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“My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq, and I want to negotiate.”
Saddam Hussein upon his capture in December 2003
Saddam Hussein – the man who terrorized the Middle East, the man who turned Iraq from a progressive oil-rich nation to a suffocating military regime and the man who ruled with a brutal iron fist. Hussein’s story is a particularly fascinating one, beginning with his life in a small village in northern Iraq, leading up to his journey as the 5th President of Iraq, it is filled with tales of bloody coups and wars. This is the story of Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti – the Scourge of Iraq.
Saddam in his youth as a shepherd in his village, near Tikrit, 1956
Born on 28th April, 1937 to a peasant family, Saddam was brought up in a very poor village near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit. His childhood was filled with traumatic experiences. His father (or according to some speculations, he may have abandoned his family quite early on) and his 12-year-old brother died, mostly due to cancer, before Saddam was born. This sudden twist in fate pushed his mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, into depression. According to some sources, she even tried to abort her pregnancy and commit suicide. She would have ‘nothing to do with the baby and sent him away to an uncle’. Her brother, Khairallah Talfah, was situated in Baghdad and he agreed to take in his nephew. A few years later, when he was 3 years old, Saddam’s mother remarried and through this alliance he gained three half-brothers. But the marriage was not favourable to Saddam. His step-father, Ibrahim al-Hassan, was a brute and would often beat him up. The torture went as far psychological abuse, and according to a psychological profile created by the CIA, Hassan would hit Saddam regularly, sometimes even to wake him up.
Saddam’s uncle, Khairallah Talfah, had a huge influence on a young Saddam. Being a devout Sunni Muslim and a veteran of the Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941, Saddam looked up to him and in his later life even appointed his uncle as the mayor of Baghdad. At the age of 10, Saddam joined primary school, graduating at the age of 18 and subsequently beginning his brief stint (of 3 years) as a law student, before dropping out in 1957. Although joining the military had been his dream, Saddam couldn’t clear the entrance exam, thus compelling him to begin a new chapter in his life, one that would go on to drastically change his life and the middle-east’s political history – Saddam’s entry into politics.
At the age of 20, Saddam, under the guidance of his uncle, joined the pan-Arab Ba’ath Party. Iraq in the 1950s, was a hot-bed of political activities, with numerous parties eyeing for power. The Ba’athist ideology had emerged chiefly in Syria, with a large following in the country, but in 1955 in Iraq, it had fewer than 300 members. His uncle’s fervent support to the party, was one of the chief reasons why Saddam chose to join the Ba’ath party as opposed to the other, more well-established parties operating in Iraq at the time. His initial role in the party was confined to aiding and guiding his schoolmates in rioting. Around two years later, he was roped in to lead the party’s operation to assassinate their leader and Iraq’s Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim – Saddam’s first real operation.
Abd al-Karim Qasim – Prime Minister of Iraq who was executed by the Ba’ath Party in 1963
The plan was set in motion on 7th October 1959, as Qasim made his way out on the streets of Al-Rashid. It is said that Saddam’s hurry to begin the shooting compromised the entire operation, leading to the death of Qasim’s chauffer. Qasim, however, was hit only in the shoulders and arms, and the squad, believing him to be dead, retreated to their headquarters. Saddam’s role in this failed assassination would go on to become a very important part of his public image, as an Iraqi author wrote, “The man and the myth merge in this episode.”
After the failed coup, Saddam fled to Syria for 3 months, making his way to Egypt after that for 3 years where he unsuccessfully pursued a degree in Law at the Cairo Law School (1962-63). The Ba’ath Party attempted another coup in 1963, although Saddam was not a part of it, and successfully toppled the Iraqi government led by Qasim. It was the next two years that proved to be the most crucial phase in Saddam Hussein’s political life. He gained immense power and prominence within the Ba’ath Party, upon his return to Iraq, and in the upcoming coup of 1968 (which firmly established the Ba’ath Party’s rule in Iraq), against the then-president Abdul Salam Arif, Saddam was made the vice-president, second only to Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the President. Although officially a deputy to the President, Saddam played a crucial role in the policy making and other matters of high significance within the Iraqi administration.
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr – 4th President of Iraq who was ousted by Saddam Hussein in 1979
However, being second in power did not sit well with Saddam in the long run. Almost a decade later, in 1979, Al-Bakr, started making treaties with Syria which would unify the two countries making the Syrian President second-in-command of the new nation, effectively eliminating Saddam from the picture. A nervous and tensed Saddam acted immediately by forcing Al-Bakr to resign from Presidency on 16th July 1979. The most horrifying scene, though, was yet to come. On 22nd July 1979, Saddam convened an assembly of the Ba’athist leaders, which he ordered to be videotaped. He claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy brewing within the party and called upon Muhyi Abdul-Hussein, the secretary to the former President of Iraq, and ordered him to read out the names of the members who were involved in the conspiracy. It is important to note that Hussein had been locked up and tortured for days together before the assembly, and had also been threatened of his family’s execution, failing his compliance. Under tremendous duress, he publicly confessed to taking the lead role in a Syrian-backed plot against the Iraqi government and announced the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators. As the names were being read out, each person was picked up and taken out by Saddam’s bodyguards. Hussein himself was then taken into custody. The ones who were left behind in the room, were the first ones to witness the sheer brutality and might of Saddam Hussein. The terrorised crowd started chanting their support for their great leader, “Long live the Party! Long live Saddam Hussein!”
