Saddam Hussein





Saddam Hussein (or Husayn) 'Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (born April 28, 1937)
was the President of Iraq from 1979 - 2003 and the Prime Minister
of Iraq from 1979 - 1991 and 1994 - 2003. While largely viewed as an
autocratic despot in the West, in the Arab World he is viewed with mixed
emotions; on the one hand he is favorably regarded for his support and
espousal of nationalistic pan-Arabism, his steadfast refusal to submit to
American-led international pressure, and for his role in the economic
modernization in Iraq, while on the other hand he is widely despised for
particular policing tactics used by his Baathist regime, for his prohibition
of many Islamic practices and his treatment of minorities and political or
perceived political enemies.

Early years

He was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit District of Iraq, to a
family of sheep-herders. His mother tried to abort her pregnancy but failed
and named her newborn "Saddam" which means "one who confronts" in Arabic.
Later in his life, relatives from his hometown would be some of his most
influential and powerful advisors and supporters, and would gain the
nickname "Tikriti mafia" as a result.

He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared
before Saddam was born. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, remarried,
and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather,
Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly, and forced young Saddam to steal
for him. His mother had three sons from this marriage. Barzan Ibrahim Hasan
was the former chief of the Iraqi secret police and ambassador to the United
Nations in Geneva. Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan is the former head of Iraqi
intelligence. Watban Ibrahim Hasan is the former Iraqi interior minister.
Barzan and Watban have been arrested by coalition forces.

Shaping Saddam's political consciousness

At the age of 10, Saddam moved to Baghdad to live with his uncle, Khairallah
Tulfah, a devout Sunni. Saddam learned from his uncle, and took to heart,
the lesson of never backing down to his enemies, no matter how superior
their force or capabilities. In 1955, he attended the nationalist secondary
school in Baghdad and joined the Ba'ath Party quickly earning a reputation
for brutality; he committed his first murder at age 19.

The collapse of Ottoman rule over the region following the First World War,
and later the withdrawal of British colonialists, combined with the
floodgate of social change opened up by urbanization and modernization,
contributed to a great deal of revolutionary sentiment, which shaped the
mindset of young Saddam. Although heralded by the ousting of the corrupt
civilian government in Syria by the military in March 1949, the rise of
Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in 1952 foreshadowed the wave of revolutions
throughout the Arab world in the fifties and sixties, which would see the
monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya toppled. The 1958 ousting of the
monarchy in Iraq was a milestone for the new urban classes in Iraq, which
eased the stranglehold of the old imperialist collaborationist Žlites,
namely the conservative monarchists, established families, and merchants.

Nasser's populist pan-Arab nationalism in Egypt, along with the
revolutionary turmoil in Iraq, would profoundly influence Saddam Hussein
until the very final days of his regime. Nasser challenged the the British
and French, nationalized the Suez Canal, and strove to modernize Egypt and
unite the Arab world politically.

Saddam joined the Ba'ath Party in 1957. A year later in 1958, a non-Baathist
group led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew the king. But the more
committed nationalists continued to fight the new regime. In 1959, Saddam
was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. The
bold guerilla was shot in the leg, but managed to flee on foot by removing
the bullet from his leg by himself to Syria, from where he would later flee
to Nasser's Egypt. He was sentenced to death in absentia.

In exile Saddam received his higher education at the University of Cairo law
school. Saddam also gained a degree in law from the University of Baghdad in 1968.

Rise to power

Saddam first came to power in Iraq amid the Ba'athist revolution of 1963.
However, the new regime was ousted quickly, within seven to eight months
torn by rife factionalism. On his return to Iraq following the 14th of
Ramadan revolution (February 8, 1963) he was imprisoned in 1964 following a
change in power, but escaped from jail in 1967. Saddam, according to many
biographers, never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist regime,
namely party unity and the ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs
to ensure social stability.

