Saddam Hussein صدام حسين
5th President of Iraq
In office 16 July 1979 – 9 April 2003
Prime Minister	List Sa'dun Hammadi Mohammed Amza Zubeidi Ahmad Husayn Khudayir as-Samarrai
Preceded by	Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Succeeded by	Jay Garner (CPA)*
Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council
In office 16 July 1979 – 9 April 2003
Preceded by	Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Succeeded by	Post abolished
57th and 61st Prime Minister of Iraq
In office 29 May 1994 – 9 April 2003
Preceded by	Ahmad Husayn Khudayir as-Samarrai
Succeeded by	Mohammad Bahr al-Ulloum**
In office 16 July 1979 – 23 March 1991
Preceded by	Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Succeeded by	Sa'dun Hammadi
Secretary General of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
In office 23 June 1989 – 30 December 2006
Preceded by	Michel Aflaq
Succeeded by	Vacant
Secretary of the Iraqi Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
In office 16 July 1979 – 30 December 2006
National Secretary	Michel Aflaq (until 1989) Himself
Preceded by	Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Succeeded by	Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri
Deputy Secretary of the Iraqi Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
In office 1966–1979
Preceded by	Unknown
Succeeded by	Taha Yassin Ramadan
Personal details
Born	Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (1937-04-28)28 April 1937 Al-Awja, Iraq
Died	30 December 2006(2006-12-30) (aged 69) Kadhimiya, Iraq
Nationality	Iraqi
Political party	Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (1957–1966) Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party (1966–2006) (NPF)
Spouse(s)	Sajida Talfah Samira Shahbandar
Children	Uday Hussein Qusay Hussein Raghad Hussein Rana Hala Hussein
Religion	Sunni Islam
*As administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq. **As Acting President of the Governing Council of Iraq.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī;^[1] 28 April 1937^[2] – 30 December 2006)^[3] was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003.^[4][5] A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.

As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions.^[6] Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace.^[7] Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.

Saddam suppressed several movements, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements seeking to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively.^[8] Saddam maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War of 1980 through 1988. In 1990 he invaded and looted Kuwait. An international coalition came to free Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991, but did not end Saddam's rule. Whereas some venerated him for his aggressive stance against Israel, including firing missiles at Israeli targets,^[9] he was widely condemned for the brutality of his dictatorship.

In March 2003, a coalition of countries led by the U.S. and U.K. invaded Iraq to depose Saddam, after U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to al-Qaeda. Saddam's Ba'ath party was disbanded and the nation made a transition to a democratic system. Following his capture on 13 December 2003, the trial of Saddam took place under the Iraqi interim government. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted of charges related to the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites and was sentenced to death by hanging. His execution was carried out on 30 December 2006.^[10]

Youth[link]

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born in the town of Al-Awja, 13 km (8 mi) from the Iraqi town of Tikrit, to a family of shepherds from the al-Begat tribal group, a sub-group of the Al-Bu Nasir (البو ناصر) tribe. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son Saddam, which in Arabic means "One who confronts"; he is always referred to by this personal name, which may be followed by the patronymic and other elements. He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abid al-Majid, who disappeared six months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterward, Saddam's 13-year-old brother died of cancer. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle Khairallah Talfah until he was three.^[11]

His mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return. At about age 10, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle Kharaillah Tulfah. Tulfah, the father of Saddam's future wife, was a devout Sunni Muslim and a veteran from the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War between Iraqi nationalists and the United Kingdom, which remained a major colonial power in the region.^[12]

Later in his life relatives from his native Tikrit became some of his closest advisors and supporters. Under the guidance of his uncle he attended a nationalistic high school in Baghdad. After secondary school Saddam studied at an Iraqi law school for three years, dropping out in 1957 at the age of 20 to join the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter. During this time, Saddam apparently supported himself as a secondary school teacher.^[13]

Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party student cell, Cairo, in the period 1959–1963

Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. In Iraq progressives and socialists assailed traditional political elites (colonial era bureaucrats and landowners, wealthy merchants and tribal chiefs, monarchists).^[14] Moreover, the pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt profoundly influenced young Ba'athists like Saddam. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed a wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, with the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser inspired nationalists throughout the Middle East by fighting the British and the French during the Suez Crisis of 1956, modernizing Egypt, and uniting the Arab world politically.^[15]

In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq.

