Saddam Hussein biography,Saddam Hossein biography,Saddam Hussein,Saddam Hossein

Saddam Hussein was dictator of Iraq from 1979 until 2003, when his regime was overthrown by a United States-led invasion. Hussein had joined the revolutionary Baath party while he was a university student. He launched his political career in 1958 by assassinating a supporter of Iraqi ruler Abdul-Karim Qassim. Saddam rose in the ranks after a Baath coup, and by 1979 he was Iraq's president and de facto dictator. He led Iraq through a decade-long war with Iran, and in August of 1990 his forces invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. A U.S.-led alliance organized by George Bush (the elder) ran Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in the Gulf War, which ended in February of 1991 with Saddam still in power. Hussein came under renewed pressure in 2002 from George W. Bush, the son of the first President Bush. Hussein's regime was overthrown by an invasion of U.S. and British forces in March of 2003. Hussein disappeared, but U.S. forces captured him on 13 December 2003 after finding him hiding in a small underground pit on a farm near the town of Tikrit. Late in 2005 he went on trial in Iraq for the 1982 deaths of over 140 men in the town of Dujail. On 5 November 2006 he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was upheld after appeal, and Hussein was executed by hanging in Baghdad on the morning of 30 December 2006.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein threatened that if international forces led by the United States attacked Iraq, it would be "the mother of all wars," giving rise to a multi-purpose catchphrase: "the mother of all (fill in the blank)"... The U.S. effort in the Gulf War was directed by the elder George Bush and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell; Powell later became Secretary of State under Bush's son George W. Bush... Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by U.S forces in the northern town of Mosul in July of 2003... Saddam Hussein was no relation to King Hussein, the late ruler of Jordan.

(b. Takrit, Iraq, 28 Apr. 1937) Iraqi; President 1979 – 2003 Saddam Hussein joined the Ba'ath party in 1957 and was sentenced to death in 1959 for participation in the attempted assassination of Premier Qasim. He escaped to Syria. A year after returning to Iraq in 1963, his relative, Hasan al-Bakr, secured his appointment as principal Ba'athist organizer and Saddam played a prominent role in the 1968 Ba'athist coup. President al-Bakr continued to patronize Saddam, making him deputy-chairman of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council. Already head of the Ba'ath party organization and militia, Saddam added control of the security services to become the regime's strong man and effective deputy leader by 1971. Oil revenues enabled them to launch an ambitious programme of public-sector industrialization and the building of a welfare state after 1973. Saddam's powers steadily increased and, with al-Bakr in poor health, his rise to supreme leader was only a matter of time. He assumed absolute power as President in 1979.

The threat to his position from Kurdish rebellion in the north and Shi'i unrest in the south, abetted by Iran, caused Saddam to invade the Islamic Republic in 1980 seeking a quick victory and the overthrow of the Khomeini regime. This failed and Iraq's armed forces withdrew from Iranian territory in 1982. The conflict then became a prolonged war of attrition, increasingly financed by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and supported militarily by the USSR, and increasingly by the West too. It ended in 1988 with Iraq in possession of the world's fourth largest army and mountainous debts, but without territorial or security gains. A second monumental military miscalculation was to invade Kuwait in 1990 and provoke a UN multinational force to rout the Iraqi army and end the occupation in 1991. By arousing popular Arab support, however, the war was a political success for Saddam. Post-war uprisings by Kurds and the Shi'i were brutally crushed and the Iraqi people's agony continued under UN economic sanctions, with Saddam Hussein more securely in power than before.

Hussein, Saddam ). Born on 28 April 1937 in (1937- Tikrit, after a career as an assassin and party enforcer, Hussein became the vice president of Iraq following the seizure of power by the Baʿth national-socialist party in a military coup in July 1968. Nine years later, in July 1979, he forced the resignation of his benefactor, Pres Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, and took his place. With high revenues from oil pouring in, he embarked upon an ambitious and radical modernization of Iraq with preference shown to the military, which grew to be the largest in the Middle East.

In September 1980 he launched the Iran-Iraq war with the double intention of crippling the militant Shiʿa regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and asserting leadership over the Gulf Arab states. Eight years later he was only able to end the war by using chemical weapons, having if anything strengthened the Iranian regime, paralysed his modernization programme, and become deeply indebted to the Gulf monarchies.

Saddam turned his sights to target Kuwait, his Gulf coast neighbour, and for a year waged an escalating diplomatic campaign with threats to force the Kuwaiti monarchy to bail him out of his financial predicament. When the latter refused, he invaded on 2 August 1990, and six days later annexed the emirate and began to dismantle its financial and economic assets and remove them to Iraq.

On 17 January 1991, after six months of futile attempts to bring about Iraq's peaceful withdrawal, a US-led international coalition waged the Gulf war on Saddam and within six weeks inflicted a crushing defeat on his army and liberated Kuwait. Since the coalition did not attempt to topple him and even refrained from supporting Shiʿa and Kurdish revolts against him, Saddam managed to survive. Although his ability to do harm was greatly reduced, well-founded suspicion that he retains not only chemical and biological but also nuclear weapons programmes mean that economic sanctions remain in effect over eight years later.

Born on 28 April 1937 in Tikrit, Hussein became the vice president of Iraq following the seizure of power by the Ba'ath national‐socialist party in a military coup in July 1968. After a decade of ruthless elimination of civilian officials and military officers, he forced out his predecessor and benefactor, Gen. Ahmad Hasan al‐, became president in July 1979, killed most of his opponents, and established himself as dictator. Using Iraq's growing oil wealth to support development, grandiose public works, and massive arms purchases, Saddam invaded Iran, whose militant Islamic regime he considered a threat. After the death of one million Iranians and Iraqis, the Iran-Iraq war ended in a stalemate in August 1988. Hussein's forces then killed tens of thousands of Iraq's Kurdish minority, which had rebelled or supported Iran during the war.

With Iraq nearly bankrupt, despite loans of $80 billion (nearly half from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), Hussein sought to bully Kuwait into bailing him out. Then, on 2 August 1990, he invaded and conquered the emirate. Hussein was accustomed to taking calculated risks, but he had overreached and found confronted by almost unified opposition from the West and the rest of the Arab world. In January–February 1991, a US-led Coalition army liberated Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.

Since the international coalition did not attempt to topple Saddam and even refrained from supporting Iraqi uprisings, his regime continued, brutally suppressing Kurds and Shiites. Although Saddam survived attempted coups in 1992 and 1993, and a major defection in 1995, UN sanctions hurt Iraq and prevented its resurgence as a major military threat in the Gulf.

Yet the UN failed to compel Saddam to comply with a string of special resolutions obliging Iraq to destroy, unconditionally and under international supervision, all its nuclear, chemical and biological stockpiles and research facilities. During the 1990s, Saddam repeatedly challenged the Security Council over the implementation of these resolutions, never giving an inch strategically but always leaving enough wriggle room for last-minute tactical concessions when confronted with the threat of force.

Things came to a head after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Though the US administration refrained from linking Saddam directly to the atrocity, it nevertheless made the Iraqi leader, who applauded the attacks as a heroic act, a central target of President Bush's “war on terrorism.” In November 2002 the UN passed Resolution 1441, which charged Iraq of violating preceding Security Council resolutions regarding non-conventional disarmament and warned that Iraq “will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violation of its obligations.” As Saddam remained unimpressed, in March‐April 2003 a lightning attack by a US-led international coalition crushed the Iraqi army and toppled the Ba'ath regime. Saddam himself managed to escape and to remain in hiding for some time, but was eventually captured and put in prison pending a war crimes trial by the first democratically elected government in Iraq's history.

Hussein, Saddam (1937-) president of Iraq (1979-) whose rule has been marked by dictatorial control and attempts to take over neighboring Persian Gulf countries. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) ended in a stalemate, but his 1990 invasion of Kuwait brought opposition from the West as well as from much of the Arab world. In early 1991, a U.S.-led coalition army liberated Kuwait in the six-week Persian Gulf War. Hussein suppressed internal uprisings that followed, but the country suffers from U.N.-imposed sanctions that have caused severe shortages of food and medicine.

