Saddam in exile in Egypt
April 1937: Saddam Hussein is born in the village of Tikrit in central Iraq.
October 1956: Saddam joins the Baath party.
October 1959: He takes part in an assassination attempt against Iraq's ruler, General Abdul Karim Qassem. He flees Iraq and spends four years in exile in Egypt.
February 1963: He returns to Baghdad after the Baath party comes to power in a military coup. The Baathists are defeated nine months later. Saddam is jailed and elected – while in prison - as the Baath party deputy secretary-general.
July 1968: The Baath party seizes power from Abdul Mohammed Aref. Saddam is the party's number two.
March 1975: He signs a border agreement with Shah of Iran. The latter then supported Kurdish rebellions.
July 1979: Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr steps down and Saddam becomes president.
September 1980: War starts between Iraq and Iran. Iraq is backed by the US during the eight-year war, in which a million people die.
March 1988: The Iraqi army bombs Halabjah and gases 5,000 Kurdish villagers.
August 1988: A ceasefire is signed between Iran and Iraq.
August 1990: Saddam invades and annexes Kuwait.
Saddam brandishing an assault rifle during a
visit to villages in northern Iraq [AFP]January 1991: US-led operation "desert storm" drives the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.
October 1995: Saddam wins a presidential referendum, official figures giving him more than 99 per cent of the votes.
September 2001: George Bush, the US president, calls Iraq "a rogue state".
October 2002: Saddam wins 100 per cent of votes in another presidential referendum.
December 2002: He apologises for invading Kuwait. Kuwait does not accept the apology.
February 2003: Saddam denies being in possession of any chemical or nuclear weapons and denies that he has any links with al-Qaeda.
20 March 2003: A US-led coalition invades Iraq, despite not securing a UN resolution authorising it to do so.
9 April 2003: US troops enter Baghdad.
Saddam as a young member of the
Baath Party [AFP]
22 July 2003: Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sons, are killed by US troops in a raid on a house in Mosul.
13 December 2003: US officials announce the capture of Saddam.
19 October 2005: Start of Saddam’s trial for the 1982 killing of 148 Shia men in Dujail after a failed assassination attempt on the president.
21 August 2006: Start of the Anfal. Saddam is accused of killing thousands of Kurdish civilians in 1988.
5 November 2006: Saddam is found guilty and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
26 December 2006: The Iraqi court of appeal upholds the death sentence against Saddam.
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Saddam Bio
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Saddam Hussein (April 28, 1937 – December 30, 2006), was the President of Iraq from July 16, 1979 until April 9, 2003, when he was deposed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As the leader of Iraq and head of the Baath Party, he espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism.
As vice president under his cousin, the frail General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Saddam tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces by creating repressive security forces and cementing his own firm authority over the apparatus of government. As president, Saddam ran an authoritarian government and maintained power and stability in the country. During his rule the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) and the Gulf War (1991) happened. He repressed movements deemed threatening to the stability of Iraq, particularly those of ethnic or religious groups that sought independence or autonomy along tribal lines. He was and remains a popular hero among many Iraqis and Arabs for standing up to Israel and the United States. he is generally considered to have been a dictator.
Saddam Hussein's government collapsed as a result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the United States, and he was captured by American forces on December 13, 2003. On November 5, 2006, he was convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraq Special Tribunal and was sentenced to death by hanging. On December 26, Saddam's appeal was rejected and the death sentence upheld. He was hanged, in front of lawyers, officials, and a doctor at 6:07 Baghdad time on December 30, 2006, according to Iraqi television sources.
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Youth
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Saddam as a child
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Saddam Hussein was born in the town of Al-Awja, 13 kilometres (8 mi) from the Iraqi town of Tikrit in the Sunni Triangle, to a family of shepherds. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son "Saddam", which in Arabic means "One who confronts". He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who disappeared six months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterward, Saddam's 13-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three.
His mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return. At about the age of 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. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his closest advisors and supporters. According to Saddam, he learned many things from his uncle, a militant Iraqi nationalist. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalistic secondary school in Baghdad. In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter.
Revolutionary sentiment was characteristic of the era in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. The stranglehold of the old elites (the conservative monarchists, established families, and merchants) was breaking down in Iraq. Moreover, the populist pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would profoundly influence the young Ba'athist, even up to the present day. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed a wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, which would see the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser challenged the British and French, nationalized the Suez Canal, and strove to modernize Egypt and unite the Arab world politically.
