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Saddam
Saddam Hussein (larger version)

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (sometimes spelled Husayn or Hussain) (صدام حسين عبدالمجيد التكريتي in Arabic) (born April 28, 1937), was dictator of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, holding the post of President. He was deposed by the United States and its allies in the 2003 Iraq War and was captured by United States forces on December 13, 2003.

(Note that Hussein is not a surname in the Western sense. Saddam should be referred to either as Saddam Hussein or Saddam.)

Rise to power

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Saddam Hussein 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. 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.

At the age of 10, Saddam moved to Baghdad to live with his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, a devout Sunni. He attended secondary school in Baghdad and at age 20 joined the Ba'ath Party, a radical pan-Arabist party in 1957. A year later in 1958, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew King Faisal. The Ba’athists opposed the new regime, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, in absentia. In exile Saddam attended the University of Cairo law school.

Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba’ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba’athist group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the Ba’ath Party. In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power, led by General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. Saddam became vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council and Vice President of Iraq. The Ba'athist regime promoted a form of economic modernization based on the state-dominated model of the Soviet Union under Stalin, along with the creation of a highly centralised and authoritarian political system. In 1972 the oil industry, Iraq’s only significant export industry, was nationalised. Although the productivity of the oil industry steadily declined under state ownership, in the 1970s the regime was able to use its revenues to fund economic development, the mechanization of agriculture and the expansion of education.

In 1973 Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the regime, and was the ‘‘de facto’’ ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with French political and business circles that stood him in good stead in the 1990s, when France replaced the Soviet Union as the principal protector of his regime. In July 1979 Saddam forced the ailing Hassan al-Bakr to resign, and replaced him as President.

Saddam as secular ruler

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One of Saddam’s first acts as President was to convene an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders and have one of them read out the names of members that Saddam thought could oppose him. These members were labelled "disloyal" and taken 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. In this as in other aspects of his regime, Saddam was modelling his behaviour on that of Stalin.

Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a moderniser, again following the model of Stalin. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his regime gave women added freedoms and offered them high level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to Islamic law. Saddam abolished the Sharia-law courts except for personal injury claims. These reforms were later offset by increasing corruption and repression; Saddam and his relatives and cronies were always above the law, and resorted increasingly to arbitrary violence to intimidate and divide their opposition.

Domestic conflict impeded Saddam’s modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam’s regime rested on the support of the 20% minority of Sunni Muslims, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority's reliance on them as administrators. The Shi’a majority were always hostile to the Ba’athist regime and constant vigilance was required to keep them subordinated, particularly after the Shi’a-led Iranian Revolution in 1979. Likewise, the Kurds in the north (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba’athist’s Arabising tendencies. Saddam had no choice but to rule as a dictator, because the Ba’athists could not have retained power any other way. At the core of Saddam’s regime was a retinue of close relatives and old cronies called the “Tikrit mafia.”

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union and nearly complete disenchantment with the state-socialist model, Iraq was a Soviet ally and to some extent a Soviet satellite. The Soviets equipped Iraq’s armed forces and funded various development projects, and Iraq ran up a huge debt which declining oil revenues made increasingly difficult to service.

Saddam as Islamist ruler

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In the later years of his rule, however, Saddam abandoned the Soviet model along with most of his progressive and secularist pretensions. The Iraqi Ba’ath was originally a pan-Arabist party (and to an extent a pan-Arab one, through its affiliation with the Ba’ath of Syria) and Saddam continued to publicly espouse the Ba’athist vision of the Arab world uniting to serve the common interests of the Arab peoples.

But he increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced (such as the 2001 edict imposing the death penalty for homosexuality and other sexual offences), and the ritual phrase "Allah akbar" (“God is great”), in Saddam’s handwriting, was added to the national flag.

He also justified Iraqi patriotism, in the form of claiming a unique role of Iraq in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq’s pre-Islamic role as the ancient cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.

His propaganda reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. He appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant, and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would be portrayed as a dedicated Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca; at other times, he would be shown wearing a western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle over his head.

The Iran-Iraq war

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The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran threatened to arouse the Shi’a majority against Saddam’s regime. 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 United States and the Soviet Union, 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 were left in ruins.

Iraq has since its founding had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country. Saddam Hussein's answer to Kurdish rebels 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 5,000 people, mostly women and children. Also, according to anti-Saddam opposition groups, around 100,000 other Kurds have been exiled since 1991.

The Gulf War

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Iraq has no significant source of income apart from oil, and the Iraqi oil industry has produced steadily less revenue since its nationalisation in 1972, despite the great increase in world oil prices since 1974. Iraq had to resort to borrowing from other Arab states, including Kuwait, particularly during the 1980s during the war with Iran. After the war, Saddam attempted to renege on these debts, claiming that since the war had been fought for the benefit of the other Arab states, all debts should be forgiven. Kuwait, however, did not forgive its debt. This, together with disputes over oil drilling issues along the Iraq-Kuwait border, provoked Saddam to revive its dormant claim to sovereignty over Kuwait. (Before 1918 Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra, and therefore in a sense part of Iraq, but Iraq had recognised Kuwait's independence in 1961.)