Saddam Hussein (born 1937), the socialist president of the Iraqi Republic beginning in 1979 and strongman of the ruling Ba'th regime beginning in 1968, was known for his political shrewdness and ability to survive conflicts. He led Iraq in its long, indecisive war with Iran beginning in 1980. He was defeated in the six week Persian Gulf War in 1990 which was a result of his invasion of Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was born in 1937 to a peasant family in a village near Tikrit, a town on the Tigris River north of Baghdad. His father died before his birth and his mother died in childbirth. He was raised by his uncles, particularly his maternal uncle Khairallah Talfah, a retired army officer and an avid Arab nationalist who influenced his political leanings and served as a role model for Hussein. (In 1963 Saddam married Talfah's daughter Sajida.) In 1956 he moved to his uncle's house in Baghdad, where he was caught up in the strong Arab nationalist sentiments sweeping Iraq in the wake of the Suez war that year. In 1957 he joined the Arab Ba'th Socialist Party, founded in Syria in 1947 and dedicated to Arab unity and socialism. The party spread to neighboring Arab countries in the 1950s (including Iraq where it was an underground party) and was especially popular with students. From 1957 on Saddam's life and career were inextricably bound up with the Ba'th Party.

In 1959 Saddam Hussein was one of the party members who attempted to carry out the unsuccessful assassination of the Iraqi dictator, Major General Abdul Karim Qasim (Kassem). Although wounded, he was subsequently able to stage a daring escape to Syria and then Egypt, where he remained in exile until 1963. In Egypt he continued his political activities, closely observing the tactics and movements of Gamal Abdel Nasser and his politics.

In February 1963 a group of Nasserite and Ba'thist officers in Iraq brought down the government of Qasim, and Saddam returned to his country. However, this Ba'thist government did not survive in power past November of the same year, and Saddam was once again forced underground. Between 1963 and 1968 he was involved in clandestine party activities and was captured and jailed, although he later escaped. In 1966 he became a member of the Iraqi branch's regional command and played a major role in reorganizing the Ba'th Party in preparation for a second attempt at power. It was during this period that he formed a close alliance with Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr - a retired officer, a distant relative, and a leading spokesman of the party. It was in this period, too, that Saddam acquired his reputation as a tough, daring Ba'th Party partisan.

In July 1968, after two coups d'etat in short succession - in both of which Saddam played a key role - the Ba'th came back to power in Iraq, temporarily governing through the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr was elected president of the republic by the RCC and Saddam was elected vice president of the RCC in 1969. Between 1969 and 1979 Iraq was ruled outwardly by al-Bakr and behind the scenes by Saddam. Saddam who proved to be a shrewd manipulator and survivor. No major decisions in this decade were taken without his consent.

In domestic affairs the Ba'th regime implemented its socialist policy by bringing virtually all economic activity under the control of the government. In 1972 Iraq nationalized the foreign-owned oil company IBC, the first Middle Eastern government to do so. Minorities were given cultural rights, generally modeled on the Yugoslav experiment in this field, and the Kurdish area of northern Iraq was given some self-rule in 1974.

Saddam Hussein also oversaw the rapid economic and social development of Iraq which followed the oil price increases of the 1970s. The country received major infusions to the infrastructure, especially schools and medical facilities. A major campaign to wipe out illiteracy was started in 1978 and compulsory schooling was effectively implemented. The status of women was substantially improved through legislation. Petrochemical and iron and steel industries were built.

In international affairs, Iraq improved relations with the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, signing a treaty of friendship with the U.S.S.R. in 1972; at the same time Iraq distanced itself from the West, except for France. Iraq took a hard line on Israel and attempted to isolate Egypt after Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David agreements with Israel's Menachem Begin.

Between 1974 and 1975 Saddam was involved in a major Kurdish insurrection in northern Iraq; the Kurds were seeking more autonomy and were receiving support from the Shah of Iran. In an effort to bring the conflict to a close, in March 1975 Saddam signed an agreement with Iran, arranged by Algeria, which ended Iranian support for the Kurds in return for rectification of the border with Iran.

Iraq was the country most affected by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. Iraq needed more energetic leadership than that provided by the aging and ailing President Bakr. On July 16, 1979, al-Bakr resigned and Saddam was elected president of the Iraqi Republic. One of the first things he ordered were posters of himself scattered throughout Iraq, some as tall as 20 feet, depicting himself in various roles: a military man, a desert horseman, a young graduate. He carefully concocted an image of himself as a devoted family man. All in order to win the trust and love of the Iraqi people. He held the titles of Secretary General of the Ba'th party and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

Throughout 1979 and 1980 relations with Iran had deteriorated, as Ayatollah Khomeini called on Iraq's Shi'ites to revolt against Saddam and the secular Ba'thist regime. (Iraq is about equally divided between members of the Shi'ite and Sunni branches of Islam.) Secret pro-Iranian organizations committed acts of sabotage in Iraq, while Iranians began shelling Iraqi border towns in 1980. In September 1980 the Iraqi army crossed the Iranian border and seized Iranian territory (subsequently evacuated in the course of the war), thus initiating a long, costly, and bitter war, which continued into the late 1980s.

With the continuation of the war, Saddam adopted a more pragmatic stance in international affairs. Relations with conservative countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt improved since they provided Iraq with either financial or military aid. Diplomatic relations with the United States, cut in 1967 in protest against U.S. support for Israel in the Six-Day War, were restored in November 1984. However, Iraq did not change its friendly relations with the U.S.S.R. which, together with France, was the main source of its arms. In 1987 the United Nations formally called for a cease-fire, but the fighting continued.

Saddam Hussein was a man with the reputation for ruthless suppression of opposition. When he assumed power, he purged his party of officials and military officers due to an alleged Syrian plot to overthrow his government. He executed another 300 officers in 1982 for rebelling against his tactics in the war with Iran. In order to protect himself, Saddam surrounded himself with a coterie of family and friends in positions of trust and responsibility in the government. This however did not ensure that these individuals were safe from his rages. After Saddam had a much publicized affair with another woman, his brother-in-law, first cousin and childhood companion, and Minster of Defense Adnan Talfah was killed in a "mysterious" helicopter crash for standing by his sister (Saddam's wronged wife). He ordered the murders of his sons-in-law after they defected to Jordan in 1996. His image of a devoted family man was shattered with these acts.

On several occasions (1969, 1973, 1979, and 1981) the regime uncovered plots against it, and at least seven unsuccessful assassination attempts were made against Saddam. The main opposition came from the Kurds, the Communists, pro-Khomeini Shi'ites, and, on occasion, elements within the Ba'th Party itself.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein brought the wrath and combined power of the West and the Arab world down upon Iraq by his unprovoked invasion of Kuwait. The Persian Gulf War lasted for six weeks and caused Iraq's leader worldwide condemnation. However, there are still a great many proponents of Saddam scattered throughout the world. They see him as "someone who is shaking an unacceptable status quo." Despite the sanctions imposed upon Iraq in the years subsequent to the war, Saddam maintained absolute power over his country. In 1997, citizens of Baghdad feared to overtly criticize Saddam and rumors abounded that he had put his wife under house arrest after his son Uday was shot. Whatever the case, Saddam Hussein remained a powerful strongman, in spite of an ongoing embargo of his country's oil, goods and services.

Majid Khadduri, Socialist Iraq, A Study in Iraqi Politics Since 1968 (1978); Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (1985); Christine Helms, Iraq, Eastern Flank of the Arab World (1984); and Fuad Matar, Saddam Hussein, the Man, the Cause and the Future (London, 1981) provide information on Saddam's role in the leadership of Iraq. Stefoff's Saddam Hussein: Absolute Ruler of Iraq provides valuable insight into the operation of Iraq since the Persian Gulf War. Bob Simon's Forty Days is an excellent memoir of the war.