In 1968 he helped lead the successful and non-violent Ba'athist coup. Saddam
was appointed vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council and Vice
President of Iraq. In 1973 he was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces.

Complicating Saddam's consolidation of power since 1968, Iraqi society is an
ethnic and religious polyglot divided between often hostile Arab Sunni,
Kurdish Sunni, Assyrian (the native people of Iraq), Turkman and Arab Shiite
camps. Tribal conflicts, conflict between secular nationalists and religious
fundamentalists, class conflict, and conflict between the rural tribes and
the popular urban sectors had also been pervasive. Saddam's government drew
its support base from middle- to working-class Arab Sunnis from the center
of the country, especially the urban popular sectors, who are nationalistic
and modern in their outlooks. This segment of Iraqi society, however,
accounts for around a fifth of the population.

Under the second Ba'athist government, the prerequisites for stable rule in
a country torn by political factionalism, tribalism, class conflict,
regional conflict, and religious conflict would be the improvement of living
standards. Thus, the new regime promoted modernization along with the
creation of a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power
structure and insurrections apart from it. Saddam, a rising star in the new
regime, aided party attempts to strengthen and unify the party. The Kurdish
condition has been an enduring poverty not yet solved. But the regime made
great strives in alleviating poverty through the nationalization of oil to
build schools, hospitals, import technology, and strengthen security services.

Always promoting himself as a Ba'athist who dreams of unifying the Arab
World as a single modern state, Saddam, on June 1, 1972, led the process of
nationalizing Western oil companies which had had a monopoly on Iraq's oil.
Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy, urging the
construction of various developed industries and following their
administration and execution. He also supervised the modernization of the
Iraqi countryside, the mechanization of agriculture and the distribution of
land to farmers. He effected a comprehensive revolution in energy industries
as well as in public services such as transport and education. He also
initiated and led the National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy
and the implementation of Compulsory Free Education in Iraq. At the same
time he was securing his position by purging members of the Ba'ath Party
that could possibly oppose him.

Under Saddam's Ba'ath Party government, the state provided social services
to Iraqi people unprecedented in other Middle Eastern countries. Under
Saddam's auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to
the highest education levels, supported families of soldiers killed in war;
granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers.
Earlier, Saddam's government had broken up the large landholdings in the
first place and redistributed land to peasant farmers.

The modernizing, socialistic nature of his government also explains Iraq's
progressive development, at least before the Iraq-Iran War, the Gulf War,
and the ensuing 12 years of United Nations-imposed economic sanctions. Since
the nationalization of oil fields and refineries, electricity has been
brought to nearly every city in Iraq, including many communities in far
outlying areas. The government has made great progress in building roads,
establishing mechanized agriculture on a large scale and promoting mining
and other industries to diversify the oil-dependent economy.

As vice president, Saddam slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's
government and the Ba'ath party structure. Relationships with fellow
Ba'athists were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon gained a powerful
circle of support within the party. As Iraq's weak and elderly President
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his
office, Saddam began to take a much more prominent role as the face of the
Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the sole
architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all
diplomatic situations, including a state visit to France in 1976. By the
late 1970s Saddam had emerged as the undisputed de facto leader of Iraq.

In 1979, President al-Bakr began to make treaties with Syria that would lead
to a unification between the two countries. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad
would become deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to
obscurity. Before this could happen, however, Saddam forced Bakr to resign
on July 16 of that year and he then became the full leader of Iraq.

One of his first acts as President was to convene an assembly of Ba'ath
party leaders on July 22, 1979 and have one of them read out the names of
members that Saddam thought could oppose him. These members were labeled
"disloyal" and were removed from the room one-by-one to face a firing squad.
After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room
for their past and future loyalty. The room erupted in applause and shouting
in support of Saddam.

