1937 -
President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003.
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.
Early History
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.
Al-Bakr and Saddam
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.
War with Iran
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.
Kuwait
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.
Sanctions
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.
Military Intervention
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.
Bibliography
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.
Marr, Phebe. The Modern History of Iraq. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003.
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.
— LOUAY BAHRY