Calls to modernize his kingdom were constant. So, too, were objections from hard-line conservatives who chafed at change.
Supporters hailed Abdullah, who died Friday at age 90, as a reformer. And in the United States, leaders have long described him as a close ally in the Middle East who played a key role in bringing stability to the region. He famously held hands with President George W. Bush as the two leaders met in Texas in 2005.
With the wealth of his oil-rich nation behind him, Abdullah wielded far-reaching influence both inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
As the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria ramped up, his leadership was a “game changer,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science at Emirates University, told CNN last year.
“It was King Abdullah who put all the moral, the political weight behind the international coalition to stop ISIS’s momentum,” he said.
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“Despite the new levels of openness enjoyed by Saudi citizens, Abdullah is not leading the kingdom on the path to political liberalism. Just the opposite: While making small social and economic concessions, the king is in fact turning the clock back in Arabia, using his popularity to confront clergy and restore the kind of unchecked authority his family enjoyed in the 1970s,” Toby C. Jones, an associate professor of history at Rutgers, wrote in an analysis for the magazine.
Ali Al-Ahmed, a former Saudi political prisoner, told CNN on Thursday that it isn’t accurate to portray Abdullah as a reformer.
Under Abdullah’s rule, he said, political prisoners were harshly punished and extremism flourished in Saudi Arabia even as leaders claimed to oppose it.
“It’s the epicenter of extremism, of terrorism, of funding terrorism. … Reforms in Saudi Arabia do not exist. This is an absolute monarchy, let’s be honest,” Al-Ahmed said. “This is an absolute monarchy where the government policies are controlled by one family. They decide everything.”
CNN’s Laura Smith-Spark and Becky Anderson contributed to this report.
