Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. Saddam was born in the village of Al-Awja, near Tikrit in northern Iraq, to a peasant Sunni Arab family. He joined the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in 1957, and the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party. He played a key role in the 17 July Revolution and was appointed vice president by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. During his time as vice president, Saddam nationalised the Iraq Petroleum Company, diversifying the Iraqi economy. He presided over the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War (1974–1975). Following al-Bakr's resignation in 1979, Saddam formally took power, although he had already been the de facto head of Iraq for several years. Positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunni Arabs, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population. Upon taking office, Saddam instituted the Ba'ath Party Purge. Saddam ordered the 1980 invasion of Iran in effort to purportedly capture Iran's Arab-majority Khuzistan province and thwart Iranian attempts to export their own 1979 revolution. The Iran–Iraq War ended after nearly eight years in a ceasefire after a gruelling stalemate that took somewhere around a total of a million lives and economic losses of $561 billion in Iraq. Later, Saddam accused its ally Kuwait of slant-drilling Iraqi oil fields and occupied Kuwait, initiating the Gulf War (1990–1991). Iraq was defeated by a multinational coalition led by the United States. The United Nations subsequently placed sanctions against Iraq. He suppressed the 1991 Iraqi uprisings of the Kurds and Shia Muslims, which sought to gain independence or overthrow the government. Saddam adopted an anti-American stance and established the Faith Campaign, pursuing an Islamist agenda in Iraq. Saddam's rule was marked by numerous human rights abuses, including an estimated 250,000 arbitrary deaths and disappearances. In 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq, falsely accusing Saddam of developing weapons of mass destruction and of having ties with al-Qaeda. The Ba'ath Party was banned and Saddam went into hiding. After his capture on 13 December 2003, his trial took place under the Iraqi Interim Government. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted by the Iraqi High Tribunal of crimes against humanity related to the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi Shi'a and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on 30 December 2006. Saddam has been accused of running a repressive authoritarian government, which several analysts have described as totalitarian, although the applicability of that label has been contested.
Early life and education
Saddam Hussein Al-Majid Al-Tikriti was born on 28 April 1937 in al-Awja, a small village near Tikrit, to a peasant Sunni Arab family from the Al-Bejat clan of the Bedouin Al-Bu Nasir tribe. His father, Hussein Abd al-Majid, was from the Al-Majid branch of the Al-Bejat clan, while his mother Subha Tulfah al-Mussalat was granddaughter of Mussallat bin Omar Al-Nasiri, a tribal leader of the Al-Bu Nasir tribe and an opponent of the Ottoman rule in Iraq. Saddam's name means "the fighter who stands steadfast". His father died before his birth. This made Saddam's mother, Subha, so depressed that she unsuccessfully attempted to abort her pregnancy and commit suicide. Saddam's mother did not want anything to do with him, and Saddam was eventually taken in by an uncle. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return, and (according to a psychological profile created by the CIA) beat him regularly, sometimes to wake him up. At around the age of 10, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle Khairallah Talfah, who became a fatherly figure to Saddam. Talfah, the father of Saddam's future wife, was a devout Sunni Muslim and a veteran of the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War between Iraqi nationalists and the United Kingdom, which remained a major colonial power in the region. He was reported to have served five years in prison for his role in fighting against Great Britain, and often mentored and told tales of his exploits to the young Saddam. Talfah was appointed the mayor of Baghdad during Saddam's time in power, until his notorious corruption compelled Saddam to force him out of office. Later in his life, relatives from his native city became some of his closest advisors and supporters. Under the guidance of his uncle, he attended a nationalistic high school in Baghdad. After secondary school, Saddam studied at an Iraqi law school for three years, dropping out in 1957 at the age of 20 to join the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter. During this time, Saddam apparently saw himself as a secondary school teacher. Ba'athist ideology originated in Syria and the Ba'ath Party had a large following in Syria at the time, but in 1955 there were fewer than 300 Ba'ath Party members in Iraq, and it is believed that Saddam's primary reason for joining the party as opposed to the more established Iraqi nationalist parties was his familial connection to Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and other leading Ba'athists through his uncle. The pan-Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt profoundly influenced young Ba'athists like Saddam. The rise of Nasser foreshadowed a wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, with the collapse of the monarchies of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. Nasser inspired nationalists throughout the Middle East by fighting the British and the French during the Suez Crisis of 1956, modernizing Egypt, and uniting the Arab world politically.
