Saddam Hussein

Since Iraq is a fragmented society and a fragile state, many have linked this to Saddam's attempts to forge an Iraqi and Arab national identity for his conflict-torn country. Saddam has espoused the ideas of the Ba'ath Party: Arab unity, the belief that that the Arab world was divided into 22 countries that should be united to serve the interests of the Arab people. But Saddam has also espoused Iraqi patriotism, expressing the belief that Iraq has played a unique role in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam has made frequent references to the Islamic period, especially the Abbasid period (when the Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world). Moreover, he is known to refer to the glorious pre-Islamic past, not failing to note Mesopotamia’s role as an ancient cradle of civilization. Saddam alluded to pre-Islamic historical figures such as Nebuchadrezzar and Hammurabi. And to his credit, he has devoted great resources to archeological explorations. Saddam, in his speeches, envisages and Arab world united and led by Iraq.

The highly questionable results of the 2002 referendum are one of the many examples of Saddam's vast state-driven personality cult. During his reign as president, extensive use of propaganda was employed to make Saddam appear synonymous with Iraq.

Many scholars have noted how Saddam’s personality cult reflects change and tradition in Iraqi society. Known to wear the costumes of the bedouin, the traditional clothes of the peasant, and even Kurdish clothing, Saddam is often photograph in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader respectful of his past. Framed portraits, enormous statues, and vast murals began to appear all over the country, depicting the Iraqi leader in a variety of different costumes, situations, and emotions. Sometimes he would be portrayed as a dedicated Muslim, wearing full headress and robe, praying to Mecca. Other times, he would be shown wearing a western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle high above his head. Some examples of Saddam's different images can be found on the right. The prevalence of the leader's image was quite unparalled in modern history, leading one western commentator to joke that Saddam's efforts made Stalin look like he had a case of "low self-esteem."

The Iran-Iraq war

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran threatened to divert Iraq from this progressive path of development. In addition, Shiites, many of whom were sympathetic to Iran's Ayatollahs, accounted for the majority of Iraq's population. The pretext for the bloody, protracted Iran-Iraq War was a territorial dispute, but most attribute the war as an attempt by Saddam, supported by both the US and the USSR, to have Iraq form a bulwark against the expansionism of radical Iranian-style revolution. During the war Saddam received international condemnation after he ordered the use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops. The war ended in a bloody stalemate with no gain to either side. The people of Iran and Iraq both lost heavily, with a total death toll of about 1.7 million. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins.

Iraq has, nearly from its founding, had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country, which took a tragic turn during the Iraq-Iran War. Saddam Hussein's answer to this ethnic conflict was seen as brutal to many observers and included the systematic use of chemical weapons on Kurdish troops and population centers. The worst such single incident occurred on March 16, 1988 when Iraqi troops, on orders from Saddam to stop a Kurdish uprising, attacked the Kurdish town of Halabjah[?] with mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5000 mostly women and children. Also, according to anti-Saddam opposition groups, around 100,000 other Kurds have been exiled since 1991.

The war with Iran left Iraq bankrupt. Faced with rebuilding its infrastructure destroyed in the war, Iraq needed money. No country would lend it money except the United States and borrowing money from the US made Iraq its client state. According to some, the costs of the Iran-Iraq War would later explain Iraq's confrontation with Kuwait and the United States.

Conflict with Kuwait, Persian Gulf War

Iraq had borrowed a tremendous amount of money from other Arab states, including Kuwait, during the 1980s to fight its war with Iran. Saddam Hussein felt that the war had been fought for the benefit of the other Gulf Arab states as much as for Iraq, and so all debts should be forgiven. Kuwait, however, did not forgive its debt and further provoked Saddam by slant drilling oil out of wells that Iraq considered within its disputed border with Kuwait.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein complained to the United States Department of State about Kuwaiti slant drilling. This had continued for years, but now Iraq needed oil money to pay off its war debts[?] and avert an economic crisis. Saddam ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, creating alarm over the prospect of an invasion. After talks with April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, assured him that the US considered the Iraq-Kuwait dispute an internal Arab matter, Saddam sent his troops into Kuwait.

According to many historians, Iraq has always been hostile to Kuwait, because Kuwait was created by the British from land that was originally part of Iraq and Saddam needed the seaport Kuwait occupied. Kuwait had already offered the use of its seaport to Iraq, and it was using Iraq's fleet of oil tankers to transport its own oil abroad, as were many other oil countries. This gave them an indigenous industry, independent of outside European and American tankers which demanded higher fees. Thus Kuwait and Iraq were in the oil tanker business together, Iraq furnishing the tankers, Kuwait furnishing the port.

