Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with cruelty and megalomaniacal entitlement. He envisioned himself as the “king” of a resurgent Mesopotamia but his true legacy was a country in collapse, wracked by sectarian violence. 

 

Saddam Hussein built his personality cult on a mythologized version of his life and accomplishments so it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. He was born in 1937 (although this date is disputed) in al-Awja (near Tikrit). By most accounts, he had a difficult childhood with an abusive stepfather. In 1958 Hussein killed his first man – he cornered a man on the street and shot him in the head for bringing disrepute to his family. His penchant for violence continued through his twenties as he gained a reputation within the fascist Baathist Party as someone willing to do the ‘dirty work.’[1] 

 

In July, 1958 the Iraqi monarchy was killed in a bloody coup and replaced by a military regime led by General Abdul Karim Qassem. A year later Hussein took part in a failed assassination attempt against Qassem and he was forced into exile in Syria and Egypt. In 1963 the Baathists seized power and Saddam Hussein returned. The Baathists lost power again a few months later but staged another coup in 1968. By this point Hussein had risen through the party ranks and so he was named the chief of internal security. He used the clout that came with this position to seize power completely in 1979.

 

The Hussein regime was sustained only by fear fed by brutality. There were over two dozen offences in Iraq that carried the death penalty (including “propagating Zionism”). The gross human rights violations included systematic and widespread political killings, forced disappearances, and torture. Hussein sometimes took direct part in the violence. The regime particularly targeted the Kurds in northern Iraq, forcing them out of their homes and massacring them. The most notorious incident took place on March 16, 1988 in Halabja when the Iraqi Air Force sprayed the town with mustard and nerve gas, killing more than five thousand men, women, and children.

 

Saddam espoused an extreme form of Iraqi nationalism and this manifested itself when the Iran-Iraq war began in 1980. The war was supposedly a territorial dispute but it was really rooted in the ideological antipathy between the largely secular Iraq and the Islamist regime in Tehran. Also, Iraq’s Baathist regime was propped up and controlled by Sunni Muslims, while Iran was officially, and predominately, Shiite. Iraq was supported by Arab governments as well as the United States and the Soviet Union but the war soon became a horribly destructive war of attrition. The war finally ended in stalemate in 1988 with as many as a million people killed in Iraq and Iran combined.

 

Hussein’s expansionist impulses were not cowed by this failure and he soon launched an invasion of neighbouring Kuwait in 1990. This was the beginning of the end for Hussein. The ensuing Persian Gulf War (where the United States and other countries intervened against Iraq) not only succeeded in expelling Iraq from Kuwait, it also shattered Iraq’s armed forces and infrastructure. However, Saddam Hussein retained power in Iraq. Another result of the invasion was that Iraq was placed under a chemical weapons inspections regime. Hussein’s cooperation with the regime was very limited. 

 

In 2003 the Americans and other forces invaded Iraq without the approval of the United Nations. The invasion was ostensibly because Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was somehow conspiring with terrorist organisations to use these weapons against American interests. These claims proved to be exaggerated at best. Nine months after the invasion Saddam Hussein was captured and an interim government was appointed by the United States. He was charged with crimes against humanity.  

 

In October, 2005 his first trial began (for massacres of Shiite Muslims in 1982) at an Iraqi High Tribunal created to prosecute those responsible for the abuses of the previous regime. The trials proved to be chaotic, largely because the court allowed Hussein to question witnesses. The trial was also heavily politicised with serious procedural flaws. Three defence lawyers and one judge were murdered in the course of the trial. He was found guilty of crimes against humanity and hung on December 30, 2006. Throughout his leadership of Iraq Saddam Hussein committed gross human rights violations against his own people, including (but not limited to) war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

 

 

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