United States blamed the kingdom's strict Wahhabi school of Islam for fueling terrorism.
The desert kingdom's fifth monarch, King Fahd gained the throne in 1982. One of the world's richest men, he presided over the kingdom -- first as crown prince, then as king -- during the massive oil boom of the 1970s and the oil bust of the 1980s. He sought to bring his once-backward kingdom safely through the last decades of the 20th century -- as other Muslim monarchies were being toppled in Iran and Afghanistan -- through a paradoxical combination of economic modernization and religious traditionalism.
King Fahd himself, a noted libertine in his youth, embodied the paradox: Even as he sought Western investment, he cemented a political alliance with the fundamentalist Muslim clergy.
Ironically, King Fahd had always been highly sensitive to his role as de facto caretaker for Islam's holiest places. In 1986, he officially changed his title from ''Majesty" to ''Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques." The previous year, he launched a significant expansion of the mosques and surrounding facilities.
King Fahd saw Saudi Arabia as a pillar of Islam internationally. The country actively supported the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation during the 1980s. Saudi Arabia championed the cause of Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s and helped organize relief efforts. It also provided financial support to the Palestinian Authority.
Eager to avoid accusations that he and his family were ''munafaqeen," or hypocrites, King Fahd effectively prevented any departure from such traditional Islamic customs as women wearing veils and not being allowed to drive. This conservatism was all the more striking because of King Fahd's overall support for modernization. That support was in keeping with his characteristically measured response.
''Our approach is exactly opposite to that of Ataturk of Turkey," he said in a 1975 Time magazine interview, after being named crown prince. ''Ataturk imposed changes on his people from the top. We try to act as a catalyst, giving the people a glimpse of change and letting them decide to accept it."
Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz Al Saud was the oldest son of King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's founder, and Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudeiri, reportedly Saud's favorite among his 22 wives.
King Fahd and his six brothers, the so-called ''Sudeiri Seven," were seen as something of an elite among the 44 male offspring of the king. Educated in Saudi Arabia, he is said to have been groomed for high office from an early age. He went to San Francisco in 1945 as a member of the Saudi delegation at the signing of the United Nations charter. Eight years later, he represented his country at the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.
Serving as Saudi Arabia's first education minister, from 1953 to 1962, King Fahd instituted a system of public elementary and secondary education.
In 1962, he was appointed interior minister, a position he held until 1975. According to a 1990
When Faisal was assassinated, in 1975, King Fahd was named crown prince under his half-brother, King Khalid. Khalid largely left decision-making to King Fahd.
When Khalid died in 1982, Fahd succeeded to the throne. On Jan. 1, 1996, he handed over management of his government to Crown Prince Abdullah.
By May 2003, when Al Qaeda cells staged a series of suicide bombings in Riyadh that killed 35 people, including the nine bombers, prompting Abdullah to mount a full-scale counteroffensive, King Fahd was barely mentioned in accounts of the royal family's decision-making.
King Fahd is believed to leave two wives, eight sons, and five daughters. His first wife, Anoud bint Abdul Aziz, died in 1999.
Arab leaders are expected in Riyadh for memorial services, but Saudi officials said there would be no state funeral, in keeping with the tradition of Wahhabism. King Fahd will be buried at the al-Oud cemetery in Riyadh, where his three immediate predecessors as king were laid to rest.
Material from the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, and Bloomberg News was used in this report. 
