King Fahd, Man of Maddening Contradictions

By Thomas W. Lippman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, August 1, 2005; 6:36 AM

King Fahd ibn Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, who died Monday, was a man of maddening contradictions who ruled a country of maddening contradictions.

By turns profligate and abstemious, corrupt and correct, energetic and lazy, dedicated and indifferent, he demonstrated both voracious appetites and undoubted abilities. Fahd, believed to be 83, was admired as a forward-looking modernizer and loathed as a corrupt autocrat, sometimes by the same analysts.

His greatest accomplishment was to hold his country together and preserve his family's rule in an era of immense pressures both domestic and external.