World Leaders Fly in for Fahd Funeral

apnews.myway ^ | Aug 2, 5:21 AM (ET) | By ADNAN MALIK

[Esther Ruth]

World Leaders Fly in for Fahd Funeral

Aug 2, 5:21 AM (ET)

By ADNAN MALIK

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - World leaders jetted into the Saudi capital amid tight security on Tuesday for the funeral of King Fahd, this oil-rich country's ruler for almost a quarter century who died a day earlier from a long illness.

Fahd will be buried in a simple grave marked only by a small stone without a name or inscription, indistinguishable from the nearby graves of commoners and past kings in keeping with the austere burial traditions of conservative Saudi Arabia.

Fahd, the country's absolute monarch since 1982 died early Monday at age 84 after nearly two months in a Riyadh hospital. He'd been leader in name only the last decade, following a debilitating stroke in 1995.

His half brother and the country's de factor ruler the last 10 years, the former Crown Prince Abdullah, was quickly installed as the successor to the Saudi throne and will lead the procession of thousands of mourners attending prayer and burial services for Fahd in Riyadh's Old City.

[Esther Ruth]

Rest of Article

Saudi officials said there would be no state funeral for Fahd - a tradition they say is not part of the kingdom's strict version of Islam known as Wahhabism.

According to Islamic rituals, the body of a deceased should be buried quickly to honor it, and coffins are not used. Instead, the body is interred in a white shroud.

Security forces erected multiple checkpoints and locked down the motorcade route from the city center to the airport, where Saudi officials in flowing robes and traditional Arab headdresses waited in searing summer heat to greet arriving presidents from Arab countries, Afghanistan and African states such as Senegal.

Western leaders and dignitaries including Britain's Prince Charles, French President Jacques Chirac and Australia's governor general will also arrive in Riyadh to pay their respects to Fahd. A U.S. delegation will also attend, but its makeup was not immediately known.

Thousands of forces have been deployed to the capital, including several hundred police and anti-terrorism personnel in and around the 6,000-capacity Mosque of Imam Turki bin Abdullah, where a pre-burial funeral service for Fahd will be held later Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia has been on high alert for terror attacks during the past two years amid a violent campaign waged by Islamic militants allied to Saudi dissident and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who has vowed to topple the ruling royal family for its close ties to the United States.

Most of the mourners expected to crowd the mosque, Riyadh's largest Islamic shrine, will come from among the Saudi royal family itself, which is believed to include more than 10,000 princes.

Fahd's body will be brought by ambulance from the King Faisal Specialist Hospital where he died to the mosque in the Deira neighborhood of Riyadh's Old City, at which a short prayer service will be held.

Shortly after, an ambulance will ferry his body to the al-Oud cemetery some three miles away, where his three predecessors as king - half brothers Saud, Faisal and Khaled - are also buried, along with commoners.

There are no gravestones or tombs for any of the kings, only piles of dirt and a simple stone at each grave with no name or inscription.

Countries from all over the globe have sent their condolences following the death of Fahd, who as Saudi's ruler has controlled the world's largest oil reserves and been custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina.

"It is a sad day for us but (the loss of Fahd) is a harsh reality that we have to face," said Khaled Saleh, a 30-year-old hotel customer relations manager.

Another Riyadh resident, Abdullah al-Dokry, 30, said he was "worried about the future of our country" and said "more energetic people are needed to take us into the future." Abdullah is 81 and his successor as crown prince, half brother Sultan, is 77.

Countries around the world marked Tuesday as a day of mourning. Flags on New Zealand public buildings and military facilities were flown at half staff Tuesday, and Spain declared Tuesday as a day of mourning.

Flags in Saudi Arabia will not be lowered to half-staff because the green Saudi flag is inscribed with Islam's testament of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet." Putting it at half staff would be a debasement of God's name.

[Esther Ruth]

"Western leaders and dignitaries including Britain's Prince Charles, French President Jacques Chirac and Australia's governor general will also arrive in Riyadh to pay their respects to Fahd. A U.S. delegation will also attend, but its makeup was not immediately known. "

[theDentist]

Fahd will be buried in a simple grave marked only by a small stone without a name or inscription, indistinguishable from the nearby graves of commoners and past kings in keeping with the austere burial traditions of conservative Saudi Arabia.

Well, that's kinda cool.

[StrangerInParadise]

.....and in other news, King Fahd is still dead. So is Generalissimo Francisco Franco, as well as Yasir Arafat. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

[CondorFlight]

Well, I don't trust Saudi security; it's said to be heavily infiltrated by radicals, who have joined up in the ranks.

So with such a rich target field as a mosque full of world leaders. . .

(meaning, I hope Bush doesn't go. . .)

[varon]

A U.S. delegation will also attend, but its makeup was not immediately known.

Who else but the glory hog duo of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Seems as though by appointment or self initiative these two have been in international spotlight more than the President!

