Saddam Hussein facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Saddam Hussein
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| صدام حسين | |
Saddam in August 1998, preparing to deliver a speech for the 10th anniversary of the end of the Iran–Iraq War
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| 5th President of Iraq | |
| In office 16 July 1979 – 9 April 2003 |
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| Prime Minister |
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| Vice President |
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| Preceded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Succeeded by | Jay Garner (as Director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance of Iraq) |
| Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council | |
| In office 16 July 1979 – 9 April 2003 |
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| Preceded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Succeeded by | Office abolished |
| Prime Minister of Iraq | |
| In office 29 May 1994 – 9 April 2003 |
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| President | Himself |
| Preceded by | Ahmad Husayn Khudayir as-Samarrai |
| Succeeded by | Mohammad Bahr al-Ulloum (as Acting President of the Governing Council of Iraq) |
| In office 16 July 1979 – 23 March 1991 |
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| President | Himself |
| Preceded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Succeeded by | Sa'dun Hammadi |
| Secretary General of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party | |
| In office January 1992 – 30 December 2006 |
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| Preceded by | Michel Aflaq |
| Succeeded by | Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri |
| Regional Secretary of the Regional Command of the Iraqi Regional Branch | |
| In office 16 July 1979 – 30 December 2006 |
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| National Secretary |
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| Preceded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Succeeded by | Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri |
| In office February 1964 – October 1966 |
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| Preceded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Succeeded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Vice President of Iraq | |
| In office 17 July 1968 – 16 July 1979 |
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| President | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Preceded by | Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr |
| Succeeded by | Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri |
| Member of the Regional Command of the Iraqi Regional Branch | |
| In office February 1964 – 9 April 2003 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 28 April 1937 Al-Awja, Saladin Governorate, Kingdom of Iraq |
| Died | 30 December 2006 (aged 69) Camp Justice, Kadhimiya, Baghdad, Iraq |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Resting place | Al-Awja |
| Political party |
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| Spouses |
Sajida Talfah
(m. 1963)Samira Shahbandar
(m. 1986) |
| Children |
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| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Iraq |
| Branch/service | Iraqi Armed Forces |
| Rank | Marshal |
| Battles/wars |
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Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who was the fifth president of Iraq, from July 1979 to April 2003. He also served as Prime minister of Iraq from July 1979 to March 1991 and from May 1994 to April 2003.
He ran a repressive authoritarian government, often described as totalitarian. He was removed from his position during the War in Iraq led by the United States. He was found guilty of war crimes and executed by hanging on 30 December 2006 at 6:05 AM, Iraqi time.
Contents
Childhood
Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit in Iraq. He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who disappeared five months before Saddam was born. Shortly before Saddam was born, Saddam's twelve-year-old brother died of cancer, leaving his mother very depressed in the final months of the pregnancy. She couldn't care for Saddam when he was born, so he was sent to the family of an uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, until he was three.
At 10, Saddam ran away from the family to return to live with his uncle, who was a devout Sunni Muslim, in Baghdad. According to Saddam, in 1957, at the age of 20, Saddam became part of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath party is an Arab political party that supports socialism.
In 1958, Hussein was arrested and spent six months in prison.
Rise in the Ba'ath party
A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim got rid of Faisal II of Iraq. The Baathists were against the new regime, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted murder of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to get away to Syria. Later, he moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death. In exile, he attended the University of Cairo law school.
Army officers, including some with the Ba'ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. However, the new regime was kicked out quickly. 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.
Gaining power
In 1976, Saddam was made a general in the Iraqi army. He quickly became the most important person of the regime. He slowly began to gain more power over Iraq's government and the Ba'ath party. As Iraq's weak, old President, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, became more unable to do the duties of his office, Saddam began to take on an more important role as the head of the Iraqi government. He soon became the creator of Iraq's foreign policy and represented the nation in all diplomatic situations. On 16 July 1979, Saddam forced the ailing al-Bakr to resign, and formally assumed the presidency.