Footage of the Ba’ath Party Purge of 1979 which Saddam ordered to be videotaped and distributed across Iraq – Courtesy AHC (American Heroes Channel)
On the 1st of August, 22 men were found guilty of treason and were ordered to be executed. The ones who were spared the firing squad, were ordered to be the firing squad. They were handed weapons and commanded to execute their comrades. The execution too, was videotaped and both the tapes were distributed across the country, with Saddam addressing a crowd of over 50,000 people from the Presidential palace’s balcony stating “that he had just witnessed the punishment the state court had ordered for 21 of those men: They had been executed by a firing squad. And the crowd cheered.” This brutal purge of 1979 set up an apt beginning of Saddam Hussein’s reign as the Dictator of Iraq.
Saddam in 1974
As Saddam began his Presidential term in 1979, he was immediately confronted with a war with their neighbouring country, and Saddam’s arch-enemy Iran. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 was one of the most prominent characteristic of Saddam’s dicatoriship. The Islamic revolution that took over Iran in early 1979 saw the accession of Ayatollah Khomeini as the first Supreme Leader of Iran. This dramatic shift in ideology increased tensions between the two countries, eventually leading to the outbreak of war, with Iraq’s invasion of Tehran. Iraq soon found itself in muddy waters as it witnessed one of the longest and most destructive wars in its history. During the war, Iraq used a heavy dose of chemical weapons against the Iranian forces and the Kurdish separatists fighting along its northern front. In 1988, the world saw the full extent of Saddam’s brutality in the form of the Halabja massacre.
The Halabja cemetry which houses the tombs of those killed in the brutal attack of 1988
The town of Halabja is occupied by Iraqi-Kurds, who are a minority in the area. On the evening of 16th March 1988, Iraqi aircrafts began to drop chemical bombs (a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents) on Halabja’s residential areas, in a total of 14 bombings which would last for over 5 hours. A total of approximately 5000 civilians were killed in the attack, disfiguring and maiming around 10,000 more. The account below narrates the incident through the eyes of a survivor.
Ultimately, the war ended in a stalemate, leaving both the countries with the almost the same boundaries, badly ruining their economies, which before the war were healthily developing. Saddam’s reign in Iraq also saw huge rise in his popularity, in the form of cult-like devotion from certain factions of the country. Thousands of huge busts, portraits, posters, statues and murals of the dictator were erected across the country. Posters were also circulated to glorify Saddam after the Iran-Iraq war, like the one shown below.
Propoganda art circulated during Saddam’s reign
Bronze sculptures 30 feet tall of Saddam Hussein, erected during his reign as Iraq’s dictator, on the grounds of the Republican Palace, Baghdad, 2005.
Around a decade later, as ties between the US and Iraq grew more and more strained, in March 2003, US President George Bush ordered Saddam to step down from office and leave Iraq within 48 hours, or face war. As Saddam refused to give into the demands of the west, the US invaded Iraq on 20th March 2003. The Iraqi forces were crushed, and it did not take long for the US to capture Baghdad on 9th April, forcing Saddam to go into hiding. On July 22nd, Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, were killed by US troops in Mosul. But it wasn’t until December 13th, that Saddam himself was finally captured in a small underground hideout near a farmhouse in the vicinity of Tikrīt, the same village in which he spent his childhood. In October 2005, Saddam Hussein was put on trial before the Iraqi High Tribunal, which found him guilty of (among his several other crimes) the murder of 148 people, torture of women and children and the illegal arrest of 399 others.
Saddam’s capture by the US forces in 2003
(L) – Saddam Hussein shortly after capture; (R) – Saddam after being shaved for identification
A statue of Saddam being toppled in Baghdad after the US invasion
On the 30th of December, 2006, the first day of Eid ul-Adha , Saddam Hussein was hung at Camp Justice, an Iraqi army base in Baghdad. The account below describes Saddam’s last exchange with the crowd, right before he was executed.
Saddam Hussein during his trial, October 2005
He was buried in his hometown of Tikrīt, the day after his execution. And thus ended the life of Saddam Hussein, the man who terrorized Iraq and the world for over two decades. Saddam’s life was a rather extraordinary one, filled with all kinds of extremities. From his childhood in a poor and destitute village in Iraq, spent with an emotionally and physically abusive step-father, to his gradual rise in the political hotbed of Iraq, until his 24 year-long stint as the dictator of Iraq, which saw numerous brutal massacres and repressive rules, leading up to his pitiful capture and execution – Saddam Hussein’s story has it all.
Sources:
Saddam Hussein – Britannica
Biography of Saddam Hussein, Dictator of Iraq – Thought Co.
The Complex Legacy of Saddam Hussein – IWM
Saddam Hussein: how a deadly purge of opponents set up his ruthless dictatorship – The Conversation
Saddam’s Roots an Abusive Childhood – The Washington Post
Halabja: Survivors talk about horror of attack, continuing ordeal – Ekurd.net
How Saddam died on the gallows – The Guardian