Saddam Hussein
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Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti1 (sometimes spelled Husayn or Hussain) (Arabic: صدام حسين عبدالمجيد التكريتي) (born April 28, 1937) was president of Iraq (1979-2003). Saddam, born into a poor family in a village near the town of Tikrit, joined the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular Arab nationalism, economic modernization, and socialism, at the age of twenty. He later played a key role in the bloodless Ba'ath Party coup on July 17, 1968.
Regularly working 18-hour days between 1968-1979, Saddam was a rising star in the new regime. Iraq's first Ba'athist president, the frail and elderly General Ahmed Bakr, delegated power to him. Saddam tightly controlled conflict between government departments and the armed forces at a time when many organizations were considered capable of overthrowing the government, and Iraq's economy grew at a rapid pace in the 1970s. 2
Saddam formally assumed the Iraqi presidency in 1979. He maintained power through the devastating Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and the first Gulf War (1991), which both corresponded with a sharp decline in living standards and the human rights situation. While hailed among some sectors of the Arab world for standing up to the West and his unflinching support for the Palestinians, the United States continued to view Saddam with harsh scorn following Iraqi defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. He was deposed by the U.S. and its allies during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and was captured by U.S. forces on December 13, 2003.
Youth
Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit district of Iraq, to a family of sheep-herders. His mother named her newborn "Saddam," which in Arabic means "one who confronts." He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared five months before Saddam was born. Shortly afterwards, Saddam's twelve-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother severely depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. She attempted both to abort Saddam and kill herself and refused to care for her new child when he was born. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of an uncle, Khairallah Tulfahuntil, until he was three.3
His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam Hussein harshly after his return. He was abusive and forced the young boy to steal.
At the age of ten, he fled the family to return to live with his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, a devout Sunni Muslim, in Baghdad. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his most influential and powerful advisors and supporters. According to Saddam, he learned many things from his uncle, especially the lesson that he should never back down from his enemies, no matter how superior their numbers or capabilities. 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 the wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the fifties and sixties, 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.
Rise in the Ba'ath party
A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew King Faisal. The Ba'athists opposed the new regime, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, in absentia. In exile he attended the University of Cairo law school.
Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, the new regime was ousted quickly, within seven to eight months torn by rife factionalism. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba'ath group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the party. According to many biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist regime, namely party unity and the ruthless resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability.
In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power under General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Tikriti and a relative of Saddam. The Baath's ruling clique named Saddam vice-chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council and vice president of Iraq.
Consolidation of power
In 1976 Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the regime, and 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 gained a powerful circle of support within the party.
As Iraq's weak and elderly President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became increasingly unable to execute the duties of his office, Saddam began to take an increasingly prominent role as the face of the Iraqi government, both internally and externally. He soon became the architect of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. By the late 1970s, Saddam had emerged as the undisputed de facto leader of Iraq.
Saddam's consolidation of power and the modernization of Iraq
Saddam consolidated power in a nation ridden with profound tensions. Long before Saddam, Iraq has been split by social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic fault lines: Sunni versus Shi'ite, Arab versus Kurd, tribal chief versus urban merchant, nomad versus peasant.
Stable rule in a country torn by political factionalism and conflict required the improvement of living standards. Thus, Saddam, a rising star in the new regime, aided party attempts to strengthen and unify the Ba'ath party by 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 consolidating his power base, he followed the administration and execution of state welfare and development programs closely. He played a leading role in the oil industry, Iraq's major source of wealth. On June 1, 1972, he led the process of expropriating Western oil companies, which had had a monopoly on the country's oil.
Due to the 1973 world oil shock, oil prices skyrocketed. Saddam pursued an ambitious agenda through oil revenues. Within a period of just several years, the state provided some social services to Iraqi people unprecedented in other Middle Eastern countries. Saddam initiated and led the implementation of the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq."
Largely under Saddam's auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels, supported families of soldiers killed in war, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. The government made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and development of other industries to diversify the oil-dependent economy.
Saddam supervised the modernization of the Iraqi countryside, the mechanization of agriculture on a large scale, and the distribution of land to farmers. He broke up the large holdings of the landowners and land to peasant farmers. He effected a comprehensive revolution in energy industries as well as in public services such as transport and education. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, including many communities in far outlying areas.
Saddam's ruthless organizational prowess was credited with Iraq's rapid the pace of development in the 1970s; development went forward at such a fevered pitch that two million persons from other Arab countries worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor.