Paramilitary and police organizations
Iraqi society fissures along lines of language, religion and ethnicity. The Ba'ath Party, secular by nature, adopted Pan-Arab ideologies which in turn were problematic for significant parts of the population. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iraq faced the prospect of régime change from two Shi'ite factions (Dawa and SCIRI) which aspired to model Iraq on its neighbour Iran as a Shia theocracy. A separate threat to Iraq came from parts of the ethnic Kurdish population of northern Iraq which opposed being part of an Iraqi state and favored independence (an ongoing ideology which had preceded Ba'ath Party rule). To alleviate the threat of revolution, Saddam afforded certain benefits to the potentially hostile population. Membership in the Ba'ath Party remained open to all Iraqi citizens regardless of background, and repressive measures were taken against its opponents.
The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, Taha Yassin Ramadan (himself a Kurdish Ba'athist), a close associate of Saddam, commanded the People's Army, which had responsibility for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces.
Foreign affairs
Iraq's relations with the Arab world have been extremely varied. Relations between Iraq and Egypt violently ruptured in 1977, when the two nations broke relations with each other following Iraq's criticism of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace initiatives with Israel. In 1978, Baghdad hosted an Arab League summit that condemned and ostracized Egypt for accepting the Camp David Accords. Egypt's strong material and diplomatic support for Iraq in the war with Iran led to warmer relations and numerous contacts between senior officials, despite the continued absence of ambassadorial-level representation. Since 1983, Iraq has repeatedly called for restoration of Egypt's "natural role" among Arab countries.
Saddam developed a reputation for liking expensive goods, such as his diamond-coated Rolex wristwatch, and sent copies of them to his friends around the world. To his ally Kenneth Kaunda Saddam once sent a Boeing 747 full of presents—rugs, televisions, ornaments.
Saddam enjoyed a close relationship with Russian intelligence agent Yevgeny Primakov that dated back to the 1960s; Primakov may have helped Saddam to stay in power in 1991.
Saddam visited only two Western countries. The first visit took place in December 1974, when the Caudillo of Spain, Francisco Franco, invited him to Madrid and he visited Granada, Córdoba and Toledo. In September 1975 he met with Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in Paris, France.
Several Iraqi leaders, Lebanese arms merchant Sarkis Soghanalian and others have claimed that Saddam financed Chirac's party. In 1991 Saddam threatened to expose those who had taken largesse from him: "From Mr. Chirac to Mr. Chevènement, politicians and economic leaders were in open competition to spend time with us and flatter us. We have now grasped the reality of the situation. If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public." France armed Saddam and it was Iraq's largest trade partner throughout Saddam's rule. Seized documents show how French officials and businessmen close to Chirac, including Charles Pasqua, his former interior minister, personally benefitted from the deals with Saddam.
Because Saddam Hussein rarely left Iraq, Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam's aides, traveled abroad extensively and represented Iraq at many diplomatic meetings. 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. The 1978 crackdown on Iraqi Communists and a shift of trade toward the West strained Iraqi relations with the Soviet Union; Iraq then took on a more Western orientation until the Gulf War in 1991.
After the oil crisis of 1973, France had changed to a more pro-Arab policy and was accordingly rewarded by Saddam with closer ties. He made a state visit to France in 1975, cementing close ties with some French business and ruling political circles. In 1975 Saddam negotiated an accord with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border disputes. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel (1979).
Saddam initiated Iraq's nuclear enrichment project in the 1980s, with French assistance. The first Iraqi nuclear reactor was named by the French "Osirak". Osirak was destroyed on 7 June 1981 by an Israeli air strike (Operation Opera).
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 government and Kurdish groups and Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate. After Saddam negotiated the 1975 treaty with Iran, the Shah withdrew support for the Kurds, who were defeated.
Iran–Iraq War
In early 1979, Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Pahlavi Dynasty were overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shi'ite Islam 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 religious and political following against the Iranian Government, which Saddam tolerated. When Khomeini began to urge the Shi'ites there to overthrow Saddam and under pressure from the Shah, who had agreed to a rapprochement between Iraq and Iran in 1975, Saddam agreed to expel Khomeini in 1978 to France. Here, Khomeini gained media connections and collaborated with a much larger Iranian community, to his advantage.