(born April 28, 1937, Tikrit, Iraq — died Dec. 30, 2006, Baghdad) President of Iraq (1979 – 2003). He joined the Ba'th Party in 1957. Following participation in a failed attempt to assassinate Iraqi Pres. 'Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, Saddam fled to Cairo, where he briefly attended law school. He returned to Iraq when the Ba'thists gained power in 1963. Jailed when the Ba'thists were overthrown, he escaped and helped reinstall the party to power in 1968. He led the nationalization of the oil industry in 1972. He took over the presidency with the aims of replacing Egypt as leader of the Arab world and of gaining hegemony over the Persian Gulf, and he launched wars against Iran (Iran-Iraq War, 1980 – 90) and Kuwait (Persian Gulf War, 1990 – 91), both of which he lost. He instituted a brutal dictatorship and directed intensive campaigns against minorities within Iraq, particularly the Kurds. U.S. fears regarding his development of weapons of mass destruction led to Western sanctions against Iraq. Sanctions were followed by an Anglo-American invasion in 2003 (Iraq War) that drove him from power. After several months in hiding, he was captured by U.S. forces. In 2006 the Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced him to death for crimes against humanity. Days after an Iraqi court upheld his sentence in December 2006, Saddam was executed. See also Pan-Arabism.

Hussein, Saddam (sädäm' hūsān') , 1937–2006, Iraqi political leader. A member of the Ba'ath party, he fled Iraq after participating (1959) in an assassination attempt on the country's prime minister; in Egypt he attended law school. Returning to Iraq in 1963 after the Ba'athists briefly came to power, he played a significant role in the 1968 revolution that secured Ba'ath hegemony. Hussein held key economic and political posts before becoming Iraq's president in 1979.

As president, he focused on strengthening the Iraqi oil industry and military and gaining a greater foothold in the Arab world while using brutal measures to maintain his power. In 1980 he escalated a long-standing dispute with Iran over the Shatt al Arab waterway into a full-scale war (see Iran-Iraq War) lasting eight years. On Aug. 2, 1990, Hussein ordered an Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait; however, Iraq was forced out in early 1991 by an international military coalition (see Iraq; Persian Gulf War).

Following the war, Hussein weathered a Kurdish rebellion in the north and quelled a Shiite insurrection in the south, while his country suffered the effects of international economic sanctions. Hussein's resistance to UN-supervised weapons inspections imposed as part of the conditions for ending the Gulf War led to U.S. and British bombing raids against Iraq beginning in 1998. With the threat of war with the U.S. and Britain looming in 2002, Iraq agreed to let UN inspectors return, but the failure of Iraq to cooperate fully with the United Nations led to a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in Mar., 2003. In a little less than a month Anglo-American forces ended Hussein's control over nearly all Iraq, although guerrillas continued to mount attacks in the following months. Hussein survived the invasion, but was not captured until Dec., 2003.

In 2004 he was transferred to Iraqi legal custody and arraigned on charges stemming from his presidency. The Iraqi government put Hussein on trial in 2005 for crimes against humanity, for ordering the execution of 143 men in the Shiite village of Dujail following an assassination attempt on him there in 1982. In 2006, charges of genocide, resulting from the anti-Kurd Anfal campaign in the late 1980s, also were brought against him. Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death in the Dujail case in Nov., 2006; after an unsuccessful appeal he was hanged in Dec., 2006.

Saddam Hussein (also Husayn, Hussain) al-Tikriti was born on 28 April 1937 to a Sunni Arab family in Tikrit, Iraq, on the northern bank of the Tigris River. His family was from the village of al-Awja, near Tikrit, and was of poor peasant stock; his father reportedly died before his birth. His stepfather denied him permission to go to school, so Saddam ran away, seeking refuge in Tikrit, in his mother's brother's home.

Saddam Hussein's maternal uncle, Adnan Khayr Allah Talfa, raised him through adolescence; he was a retired army officer and an advocate of Arab nationalism - a sentiment he imparted to Saddam - and he had participated in the short-lived anti-British revolt in 1941, known as the Rashid Ali Coup.

In 1956, Saddam moved to Baghdad, where he was impressed by the nationalism that swept Iraq in the wake of Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal and the British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt. In 1957, he joined the Baʿth Arab socialist party, which had been founded in Syria in 1947. Dedicated to Arab unity, the party had been popular among students in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon since the early 1950s. From 1957 on, his life was inextricably bound up with Baʿth.

In 1959, during the presidency of the Iraqi dictator General Abd al-Karim Qasim, Saddam was a member of a Baʿth team assigned to assassinate Qasim. The attempt failed, and Saddam was wounded in the leg during an exchange of gunfire. He fled Baghdad and later staged a daring escape to Syria, and from there to Egypt, where he joined a number of other exiled Iraqis. He is believed to have become a full member of Baʿth while he was in Egypt.

Qasim's regime ended in February 1963, when a group of Iraqi nationalists and Baʿthist officers brought it down in a violent coup. Qasim was killed, and Saddam returned to Iraq with other exiled Iraqis, although he played only a minor role in the
Baʿth government that took power. The new regime did not last.

In November 1963, General Abd al-Salam Arif staged a successful anti-Baʿthist coup and Saddam went underground again. From 1963 to 1968, he worked in clandestine party activities, and he was captured and jailed, although he managed to escape. In 1966, while still underground, he became a member of the regional command of the Iraqi branch of the Baʿth Party and played a major role in reorganizing the party to prepare for a second attempt at seizing power. He worked closely with General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, a fellow Tikriti and a distant relative, who had been prime minister under the Baʿth and was respected by the military. In this period, Saddam was known as a tough partisan and a political enforcer, willing to liquidate enemies of the party.

In July 1968, the Baʿth Party returned to power after two successful coups that took place in rapid succession. Saddam played an important part in both. Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr became president of the republic; Saddam became vice president of the Revolutionary Command Council after some maneuvers to eliminate competitors for the position.

From 1969 through 1979, Iraq was ruled by al-Bakr, the respected army officer, and Saddam, the young, dynamic manipulator and survivor. No major decisions were made without Saddam's consent, and he gradually built the organs of a police state that spread an aura of fear over the country and of invincibility around himself.

In the 1970s, Saddam had helped shepherd Iraq through major social and economic development, made possible by an increase in petroleum revenues. The changes brought by this expansion of social programs included compulsory primary education, a noticeable increase in women's participation in the workforce, the founding of new universities, and the availability of medical services. An ambitious industrial program in petrochemicals, steel, and other heavy industry began. The Baʿth Party also implemented policies that brought all the social and economic sectors under its control, including the foreign-owned Iraq Petroleum Company, which was nationalized in 1972.

Saddam and the Baʿth Party distanced themselves from the West in the 1970s, instead building strong ties with the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. In 1972, an important treaty of friendship was signed between Iraq and the Soviet Union. France was the only Western European country with which Iraq maintained good political and economic relations. Iraq took a hard stand against Israel, attempting to isolate Egypt after the 1978 Camp David Accords.

The Baʿth Party inherited a problem with the Iraqi Kurds, who were struggling for self-determination. After a major revolt that lasted two years, the Kurds had been given special status in 1970, allowing self-rule in Kurdish areas. The Kurds revolted again in 1974 and 1975. Unable to put an end to their revolt, mainly because the Kurds had help from Iran, Saddam demonstrated his daring style by signing the 1975 Algiers Agreement with the shah of Iran, putting an end to Iranian support for the Kurds in return for some modifications of the Iran - Iraq border along the Shatt al-Arab in the south.

Saddam married his cousin Sajida Khayr Allah Tulfa and had five children. His two sons, Uday and Qusay, held high security positions in the mid-1990s.

The health of President al-Bakr had been deteriorating, reportedly due to cancer. Saddam felt that the moment had come for him to assume total power. On 16 July 1979, al-Bakr was forced to resign and Saddam was elected president of the Iraqi republic. Followed a ruthless purge of suspected challengers, he executed five members of the Revolutionary Command Council and some twenty Baʿth Party members. This cleared the way for him to establish personal rule and a total monopoly of power.