By focusing especially on the implementation role, Saddam became associated with Ba'athist welfare programs, thus widening his original popular base of support while co-opting new sectors of the Iraqi population. Part of a combination of "carrot and stick" tactics, expanding government services forged patron-client ties between Saddam and his support base within the party, government bureaucracy.
Succession
In 1979 President al-Bakr began 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. Before this could happen, however, the ailing al-Bakr resigned on July 16, 1979. Saddam formally assumed the presidency.
Shortly afterwards, he convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on July 22, 1979. He had one of them read out the names of members that Saddam thought could oppose him. These members were labeled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one-by-one to face a firing squad. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty.
Saddam Hussein as a secular leader
Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a modernizer, following the model of Nasser. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his regime 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 Islamic law. 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 petit bourgeois Sunni Muslims, 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 and constant vigilance was required to keep them subordinated, particularly after the Shi'a-led Iranian Revolution in 1979. Likewise, the Kurds in the north (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba'athist party's Arabising tendencies. Saddam had no choice but to rule as a dictator, because the Ba'athists could not have retained power any other way. At the core of Saddam's regime was a retinue of close relatives and members of his Tikriti tribe.
Saddam justified Iraqi patriotism, in the form of 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 the ancient cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadnezzar 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.
His propaganda and 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, and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would be portrayed as a dedicated Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca; at other times, he would be shown wearing a western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle over his head.
Foreign affairs
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 the executions of Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union, which took on a more Western orientation from then until the Gulf War in 1991.
He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with French political and business circles. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1979). 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.
After Saddam had negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, the Shah 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 regime and Kurdish groups and even Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate.
The Iraq-Iran War
For details see the main article Iraq-Iran War.
In 1979 Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam quickly grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shi'ite populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that radical Islamic ideas—hostile to his secular rule— were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shi'ite population.
There had also been bitter enmity between Saddam and Khomeini since the 1970s. Khomeini, having been exiled from Iran in 1964, took up residence in Iraq, at the Shi'ite holy city of An Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shi'ites and developed a strong, worldwide religious and political following. Under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978. After the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini perhaps regarded toppling Saddam's government a goal second only to consolidating power in Iran.
After Khomeini gained power, skirmishes between Iraq and revolutionary Iran occurred for ten months over the sovereignty of the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway, which divides the two countries. Iraq and Iran entered into open warfare on September 22, 1980. The pretext for hostilities with Iran was this territorial dispute, but the war was more likely an attempt by Saddam, supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union, to have Iraq form a bulwark against the expansion of radical Iranian-style revolution. Regardless of Saddam's personal motives, Western powers saw strategic value in the new war as a way to distract the Iranian government from supporting revolutions in the region, and they readily moved to support Iraq.
| File:Donald saddam.jpg |
| Saddam Hussein meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, at the time Ronald Reagan's special envoy to the Middle East, during a visit to Baghdad, Iraq in 1983. Video frame capture, see the complete video. |
In the first days of the war, there was heavy ground fighting around strategic ports as Iraq launched an attack on Khuzestan. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops began to suffer losses from human-wave attacks by Iran. By 1982 Iraq was looking for ways to end the war.
During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists. On March 16, 1988 Iraqi troops, on orders from Saddam to stop a Kurdish uprising, attacked the Kurdish town of Halabjah with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5000 people, mostly women and children. Dissenting opinions dispute the numbers and have said the incident was actually a battle in the Iran-Iraq war where chemical weapons were used on both sides and a significant portion of the fatalities were caused by the Iranian weapons.
Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support. The Iranians, hoping to bring down Saddam's secular government and instigate a Shi'ite rebellion in Iran, refused a cease-fire until 1988.
The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. There were hundreds of thousands of casualties. Perhaps upwards of 1.7 million died on both sides. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding were left in ruins.
Saddam was also stuck with a war debt of roughly $75 billion. Borrowing money from the U.S. was making Iraq into its client state, embarrassing a strongman who had sought to define and dominate Arab nationalism. Saddam also borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states during the 1980s to fight Iran. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, Saddam desperately sought out cash once again, this time for postwar reconstruction.
Tensions with Kuwait
Saddam was pressuring Kuwait to forgive its share of his war debt, some $30 billion. He argued that since the struggle with Iran had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq that a share of Iraqi debt should be forgiven. Perhaps, Saddam's war with Iran spared the Kuwaitis from the imminent threat of Iranian domination.