Rise to power[link]

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Of the 16 members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 of them were Ba'ath Party members; however, the party turned against Qasim due to his refusal to join Gamel Abdel Nasser's United Arab Republic.^[16] To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim created an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party, which was opposed to any notion of pan-Arabism.^[17] Later that year, the Ba'ath Party leadership was planning to assassinate Qasim. Saddam was a leading member of the operation. At the time, the Ba'ath Party was more of an ideological experiment then a strong anti-government fighting machine. The majority of its members were either educated professionals or students, and Saddam fit the bill.^[18] The choice of Hussein was, according to historian Con Coughlin, "hardly surprising". The idea of assassinating Qasim may have been Nasser's, and there is speculation that some of those who participated in the operation received training in Damascus, which was then part of the UAR.^[19]

The assassins planned to ambush Qasim at Al-Rashid Street on 7 October 1959: one man was to kill those sitting at the back of the car, the rest killing those in front. During the ambush it is claimed that Saddam began shooting prematurely, which disorganised the whole operation. Qasim's chauffeur was killed, and Qasim was hit in the arm and shoulder. The assassins believed they had killed him and quickly retreated to their headquarters, but Qasim survived. At the time of the attack the Ba'ath Party had less than 1,000 members.^[20]

Some of the plotters quickly managed to leave the country for Syria, the spiritual home of Ba'athist ideology. There Hussein was given full-membership in the party by Michel Aflaq.^[21] Some members of the operation were arrested and taken into custody by the Iraqi government. At the show trial, six of the defendants were given the death sentence; for unknown reasons the sentences were not carried out. Aflaq, the leader of the Ba'athist movement, organised the expulsion of leading Iraqi Ba'athist members, such as Fuad al-Rikabi, on the grounds that the party should not have initiated the attempt on Qasim's life. At the same time, Aflaq managed to secure seats in the Iraqi Ba'ath leadership for his supporters, one them being Saddam.^[22]

In February 1960, the CIA planned an unrelated attempt to oust Qasim by giving him a poisoned handkerchief. Many foreign countries opposed Qasim, particularly after he threatened to invade Kuwait.^[23]

Saddam lived in Egypt from 1959 to 1963. Some sources have alleged that he had occassional contacts with US and CIA officials while living there, although the CIA has called the notion that he received American funding "utterly ridiculous."^[24]

Army officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party overthrew Qasim in the Ramadan Revolution coup of 1963. Ba'athist leaders were appointed to the cabinet and Abdul Salam Arif became president. The governments of the United States and United Kingdom were complicit in the coup.^[25] Arif dismissed and arrested the Ba'athist leaders later that year in the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état.

Arif died in a plane crash in 1966, in what was probably an act of sabotage by Ba'athist elements in the Iraqi military.^[26] Abdul Rahman al-Bazzaz became acting president for three days, and a power struggle for the presidency occurred. In the first meeting of the Defense Council and cabinet to elect a president, Al-Bazzaz needed a two-thirds majority to win the presidency. Al-Bazzaz was unsuccessful, and Abdul Rahman Arif was elected president. He was viewed by army officers as weaker and easier to manipulate than his brother.^[27]

Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964. Saddam was released from prison in 1966, after Abdul Rahman Arif assumed power. That same year, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr appointed him Deputy Secretary of the Regional Command. Saddam, who would prove to be a skilled organiser, revitalised the party.^[28] He was elected to the Regional Command, as the story goes, with help from Michel Aflaq--the founder of Ba'athist thought.^[29]