Also in 1979, the Iranian Revolution established a Shiʿite Islamic republic. Iran's new government soon became a political threat to Iraq, calling for an uprising among Iraq's Shiʿite population and the establishment of a regime similar to Iran's. Soon border clashes and claims of border violations by troops from both sides were weekly events. Some pro-Iranian Shiʿite elements in opposition to Saddam, mainly the al-Daʿwa al-Islamiyya (Religious Call) Party, aggravated this situation with internal violence, including two assassination attempts on top Iraqi government members.

Saddam took advantage of Iran's weakness to settle previous scores. In September 1980, he declared that the 1975 Algiers Accord with Iran was null and void. The Iraqi army then crossed the Iranian border and seized Iranian territories, which were evacuated later in the war. The result was a bitter and costly war that lasted eight years.

Islamic, Arab, and international mediation efforts to end the war were unsuccessful. Both countries used long-range missiles against cities, and Iraq used chemical weapons to ward off Iran's human-wave attacks. Casualties - both military and civilian - mounted on both sides. As the war continued, Saddam adopted a pragmatic stance in international affairs, and the oil-rich Gulf states provided funds to finance the Iraqi military effort. Diplomatic relations with the United States - severed since 1967 - were reestablished in November 1984.

In July 1988, Iran unexpectedly announced that it had agreed to a cease-fire after repeated attempts to defeat the Iraqi army near Basra. Peace negotiations continued for months; in the fall of 1990 (after Iraq's August invasion of Kuwait), in a dramatic action, Iraq accepted the reinstitution of the 1975 Algiers Accord and a rectification of borders between the two countries, as demanded by Iran. However, no peace treaty was signed.

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The invasion was swift and met little resistance, and the Kuwaiti ruling family fled to Saudi Arabia. Iraq had longstanding claims to Kuwait, which went back to the days of the Ottoman Empire, but Kuwait's independence had been recognized by Iraq's Baʿthist regime, which had come to power in 1963.

Just before the invasion, relations between Iraq and Kuwait had been tense. Differences existed over loan repayments, oil pricing, and the border. Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing oil by slant drilling under the border into Iraqi oil fields, and of economic warfare because of Kuwait's oil policy. Saddam annexed Kuwait a few days after the invasion, declaring that country a province of Iraq. The Kuwaiti government called for help to force Iraq's withdrawal. The UN Security Council repeatedly convened to debate several resolutions asking Iraq to withdraw and restore Kuwait's legitimate government. The United Nations agreed to impose an economic blockade on Iraq and, if that did not succeed, to use military force. The role of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union was pivotal in passing these measures.

Mediation efforts and economic pressures proved unsuccessful, but an international coalition of military forces, led by the United States (in accord with the newly cooperative Soviet Union), was deployed to eastern Saudia Arabia. After several months of troop buildup in Saudi Arabia and Saddam's failure to accede to a deadline for withdrawal, the attack began, on 16 and 17 January 1991, with a five-week campaign of air strikes on Iraq, followed by a four-day land campaign. Saddam ordered a retreat from Kuwait when coalition forces entered southern Iraq. A cease-fire was declared on 27 February 1991, and anti-Saddam uprisings began in some southern Iraqi cities - mainly Basra, Amara, al-Najaf, and Karbala, spreading throughout the south. Separatist uprisings took place soon after in Iraq's northern Kurdish cities. The United States had called for Saddam's overthrow but did not aid the rebellion.

Saddam used the army to crush these revolts, and he was successful, but only after fierce fighting with insurgents in southern Iraq, which resulted in major destruction in the Shiʿite cities of the south. The Kurds in the north, faced with Saddam's tanks, left the cities they had occupied and retreated to more secure positions in the mountains. Many retreated to Turkey and Iran.

The plight of the Kurds was dramatized by the international media, especially in the United States and Europe. As a result, public opinion allowed Western leaders to order military penetration of northern Iraq to establish secure zones guarded by coalition forces. Safe havens were established to entice Kurdish refugees back. Saddam invited a top-level Kurdish delegation to negotiate with his government in April 1991, but it failed and Saddam pulled his forces back from Kurdish areas and established a trade embargo on the north. Inside the Kurdish zone, under the protection of UN forces (mainly U.S., British, and French), the Kurds began to establish genuine self-rule and in 1992 elected a Kurdish government.

During his presidency, Saddam established an extreme cult of personality. Photos of him were everywhere; his speeches were printed and widely distributed; schools, towns, and the Baghdad airport were named for him. Any criticism of him as head of state was severely punished. Despite a military defeat, destruction of large parts of the Iraqi economy, and the most widespread rebellion Iraq had experienced since 1920, he remained in control. By the end of 1991, although weakened by these events, his presence was ubiquitous in Baghdad.

Between 1991 and 2003, Saddam Hussein adopted a siege mentality, making rare public appearances, and his whereabouts were a state secret. He received few foreign visitors and never left the country.

Under continuing UN sanctions, the population of Iraq suffered enormously. A rationing system provided basic food items and enabled the population to purchase necessities at nominal prices. However, the health and education systems rapidly deteriorated. Many students dropped out of school to work at menial jobs in order to help their needy families. Malnutrition created a dramatic rise in the number of deaths among children under five. Faced not only faced with economic difficulties but also the pressures of a police state, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the country. The number of Iraqis living abroad was estimated to be at least 3 million. As inflation soared, the value of the national currency, the dinar, dropped sharply without any concomitant increase in salaries.

Since Iraq was unable to sell its oil, its economic situation worsened. By the mid-1990s, the deterioration of social and economic conditions had helped generate a religious revival, which received the regime's blessings. The new Islamic movement did not adhere to any internal or external political group or party.

Saddam's complex and difficult relationship with his family affected the political situation. His three half-brothers, Barzan, Watban, and Sabawi, served in key security posts, but their status deteriorated and by the mid-1990s they had disappeared from public view. Both the regime and Saddam's personal prestige suffered a serious shock in August 1995 when two key relatives and aides defected with their wives, who were Saddam's daughters. They went to Jordan, where they received the protection of King Hussein. The two men, however, were convinced by Saddam's emissaries to return to Baghdad and receive a pardon. When they arrived, they were divorced from their wives and three days later it was announced that they had died in a shootout with members of the extended family. The family declared that they were avenging the dishonor brought on their clan by these defectors.

On 12 December 1996, Saddam's elder son, Uday, was wounded in an assassination attempt in Baghdad. His wound left him partially paralyzed, which excluded him from becoming the eventual successor to his father. This position was taken by his younger brother, Qusay (born in 1968), who slowly assumed all the important security responsibilities in the state.

As part of the 1991 cease-fire accord with the UN coalition forces, Iraq accepted the elimination of its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. The United Nations charged two bodies with overseeing Iraq's disarmament operations, the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency. When these two agencies started inspections in Iraq, they were expected to disarm Iraq within a few weeks. Instead, the regime challenged the inspectors constantly, refusing to submit documents and materials and withholding information; the inspections dragged on for over a decade.

In the aftermath of the Kurdish revolt against the regime and the flight of Kurds toward neighboring Turkey and Iran, the United States led the coalition countries in imposing a no-fly zone over northern Iraq. This allowed the Kurds to return home. A similar no-fly zone was imposed in 1992 in southern Iraq in order to protect the Shiʿa. It was also used as a punitive measure against a possible attempt to mass Iraqi armed forces on or near the Kuwaiti border. In 1996, this zone was extended to the outskirts of Baghdad.

The imposition of these no-fly zones curtailed the sovereignty of the Iraqi state over its territory. This was particularly true in northern Iraq, where the two main Kurdish parties, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (Iraq) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, started to build state institutions and rule over northern Iraq.

In April 1995, responding to the deterioration of the economic situation in Iraq, the UN Security Council passed the Oil-for-Food resolution (Resolution 986), which allowed Iraq to sell some of its oil to buy food and medicine for its population. Iraq initially rejected the resolution, but accepted it in December 1996 due to the worsening economic situation.