Saddam had pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices and cut back production, but on top of Kuwaiti refusals to do so, Kuwait helped spearhead OPEC's opposition to the production cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and thus keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off a huge debt.
On another compelling level, Saddam showed disdain for the Kuwait-Iraq boundary line (actually imposed on Iraq by British imperial officials in 1922) because it cut Iraq off from the sea. One of the few articles of faith uniting the political scene in a nation rife with sharp social, ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic divides was the belief that Kuwait had no right to even exist in the first place. For at least half a century, Iraqi nationalists were espousing emphatically the belief that Kuwait was historically an integral part of Iraq, and that Kuwait had only come into being through the maneuverings of British imperialism.
Of course, the colossal extent of Kuwaiti oil reserves intensified tensions in the region. The oil reserves of Kuwait (with a population of a mere 2 million next to Iraq's 25) were roughly equal to those of Iraq. Taken together Iraq and Kuwait sat on top of some 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves; as an article of comparison Saudi Arabia holds 25 percent.
The Kuwaiti monarchy further angered Saddam by slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered within its disputed border with Kuwait. At the time, Saddam's regime was not regarded as a pariah state. Saddam was able to complain about the slant drilling to the U.S. State Department. Although this had continued for years, Saddam now needed oil money to stem a looming economic crisis. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border.
As Iraq-Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the U.S. would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion worth of arms in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars of food and arms to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. 4
U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie met with Saddam in an emergency meeting on July 25, where the Iraqi leader stated his intention to continue talks. U.S. officials attempted to maintain a conciliatory line with Iraq, indicating that that while Bush and Baker did not want force used, they would not take any position on the Iraqi-Kuwait boundary dispute and did not want to become involved. Later, Iraq and Kuwait then met for a final negotiation session, which failed. Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.
Although no reliable firsthand information on Saddam's appraisal of the situation exists, surmising from the prewar standpoint of the Iraqi leader and his interests and the conflicting prewar information from Washington, the invasion was likely born out of Iraq's postwar debt problem and faltering attempts to gain the resources needed for postwar reconstruction, rebuild the devastated Iraqi economy, and stabilize the domestic political situation.
The Gulf War
For details see the main article Gulf War.
With hours remaining before the war, UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar met with Saddam Hussein to discuss the Security Council timetable for the withdraw of troops from Kuwait.
On August 2, 1990, Saddam invaded and annexed Kuwait, thus sparking an international crisis. The annexation of Kuwait gave Iraq, with its own substantial oil fields, control of 20 percent of the Persian Gulf reserves. The U.S. provided assistance to Saddam Hussein in the war with Iran, but with Iraq's seizure of the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait in August of 1990 the United States led a United Nations coalition that drove Saddam from Kuwait in February 1991.
Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchy that had had the most friendly relations with the Soviets. On the other hand, Washington foreign policy-markers, along with Middle East expert, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, are extremely concerned with stability in this region.5 The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's price of oil, and therefore the control of the world economy, was at stake. President Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with the tough British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who happened to be in the U.S. at the time.6 Britain profited heavily from billions of dollars of Kuwaiti investments and bank deposits.
Cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union made possible the passage of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council giving Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait and approving the use of force if Saddam did not comply with the timetable.
Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. Backed by the Security Council, a U.S.-led coalition launched missile attacks on Iraq, January 16, 1991. The United States and a group of allies it had hastily rounded up, including Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, evicted Saddam's army from Kuwait in January 1991. (see Gulf War).
Israel, though subjected to attack by Iraqi missiles, refrained from retaliating in order not to provoke Arab states into leaving the coalition. But Saddam had focused renewed attention on the Palestinian problem by promising to withdraw his forces from Kuwait if Israel would relinquish the occupied territories in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Saddam's proposal further split the Arab world, pitting U.S.- and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians.
On March 6, 1991, Bush announced: "What is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea - a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law." The United States responded with massive troop deployments along the Saudi border with Kuwait and Iraq in order to encircle the Iraqi army, the largest in the Middle East. U.S. officials feared Iraqi retaliation against oil-rich Saudi Arabia, since the 1940s a close ally of Washington, for the Saudis' opposition to the invasion of Kuwait.