From 1963-67, the U.S. and Iraq enjoyed extremely close relations; so close that, in 1967, a group of Iraqi military officers under Abdul Rahman Arif were given a tour of American chemical weapons facilities. In an irony of history, one officer was reportedly a young Saddam, who would later play a major role in the military coup that removed Arif from power (he would also become infamous for his use of chemical weapons in the eighties).^[30] Nevertheless, Arif broke all ties with the U.S. later that year after the Six Day War with Israel.^[31]

In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless coup led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr that overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif. Arif was given refuge in London and then Istanbul.^[32] Al-Bakr was named president and Saddam was named his deputy, and deputy chairman of the Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council. According to biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, which formed the basis for his measures to promote Ba'ath party unity as well as his resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability.

Although Saddam was al-Bakr's deputy, he was a strong behind-the-scenes party politician. Al-Bakr was the older and more prestigious of the two, but by 1969 Saddam Hussein clearly had become the moving force behind the party.

Political program[link]

Promoting women's literacy and education in the 1970s

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, formally the al-Bakr's second-in-command, Saddam built a reputation as a progressive, effective politician.^[33] At this time, Saddam moved up the ranks in the new government by aiding attempts to strengthen and unify the Ba'ath party and taking a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems and expanding the party's following.

After the Ba'athists took power in 1968, Saddam focused on attaining stability in a nation riddled with profound tensions. Long before Saddam, Iraq had been split along social, ethnic, religious, and economic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, nomad versus peasant.^[34] The desire for stable rule in a country rife with factionalism led Saddam to pursue both massive repression and the improvement of living standards.^[34]

Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy along with the creation of a strong security apparatus to prevent coups within the power structure and insurrections apart from it. Ever concerned with broadening his base of support among the diverse elements of Iraqi society and mobilizing mass support, he closely followed the administration of state welfare and development programs.

At the center of this strategy was Iraq's oil. On 1 June 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, dominated the country's oil sector. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and skyrocketing revenues enabled Saddam to expand his agenda.

Saddam seen talking to Michel Aflaq, the founder of ba'athist thought, in 1988.

Within just a few years, Iraq was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).^[35][36]

With the help of increasing oil revenues, Saddam diversified the largely oil-based Iraqi economy. Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. The campaign helped Iraq's energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas.

Before the 1970s, most of Iraq's people lived in the countryside and roughly two-thirds were peasants. This number would decrease quickly during the 1970s as global oil prices helped revenues to rise from less than a half billion dollars to tens of billions of dollars and the country invested into industrial expansion.

Saddam was lucky for the revenue.^[37] The Economist described the sentiments, stating that "Much as Adolf Hitler won early praise for galvanising German industry, ending mass unemployment and building autobahns, Saddam earned admiration abroad for his deeds. He had a good instinct for what the "Arab street" demanded, following the decline in Egyptian leadership brought about by the trauma of Israel's six-day victory in the 1967 war, the death of the pan-Arabist hero, Gamal Abdul Nasser, in 1970, and the "traitorous" drive by his successor, Anwar Sadat, to sue for peace with the Jewish state. Saddam's self-aggrandising propaganda, with himself posing as the defender of Arabism against Jewish or Persian intruders, was heavy-handed, but consistent as a drumbeat. It helped, of course, that his mukhabarat (secret police) put dozens of Arab news editors, writers and artists on the payroll."^[37]

Alexei Kosygin (left) and Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr signing the Iraqi–Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Co-Operation in 1972

In 1972, Saddam started developing his chemical weapons program^{[citation needed]} and signed a 15-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union.

