Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in Tikrit, Iraq. His father, who was a shepherd, disappeared several months before Saddam was born. Continue with Saddam Hussein Biography and Profile.
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Saddam Hussein Biography
Bio Synopsis
Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in Tikrit, Iraq. His father, who was a shepherd, disappeared several months before Saddam was born. Continue with Saddam Hussein Biography and Profile. Read more
Born on April 28, 1937, in Tikrit, Iraq, Saddam Hussein was a secularist who rose through the Baath political party to assume a dictatorial presidency. Under his rule, segments of the populace enjoyed the benefits of oil wealth, while those in opposition faced torture and execution. After military conflicts with U.S.-led armed forces, Hussein was captured in 2003. He was later executed.
Early Life
Saddam Hussein was born on April 28,
1937, in Tikrit, Iraq. His father, who was a shepherd, disappeared
several months before Saddam was born. A few months later, Saddam’s
older brother died of cancer. When Saddam was born, his mother, severely
depressed by her oldest son’s death and the disappearance of her
husband, was unable to effectively care for Saddam, and at age 3 he was
sent to Baghdad to live with his uncle, Khairallah Talfah. Years later,
Saddam would return to Al-Awja to live with his mother, but after
suffering abuse at the hand of his stepfather, he fled to Baghdad to
again live with Talfah, a devout Sunni Muslim and ardent Arab
nationalist whose politics would have a profound influence on the young
Saddam.
After attending the nationalistic al-Karh Secondary School in Baghdad, in 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the Ba’ath Party, whose ultimate ideological aim was the unity of Arab states in the Middle East. On October 7, 1959, Saddam and other members of the Ba-ath Party attempted to assassinate Iraq’s then-president, Abd al-Karim Qasim, whose resistance to joining the nascent United Arab Republic and alliance with Iraq’s communist party had put him at odds with the Ba’athists. During the assassination attempt, Qasim’s chauffeur was killed, and Qasim was shot several times, but survived. Saddam was shot in the leg. Several of the would-be assassins were caught, tried and executed, but Saddam and several others managed to escape to Syria, where Saddam stayed briefly before fleeing to Egypt, where he attended law school.
Rise to Power
In 1963, when Qasim’s government
was overthrown in the so-called Ramadan Revolution, Saddam returned to
Iraq, but he was arrested the following year as the result of
in-fighting in the Ba’ath Party. While in prison, however, he remained
involved in politics, and in 1966 was appointed deputy secretary of the
Regional Command. Shortly thereafter he managed to escape prison, and in
the years that followed, continued to strengthen his political power.
In 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless but successful Ba’athist coup that resulted in Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr becoming Iraq’s president and Saddam his deputy. During al-Bakr’s presidency, Saddam proved himself to be an effective and progressive politician, albeit a decidedly ruthless one. He did much to modernize Iraq’s infrastructure, industry, and health-care system, and raised social services, education, and farming subsidies to levels unparalleled in other Arab countries in the region. He also nationalized Iraq’s oil industry, just before the energy crisis of 1973, which resulted in massive revenues for the nation. During that same time, however, Saddam helped develop Iraq’s first chemical weapons program and, to guard against coups, created a powerful security apparatus, which included both Ba’athist paramilitary groups and the People’s Army, and which frequently used torture, rape and assassination to achieve its goals.
In 1979, when al-Bakr attempted to unite Iraq and Syria, in a move that would have left Saddam effectively powerless, Saddam forced al-Bakr to resign, and on July 16, 1979, Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. Less than a week later, he called an assembly of the Ba’ath Party. During the meeting, a list of 68 names was read out loud, and each person on the list was promptly arrested and removed from the room. Of those 68, all were tried and found guilty of treason and 22 were sentenced to death. By early August 1979, hundreds of Saddam’s political foes had been executed.