Some 175,000 Iraqis were taken prisoner and casualties were estimated at over 85,000. As part of the cease-fire agreement, Iraq agreed to scrap all poison gas and germ weapons and allow UN observers to inspect the sites. UN trade sanctions would remain in effect until Iraq complied with all terms.
Postwar aftermath
Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, together with the brutality of the conflict that this had engendered, laid the groundwork for postwar rebellions. In the aftermath of the fighting, social and ethnic unrest among Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds, and dissident military units threatened the stability of Saddam's regime. Uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi'a southern and central parts of the Iraq, but were ruthlessly repressed.
The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions. U.S. ally Turkey opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and because the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shiite revolution. Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or military from the Gulf War. Saddam routinely cited his survival as "proof" that Iraq had in fact won the war against America. This message earned Saddam a great deal of popularity in many sectors of the Arab world.
Saddam increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced (such as the 2001 edict imposing the death penalty for homosexuality and other sexual offences), and the ritual phrase "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), in Saddam's handwriting, was added to the national flag.
1991-2003
Relations between the United States and Iraq remained tense following the Gulf War. The U.S. launched a missile attacked aimed at Iraq's intelligence headquarters in Baghdad June 26, 1993, citing evidence that Iraq had sponsored a plot to kill former President George Bush.
The UN placed a trade embargo on Iraq, blocking Iraqi oil exports. This caused immense hardship in Iraq and virtually destroyed the Iraqi economy and state infrastructure. Only smuggling across the Syrian border, and humanitarian aid kept Iraq from humanitarian crisis. Later, limited amounts of income from the United Nations oil-for-food program started flowing into Iraq. On December 9, 1996 the United Nations allowed Baghdad to begin selling limited amounts of oil for food and medicine.
U.S. officials continued to accuse Saddam of violating the terms of the Gulf War's cease fire, by developing weapons of mass destruction and other banned weaponry, and violating the UN-imposed sanctions and "no fly zones." Isolated military strikes by US and British forces continued on Iraq sporadically, the largest being Operation Desert Fox in 1998. Western charges of Iraqi resistance to UN access to suspected weapons were the pretext for crises between 1997 and 1998, culminating in intensive U.S. and British missile strikes on Iraq, December 16-19, 1998. After two years of intermittent activity, U.S. and British warplanes struck harder at sites near Baghdad in February, 2001.
Saddam's support base of Tikriti tribesmen, family members, and other supporters was divided after the war, and in the following years, contributing to the regime's increasingly repressive and arbitrary nature. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam's sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. They likely had a leading hand when, in August 1995, two of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, who held high positions in the Iraqi military, defected to Jordan. Both were killed after returning to Iraq the following February.
Iraqi cooperation with UN weapons inspection teams was intermittent throughout the 1990s. It now appears more likely that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with.
2003 invasion of Iraq
For details see the main article 2003 invasion of Iraq.
On April 4, satellite channels worldwide broadcasted footage of the besieged Iraqi leader touring the streets of his bombed capital. Smoke was emanating from nearby oil fires in the distance. As U.S.-led ground troops were marching toward the capital, a smiling Saddam Hussein greeted cheering, chanting mobs in the streets of Baghdad.8
Saddam continued to loom large in American consciousness as a major threat to Western allies such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Israel, to Western oil supplies from the Gulf states, and to Middle East stability generally. Bush's successor, U.S. President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), maintained sanctions and made occasional air strikes in the "Iraqi no-fly zones" or other restrictions, in the hope that Saddam would be overthrown by his many political enemies.
The domestic political equation changed in the U.S. after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which bolstered the influence of the neoconservative faction in the presidential administration and throughout Washington. In his January 2002 state-of-the-union message to Congress, George W. Bush (the son of George H.W. Bush) spoke of an "axis of evil" comprising Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. Moreover, Bush announced that he would possibly take action to topple the Iraqi government. Bush claimed, "The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade." "Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror," said Bush.7 (So far no evidence linking Saddam and the attacks of September 11, 2001 appears to have been found.)
As the war was looming on February 24, 2003, Saddam Hussein talked with CBS News anchor Dan Rather for more than three hours—his first interview with a U.S. reporter in over a decade. 9 CBS aired the taped interview later that week.
The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both narrowly failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April Coalition forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army either crumbled or shifted to guerrilla tactics, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. When Baghdad fell to the Coalition on April 9, Saddam was nowhere to be found.