U.S. and British war planes continued to patrol the no-fly zones, firing missiles on Iraqi military targets when they were challenged. Tensions increased over weapons inspections. On more than one occasion, Iraq threatened to expel the UN inspectors.

The deterioration of relations between UNSCOM and the Iraqis reached its climax in December 1998, when Richard Butler, head of UNSCOM, presented a negative report to the UN Security Council and withdrew his inspectors. Three days later, U.S. and British airplanes staged air raids on Iraq military installations in Operation Desert Fox. The Iraqis responded by declaring that they would never allow UN inspectors to return.

Since 1997, faced with the difficulties of disarming Iraq, the U.S. government had considered overthrowing the Saddam regime. The U.S. began to openly encourage Iraqi opposition groups abroad (mainly in London) to cooperate and organize their efforts to topple the Iraqi ruler. The war of words between Iraq and the United States rose in tone. When the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 occurred in New York and Washington D.C., Saddam's regime was one of the very few to declare its public satisfaction over what had happened.

Internally, Saddam became more oppressive toward his opponents, putting a brutal end to unrest, especially among the Shiʿa, and assassinating well-known Shiʿite clerics. In a State of the Union address delivered after the 11 September attacks, President George W. Bush labeled Iraq a member of the "axis of evil" and called for "regime change." In 2002, after months of UN discussions and U.S. threats, Saddam finally allowed the UN inspectors to return to Iraq. A new inspection agency, the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, headed by Hans Blix, was created to oversee this operation. On 27 January 2003, after inspecting suspected sites for several weeks, the team handed in a report that was inconclusive on the question of whether illegal arms or arms programs existed. Meanwhile, the United States and Britain continued to demand regime change in Baghdad and undertook a massive military buildup around Iraq, preparing for military intervention, preferably with the blessing of the UN Security Council. Objections to intervention, however, came from countries such as France, Germany, and Russia, which called for continued inspections, and from individual citizens in many countries. The Security Council did not back intervention.

On 17 March 2003, the United States issued an ultimatum demanding that President Saddam Hussein leave the country within twenty-four hours. He rejected it, and UN inspectors left Iraq. On 20 March, the first air attacks on Baghdad began, followed by U.S. and British troops entering Iraq from Kuwait. Despite some resistance, U.S. troops pushed north toward Baghdad and occupied it on 9 April. Saddam Hussein and his top aides went underground. By 18 April, most of the country was under the control of U.S. and British forces.

The United States issued a list of fifty-five of the most wanted persons in the old regime, including Saddam, his two sons, and his half-brothers. Uday and Qusay were killed in Mosul on July 22 during a firefight with U.S. forces. Two of his half-brothers, Barzan and Watban, were captured but the third, Sabawi, was still at large in 2004. Saddam Hussein himself was captured on 13 December 2003, hiding underground in Dur, a small town south of Tikrit.

After Saddam's capture, the United States declared him a prisoner of war. Several suggestions were made by Iraq's transitional authority (put in place by the Americans) and others on how to bring Saddam to justice. Iraqis insisted that he be held in Iraq and tried by an Iraqi court.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq became a theater of violence, with widespread looting, attacks on American troops and the newly installed Iraqi police, and suicide bombings of key targets, including UN personnel and Shiʿite leaders and mosques. These acts were blamed on Iraqi groups resisting foreign occupation. The perpetrators were believed to consist of remnants of the old Baʿthist regime in addition to Muslim fundamentalists, some of whom were believed to have ties to alQaʿida. Saddam himself was believed to have directed some of the resistance before his capture. Despite efforts by the Americans to discover them, no hidden weapons of mass destructions were found. David Kay, a former weapons inspector appointed by President Bush to investigate the situation, reported in 2004 that none were likely to be found.

Aburish, Said K. Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge. New York: Bloomsbury, 2000.

Henderson, Simon. Instant Empire: Saddam Hussein's Ambition for Iraq. San Francisco: Mercury, 1991.

Karsh, Efraim, and Rautsi, Inari. Saddam Hussein: A PoliticalBiography. New York: Free Press, 1991.

Khadduri, Majid. Socialist Iraq: A Study in Iraqi Politics since1968. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1978.

Matar, Fuad. Saddam Hussein: The Man, the Cause, and the Future. London: Third World Centre, 1981.

Miller, Judith, and Mylroie, Laurie. Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf. New York: Times Books, 1990.

Munthe, Turi, ed. The Saddam Hussein Reader. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.

Dictator of Iraq who seized power in 1979. With the intent of making Iraq the dominant power in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. The latter invasion provoked a military response from the United Nations, led by the United States, which drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. (See Persian Gulf War.)

· Hussein's cruelty and deviousness have become legendary. He has ruthlessly suppressed both Shi'ite Muslims and Kurds within Iraq; in 1987 and 1988 he authorized poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages.

· Although widely loathed outside the Arab world and feared by most Arab governments, Hussein retains some of his appeal to the Arab masses because of his resolute defiance of the United States and western Europe.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Tikrītī^[1]; 28 April 1937^[2] – 30 December 2006)^[3] was the President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003.^[4][5] A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power.

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 spearheaded Iraq's nationalization of the Western-owned Iraq Petroleum Company, which had long held a monopoly on the country's oil. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparati of government as Iraq's economy grew at a rapid pace.^[6]

As president, Saddam maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War of 1980 through 1988, and throughout the Persian Gulf War of 1991. During these conflicts, Saddam suppressed several movements, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements seeking to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively. Whereas some Arabs venerated him for his aggressive stance against foreign intervention and for his support for the Palestinians,^[7] other Arabs and Western leaders vilified him as the force behind both a deadly attack on northern Iraq in 1988 and, two years later, an invasion of Kuwait to the south.

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. 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.^[17]

His mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return. At around 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.^[18] 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.^[19]

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).^[20] 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. ^[21]

Saddam Hussein in Cairo after fleeing there following the failed assassination attempt against Qassim

Army officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party overthrew Qassim in a coup in 1963. Ba'athist leaders were appointed to the cabinet and Abdul Salam Arif became president. Arif dismissed and arrested the Ba'athist leaders later that year. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964. Just prior to his imprisonment and until 1968, Saddam held the position of Ba'ath party secretary.^[23] He escaped from prison in 1967 and quickly became a leading member of the party. In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless coup led by Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr that overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif. Al-Bakr was named president and Saddam was named his deputy, and deputy chairman of the Baathist 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.

Saddam Hussein in the past was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism in the 1960s and 1970s.^[24] 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.

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.^[25] 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 Baathists 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. ^[26] Stable rule in a country rife with factionalism required both massive repression and the improvement of living standards. ^[27]

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.

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).^[28][29]

To diversify 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 revolutionized 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, where Saddam himself was born and raised, and roughly two-thirds were peasants. But this number would decrease quickly during the 1970s as the country invested much of its oil profits into industrial expansion.

Nevertheless, Saddam focused on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athist government 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.^[19] The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives, in which profits were distributed according to the labors of the individual and the unskilled were trained. The government also doubled expenditures for agricultural development in 1974–1975. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standard of the peasantry and increased production.

Saddam became personally associated with Ba'athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis, widening his appeal both within his traditional base and among new sectors of the population. These programs were part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics to enhance support in the working class, the peasantry, and within the party and the government bureaucracy.

Saddam's organizational prowess was credited with Iraq's rapid pace of development in the 1970s; 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.

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 (see ^[30]), 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.^[31][32]

To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, Saddam's government 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 traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia courts, except for personal injury claims.

Domestic conflict impeded Saddam's modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam's government rested on the support of the 20 percent minority of largely working class, peasant, and lower middle class Sunnis, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British colonial authority's reliance on them as administrators.

The Shi'a majority were long a source of opposition to the government's secular policies, and 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. The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan, 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.^[33]

Saddam justified Iraqi nationalism by 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 Mesopotamia, the ancient cradle of civilization, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadnezzar II 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.

As a sign of his consolidation of power, Saddam's personality cult pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were 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. 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, 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.

Donald Rumsfeld, at the time Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, meeting Saddam Hussein on December 19-20 1983. During the 1980s, the United States maintained cordial relations with Saddam as a bulwark against Iran.