Decades of Conflict
The same year that Saddam
ascended to the presidency, Ayatollah Khomeini led a successful Islamic
revolution in Iraq’s neighbor to the northeast, Iran. Saddam, whose
political power rested in part upon the support of Iraq’s minority Sunni
population, worried that developments in Shi-ite majority Iran could
lead to a similar uprising in Iraq. In response, on September 22, 1980,
Saddam ordered Iraqi forces to invade the oil-rich region of Khuzestan
in Iran. The conflict soon blossomed into an all-out war, but Western
nations and much of the Arab world, fearful of the spread of Islamic
radicalism and what it would mean to the region and the world, laid
their support firmly behind Saddam, despite the fact that his invasion
of Iran clearly violated international law. During the conflict, these
same fears would cause the international community to essentially ignore
Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, its genocidal dealing with its Kurdish
population and its burgeoning nuclear program. On August 20, 1988, after
years of intense conflict that left hundreds of thousands dead on both
sides, a ceasefire agreement was finally reached.
In the aftermath of the conflict, seeking a means of revitalizing Iraq’s war-ravaged economy and infrastructure, at the end of the 1980s, Saddam turned his attention toward Iraq’s wealthy neighbor, Kuwait. Using the justification that it was a historical part of Iraq, on August 2, 1990, Saddam ordered the invasion of Kuwait. A UN Security Council resolution was promptly passed, imposing economic sanctions on Iraq and setting a deadline by which Iraqi forces must leave Kuwait. When the January 15, 1991 deadline was ignored, a UN coalition force headed by the United States confronted Iraqi forces, and a mere six weeks later, had driven them from Kuwait. A ceasefire agreement was signed, the terms of which included Iraq dismantling its germ and chemical weapons programs. The previously imposed economic sanctions levied against Iraq remained in place. Despite this and the fact that his military had suffered a crushing defeat, Saddam claimed victory in the conflict.
The Gulf War’s resulting economic hardships further divided an already fractured Iraqi population. During the 1990s, various Shi-ite and Kurdish uprisings occurred, but the rest of the world, fearing another war, Kurdish independence (in the case of Turkey) or the spread of Islamic fundamentalism did little or nothing to support these rebellions, and they were ultimately crushed by Saddam’s increasingly repressive security forces. At the same time, Iraq remained under intense international scrutiny as well. In 1993, when Iraqi forces violated a no-fly zone imposed by the United Nations, the United States launched a damaging missile attack on Baghdad. In 1998, further violations of the no-fly zones and Iraq’s alleged continuation of its weapons programs led to further missile strikes on Iraq, which would occur intermittently until February 2001.
Saddam’s Fall
Members of the Bush administration
had suspected that the Hussein government had a relationship with Osama
bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization. In his January 2002 State of the
Union address, U.S. President George W. Bush named Iraq as part of his
so-called “Axis of Evil,” along with Iran and North Korea, and claimed
that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction and
supporting terrorism.
Later that year, UN inspections of suspected weapons sites in Iraq began, but little or no evidence that such programs existed was ultimately found. Despite this, on March 20, 2003, under the pretense that Iraq did in fact have a covert weapons program and that it was planning attacks, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq. Within weeks, the government and military had been toppled, and on April 9, 2003, Baghdad fell. Saddam, however, managed to elude capture.
Capture, Trial and Execution
In the months that
followed, an intensive search for Saddam began. While in hiding, Saddam
released several audio recordings, in which he denounced Iraq’s invaders
and called for resistance. Finally, on December 13, 2003, Saddam was
found hiding in a small underground bunker near a farmhouse in ad-Dawr,
near Tikrit. From there, he was moved to a U.S. base in Baghdad, where
he would remain until June 30, 2004, when he was officially handed over
to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for crimes against
humanity.
During the subsequent trial, Saddam would prove to be a belligerent defendant, often boisterously challenging the court’s authority and making bizarre statements. On November 5, 2006, Saddam was found guilty and sentenced to death. The sentencing was appealed, but was ultimately upheld by a court of appeals. On December 30, 2006, at Camp Justice, an Iraqi base in Baghdad, Saddam was hanged, despite his request to be shot. He was buried in Al-Awja, his birthplace, on December 31, 2006.
- Saddam Hussein Biography and Profile (Biography)
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2019-02-08