The US and Britain, two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, convinced the Security Council to give Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait. Eventually a reluctant Security Council declared war on Iraq, which President George Bush declared was "for the New World Order." Saddam ignored the deadline and by the end of the Gulf War Iraq had lost an estimated 20,000 troops and had been expelled from Kuwait. Other sources—like the ex-minister for defense Ramsey Clark—speak of more than 100,000 on Iraqi side.

Prior to that point, however, Iraq's stance in the international community had alarmed Western powers. Iraq was the leading country in forming the Arab League similar to the European Economic Community, an alliance of European countries. All oil nations would share and work together and plan their own army that would include no Europeans. Iraq at the time had compiled a huge foreign debt and was striving to pay off the debts accumulated during the Iraq-Iran War. Perhaps in response, Saddam was pushing oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices and cutback production. Westerners, however, remember the very destabilizing effects of the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

Following the war popular uprisings erupted in the north and south parts of the nation. These uprisings were switftly and ruthlessly repressed and thousands of Iraqis were killed. A United Nations trade embargo[?] was placed on Iraq following the war and since then Saddam tightened his control over Iraq.

According to some official reports, Saddam appeared to have enjoyed great popularity within Iraq. A 2002 referendum, asking whether he should continue to lead Iraq, claimed 100% of voters thought he should, and that the turnout was 100%, with international media releasing pictures of Iraqi women voting in their own blood. However, he was the only presidential candidate on the ballot and voting was mandatory.

The 2003 war

By April 9, 2003 Saddam Hussein was not in the public eye, with some reports indicating he had been killed or wounded in air strikes in a restaurant where he reportedly had been holding a meeting. By this date, coalition (American and British) forces occupied much of Iraq, and several presidential palaces were in coalition hands. The large bronze statue of Saddam in a roundabout in central Baghdad had been torn down to the cheers of a a crowd of around 200 Iraqi citizens, many of which went on to remove or deface many posters and other likenesses of Saddam. Icons and other Saddam Hussein-bearing articles were beaten with shoes and slippers—an action that is a grave insult in the Arab culture. Images were broadcast around the world of Iraqis defacing the numerous ubiquitous portraits and murals of the dictator and dragging broken statues through the streets.

From all this, it appears that Saddam had lost control of Iraq and was at the least in hiding. The population did not rise up in response to his repeated calls to do so, shedding more doubts on the accuracy of his popularity as represented by government-run Iraqi news and radio. However the sudden loss of all Iraqi governmental controls on April 9th left a power vacuum that was followed by widespread looting of governmental buildings including Iraq's Olympic headquarters, which dissidents allege was used by Saddam's eldest son, Uday, to torture athletes and others that displeased him. The looting quickly spread to civilian properties and many observers feared a looming humanitarian crisis[?] as a result of the toppling of Saddam's government. Embedded reporters[?] interviewed many Iraqis in the capital and other parts of the nation and found that the general relief that the Saddam Hussein government was gone was tempered by worries over the possibility of a prolonged American occupation.

Saddam's whereabouts remained in question in the weeks following the toppling of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting in the war. Nearly two weeks after the fall of Hussein's regime, a video was released showing Hussein purportedly on the day Baghdad fell, April 9. Various citings of Saddam were also reported throughout Baghdad in the weeks following the war. Regardless of his location and health, he remains one of the U.S. military's "Iraqi 55 Most Wanted". As the ace of spades in the "most wanted" playing cards, he is at the top of the list.

Personal

Saddam has been married three times. His first marriage to his first cousin Sajida Talfah, a former teacher, occurred in 1963. This union with the eldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, the uncle who raised Saddam, produced two sons, (Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusai Hussein) and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala. Sajidah 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. Sajidah's brother, Saddam Hussein's boyhood friend General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah[?], 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 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 Hussein Kamel Majid and Saddam Kamel Majid were executed. Raghad and Rana are said to be estranged from their father, refusing to speak to him for several years. The Majid brothers were cousins of Saddam Hussein.

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 political plots.

Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali", who was accused of ordering the use of poison gas to slaughter Kurds in 1988. Ali has been reported killed in a bombing raid.

See also: Saddam International Airport, Saddam's Dirty Dozen, Possible death of Saddam Hussein