Saddam Hussein

I

Introduction

Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), authoritarian president of Iraq (1979-2003), who led his country into three devastating wars. Born on April 28, 1937, to a poor farming family in Tikrit, a town north of Baghdad, Hussein was raised by his widowed mother and other relatives. He moved to Baghdad in 1955 and became involved in politics, joining the opposition Baath Party, an Arab nationalist movement. Hussein rose quickly within the party and in 1959 helped organize an assassination attempt on 'Abd al-Karim Kassem, the military president of Iraq. Both Kassem and Hussein were injured in the gun battle, and Hussein fled to Cairo.

II

Rise to Power

Hussein studied law in Cairo while continuing party-affiliated activities. He returned to Baghdad in 1963, married, and rose to the post of assistant secretary-general of the Baath Party. The party remained in opposition to the government until 1968, when it seized power in a coup. Years of underground work gave Hussein a small core of like-minded friends, many related to him by blood or marriage and most from Tikrit. After the coup, this clique established itself as a Revolutionary Command Council with absolute authority in the country. Hussein became vice-chairman of the council in 1969. He worked closely with General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the council’s chairman and president of Iraq.

Hussein took a leading role in addressing the country’s major domestic problems. He negotiated an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy. The agreement later broke down, leading to brutal fighting between the regime and Kurdish groups. He also played a part in the nationalization of the oil industry, Iraq’s major source of wealth. In 1973 oil prices skyrocketed, allowing the government to pursue an ambitious economic development programme that included new schools, universities, hospitals, and factories.

In foreign affairs, Hussein at first helped Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. In 1975 he negotiated a settlement with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border demarcation. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq. Hussein also led Arab opposition to the 1979 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. President al-Bakr gradually withdrew from politics during the 1970s and formally retired in 1979. Hussein became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and president of the country. Influenced by the example of Joseph Stalin, he asserted his autocratic rule by conducting a purge of senior Baath Party figures.

III

Dictator of Iraq

In 1979, neighbouring Iran’s government was overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists and their supporters (see Islamic Revolution in Iran), and Hussein feared radical Islamic ideas were spreading inside Iraq, especially among the country’s majority Shiite Muslim population (see Shiism). In September 1980 Hussein abandoned his 1975 agreement with Iran and invaded (see Iran-Iraq War). After making some initial gains, Iraq’s troops were stopped, and by 1982 Iraq was looking for ways to end the war. Hussein reached out to other Arab governments for financial and diplomatic support and began to target the Iranian oil industry. In April 1987 chemical weapons were deployed in the north of Iraq, where Iranian and Kurdish forces were putting pressure on Hussein’s regime. An organized effort to remove or destroy the Kurdish population, called Operation Anfal, was conducted under the leadership of Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid (who became known as “Chemical Ali”). In March 1988 the Kurdish city of Halabjah was struck with chemical weapons. These brutal measures, and Iraq’s superior firepower, compelled the Iranians to accept a ceasefire in July 1988. Despite the absence of any material gain for Iraq, Saddam Hussein claimed a great victory.

The Iran-Iraq War left Iraq devastated, with hundreds of thousands of casualties and a debt of about US$75 billion. Still, Hussein had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs, for example, by pressurizing Kuwait to forgive its share of Iraq’s debt. In August 1990 Hussein sent troops into Kuwait and annexed it. An international coalition led by the United States expelled Iraqi troops in January and February of 1991 in a conflict known as the Gulf War. Though briefer than the Iran-Iraq War, it was equally devastating, leaving Iraq isolated and reeling from international economic sanctions.

Despite having led Iraq into two wars and, in so doing, squandering the country’s oil wealth, Hussein succeeded in facing down all internal challenges to his rule. In 1991, shortly after the end of the Gulf War, Hussein suppressed an uprising among Shiites in the south. Kurds who rebelled in the north were saved from complete defeat only because the international community protected them. Hussein’s small clique of friends and family was divided after the war, and in the following years Hussein arrested, exiled, and killed many among them who were thought to threaten his rule. In May 2001, Hussein’s son Qusay became chairman of the Baath Party, indicating that he was his father’s chosen successor.

In the late 1990s Hussein periodically brought Iraq to the brink of further military conflicts by refusing to comply with United Nations inspection teams assigned to ensure that Iraq had destroyed its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons capabilities. In 1998 he averted conflicts in February and again in November by agreeing to allow inspections to continue. However, when in December he again blocked inspections, the United States and Britain launched a four-day series of air strikes on Iraqi military and industrial targets. In response, Hussein declared that Iraq would allow no further UN inspections and threatened to fire on foreign aircraft patrolling over northern and southern Iraq. Iraqi challenges to the patrols led to British and US attacks on Iraqi missile launch sites and other targets. In late 1998 the United States passed a resolution to provide economic assistance to Iraqi dissident groups seeking to overthrow Hussein.

IV

Invasion and Defeat

Although links between Iraq and the perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States remain highly speculative, the country was named as one member of an “axis of evil”—countries whose actions are seen as a threat to the United States and its allies—in the State of the Union address by President George W. Bush in January 2002. Hussein agreed to readmit weapons inspectors in November after a UN resolution called on Iraq to complete the process of disarmament. At the same time a build-up of US and British military forces in the region increased the pressure on the Iraqi regime. As the US administration moved closer to taking military action against Iraq without further UN support, Hussein divided Iraq into military regions under the command of his closest allies, including his sons Uday and Qusay. Ignoring an ultimatum from the US to leave Iraq, Hussein expressed his determination to fight any invasion. The opening bombardments by US forces on March 20, 2003 failed to dislodge him from power. Nevertheless, forces loyal to Hussein’s regime were unable to resist the entry and occupation of Baghdad by US troops in early April, effectively bringing to an end the rule of the Baath Party (see War on Iraq). In July both Uday and Qusay died during an assault by US forces on the northern city of Mosul.

In December, Hussein himself was captured by US soldiers after he was found hiding in a farmhouse near his home town of Tikrit. He was finally put on trial in October 2005 before a specially established Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November 2006, in a case pertaining to the killing in 1982 of 148 people in the Shiite town of Dujail, and was sentenced to death by hanging. Although a second trial, concerning the alleged genocide committed against the Kurdish population during the Anfal campaign in 1988, was underway, Saddam Hussein was hanged on December 30.