Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the careful reformer, dies at 90 – by Mark MacKinnon (Globe and Mail – January 23, 2015)

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LONDON — King Abdullah, the monarch who led Saudi Arabia through a period of wrenching change in the Middle East – keeping the oil-rich country stable as the region convulsed around it and critics demanded urgent reform – died late Thursday, a statement from the royal palace in Riyadh said.

The death, while immediately mourned in the Arab world, was hardly unexpected. The 90-year-old Abdullah had been seriously ill for several weeks, suffering from pneumonia and breathing only with the help of a tube.

Abdullah became king after the 2006 death of his half-brother, Fahd, but with Fahd in ill health, he had been de facto regent for a decade before that. He led the country through the worst years of the Iraq war, kept the kingdom intact through the upheaval of the Arab Spring, and in recent years built an informal Sunni Arab coalition that confronted what he saw as Iran’s rising influence across the region, particularly in Syria.

Saudi Arabia’s role in Syria will remain a controversial part of Abdullah’s legacy. Saudi Arabia gave money and weapons to jihadi groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, helping give birth to the force now known as Islamic State.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday that he had a “genuine and warm” friendship with Abdullah, whom he described as a “candid” ruler who “had the courage of his convictions.”

The early signs from Riyadh were that there would be a smooth succession to Abdullah’s half brother, Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. The palace statement said that the 79-year-old Salman was now King, and his own 69-year-old half-brother Muqrin – whom Abdullah elevated last year to the newly created post of Deputy Crown Prince – was now Crown Prince and next in line to the throne.

But insiders say King Salman is also not well, and his reign may feature a power struggle between conservative members of the royal family – a camp the new king is said to belong to – and younger princes who want to see the country make political reforms.

“I don’t know to what extent Salman is competent mentally and physically. There are many stories about him having early signs of dementia. Many people who have seen him in the past few years say that he starts the first minute of a conversation in a good way, and then he keeps repeating himself and forgets part of the conversation,” said a veteran Arab diplomat who regularly advised Abdullah.

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