Rise to power
Assassination attempt on Qasim
In 1958, the Ba'ath Party was originally represented in Abdul-Karim Qasim's cabinet, the prime minister of Iraq and its de factor leader. However, Qasim—reluctant to join Nasser's newly formed union between Egypt and Syria—sided with various groups within Iraq (notably the social democrats and the Iraqi Communist Party) that told him such an action would be dangerous. Instead, Qasim adopted a wataniyah policy of "Iraq First". To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim also had an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), which was opposed to the notion of pan-Arabism. His policies angered several pan-Arab organizations, including the Ba'ath Party, which later began plotting to assassinate Qasim at Al-Rashid Street on 7 October 1959 and take power. Saddam was recruited to the assassination conspiracy by its ring-leader, Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, after one of the would-be assassins left. During the ambush, Saddam (who was only supposed to provide cover) began shooting prematurely, which disorganised the whole operation. Qasim's chauffeur was killed and Qasim was hit in the arm and shoulder. The assassins thought they had killed Qasim and quickly retreated to their headquarters, but Qasim survived. Saddam himself is not believed to have received any training outside of Iraq, as he was a late addition to the assassination team. Richard Sale of United Press International (UPI), citing former United States diplomat and intelligence officials, Adel Darwish, and other experts, reported that the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Qasim was a collaboration between the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Egyptian intelligence. Pertinent contemporary records relating to CIA operations in Iraq have remained classified or heavily redacted, thus "allow[ing] for plausible deniability." It is generally accepted that Egypt, in some capacity, was involved in the assassination attempt, and that "[t]he United States was working with Nasser on some level." At the time of the attack, the Ba'ath Party had fewer than 1,000 members; however, the failed assassination attempt led to widespread exposure for Saddam and the Ba'ath within Iraq, where both had previously languished in obscurity, and later became a crucial part of Saddam's public image during his tenure as president of Iraq. Kanan Makiya recounts:
The man and the myth merge in this episode. His biography—and Iraqi television, which stages the story ad nauseam—tells of his familiarity with guns from the age of ten; his fearlessness and loyalty to the party during the 1959 operation; his bravery in saving his comrades by commandeering a car at gunpoint; the bullet that was gouged out of his flesh under his direction in hiding; the iron discipline that led him to draw a gun on weaker comrades who would have dropped off a seriously wounded member of the hit team at a hospital; the calculating shrewdness that helped him save himself minutes before the police broke in leaving his wounded comrades behind; and finally the long trek of a wounded man from house to house, city to town, across the desert to refuge in Syria.
=== Exile to the United Arab Republic === Michel Aflaq, the leader of the Ba'athist movement, organized the expulsion of leading Iraqi Ba'athist members, such as Fuad al-Rikabi, on the grounds that the party should not have initiated the attempt on Qasim's life. At the same time, Aflaq secured seats in the Iraqi Ba'ath leadership for his supporters, one of them being Saddam. The assassins, including Saddam, all eventually escaped to Cairo, United Arab Republic, "where they enjoyed Nasser's protection for the remainder of Qasim's tenure in power." Saddam initially escaped to Syria and then to Egypt itself in February 1960, and he continued to live there until 1963, graduating from high school in 1961 and unsuccessfully pursuing a law degree at Cairo Law School (1962–1963). It is possible that Saddam visited the U.S. embassy in Cairo during his exile, and some evidence suggests that he was "in frequent contact with US officials and intelligence agents." A former high-ranking U.S. official told historians Marion Farouk–Sluglett and Peter Sluglett that Iraqi Ba'athists, including Saddam, "had made contact with the American authorities in the late 1950s and early 1960s."
Army officers with ties to the Ba'ath Party overthrew and killed Qasim in the Ramadan Revolution coup of February 1963; long suspected to be supported by the CIA, however, pertinent contemporary documents relating to the CIA's operations in Iraq have remained classified by the U.S. government, although the Ba'athists are documented to have maintained supportive relationships with U.S. officials before, during, and after the coup. Ba'athist leaders were appointed to the cabinet and Abdul Salam Arif became president. Arif dismissed and arrested the Ba'athist leaders later that year in the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état. Being exiled in Egypt at the time, Saddam played no role in the 1963 coup or the brutal anti-communist purge that followed; although he returned to Iraq after the coup, becoming a key organizer within the Ba'ath Party's civilian wing upon his return. Unlike during the Qasim years, Saddam remained in Iraq following Arif's anti-Ba'athist purge in November 1963, and became involved in planning to assassinate Arif. In marked contrast to Qasim, Saddam knew that he faced no death penalty from Arif's government and knowingly accepted the risk of being arrested rather than fleeing to Syria again. Saddam was arrested in October 1964 and served approximately two years in prison before escaping in 1966. In 1966, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr appointed him Deputy Secretary of the Regional Command. Saddam, who would prove to be a skilled organizer, revitalized the party. He was elected to the Regional Command, as the story goes, with help from Michel Aflaq—the founder of Ba'athist thought. In September 1966, Saddam initiated an extraordinary challenge to Syrian domination of the Ba'ath Party in response to the Marxist takeover of the Syrian Ba'ath earlier that year, resulting in the Party's formalized split into two separate factions. Saddam then created a Ba'athist security service, which he alone controlled.