Saddam Hussein and Social Change

Aside from land ownership, the Saddam Hussein era oversaw other examples of
a social revolution. Saddam, to the consternation of Islamic fundamentalists
and the Islamic Republic of Iran, gave women added freedoms and offered them
high level government and industry jobs. Saddam provided both Arab and
Western style banking systems to give the people a choice between these
interest-bearing and non-interest-bearing accounts, created a western style
legal system (Iraq is the only country in the Persian Gulf region which is
not ruled according to Islamic law), and abolished the old Mosaic law courts
except for personal injury, small court claims. At the same time, human
rights groups have documented cases of state-sponsored rapes of women and
systemic acts of torture for political ends.[1]

However, domestic and international conflict were long an impediment to his
modernizing aims. Iraq is a highly fragmented society; according to some, it
is tantamount to a Middle Eastern Yugoslavia (an analogy used often by
Thomas Friedman). Over the past three decades, however, Saddam's
authoritarian rule kept the lid on pervasive tribal, class, religious,
factional, and ethnic conflicts, and destabilizing forces externally, such
as hostile powers like Iran and the United States. The cost, though,
resulted in one of the more autocratic of the Middle East's many
autocracies. Islamic fundamentalists, suppressed through classic carrot and
stick tactics, and won over eventually by co-optation and coercion, tended
to reject the direction in which Saddam led the country. And the region's
traditional aristocracies, both Sunni and Shiite (the kinds of aristocracies
that still rule the other Arab Persian Gulf states with an iron grip),
rejected the populist nature of his policies which undermined and largely
eroded aristocratic privilege. In short, large segments of Iraq's population
tended to reject modernization even though it dramatically raised living
standards in the aggregate.

In response, his efforts to construct mosques and portray himself as a
devout Muslim in more recent years have been seen as measures to co-opt more
religious segments of society. These measures have seemed to work,
considering that Iraq has avoided the bloody fundamentalist insurgencies
seen in other secular states, such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria.

Since Iraq is a fragmented society and a fragile state, many have linked
this to Saddam's attempts to forge an Iraqi and Arab national identity for
his conflict-torn country. Saddam has espoused the ideas of the Ba'ath
Party: Arab unity, the belief that that the Arab world was divided into 22
countries that should be united to serve the interests of the Arab people.
But Saddam has also espoused Iraqi patriotism, expressing the belief that
Iraq has played a unique role in the history of the Arab world. As
president, Saddam has made frequent references to the Islamic period,
especially the Abbasid period (when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and
economic capital of the Arab world). Moreover, he is known to refer to the
glorious pre-Islamic past, not failing to note Mesopotamia's role as an
ancient cradle of civilization. Saddam alluded to pre-Islamic historical
figures such as Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi. And to his credit, he has
devoted great resources to archeological explorations. Saddam, in his
speeches, envisages an Arab world united and led by Iraq.

The highly questionable results of the 2002 referendum are one of the many
examples of Saddam's vast state-driven personality cult. During his reign as
president, extensive use of propaganda was employed to make Saddam appear
synonymous with Iraq.

Many scholars have noted how Saddam's personality cult reflects change and
tradition in Iraqi society. Known to wear the costumes of the Bedouin, the
traditional clothes of the peasant, and even Kurdish clothing, Saddam is
often photographed in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and
modern leader respectful of his past. Framed portraits, enormous statues,
and vast murals began to appear all over the country, depicting the Iraqi
leader in a variety of different costumes, situations, and emotions.
Sometimes he would be portrayed as a dedicated Muslim, wearing full
headdress and robe, praying to Mecca. Other times, he would be shown wearing
a western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle high above his
head. Some examples of Saddam's different images can be found on the right.
The prevalence of the leader's image was quite unparalleled in modern
history, leading one western commentator to joke that Saddam's efforts made
Stalin look like he had a case of "low self-esteem."