[CarrotAndStick]

Well, that's kinda cool.

Would have been even cooler if the Saudi authorities established a system to provide liberty, justice and equality to all Saudis in life also, not just in death. A system called democracy.

[Esther Ruth]

More Below .... this paragraph below from article...

==>In 1945, Fahd made his first trip in an official capacity, to Egypt, and WAS PART OF THE SAUDI DELEGATION TO THE CONFERENCE IN SAN FRANCISCO THAT DRAFTED THE U.N. CHARTER.

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: World

Aug. 2, 2005, 12:50AM

Saudi king was 'America's man'
Saudi ruler saw the rise of both his kingdom and a militant threat
By DAVID LAMB and DOYLE MCMANUS
Los Angeles Times
RESOURCES

Associated Press
King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud

BIRTH: In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the early 1920s.

BACKGROUND: One of 42 sons of King Abdul Aziz, who founded modern Saudi Arabia. Mother, Hassa, was Abdul Aziz's fifth wife.

EDUCATION: Elementary school only, with heavy emphasis on religion.

POLITICAL CAREER: Became Saudi Arabia's first minister of education in 1953, launching nationwide public schools and encouraging girls to attend. Named interior minister in 1962. Appointed crown prince in 1975 when brother, King Khaled, was in poor health. Assumed throne in 1982 upon Khaled's death. Heir is half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah.

FAMILY: Believed to have had three wives and eight sons. Eldest son, Faisal, died in 1999 of a heart attack.

---

Video:
• Saudi Arabia's King Fahd dies


King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who died Monday after a long illness, was playboy-turned-statesman who led his desert kingdom into a controversial military alliance with the United States that produced a violent backlash by Islamic fundamentalists.

During more than three decades as one of the principal rulers of Saudi Arabia, Fahd never sought a leadership role in the Middle East. But by virtue of his country's immense oil wealth and its strategic geographic position, he became one of Washington's most important Arab allies and a prime conduit for U.S. influence.

Fahd presided over Saudi Arabia — 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 headlong economic modernization and officially enforced religious traditionalism.

The king 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. He declared that his most important title was not king, but "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques," keeper of Islam's holy sites at Mecca and Medina.

But when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990, Fahd faced a critical choice and he invited the United States to station thousands of ground troops and aircraft on Saudi soil to defend the kingdom. Riyadh became the headquarters for the U.S.-led war to expel Iraq from Kuwait.

Saddam was defeated and the Saudi monarchy preserved, but many Saudi fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden, were bitterly angry over at the decision to invite non-Muslim troops into the birthplace of Islam.


Era of transformation

Over time, Bin Laden's al-Qaida organization 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. Fahd had initially tolerated the group and the Saudi fundraising network that supported it. Years later, Crown Prince Abdullah would declare war on al-Qaida as a mortal threat to the royal family.

"Fahd played a major role in building a Saudi state that's bureaucratic as opposed to informal," said F. Gregory Gause III, a professor at the University of Vermont and leading American authority on Saudi Arabia. "He was also, among the senior princes, probably the most reflexively pro-American."

"In the end, King Fahd was America's man," said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East scholar at the University of Maryland.

Like King Khalid, the half brother he succeeded, and Crown Prince Abdullah, his successor, Fahd's lifetime spanned Saudi Arabia's transformation — from one of the most primitive desert societies on Earth to one of the most moneyed and powerful.

Little known by outsiders when he became crown prince in 1975, he proved himself a quick learner and tough negotiator.

By the time he became king after Khalid's death in 1982, Fahd had already served in cabinet-level government positions for 29 years — groomed by his father and his uncles, and chosen by his siblings, to manage the Saudi ruling dynasty.

He was a hulk of a man, more than 6 feet tall and 275 pounds. Fahd ate very well and chain-smoked Marlboros. He suffered from diabetes and a weak heart and used a cane to ease the discomfort of a painful knee condition.

Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud was born in Riyadh, although his exact date of birth is uncertain. Within 12 years of his birth, his father, the desert warrior Abdul Aziz ibn al Saud (known as Ibn Saud) had united the Arabian Peninsula's 13 dozen or so tribes to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — the world's only country named for a family. His mother, Hassa Sudairi, was said to be the favorite of Ibn Saud's 40 or so wives, with whom he produced more than 50 sons and many daughters.

Young Fahd was educated at a school for princes and by private tutors. In 1945, Fahd made his first trip in an official capacity, to Egypt, and was part of the Saudi delegation to the conference in San Francisco that drafted the U.N. Charter.

Fahd, then in his mid-20s, was fascinated by the United States though everything in America seemed to contrast with his ultraconservative Islamic kingdom, where alcohol was banned, the sexes were segregated and not a movie theater or nightclub existed.