Pursuit and capture
Saddam's whereabouts remained in question in the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting in the war. Various sightings of Saddam were reported in the weeks following the war but none was authenticated. A series of audio tapes claiming to be from Saddam were released at various times, although the authenticity of these tapes remains uncertain.
Although Saddam was placed at the top of the "most-wanted list," extensive efforts to find him had little effect, although many of the other leaders of the Iraqi regime were arrested. His sons and political heirs, Uday and Qusay, were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces after a tip-off from an Iraqi informant.
On December 14, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, shortly afterwards, the U.S. Civil Administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer formally announced the capture of Saddam by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" He was captured at approximately 8:30 PM Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground "spider hole" at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn. Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody, and said that DNA testing to confirm his identity beyond doubt was in progress.
Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer and curlier than his familiar appearance, which a barber later restored. His identity was later reportedly confirmed by DNA testing. He was described as being in good health and as "talkative and co-operative." Bremer said that Saddam would be tried, but that the details of his trial have not yet been determined. Members of the Governing Council who spoke with Saddam after his capture reported that he was unrepentant, claiming to have been a "firm but just ruler." Later it emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation.
Personal
Saddam has been married three times. His first marriage was to his first cousin Sajida Talfah, a former teacher in 1963. This union with the eldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, Saddam's uncle and surrogate, produced two sons, (Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusay Hussein) and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala. Sajida was put under house arrest in early 1997, along with daughters Raghad and Rana, because of suspicions of their involvement in an attempted assassination on Uday in December 12, 1996. General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah, who was Sajida's brother and Saddam Hussein's boyhood friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity.
Saddam Hussein also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumoured to be his favourite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose husband apparently was also persuaded to divorce his wife. There apparently have been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has a son, Ali, by Samira.
In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel al Majid and Raghad and her husband, Saddam Kamel 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 executed.
Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa, the deputy head of Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in politics. 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.
In August 2003 Saddam's daughters Raghad and Rana received sanctuary in Amman, Jordan, where they are 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." 10
Notes
1 Hussein is not a surname in the Western sense. Saddam (pronounced "Sad-DAHM") is his given personal name; Hussein is his father's given personal name; al-Majid is his familial name, and al-Tikriti is his regional affiliation. In many Arab countries he is most commonly referred to as Saddam Hussein or Saddam. However, in Iraq, he was and is most commonly referred to by his formal presidential title. Some observers have argued that referring to the man as only Saddam may be derogatory and academically inappropriate. It is common for Arab men to add the name of their town or village onto their name. This would give Saddam Hussein al-Awja.
2 See PBS Frontline (2003), "The survival of Saddam: secrets of his life and leadership: interview with Saïd K. Aburish" at [1].
3 From Elisabeth Bumiller's interview of Jerrold M. Post, the founder of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the CIA in the New York Times' (May 15, 2004) on the importance of events during Saddam Hussein's youth. It can be read online at [2].
4 A free access online archive relating to U.S.-Iraq relations in the 1980s is offered by The National Security Archive of the George Washington University. It can be read online at [3]. The Mount Holyoke International Relations Program also provides a free access document briefing on U.S.-Iraq relations (1904- present); this can be accessed online at [4].
5 For a statement asserting the overriding importance of oil to U.S. national security and the U.S. economy, see, e.g., the declassified document, "Responding to Iraqi Aggression in the Gulf," The White House, National Security Directive (NSD 54), top secret, January 15, 1991. This document can be read online in George Washington University's National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 21 at [5].
6 See Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1979-1990), 817.
7 For further details see Globe and Mail Update, "Hussein does Baghdad walkabout" [6] Apr. 4, 2003.
8 The full text of Bush's 2002 State of the Union address can be read online (BBC News) at [7].
9 Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein leading up to the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq on March 20 can be read online (CBSNEWS.com) at [8].
10 For coverage of the postwar CNN and Al-Arabiya interviews with Saddam's daughters, see [9].
Related articles
- Saddam International Airport
- Human rights situation in Saddam's Iraq
- Human rights situation in post-Saddam Iraq
- Pictures of Saddam Hussein
- Operation Rockingham
External links
- Saddam Hussein at Wikiquote
- Report of Saddam's treatment of women
- Brookings Institution's links on Saddam Hussein
- The Iraqi Resistance Site (includes an archive of Saddam Hussein's recent audio tape recordings posted by the London-based "Free Arab Voice")
- American Forces Press Service announcement of Saddam Hussein's capture
- Saddam Hussein Biography