In foreign affairs, Saddam sought to have Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. Iraq signed an aid pact with the Soviet Union in 1972, and arms were sent along with several thousand advisers. However, the 1978 crackdown on Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union; Iraq then took on a more Western orientation until the Persian Gulf War in 1991.^[34]

After the oil crisis of 1973, France had changed to a more pro-Arab policy and was accordingly rewarded by Saddam with closer ties. He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and ruling political circles. In 1975 Saddam negotiated an accord with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border disputes. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1979).

Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French Osirak. Osirak was destroyed on 7 June 1981^[35] by an Israeli air strike (Operation Opera).

Nearly from its founding as a modern state in 1920, Iraq has had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country. (Humphreys, 120) Saddam did negotiate an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy, but the agreement broke down. The result was brutal fighting between the government and Kurdish groups and even Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate. However, after Saddam had negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, the Shah withdrew support for the Kurds, who suffered a total defeat.

In 1979 Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas—hostile to his secular rule—were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population.

There had also been bitter enmity between Saddam and Khomeini since the 1970s. Khomeini, having been exiled from Iran in 1964, took up residence in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shi'ites and developed a strong, worldwide religious and political following against the Iranian Government, whom Saddam tolerated. However, when Khomeini began to urge the Shi'ites there to overthrow Saddam and under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978 to France. However this turned out to be an imminent failure and a political catalyst, for Khomeini had access to more media connections and also collaborated with a much larger Iranian community under his support whom he used to his advantage.

After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries. During this period, Saddam Hussein publicly maintained that it was in Iraq's interest not to engage with Iran, and that it was in the interests of both nations to maintain peaceful relations. However, in a private meeting with Salah Omar Al-Ali, Iraq's permanent ambassador to the United Nations, he revealed that he intended to invade and occupy a large part of Iran within months. Iraq invaded Iran, first attacking Mehrabad Airport of Tehran and then entering the oil-rich Iranian land of Khuzestan, which also has a sizable Arab minority, on 22 September 1980 and declared it a new province of Iraq. With the support of the Arab states, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Europe, and heavily financed by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Saddam Hussein had become "the defender of the Arab world" against a revolutionary Iran. Consequently, many viewed Iraq as "an agent of the civilized world".^[36] The blatant disregard of international law and violations of international borders were ignored. Instead Iraq received economic and military support from its allies, who conveniently overlooked Saddam's use of chemical warfare against the Kurds and the Iranians and Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.^[36]

In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around strategic ports as Iraq launched an attack on Khuzestan. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from human wave attacks by Iran. By 1982, Iraq was on the defensive and looking for ways to end the war.

At this point, Saddam asked his ministers for candid advice. Health Minister Dr Riyadh Ibrahim suggested that Saddam temporarily step down to promote peace negotiations. Initially, Saddam Hussein appeared to take in this opinion as part of his cabinet democracy. A few weeks later, Dr Ibrahim was sacked when held responsible for a fatal incident in an Iraqi hospital where a patient died from intravenous administration of the wrong concentration of Potassium supplement.

Dr Ibrahim was arrested a few days after he started his new life as a sacked Minister. He was known to have publicly declared before that arrest that he was "glad that he got away alive." Pieces of Ibrahim’s dismembered body were delivered to his wife the next day.^[37]

Iraq quickly found itself bogged down in one of the longest and most destructive wars of attrition of the twentieth century. During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces fighting on the southern front and Kurdish separatists who were attempting to open up a northern front in Iraq with the help of Iran. These chemical weapons were developed by Iraq from materials and technology supplied primarily by West German companies.^[38]

Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support during the war, particularly after Iraq's oil industry severely suffered at the hands of the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf. Iraq successfully gained some military and financial aid, as well as diplomatic and moral support, from the Soviet Union, China, France, and the United States, which together feared the prospects of the expansion of revolutionary Iran's influence in the region. The Iranians, demanding that the international community should force Iraq to pay war reparations to Iran, refused any suggestions for a cease-fire. Despite several calls for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August 1988.

On 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10,000 more. (see Halabja poison gas attack)^[39] The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988 al-Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces. The United States now maintains that Saddam ordered the attack to terrorize the Kurdish population in northern Iraq,^[39] but Saddam's regime claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the attack^[40] and US analysts supported the claim until several years later.

The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties with estimates of up to one million dead. Neither side had achieved what they had originally desired and at the borders were left nearly unchanged. The southern, oil rich and prosperous Khuzestan and Basra area (the main focus of the war, and the primary source of their economies) were almost completely destroyed and were left at the pre 1979 border, while Iran managed to make some small gains on its borders in the Northern Kurdish area. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins.

Iraq was also stuck with a war debt of roughly $75 billion^{[citation
needed]}. Borrowing money from the U.S. was making Iraq dependent on outside loans, embarrassing a leader who had sought to define Arab nationalism. Saddam also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran, mainly to prevent the expansion of Shiite radicalism. However, this had proven to completely backfire both on Iraq and on the part of the Arab states, for Khomeini was praised as a hero for managing to defend Iran and maintain the war with little foreign support against the heavily backed Iraq, and only managed to boost Islamic radicalism in the Arab states. Because of this, Arab states, and even the western nations refused to extend anymore loans or forgive any more on their part^{[citation
needed]}. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction.

The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam urged the Kuwaitis to forgive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but they refused. ^[41]

Saddam pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices by cutting back production; Kuwait refused, however. In addition to refusing the request, Kuwait spearheaded the opposition in OPEC to the cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and thus keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off a huge debt.

Saddam had always argued that Kuwait was historically an integral part of Iraq, and that Kuwait had only come into being through the maneuverings of British imperialism; this echoed a belief that Iraqi nationalists had voiced for the past 50 years. This belief was one of the few articles of faith uniting the political scene in a nation rife with sharp social, ethnic, religious, and ideological divides. ^[42]

The extent of Kuwaiti oil reserves also intensified tensions in the region. The oil reserves of Kuwait (with a population of 2 million next to Iraq's 25) were roughly equal to those of Iraq. Taken together, Iraq and Kuwait sat on top of some 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves; as an article of comparison, Saudi Arabia holds 25 percent. ^[43]

Saddam complained to the U.S. State Department that the Kuwaiti monarchy had slant drilled oil out of wells that Iraq considered to be within its disputed border with Kuwait. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraq–Kuwait border.

As Iraq-Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U.S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also gave Saddam billions of dollars to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets.^[44] Saddam's Iraq became "the third-largest recipient of US assistance".^[45]

U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on July 25, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to continue talks. U.S. officials attempted to maintain a conciliatory line with Iraq, indicating that while George H. W. Bush and James Baker did not want force used, they would not take any position on the Iraq–Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved.^[46] Whatever Glapsie did or did not say in her interview with Saddam, the Iraqis assumed that the United States had invested too much in building relations with Iraq over the 1980s to sacrifice them for Kuwait. ^[47] Later, Iraq and Kuwait met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait. As tensions between Washington and Saddam began to escalate, the Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev, strengthened its military relationship with the Iraqi leader, providing him military advisors, arms and aid.^[48]

On 2 August 1990, Saddam invaded and annexed Kuwait, thus sparking an international crisis. Just two years after the 1988 Iraq and Iran truce, "Saddam Hussein did what his Gulf patrons had earlier paid him to prevent." Having removed the threat of Iranian fundamentalism he "overran Kuwait and confronted his Gulf neighbors in the name of Arab nationalism and Islam."^[36]

The U.S. had provided assistance to Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran, but with Iraq's seizure of the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in August 1990 the United States led a United Nations coalition that drove Iraq's troops from Kuwait in February 1991. The ability for Saddam Hussein to pursue such military aggression was from a "military machine paid for in large part by the tens of billions of dollars Kuwait and the Gulf states had poured into Iraq and the weapons and technology provided by the Soviet Union, Germany, and France."^[36]

U.S. President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was the Persian Gulf monarchy that had had the most friendly relations with the Soviets.^[49] On the other hand, Washington foreign policymakers, along with Middle East experts, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, were extremely concerned with stability in this region.^[50] The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's price of oil, and therefore control of the world economy, was at stake. Britain profited heavily from billions of dollars of Kuwaiti investments and bank deposits. Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who happened to be in the U.S. at the time.^[51]

Co-operation between the United States and the Soviet Union made possible the passage of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council giving Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait and approving the use of force if Saddam did not comply with the timetable. U.S. officials feared Iraqi retaliation against oil-rich Saudi Arabia, since the 1940s a close ally of Washington, for the Saudis' opposition to the invasion of Kuwait. Accordingly, the U.S. and a group of allies, including countries as diverse as Egypt, Syria and Czechoslovakia, deployed massive amounts of troops along the Saudi border with Kuwait and Iraq in order to encircle the Iraqi army, the largest in the Middle East.