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. During this period, Saddam Hussein publicly maintained that it was in Iraq's interest not to engage with Iran, and that it was in the interests of both nations to maintain peaceful relations. In a private meeting with Salah Omar al-Ali, Iraq's permanent ambassador to the United Nations, he revealed that he intended to invade and occupy a large part of Iran within months. Later (probably to appeal for support from the US and most Western nations), he would make toppling the Islamic government one of his intentions as well.
Image:Shakinghands high.OGG Iraq invaded Iran, first attacking Mehrabad Airport of Tehran and then entering the oil-rich Iranian land of Khuzestan, which also has a sizable Arab minority, on 22 September 1980 and declared it a new province of Iraq. With the support of the Arab states, the US, and Europe, and heavily financed by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Saddam Hussein had become "the defender of the Arab world" against a revolutionary Iran. The only exception was the Soviet Union, who initially refused to supply Iraq on the basis of neutrality in the conflict, although in his memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev claimed that Leonid Brezhnev refused to aid Saddam over infuriation of Saddam's treatment of Iraqi communists. Consequently, many viewed Iraq as "an agent of the civilized world." The blatant disregard of international law and violations of international borders were ignored. Instead Iraq received economic and military support from its allies, who overlooked Saddam's use of chemical warfare against the Kurds and the Iranians, in addition to Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
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 on the defensive and looking for ways to end the war.
The bloody eight-year war ended in a stalemate. Neither side had achieved what they had originally desired and the borders were left nearly unchanged. The southern, oil rich and prosperous Khuzestan and Basra area (the main focus of the war, and the primary source of their economies) were almost completely destroyed and were left at the pre-1979 border, while Iran managed to make some small gains on its borders in the Northern Kurdish area. Both economies, previously healthy and expanding, were left in ruins.
Saddam borrowed tens of billions of dollars from other Arab states and a few billions from elsewhere during the 1980s to fight Iran, mainly to prevent the expansion of Shi'a radicalism. This backfired on Iraq and the Arab states, for Khomeini was widely perceived as a hero for managing to defend Iran and maintain the war with little foreign support against the heavily backed Iraq and only managed to boost Islamic radicalism not only within the Arab states, but within Iraq itself, creating new tensions between the Sunni Ba'ath Party and the majority Shi'a population. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and internal resistance, Saddam desperately re-sought cash, this time for postwar reconstruction.
Al-Anfal Campaign
The Al-Anfal Campaign was a genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people (and many others) in Kurdish regions of Iraq led by the government of Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid. The campaign takes its name from Qur'anic chapter 8 (al-ʾanfāl), which was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Ba'athist administration for a series of attacks against the peshmerga rebels and the mostly Kurdish civilian population of rural Northern Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989 culminating in 1988. This campaign also targeted Shabaks and Yazidis, Assyrians, Turkoman people and Mandaeans and many villages belonging to these ethnic groups were also destroyed. Human Rights Watch estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed.
Gulf War
On 2 August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait, initially claiming assistance to "Kuwaiti revolutionaries", thus sparking an international crisis. On 4 August an Iraqi-backed "Provisional Government of Free Kuwait" was proclaimed, but a total lack of legitimacy and support for it led to an 8 August announcement of a "merger" of the two countries. On 28 August Kuwait formally became the 19th Governorate of Iraq. Just two years after the 1988 Iraq and Iran truce, "Saddam Hussein did what his Gulf patrons had earlier paid him to prevent." Having removed the threat of Iranian fundamentalism he "overran Kuwait and confronted his Gulf neighbors in the name of Arab nationalism and Islam."
When later asked why he invaded Kuwait, Saddam first claimed that it was because Kuwait was rightfully Iraq's 19th province and then said "When I get something into my head I act. That's just the way I am." Saddam Hussein could pursue such military aggression with a "military machine paid for in large part by the tens of billions of dollars Kuwait and the Gulf states had poured into Iraq and the weapons and technology provided by the Soviet Union, Germany, and France."
