Saddam Hussein (1937 - 2006) was an Iraqi politician who ruled Iraq as president and head of the Ba'ath Party from 1979 until he was overthrown by a United States-led invasion in 2003. [1] His government invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, and carried out large-scale killings of Kurdish and Shia civilians, including the Anfal campaign and the chemical attack on Halabja. [2] Captured in December 2003, he was convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi tribunal and executed on 30 December 2006. [3]
Early life and rise
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on 28 April 1937 near Tikrit in northern Iraq, into a poor Sunni Arab family; his father was absent and he was raised in part by an uncle who was a nationalist army officer. [1] He joined the Ba'ath Party in 1957, took part in a failed attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, and fled to Egypt, where he studied law at Cairo University.
After the Ba'athist seizure of power in July 1968 he became deputy to President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and he oversaw the nationalisation of the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1972. [2]
Seizure of power
Saddam forced al-Bakr's resignation and assumed the presidency on 16 July 1979. [1] Days later he convened a Ba'ath Party assembly at which dozens of senior members were named as conspirators, removed from the hall and subsequently executed — a purge filmed and circulated to make the lesson public. His rule rested on an extensive apparatus of intelligence services, a state-controlled press and a pervasive personality cult, and torture, disappearance and the collective punishment of suspects' families were documented features of the system. [3]
The Iran-Iraq War
In September 1980 Iraq invaded Iran, seeking territorial gains along the Shatt al-Arab waterway and hoping to exploit the disorder following the Iranian revolution. [2] The war lasted eight years, settled into trench fighting and missile attacks on cities, and ended in 1988 essentially where it had begun; estimates of the dead on both sides run to roughly a million.
Campaigns against Iraqi civilians
In 1987 and 1988 the Iraqi government conducted the Anfal campaign against the Kurdish population of the north, destroying thousands of villages, deporting and executing civilians and using poison gas. [3] Human rights organisations estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 people, and possibly more, were killed. On 16 March 1988 chemical weapons dropped on the town of Halabja killed several thousand civilians in a single day.
After the 1991 Gulf War, uprisings by Shia Arabs in the south and Kurds in the north were crushed with heavy loss of life, mass graves and the draining of the southern marshes, which destroyed the livelihood of the Marsh Arabs. [2]
Kuwait, sanctions and the 2003 invasion
Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in August 1990. A United Nations-authorised coalition expelled Iraqi forces in early 1991, and retreating troops set Kuwaiti oil wells alight. [1] In March 2003 a United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, citing weapons of mass destruction that were not subsequently found. Baghdad fell within weeks, and Saddam was captured near Tikrit on 13 December 2003. [3]
Trial, execution and aftermath
He was tried by the Iraqi High Tribunal for the killing of 148 men and boys in the town of Dujail in 1982, in reprisal for an assassination attempt. [2] Convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death, he was hanged at Camp Justice in Baghdad on 30 December 2006; a second trial concerning the Anfal campaign was ended by his execution.
The overthrow of his government was followed by prolonged insurgency and sectarian conflict that killed hundreds of thousands more people. [1]