The Iran-Iraq war

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran threatened to divert Iraq from this
progressive path of development. In addition, Shiites, many of whom were
sympathetic to Iran's Ayatollahs, accounted for the majority of Iraq's
population. The pretext for the bloody, protracted Iran-Iraq War was a
territorial dispute, but most attribute the war as an attempt by Saddam,
supported by both the US and the USSR, to have Iraq form a bulwark against
the expansionism of radical Iranian-style revolution. During the war Saddam
received international condemnation after he ordered the use of chemical
weapons on Iranian troops. The war ended in a bloody stalemate with no gain
to either side. The people of Iran and Iraq both lost heavily, with a total
death toll of about 1.7 million. Both economies, previously healthy and
expanding, were left in ruins.

Iraq has, nearly from its founding, had to deal with Kurdish separatists in
the northern part of the country, which took a tragic turn during the
Iraq-Iran War. Saddam Hussein's answer to this ethnic conflict was seen as
brutal to many observers and included the systematic use of chemical weapons
on Kurdish troops and population centers. The worst such single incident
occurred on March 16, 1988 when Iraqi troops, on orders from Saddam to stop
a Kurdish uprising, attacked the Kurdish town of Halabjah with a mix of
poison gas and nerve agents killing 5000 people, mostly women and children.
Also, according to anti-Saddam opposition groups, around 100,000 other Kurds
have been exiled since 1991.

The war with Iran left Iraq bankrupt. Faced with rebuilding its
infrastructure destroyed in the war, Iraq needed money. No country would
lend it money except the United States and borrowing money from the US made
Iraq its client state. According to some, the costs of the Iran-Iraq War
would later explain Iraq's confrontation with Kuwait and the United States.

Conflict with Kuwait, Persian Gulf War

Iraq had borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states,
including Kuwait, during the 1980s to fight its war with Iran. Saddam
Hussein felt that the war had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf
Arab states as much as for Iraq, and so all debts should be forgiven.
Kuwait, however, did not forgive its debt and further provoked Saddam by
slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered within its disputed
border with Kuwait.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein complained to the United States Department of State
about Kuwaiti slant drilling. This had continued for years, but now Iraq
needed oil money to pay off its war debts and avert an economic crisis.
Saddam ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, creating alarm over the
prospect of an invasion. After April Glaspie, the United States ambassador
to Iraq, assured him that the US considered the Iraq-Kuwait dispute an
internal Arab matter, Saddam sent his troops into Kuwait.

According to many historians, Iraq has always been hostile to Kuwait,
because Kuwait was created by the British from land that was originally part
of Iraq and Saddam needed the seaport Kuwait occupied. Kuwait had already
offered the use of its seaport to Iraq, and it was using Iraq's fleet of oil
tankers to transport its own oil abroad, as were many other oil countries.
This gave them an indigenous industry, independent of outside European and
American tankers which demanded higher fees. Thus Kuwait and Iraq were in
the oil tanker business together, Iraq furnishing the tankers, Kuwait
furnishing the port.

The US and Britain, two of the five permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council, convinced the Security Council to give Iraq a deadline to
leave Kuwait. Eventually a reluctant Security Council declared war on Iraq,
which President George Bush declared was "for the New World Order." Saddam
ignored the deadline and by the end of the Gulf War Iraq had lost an
estimated 20,000 troops and had been expelled from Kuwait. Other
sources—like Ramsey Clark, formerly the US Attorney
General—speak of more than 100,000 on the Iraqi side.

Prior to that point, however, Iraq's stance in the international community
had alarmed Western powers. Iraq was the leading country in forming the Arab
League, an alliance similar to Europe's European Economic Community. All oil
nations would share and work together and plan their own army that would
include no Europeans. Iraq at the time had compiled a huge foreign debt and
was striving to pay off the debts accumulated during the Iraq-Iran War.
Perhaps in response, Saddam was pushing oil-exporting countries to raise oil
prices and cut back production. Westerners, however, remember the very
destabilizing effects of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

Following the war, popular uprisings erupted in the north and south parts of
the nation. These uprisings were swiftly and ruthlessly repressed and
thousands of Iraqis were killed. A United Nations trade embargo was placed
on Iraq following the war and Saddam tightened his control over Iraq.