US President George H. W. Bush responded cautiously for the first several days. On one hand, Kuwait, prior to this point, had been a virulent enemy of Israel and was the Persian Gulf monarchy that had the most friendly relations with the Soviets. On the other hand, Washington foreign policymakers, along with Middle East experts, military critics, and firms heavily invested in the region, were extremely concerned with stability in this region. The invasion immediately triggered fears that the world's price of oil, and therefore control of the world economy, was at stake. Britain profited heavily from billions of dollars of Kuwaiti investments and bank deposits. Bush was perhaps swayed while meeting with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who happened to be in the US at the time.
Cooperation between the US and the Soviet Union made possible the passage of resolutions in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) giving Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait and approving the use of force if Saddam did not comply with the timetable. US 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. Accordingly, the US and a group of allies, including countries as diverse as Egypt, Syria and Czechoslovakia, deployed a massive number of troops along the Saudi border with Kuwait and Iraq in order to encircle the Iraqi army, the largest in the Middle East.
Saddam's officers looted Kuwait, stripping even the marble from its palaces to move it to Saddam's own palace.
During the period of negotiations and threats following the invasion, Saddam 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 US- and Western-supported Arab states against the Palestinians. The allies ultimately rejected any linkage between the Kuwait crisis and Palestinian issues.
Saddam ignored the Security Council deadline. Backed by the Security Council, a US-led coalition launched round-the-clock missile and aerial attacks on Iraq, beginning 16 January 1991. Israel, though subjected to attack by Iraqi missiles, refrained from retaliating in order not to provoke Arab states into leaving the coalition. A ground force consisting largely of US and British armored and infantry divisions ejected Saddam's army from Kuwait in February 1991 and occupied the southern portion of Iraq as far as the Euphrates.
On 6 March 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."
In the end, the Iraqi army proved unable to compete on the battlefield with the highly mobile coalition land forces and their overpowering air support. 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. Saddam publicly claimed victory at the end of the war.
2003 invasion of Iraq
In 2003, the United States led an invasion of Iraq. The main reason for the invasion was President George W. Bush's claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Bush argued that this made Saddam a major threat to Western allies, such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Israel; to Western oil supplies from the Persian Gulf states; and to Middle East stability in general. The President before Bush, 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. However, this never happened.
Things changed in the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In his January 2002 State of the Union Address to the United States Congress, President Bush said that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were an "axis of evil." Bush also argued that Iraq had supported Al-Qaeda, the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11.
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 ten years. CBS aired the taped interview later that week.
The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks after the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion on March 20. The United States tried at least twice to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April, Coalition forces controlled 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 showed 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
Even when Baghdad was taken over, and most of the fighting had stopped, people still did not know where Saddam was. Although Saddam was placed at the top of the "most-wanted list," he could not be found, even when the other leaders of the Iraqi regime were arrested. His sons and political heirs, Uday and Qusay, were killed in July 2003 in a clash with U.S. forces after a tip from an Iraqi.
On 13 December 2003, in Operation Red Dawn, Saddam was captured by American forces after being found hiding in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse in ad-Dawr, near Tikrit. Following his capture, Saddam was transported to a US base near Tikrit, and later taken to the American base near Baghdad.
The first photos taken of Saddam after the soldiers found him did not look like the photos taken when he was President of Iraq. He had grown long hair and a long beard. Later on, he shaved his beard to confirm his identity. DNA tests proved that he really was Saddam Hussein.
Trial and execution
On 30 June 2004, Saddam Hussein, held in custody by US forces at the US base "Camp Cropper", along with 11 other senior Ba'athist leaders, was handed over to the interim Iraqi government to stand trial for crimes against humanity and other offences. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging.
Saddam was executed on 30 December 2006 at 6:05 AM, Iraqi time. He was buried at his birthplace of Al-Awja in Tikrit, Iraq, on 31 December 2006.
Personal life
Saddam had been married three times. His first marriage was to his first cousin, Sajida Talfah. She was the oldest daughter of Saddam's uncle, Khairallah Talfah. Together, Saddam and Sajida had two sons, Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusay Hussein, and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala.
In early 1997, Sajida was put under house arrest, along with her daughters Raghad and Rana, because they were suspected of being involved in an attempted assassination on Uday on 12 December 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. The second was Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986. She was said to have been his favorite wife. His third wife was Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research.
See also
In Spanish: Sadam Huseín para niños