Fahd enjoyed the pleasures forbidden at home. He soon was a regular in the nightclubs of Beirut and at the gambling tables of Monte Carlo (where he is said to have lost $1 million in a single weekend). He drank Scotch with gusto. He lavished money and gifts on belly dancers and many other women. He continued his overseas carousing until 1953, when an older half brother Faisal, then crown prince, summoned him home and said he was disgracing the family and the kingdom.


Consolidating, modernizing

From 1962 until King Faisal's assassination in 1975, Fahd served as minister of the interior. Faisal's successor, Khalid, had a weak heart and no great ambition. He gave Fahd, then about 55 and the crown prince, a relatively free hand to run the kingdom's day-to-day affairs. The kingdom that Fahd inherited was essentially a family corporation, and Fahd had two goals: to consolidate the royals' power and to continue modernizing Saudi Arabia under an Islamic umbrella.

More than $100 billion a year in oil money was flooding Saudi Arabia by 1975, and Fahd rushed headlong into creating a modern welfare state of stunning proportions.

Gleaming cities and skyscrapers of glass and marble sprang from the desert.

When Khalid died in 1982, Fahd succeeded to the throne.

[theDentist]

I don't want any US Official there, but someone will be sent.

[theDentist]

Umm, yes, but I'm just referring to that tradition of burial, not of government.

[kabar]

I don't want any US Official there, but someone will be sent.

Saudi Arabia is an ally and more importantly, sits on top of the world's largest proven oil reserves. Approximately, 20% of the daily supply of oil sold on the world market comes from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are also a major trading partner with the US being the number 1 recipient of exports and the number 1 source of imports.

I hope we send a high ranking US official to the funeral.

[MinuteGal]

The Saudi traditional quick burial surely must have caught Jesse Jackson by surprise, so don't look for him at the funeral.

I will miss him, though. He's kinda like a black Tourist Guy, showing up at all major events worldwide.

I hope someone has a pic of Tourist Guy to post. Haven't seen him around lately. Maybe he'll show up at the King's funeral.

Leni

[Nathan Zachary]

""There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."

That is wrong. it's there is no ilah [arabic word for a god] but Allah,[NAME of the Islamic rock god] and Muhammad is his [pedophile] prophet. Western "journalists" should realize that the Islamic god is NOT the same as the Judeo- Christian God. "Allah" is not an arabic word for god, it's a NAME. Ilah is arabic for god.

[CarrotAndStick]

The journalists have clubbed them together since a long time, so that the evil can be shared, I guess, instead of leaving everything to Allah, the Arabic moon god.

[theDentist]

I expect we will, but let's remember, there'll likely be an attack. The government is now a bit "unstable" until Abdullah (?) cements his full control of Military and Civil powers. Right now, it's vulnerable, and the terrorists will want to destabilize it even more... and an attack at the Funeral, against "infidels" would be too sweet to pass up.

[Sally'sConcerns]

I agree with you, we should send a high ranking official to Fahd's funeral.

How many times did Saudi Arabia increase their output through OPEC in order to help us during times of oil crisis? During the first Gulf War, he allowed us to use American bases in his country. If I remember correctly, one of Hussein's scuds hit an area of Riyadh.

The Saudi royal family has an extremely tough job in walking the tight rope of ally to the United States and dealing with wahabism. It's a difficult job pulling a country into the modern world while still retaining the people's religious beliefs.

There's good and bad in Saudi. We can only hope and pray Saudi will eventually become much more westernized by embracing the positive aspects of our world and leaving behind the world of Islam. Needless to say, this will probably take many years to accomplish but I believe that's the say Saudi Arabia is headed.

[swarthyguy]

Ah, yes, monarchy in the 21st Century.

As the world prostrates itself to the Oil Shaikhs, ignoring all human rights and even a modicum of a modern civil society.

As much as the British get praised for banning sati in India, the USA hasn't done jack shit for the tragically oppressed women of that misogynistic tragic kingdom.

And, even now, for all the vaunted reform, three reformers have been given longterm jail sentences. If the Royal Fecal Pukes can't even do this........

Just goes to show, talk is cheap, when it comes to the Saudis.

Oh, what a great transition.

[mewzilla]

Betcha the Toons go.

[July 4th]

coffins are not used. Instead, the body is interred in a white shroud

Oh, boy. Just wait until someone's dog digs him up.

[Esther Ruth]

"Western "journalists" should realize that the Islamic god is NOT the same as the Judeo- Christian God. "Allah" is not an arabic word for god, it's a NAME."

Christians definitely should all believe that Scripture does say that there is no other name that man can call upon to be saved, accept the name of Jesus. Some are saying otherwise. This is one of the signs that points to the fact, I believe, that we are in The Last Days. A sign that the world is trying to come together, to unite, under one God, one religion, one leader (as the prophets told us would happen). In Revelations 13:17 it says that unless people take the name of the Beast they will not be able to do much.

Rev 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

Rev 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.