According to some official reports, Saddam appeared to have enjoyed great
popularity within Iraq. A 2002 referendum, asking whether he should continue
to lead Iraq, claimed 100% of voters thought he should, and that the turnout
was 100%, with international media releasing pictures of Iraqi women voting
in their own blood. However, he was the only presidential candidate on the
ballot and voting was mandatory.

The 2003 war

The Iraqi government and military collapsed about three weeks after the
beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. By April 9, Saddam Hussein was not
in the public eye, with some reports indicating he had been killed or
wounded in air strikes in a restaurant where he reportedly had been holding
a meeting. By this date, coalition (American and British) forces occupied
much of Iraq, and several presidential palaces were in coalition hands. The
large bronze statue of Saddam in a roundabout in central Baghdad had been
torn down to the cheers of a a crowd of around 200 Iraqi citizens, many of
which went on to remove or deface many posters and other likenesses of
Saddam. Icons and other Saddam Hussein-bearing articles were beaten with
shoes and slippers—an action that is a grave insult in the Arab
culture. Images were broadcast around the world of Iraqis defacing the
numerous ubiquitous portraits and murals of the dictator and dragging broken
statues through the streets.

From all this, it appears that Saddam had lost control of Iraq and was at
the least in hiding. The population did not rise up in response to his
repeated calls to do so, shedding more doubts on the accuracy of his
popularity as represented by government-run Iraqi news and radio. However
the sudden loss of all Iraqi governmental controls on April 9th left a power
vacuum that was followed by widespread looting of governmental buildings
including Iraq's Olympic headquarters, which dissidents allege was used by
Saddam's eldest son, Uday, to torture athletes and others that displeased
him. The looting quickly spread to civilian properties and many observers
feared a looming humanitarian crisis as a result of the toppling of Saddam's
government. Embedded reporters interviewed many Iraqis in the capital and
other parts of the nation and found that the general relief that the Saddam
Hussein government was gone was tempered by worries over the possibility of
a prolonged American occupation.

Saddam's whereabouts remained in question in the weeks following the
toppling of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting in the war.
Nearly two weeks after the fall of Hussein's regime, a video was released
showing Hussein purportedly on the day Baghdad fell, April 9. Various
sightings of Saddam were also reported throughout Baghdad in the weeks
following the war. Regardless of his location and health, he remains one of
the U.S. military's "Iraqi 55 Most Wanted". As the ace of spades in the
"most wanted" playing cards, he is at the top of the list.

Personal

Saddam has been married three times. His first marriage to his first cousin
Sajida Talfah, a former teacher, occurred in 1963. This union with the
eldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, the uncle who raised Saddam, produced
two sons, (Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusay Hussein) and three daughters, Rana,
Raghad and Hala. Sajida was put under house arrest in early 1997, along with
daughters Raghad and Rana, because of suspicions of their involvement in an
attempted assassination on Uday in December 12, 1996. General Adnan
Khairallah Tuffah, who was Sajida's brother and Saddam Hussein's boyhood
friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity.

Saddam Hussein also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he
married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumoured to
be his favourite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the
Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose
husband apparently was also persuaded to divorce his wife. There apparently
have been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has a
son, Ali, by Samira.

In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel Majid and Raghad and her
husband, Saddam Kamel Majid, defected to Jordan, taking their children with
them. They returned to Iraq when they received assurances that Saddam
Hussein would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February
1996, both Hussein Kamel Majid and Saddam Kamel Majid were executed. Raghad
and Rana are said to be estranged from their father, refusing to speak to
him for several years. The Majid brothers were cousins of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa, the deputy head of
Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in
political plots.

Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali", who
was accused of ordering the use of poison gas to slaughter Kurds in 1988.
Ali is now in US custody.