According to former CIA Near East Division Chief James Chritchfield, after al-Bakr and Hussein seized power in 1968, "America slowly developed, not a hostility, but enormous reservations about the ability of the Ba'ath to constructively bring Iraq along."^[38] From 1973-5, the CIA colluded with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran to finance and arm Kurdish rebels in the Second Kurdish-Iraqi War in an attempt to overthrow al-Bakr. When Iran and Iraq signed the Algiers Agreement in 1975, the support ceased.^[39]

Saddam focused on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athists in the rural areas. After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the countryside, mechanizing agriculture on a large scale, and distributing land to peasant farmers.^[13] The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives and the government also doubled expenditures for agricultural development in 1974–1975. Saddam's welfare programs were part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics to enhance support for Saddam. The state-owned banks were put under his thumb. Lending was based on cronyism.^[6]

Development went forward at such a fevered pitch that two million people from other Arab countries and even Yugoslavia worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor.^{[citation needed]}

Succession[link]

In 1976, Saddam rose to the position of general in the Iraqi armed forces, and rapidly became the strongman of the government. As the ailing, elderly al-Bakr became unable to execute his duties, Saddam took on an increasingly prominent role as the face of the government both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. He was the de facto leader of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He slowly began to consolidate his power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. Relationships with fellow party members were carefully cultivated, and Saddam soon accumulated a powerful circle of support within the party.

In 1979 al-Bakr started to make treaties with Syria, also under Ba'athist leadership, that would lead to unification between the two countries. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad would become deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to obscurity. Saddam acted to secure his grip on power. He forced the ailing al-Bakr to resign on 16 July 1979, and formally assumed the presidency.

Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on 22 July 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped (viewable via this reference^[40]), Saddam claimed to have found a fifth column within the Ba'ath Party and directed Muhyi Abdel-Hussein to read out a confession and the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators. These members were labelled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one and taken into custody. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. The 68 people arrested at the meeting were subsequently tried together and found guilty of treason. 22 were sentenced to execution. Other high-ranking members of the party formed the firing squad. By 1 August 1979, hundreds of high-ranking Ba'ath party members had been executed.^[41][42]

Genocidal campaign against Kurds[link]

The Al-Anfal Campaign was a genocidal^[43] campaign against the Kurdish people (and many others) in Iraqi Kurdistan led by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid. The campaign takes its name from Surat al-Anfal in the Qur'an, which was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Ba'athist administration for a series of attacks against the peshmerga rebels and the mostly Kurdish civilian population of rural Northern Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989 culminating in 1988. This campaign also targeted Shabaks and Yazidis, Assyrians, Turkoman people and Mandeans and many villages belonging to these ethnic groups were also destroyed. Some reports cite Saddam Hussein's army as being responsible for 200,000 civilian deaths.^[44]

Political repression[link]

Saddam was notable for terror against his own people. The Economist described Saddam as "one of the last of the 20th century's great dictators, but not the least in terms of egotism, or cruelty, or morbid will to power".^[37]

The New York Times described in its obituary how Saddam "murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land. Hussein created a nation of informants — friends on friends, circles within circles — making an entire population complicit in his rule".^[45]

Others have estimated 800,000 deaths caused by Saddam not counting the Iran-Iraq war.^[46] Estimates as to the number of Iraqis executed by Saddam's regime vary from 300–500,000^[47] to over 600,000,^[48] estimates as to the number of Kurds he massacred vary from 70,000 to 300,000,^[49] and estimates as to the number killed in the put-down of the 1991 rebellion vary from 60,000^[50] to 200,000.^[48] Estimates for the number of dead in the Iran-Iraq war range upwards from 300,000.^[51]

Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam's government rested on the support of the 20% minority of Sunnis. The Ba'ath Party was increasingly concerned about potential Shi'a Islamist influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni, but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's pan-Arabism. To maintain power Saddam tended either to provide them with benefits so as to co-opt them into the regime, or to take repressive measures against them.^[52]

The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan (himself a Kurd Ba'athist), a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which was responsible for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence (Mukhabarat) was the most notorious arm of the state security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. It was commanded by Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother. Since 1982, foreign observers believed that this department operated both at home and abroad in their mission to seek out and eliminate Saddam's perceived opponents.^[53]

The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.

Personality cult[link]

As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. He had thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports, and shops, as well as on Iraqi currency. Saddam's personality cult reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. A clotheshorse, he appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant (which he essentially wore during his childhood), and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits fitted by his favorite tailor, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would also be portrayed as a devout Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca.