Saddam Hussein he was an Iraqi dictator who ruled his country for 24 years in an extremely authoritarian manner. It involved Iraq in two wars (Iran-Iraq War and Gulf War) and was marked by crimes against humanity through the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish minority. He was arrested in 2003 by US troops and executed in 2006.
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birth and youth
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on April 28, 1937, in a village called al-Auja, near Tikrit, a city in northern Iraq. Saddam's father was named Hussein Abid al-Majid and he is believed to have died months before the birth of his son, but other biographers point out that he may have run away and abandoned his family.
His mother was named Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat and it is said that she was unable to care for Saddam due to the death of her first child (Saddam Hussein's older brother). The death of her eldest son and the possible death of her husband, both from cancer, were hard blows for Subha.
Therefore, Saddam Hussein was raised by his uncle Khairullah Tulfah, a figure who assumed the position of father for him. At age 10, Saddam Hussein returned to his mother's home when she married Ibrahim al-Hassan, a violent man who abused young Saddam. So the boy decided to return to his uncle's house.
Saddam's uncle was a man involved in Iraqi politics and was a strong advocate of ending British rule over Iraq. It was through his uncle that Saddam Hussein had access to education. He finished elementary school at age 18 and tried to apply to a military college, but failed. Thereby, enrolled-if at a law school, in Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein's involvement in politics
Saddam Hussein dropped out of law school and decided to get involved in politics. This was under the direct influence of your uncle. In 1957, he joined the Ba’ath Party, party that his uncle supported. this was a nationalist party and which was based on pan-ArabismO; therefore, he advocated the independence of Arab nations from European rule.
In 1958, a military coup ended the British-supporting monarchy and a republic was established in Iraq. The new government had many members of the Ba’ath Party, but disagreements with the prime minister, Abd al-Karim Qasim, led Ba’ath members to plan his death.
Saddam Hussein was chosen to plan Qasim's assassination, but the plan failed, and Qasim survived. With that, Saddam and other party members decided to flee to Syria, the country where the Ba’ath had arisen. He stayed in Syria for three months and then took refuge in Egypt, where he stayed for three years.
In 1963, Saddam Hussein returned to Iraq because the Ba’ath carried out a coup and overthrew Prime Minister Qasim. But a new military coup took the Ba’ath from power as early as 1963. With this coup, Saddam Hussein he was arrested and spent two years in jail.
In 1966, the president of Iraq was Abdul Rahman Arif, brother of Abdul Salam Arif, the leader of the 1963 military coup. Later this year, Saddam Husseinescaped from prison and, between 1966 and 1968, he became a major figure within the Ba’ath Party. In 1968, the Ba’ath carried out a new coup, and through it, Abdul Rahman Arif was deposed.
This coup was led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who became Iraq's president on July 17, 1968. Saddam was involved in this coup, although the degree of involvement is unknown. As an influential politician in the Ba’ath, Saddam was named vice president of Iraq.
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Saddam Hussein in power
Saddam Hussein followed like the second man more important from iraq by 10 years old and in that period he played important roles in consolidating the Ba’ath's position in the country. Saddam strengthened the government's security system to prevent further coups from happening and established a series of actions to unify the Ba’ath and secure the support of the population.
In 1976, Saddam Hussein became a general in the Iraqi army and while his reputation rose, President al-Bakr's reputation fell. In July 1979, Saddam Hussein closed the loop and forced al-Bakr to resign as president. With that, Saddam became the president of iraq.
After taking power, Saddam ruled Iraq in an extremely authoritarian way, and the first demonstration of his centralizing vocation was in the Ba’ath itself. In 1979, he carried out a purge of the party, ordering the arrest of nearly 70 members for being “disloyal”. Of these, 22 were executed by order of the dictator.
Saddam Hussein established a secret police, which monitored the population and repressed any opposition initiatives that were outlined. In addition to harassing his opponents, he started a program of worship your own image and ordered the construction of a series of monuments in his honor.
He also sought to explore the historical and cultural heritage of Iraq – a legacy from the times of Mesopotamia – as a way to position yourself as a great leader. However, Saddam Hussein was marked by cruelty with which it dealt with its own population. In 1988, for example, he ordered a chemical weapons attack on Halabja, a town near the Iran-Iraq border.
The attack came because Kurdish militias helped Iranian troops invade the city during the Iran-Iraq War. The Kurds were a persecuted ethnic minority in Iraq, and their support for Iran prompted Saddam Hussein to authorize Iraqi army planes to bomb the city with chemical weapons. The result was five thousand people dead.
The Iran-Iraq War was just one of the conflicts that Saddam Hussein started. This war lasted from 1980 to 1988 and was motivated by the Islamic revolution, which took place in Iran in 1979. Saddam Hussein feared that the Shiites in Iran's power could expand into the Middle East and decided to attack the neighboring country.
After eight long years of war, Iran and Iraq found themselves in an impasse, as there was no winning side, the death toll had already surpassed one million and the economy of both countries was in ruins because of the conflict. During this war, Saddam Hussein also used the Iraqi army to persecute minoritiesethnic, like the Kurds. This conflict ended in 1988, with an armistice between the two nations.
Two years after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein dragged Iraq into a new conflict. The Iraqi dictator owed huge debts to Kuwait from loans obtained during the Iran-Iraq War. In addition, he was dissatisfied because the Kuwaitis were exploring for oil in the border region and because they sold their oil too cheap.
The tension between the two countries has caused Saddam Hussein to order the invasion of Kuwait, on August 2, 1990, initiating the Gulf War. With the invasion, Iraq came to control a large part of the world's oil reserves and posed a strong threat to Saudi Arabia, the greatest US ally in the region.
You United States decided to intervene in the situation and carried out attacks against Iraq for 42 days. Iraq's resistance to leaving Kuwait prompted the Americans to launch a military overland campaign that wiped out Iraqi troops from Kuwait in less than 100 hours. The Iraqi population's dissatisfaction with years of irresponsible wars and Saddam's authoritarianism Hussein led to a series of popular uprisings in 1991, but the Iraqi dictator used force to contain them.
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Last years
After the Gulf War, US-Iraq relations were never the same. After 11 of sseptember, the US government started to defend the overthrow of traditional dictatorships in the Middle East, with the aim of transforming the politics of those countries. In addition, there are many who argue that there was a strong US interest in taking over Iraqi oil wells.
Reasons aside, the big question is that the Americans used Saddam Hussein's attempt to obtain weapons of mass destruction as a justification for invading Iraq. The Iraqi dictator's attempts to obtain these weapons had failed since the early 1990s, so the justification given by the Americans was false.
In early 2003, about 150,000 US soldiers were mobilized to invade iraq. The battle for control of Baghdad lasted about 10 days, and US troops had great success in the Iraqi invasion. Saddam Hussein relinquished power from Iraq and fled the capital, Baghdad.
On December 13, 2003, Hussein was found by US troops. The former Iraqi dictator was hiding in a hole in the ground, in shabby clothes and a huge beard. He was put on trial, convicted of committing crimes against humanity and was sentenced to death.
He was hangedon December 30, 2006 and her body was buried in an unknown location. With his execution, Saddam Hussein left two wives: his first wife, Sajida Talfah; and his second wife, Samira Shahbandar. The dictator is believed to have contracted other marriages as well.
By Daniel Neves Silva
History teacher
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/saddam-hussein.htm