In early 1990 Saddam ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, creating alarm over the prospect of an invasion. April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, met with Hussein in an emergency meeting, where Hussein stated his intention to continue talks. Glaspie indicated that the United States did not favour either Iraq or Kuwait’s position in their dispites: Saddam may have interpreted this as meaning that the United States would not object if Iraq annexed Kuwait, though that was certainly not the American position. Iraq and Kuwait met for a final negotiation session, which failed. In August 1990 Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.

The United Nations Security Council gave Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait. Saddam ignored the deadline, and the United States and a group of allies it had hastily rounded up, including Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, evicted Saddam’s army from Kuwait in January 1991. (see Gulf War). By the end of the war Iraq had lost an estimated 20,000 troops and had been expelled from Kuwait. Some sources estimate Iraqi losses at more than 100,000.

After the war, popular uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi’a southern and central parts of the Iraq. These uprisings were swiftly and ruthlessly repressed and thousands of Iraqis were killed. The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions – apparently because Turkey, an American ally, opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and because the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi’a revolution.

Between wars

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Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or military from the Gulf War. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Iraq entered into a number of agreements, such as paying reparations to Kuwait, returning stolen property and releasing all prisoners, which were only partly complied with. Iraq also agreed to co-operate with the United Nations in verifying the abolition of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. This condition was never met voluntarily, and even under duress of sanctions it was only partly complied with. Western intelligence agencies remained convinced that Iraq still possessed stocks of these weapons, and was seeking to develop new ones. It now appears more likely that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with. If so, this bluff proved to be Saddam’s undoing.

Because of Iraq’s failure to comply with United Nations requirements, a trade embargo was placed on it, blocking Iraqi oil exports. This caused immense hardship in Iraq and virtually destroyed the Iraqi economy and state infrastructure. Only smuggling across the Syrian border, humanitarian aid and limited amounts of income from the United Nations oil-for-food program kept Iraq from starvation. Nevertheless, Saddam’s bellicose and triumphalist rhetoric was unabated. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam’s sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. Saddam continued to loom large in American consciousness as a major threat to Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, to Western oil supplies from the Gulf states, and to Middle East stability generally.

Nevertheless the Clinton administration (1993-2001) was content to maintain sanctions and make occasional air strikes when Iraq violated the no-fly-zones or other restrictions, in the hope that Saddam would either be forced eventually to comply or would be overthrown by his many political enemies. Even the administration of George W. Bush (beginning in January 2001) seemed initially willing to continue this strategy, despite Bush’s campaign rhetoric about getting rid of Saddam. What changed the equation was the terrorist attacks of September 2001, which led the administration to the belief that a hostile regime in Iraq, possibly possessing weapons of mass destruction and possibly sponsoring international terrorism, was no longer acceptable in the context of the war against terrorism which began on September 11. The increasingly influential neo-conservative faction in the administration also argued that the overthrow of Iraq could lead to the establishment of democracy throughout the Middle East.

During 2002 Saddam played an increasingly dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the United States and its principal ally, Britain, hoping that a show of minimal compliance with United Nations resolutions on disarmament, such as the reintroduction of inspectors, would appease the Coalition powers. Saddam also evidently believed that France or Russia would veto any Security Council resolution authorising the use of force to overthrow his regime. Saddam did not reckon with the possibility that the United States would be willing to act without further Security Council approval, in defiance of majority world opinion. Up to the last he appeared to believe that the Coalition powers were bluffing. But they were not, and in March 2003 the Coalition launched Operation Iraqi Freedom with the explicit aim of removing him from power.

The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both narrowly failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April Coalition forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army quickly crumbled, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. It is still not known if this video was authentic. When Baghdad fell to the Coalition on 9 April, Saddam was nowhere to be found.

Pursuit and capture

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Saddam's whereabouts remained in question in the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting in the war. Various sightings of Saddam were reported in the weeks following the war but none was authenticated. A series of audio tapes claiming to be from Saddam were released at various times, although the authenticity of these tapes remains uncertain.

Although Saddam was placed at the top of the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis, extensive efforts to find him had little effect, although many of the other leaders of the Iraqi regime were arrested. His sons and political heirs, Uday and Qusay, were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces after a tip-off from an Iraqi informant.

On December 14, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, shortly afterwards, the U.S. Civil Administrator Paul Bremer formally announced the capture of Saddam by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" He was captured at approximately 8:30 PM Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground "spider hole" at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn. Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody, and said that DNA testing to confirm his identity beyond doubt was in progress.

Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer and curlier than his familiar appearance, which a barber later restored. His identity was later reportedly confirmed by DNA testing. He was described as being in good health and as "talkative and co-operative". Bremer said that Saddam would be tried, but that the details of his trial have not yet been determined. Members of the Governing Council who spoke with Saddam after his capture reported that he was unrepentant, claiming to have been a "firm but just ruler". Later it emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation.

Personal

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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 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 politics. 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.

See also

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