In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted United States-backed plot to assassinate Qassim.
Saddam was shot in the leg, but escaped to Tikrit with the help of CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents. Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred to Beirut for a brief CIA training course. From there he moved to Cairo where he made frequent visits to the American embassy. During this time the CIA placed him in an upper-class apartment observed by CIA and Egyptian operatives. (UPI 'analysis' article)
He was sentenced to death in absentia. Saddam studied law at the Cairo University during his exile.
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Marriage and family relationships
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Saddam married Sajida Talfah in 1963. Sajida is the daughter of Khairallah Talfah, Saddam's uncle and mentor. Their marriage was arranged when Saddam was 5 and Sajida was 7; however, the two didn't meet until their wedding. They were married in Egypt during his exile. They had two sons (Uday and Qusay) and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala. Uday controlled the media, and was named Journalist of the Century by the Iraqi Union of Journalists. Qusay ran the elite Republican Guard, and was considered Saddam's heir. Both brothers made a fortune smuggling oil. Sajida, Raghad, and Rana were put under house arrest because they were suspected of being involved in an attempted assassination of Uday on December 12, 1996. General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah, Sajida's brother and Saddam's childhood friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity.
Saddam also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumored to have been his favorite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose husband was apparently also persuaded to divorce his wife. There have apparently been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has another son, Ali, from Samira.
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 Hussein would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February 1996, both of the Majid 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.
Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa Sultan al-Tikriti, the deputy head of Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in politics. Jamal surrendered to U.S. troops in April 2003. Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known in the United States as "Chemical Ali," who was accused of ordering the use of poison gas in 1988. Ali is now in U.S. custody.
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Saddam with his daughter, Rana Hussein
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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."
Concerned about Qassim's growing ties to Communists, the CIA gave assistance to the Ba'ath Party and other regime opponents. 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. He escaped 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. Saddam soon became the regime's strongman. According to biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, which informed his measures to promote Ba'ath party unity as well as his ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability.
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Saddam Hussein (left) talking with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (right)
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Soon after becoming deputy to the president, Saddam demanded and received the rank of four-star general despite his lack of military training.
Modernization
Saddam caught
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Saddam consolidated power 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. Stable rule in a country rife with factionalism required the improvement of living standards. 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.
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 June 1, 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, had a monopoly on the country's oil. 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).
To diversify the largely oil-based 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 intensely 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. 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's commitment to agrarian reform was demonstrated by the doubling of expenditures for agricultural development in 1974-1975. Moreover, agrarian reform in Iraq improved the living standard of the peasantry and increased production, though not to the levels Saddam had hoped for.
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 persons from other Arab countries and 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. At the time Saddam was considered an enemy of Communism and radical Islamism. Saddam was integral to U.S. policy in the region, a policy which sought to weaken the influence of Iran and the Soviet Union.[citation needed] As the weak, 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 ruler 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 July 16, 1979, and formally assumed the presidency.
Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on July 22, 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found spies and conspirators within the Ba'ath Party and read out the names of 68 members who he thought could oppose him. These members were labeled "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 put on trial, and 22 were sentenced to execution for treason.
Saddam Hussein as a secular leader
Saddam's hole
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Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the Nasser model. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his 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 law 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% minority of largely working class, peasant, and lower middle class Sunnis, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate 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 Sh'ia Islamist influence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Kurds of northern Iraq (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's pan-Arabism. To maintain his regime 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.
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 Nebuchadrezzar 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.
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 executions of Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union, leading to a more Western orientation from then until the Gulf War in 1991, though Saddam continued to receive the largest share of his armaments from the Soviet bloc.
He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and conservative political circles. Saddam led Arab opposition to the 1979 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. In 1975 he negotiated an accord with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border disputes. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq.
Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French "Osirak", a portmanteau formed from "Osiris", the name of the French experimental reactor that served as template and "Irak", the French spelling of "Iraq". Osirak was destroyed by an Israeli air strike (Operation Opera), because Israel suspected it was going to start producing weapons-grade nuclear material.
After Saddam had negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi withdrew support for the Kurds, who suffered a total defeat. 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. 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.
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The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988)
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