During the period of negotiations and threats following the invasion, Saddam focused renewed attention on the Palestinian problem by promising to withdraw his forces from Kuwait if Israel would relinquish the occupied territories in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Saddam's proposal further split the Arab world, pitting U.S.- and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians. The allies ultimately rejected any linkage between the Kuwait crisis and Palestinian issues.

Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. Backed by the Security Council, a U.S.-led coalition launched round-the-clock missile and aerial attacks on Iraq, beginning 16 January 1991. Israel, though subjected to attack by Iraqi missiles, refrained from retaliating in order not to provoke Arab states into leaving the coalition. A ground force comprised largely of U.S. and British armoured and infantry divisions ejected Saddam's army from Kuwait in February 1991 and occupied the southern portion of Iraq as far as the Euphrates.

In the end, the over-manned and under-equipped Iraqi army proved unable to compete on the battlefield with the highly mobile coalition land forces and their overpowering air support. Some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner and casualties were estimated at over 85,000. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq agreed to scrap all poison gas and germ weapons and allow UN observers to inspect the sites. UN trade sanctions would remain in effect until Iraq complied with all terms. Saddam publicly claimed victory at the end of the war.

Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, together with the brutality of the conflict that this had engendered, laid the groundwork for postwar rebellions. In the aftermath of the fighting, social and ethnic unrest among Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds, and dissident military units threatened the stability of Saddam's government. Uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi'a southern and central parts of Iraq, but were ruthlessly repressed.

The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions. The Iranians, who had earlier called for the overthrow of Saddam, were in no state to even intervene on behalf of the rebellions due to the disastrous state of its economy and military and another conflict was the last thing Iran needed at the time. U.S. ally Turkey opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi'ite revolution. 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 militarily from the Gulf War. Saddam routinely cited his survival as "proof" that Iraq had in fact won the war against the U.S. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world. John Esposito, however, claims that "Arabs and Muslims were pulled in two directions. That they rallied not so much to Saddam Hussein as to the bipolar nature of the confrontation (the West versus the Arab Muslim world) and the issues that Saddam proclaimed: Arab unity, self-sufficiency, and social justice." As a result, Saddam Hussein appealed to many people for the same reasons that attracted more and more followers to Islamic revivalism and also for the same reasons that fueled anti-Western feelings. "As one U.S. Muslim observer noted: People forgot about Saddam's record and concentrated on America...Saddam Hussein might be wrong, but it is not America who should correct him." A shift was, therefore, clearly visible among many Islamic movements in the post war period "from an initial Islamic ideological rejection of Saddam Hussein, the secular persecutor of Islamic movements, and his invasion of Kuwait to a more populist Arab nationalist, anti-imperialist support for Saddam (or more precisely those issues he represented or championed) and the condemnation of foreign intervention and occupation."^[36]

Saddam, therefore, 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, and the ritual phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), in Saddam's handwriting, was added to the national flag.

Relations between the United States and Iraq remained tense following the Gulf War. The U.S. launched a missile attack aimed at Iraq's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad 26 June 1993, citing evidence of repeated Iraqi violations of the "no fly zones" imposed after the Gulf War and for incursions into Kuwait. Some speculated that it was in retaliation for Iraq's sponsorship of a plot to kill former President George H. W. Bush.^{[citation
needed]}

The UN sanctions placed upon Iraq when it invaded Kuwait were not lifted, 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, and humanitarian aid ameliorated the humanitarian crisis.^[52] On 9 December 1996 the United Nations allowed Saddam's government to begin selling limited amounts of oil for food and medicine. Limited amounts of income from the United Nations started flowing into Iraq through the UN Oil for Food program.

U.S. officials continued to accuse Saddam of violating the terms of the Gulf War's cease fire, by developing weapons of mass destruction and other banned weaponry, and violating the UN-imposed sanctions and "no-fly zones." Isolated military strikes by U.S. and British forces continued on Iraq sporadically, the largest being Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Western charges of Iraqi resistance to UN access to suspected weapons were the pretext for crises between 1997 and 1998, culminating in intensive U.S. and British missile strikes on Iraq, 16-19 December 1998. After two years of intermittent activity, U.S. and British warplanes struck harder at sites near Baghdad in February 2001.

Saddam's support base of Tikriti tribesmen, family members, and other supporters was divided after the war, and in the following years, contributing to the government's increasingly repressive and arbitrary nature. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. They likely had a leading hand when, in August 1995, two of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law (Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel), who held high positions in the Iraqi military, defected to Jordan.^{[citation
needed]} Both were killed after returning to Iraq the following February.

Iraqi co-operation with UN weapons inspection teams was intermittent throughout the 1990s. 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, than that Iraq was hiding significant stockpiles of prohibited materials.^{[citation
needed]}

Satellite channels broadcasting the besieged Iraqi leader among cheering crowds as U.S.-led troops push toward the capital city.^[53]
April 4, 2003.

The U.S. continued to view Saddam as a bellicose tyrant who was a threat to the stability of the region. Saddam, meanwhile, was embittered by the aftermath of the Gulf War, which he viewed as a betrayal by a nation that once considered him an indispensable ally.^{[citation
needed]} During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton maintained sanctions and ordered air strikes in the "Iraqi no-fly zones" (Operation Desert Fox), in the hope that Saddam would be overthrown by political enemies inside Iraq.

The domestic political equation changed in the U.S. after the September 11, 2001 attacks; in his January 2002 state of the union address to Congress, President George W. Bush spoke of an "axis of evil" consisting of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Moreover, Bush announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government, because of the alleged threat of its "weapons of mass destruction." Bush claimed, "The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade... Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror."^[54][55] Saddam Hussein claimed that he falsely led the world to believe Iraq possessed nuclear weapons in order to appear strong against Iran.^[56]

With war looming on 24 February 2003, Saddam Hussein talked with CBS News reporter Dan Rather for more than three hours, his first interview with a U.S. reporter in over a decade.^[57] CBS aired the taped interview later that week.

The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on 20 March. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both failed to hit their target, killing civilians instead. By the beginning of April, U.S.-led forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or shifted to guerrilla tactics, 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. When Baghdad fell to U.S-led forces on 9 April Saddam was nowhere to be found.

In April 2003, Saddam's whereabouts remained in question during the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting of the war. Various sightings of Saddam were reported in the weeks following the war but none was authenticated. At various times Saddam released audio tapes promoting popular resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

Saddam was placed at the top of the U.S. list of "most-wanted Iraqis." In July 2003, his sons Uday and Qusay and 14-year-old grandson Mustapha were killed in a three-hour^[58] gunfight with U.S. forces.

On 14 December 2003, U.S. administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer announced that Saddam Hussein had been captured at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit.^[59] Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody.

Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer than his familiar appearance. He was described by U.S. officials as being in good health. Bremer reported plans to put Saddam on trial, but claimed that the details of such a trial had not yet been determined. Iraqis and Americans who spoke with Saddam after his capture generally reported that he remained self-assured, describing himself as a "firm but just leader."

According to U.S. military sources, following his capture by U.S. forces on 13 December Saddam was transported to a U.S. base near Tikrit, and later taken to the U.S. base near Baghdad. The day after his capture he was reportedly visited by longtime opponents such as Ahmed Chalabi.

British tabloid newspaper The Sun posted a picture of Saddam wearing white briefs on the front cover of a newspaper. Other photographs inside the paper show Saddam washing his trousers, shuffling, and sleeping. The United States Government stated that it considers the release of the pictures a violation of the Geneva Convention, and that it would investigate the photographs.^[60][61] During this period Hussein was interrogated by FBI agent George Piro, revealing among other things that Saddam had not expected a U.S. invasion of Iraq.^[62]

The guards at the Baghdad detention facility called their prisoner "Vic," and let him plant a little garden near his cell. The nickname and the garden are among the details about the former Iraqi leader that emerged during a 27 March 2008 tour of prison of the Baghdad cell where Saddam slept, bathed, and kept a journal in the final days before his execution.^[63]

On 30 June 2004, Saddam Hussein, held in custody by U.S. forces at the U.S. base "Camp Cropper," along with 11 other senior Baathist leaders, were handed over legally (though not physically) to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for crimes against humanity and other offences.

A few weeks later, he was charged by the Iraqi Special Tribunal with crimes committed against residents of Dujail in 1982, following a failed assassination attempt against him. Specific charges included the murder of 148 people, torture of women and children and the illegal arrest of 399 others.^[64] Among the many challenges of the trial were:

On 5 November 2006, Saddam Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam's half brother, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court in 1982, were convicted of similar charges. The verdict and sentencing were both appealed but subsequently affirmed by Iraq's Supreme Court of Appeals.^[66] On December 30, 2006, Saddam was hanged.^[8]

Saddam was hanged on the first day of Eid ul-Adha, 30 December 2006, despite his wish to be shot (which he felt would be more dignified).^[67] The execution was carried out at Camp Justice, an Iraqi army base in Kadhimiya, a neighborhood of northeast Baghdad.

The execution was videotaped on a mobile phone, showing Saddam being taunted before his hanging, and he and his captors insulting each other. The video was leaked to electronic media and posted on the Internet within hours, becoming the subject of global controversy.^[68] It was later claimed by the head guard at the tomb where his body remains that Saddam's body was stabbed six times after the execution. ^[69]

Not long before the execution, Saddam's lawyers released his last letter. The following includes several excerpts:

“

To the great nation, to the people of our country, and humanity,

Many of you have known the writer of this letter to be faithful, honest, caring for others, wise, of sound judgment, just, decisive, careful with the wealth of the people and the state ... and that his heart is big enough to embrace all without discrimination.

You have known your brother and leader very well and he never bowed to the despots and, in accordance with the wishes of those who loved him, remained a sword and a banner.

This is how you want your brother, son or leader to be ... and those who will lead you (in the future) should have the same qualifications.

Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if He wants, He will send it to heaven with the martyrs, or, He will postpone that ... so let us be patient and depend on Him against the unjust nations.

Remember that God has enabled you to become an example of love, forgiveness and brotherly coexistence ... I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave a space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking and keeps away one from balanced thinking and making the right choice.

I also call on you not to hate the peoples of the other countries that attacked us and differentiate between the decision-makers and peoples. Anyone who repents - whether in Iraq or abroad - you must forgive him.

You should know that among the aggressors, there are people who support your struggle against the invaders, and some of them volunteered for the legal defence of prisoners, including Saddam Hussein ... some of these people wept profusely when they said goodbye to me.

Dear faithful people, I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any faithful, honest believer ... God is Great ... God is great ... Long live our nation ... Long live our great struggling people ... Long live Iraq, long live Iraq ... Long live Palestine ... Long live jihad and the mujahedeen (the insurgency).

Saddam Hussein President and Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Mujahed Armed Forces

Additional clarification note:

I have written this letter because the lawyers told me that the so-called criminal court — established and named by the invaders — will allow the so-called defendants the chance for a last word. But that court and its chief judge did not give us the chance to say a word, and issued its verdict without explanation and read out the sentence — dictated by the invaders — without presenting the evidence. I wanted the people to know this.^[70]

”

— Letter by Saddam Hussein

A second unofficial video, apparently showing Saddam's body on a trolley, emerged several days later. It sparked speculation that the execution was carried out incorrectly as Saddam Hussein had a gaping hole in his neck.^[71]

Saddam was buried at his birthplace of Al-Awja in Tikrit, Iraq, 3 km (2 mi) from his sons Uday and Qusay Hussein, on 31 December 2006.^[72]

Saddam Hussein's family (clockwise from top L), son-in-law Saddam Kamel and daughter Rana, son Qusay and daughter-in-law Sahar, daughter Raghad and son-in-law Hussein Kamal, son Uday, daughter Hala, Saddam Hussein and his first wife Sajda Talfah, pose in this undated photo from the private archive of an official photographer for the regime

While Saddam has no official marital history he is believed to have been married to at least four women, two of whom have been confirmed as his wives, and has had five children.

· Uday Hussein (28 June 1964 - 22 July 2003), was Saddam's oldest son, who ran the Iraqi Football Association, Fedayeen Saddam, and several media corporations in Iraq including Iraqi TV and the newspaper Babel. Uday, while Saddam's favorite son and raised to succeed him, eventually fell out of favour with his father due to his erratic behavior; he was responsible for many car crashes and rapes around Baghdad, constant feuds with other members his family, and killing his father's favorite valet and food taster Kamel Hana Gegeo at a party in Egypt honoring Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak. He was widely known for his paranoia and his obsession with torturing people who disappointed him in any way, which included tardy girlfriends, friends who disagreed with him and, most notoriously, Iraqi athletes who performed poorly. He was briefly married to Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri's daughter but later divorced her. The couple had no children. He was killed in a gun battle with US Forces in Mosul.

· Qusay Hussein (17 May 1966 - 22 July 2003), was Saddam's second — and, after the mid-90's, his favorite — son. Qusay was believed to have been Saddam's later intended successor as he was less erratic than his older brother and kept a low profile. He was second in command of the military (behind his father) and ran the elite Iraqi Republican Guard and the SSO. He was believed to have ordered the army to kill thousands of rebelling Marsh Arabs and frequently ordered airstrikes on Kurdish and Shi'ite settlements. He was also believed to have assisted Ali Hassan al-Majid in the 1988 Halabja and Dujail chemical attacks. He was married once and had three children. His oldest son, Mustapha Hussein, was killed along with Uday and Qusay in Mosul.

· Raghad Hussein (2 September 1968) is Saddam's oldest daughter. After the war, Raghad fled to Amman, Jordan where she received sanctuary from the royal family. She is currently wanted by the Iraqi Government for allegedly financing and supporting the insurgency and the now banned Iraqi Ba'ath Party. ^[73][74] The Jordanian royal family refused to hand her over. She married Hussein Kamel and has five children from this marriage.

· Rana Hussein (c. 1969), is Saddam's second daughter. She like her sister fled to Jordan and has stood up for her father's rights. She was married to Saddam Kamel and has had four children from this marriage.

· Hala Hussein (c. 1972), is Saddam's third and youngest daughter. Very little information is known about her. Her father arranged for her to marry General Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti in 1998. She fled with her children and sisters to Jordan. The couple have two children.

In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel al-Majid and Raghad and her husband, Saddam Kamel al-Majid, defected to Jordan, taking their children with them. They returned to Iraq when they received assurances that Saddam would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February 1996, both of the Kamel brothers were attacked and killed in a gunfight with other clan members who considered them traitors. Saddam had made it clear that although pardoned, they would lose all status and would not receive any protection.

In August 2003, Saddam's daughters Raghad and Rana received sanctuary in Amman, Jordan, where they are currently staying with their nine children. That month, they spoke with CNN and the Arab satellite station Al-Arabiya in Amman. When asked about her father, Raghad told CNN, "He was a very good father, loving, has a big heart." Asked if she wanted to give a message to her father, she said: "I love you and I miss you." Her sister Rana also remarked, "He had so many feelings and he was very tender with all of us."^[77]