1968 coup
In July 1968, Saddam participated in a bloodless coup led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr that overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif, Salam Arif's brother and successor. While Saddam's role in the coup was not largely significant (except in the official account), Saddam planned and carried out the subsequent purge of the non-Ba'athist faction led by Prime Minister Abdul Razzaq an-Naif, whose support had been essential to the coup's success. According to a semi-official biography, Saddam personally led Naif at gunpoint to the plane that escorted him out of Iraq. Arif was given refuge in London and then Istanbul. Al-Bakr was named president and Saddam was named his deputy, and deputy chairman of the Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council. According to biographers, Saddam never forgot the tensions within the first Ba'athist government, which formed the basis for his measures to promote Ba'ath party unity as well as his resolve to maintain power and programs to ensure social stability. Although Saddam was al-Bakr's deputy, he was a strong behind-the-scenes party politician. Al-Bakr was the older and more prestigious of the two, but by 1969 Saddam had become the moving force behind the party.
Vice presidency (1968–1979)
=== Political program === In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, formally al-Bakr's second-in-command, Saddam built a reputation as a progressive, effective politician. At this time, he moved up the ranks in the new government by aiding attempts to strengthen and unify the Ba'ath party and taking a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems and expanding the party's following. At the center of this strategy was Iraq's oil. On 1 June 1972, Saddam oversaw the seizure of international oil interests, which, at the time, dominated the country's oil sector. A year later, world oil prices rose dramatically as a result of the 1973 energy crisis, and skyrocketing revenues enabled Saddam to expand his agenda. Saddam subsequently implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas. Before the 1970s, most of Iraq's people lived in the countryside and roughly two-thirds were peasants. This number would decrease quickly during the 1970s. He nationalized independent banks, eventually leaving the banking system insolvent due to inflation and bad loans. Saddam focused on fostering loyalty to the Ba'athists in the rural areas. After nationalizing foreign oil interests, Saddam supervised the modernization of the countryside, mechanizing agriculture on a large scale, and distributing land to peasant farmers. The Ba'athists established farm cooperatives and the government also doubled expenditures for agricultural development in 1974–1975. By the late 1970s, Iraq had experienced significant economic growth, with a budget reserve surpassing US$35 billion. The value of 1 Iraqi dinar was worth more than 3 dollars, making it one of the most notable economic expansions in the region. Saddam Hussein's regime aimed to diversify the Iraqi economy beyond oil. The government invested in various industries, including petrochemicals, fertilizer production, and textile manufacturing, to reduce dependence on oil revenues and promote economic self-sufficiency. The oil revenue benefited Saddam politically. According to The Economist, "Much as Adolf Hitler won early praise for galvanizing German industry, ending mass unemployment and building autobahns, Saddam earned admiration abroad for his deeds. He had a good instinct for what the "Arab street" demanded, following the decline in Egyptian leadership brought about by the trauma of Israel's six-day victory in the 1967 war, the death of the pan-Arabist hero, Gamal Abdel Nasser, in 1970, and the "traitorous" drive by his successor, Anwar Sadat, to sue for peace with the Jewish state. Saddam's self-aggrandizing propaganda, with himself posing as the defender of Arabism against Zionist or Persian intruders, was heavy-handed, but consistent as a drumbeat. It helped, of course, that his mukhabarat (secret police) put dozens of Arab news editors, writers and artists on the payroll."
Foreign relations
Saddam sought to have Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. In 1972, Saddam signed a 15-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. Arms were sent along with several thousand advisers. According to historian Charles R. H. Tripp, the treaty upset "the US-sponsored security system established as part of the Cold War in the Middle East. It appeared that any enemy of the Baghdad regime was a potential ally of the United States." In response, the US covertly financed Kurdish rebels led by Mustafa Barzani during the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War; the Kurds were defeated in 1975, leading to the forcible relocation of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish civilians. A 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. Saddam's rare trips abroad included many Western countries. His visit to Spain 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. Saddam's 1975 visit further cemented close ties with French business and ruling political circles.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. Saddam led Arab opposition to the Camp David Accords.
Peace treaty with Iran
Iran and Iraq had been engaged in a long-standing territorial dispute over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which serves as the border between the two countries. Iran had backed Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq. A peace treaty, which aimed to address the Shatt al-Arab dispute, was signed in 1975. The 1975 Algiers Agreement, also known as the Algiers Accord, was a significant diplomatic agreement signed between Iran and Iraq on 6 March 1975, to settle border disputes and improve bilateral relations. It was mediated by the then president of Algeria, Houari Boumediene. Under the accord, Iran was granted sovereignty over the eastern bank of the waterway, while Iraq retained control over the western bank. Following the agreement, Iraq and Iran restored full diplomatic relations and exchanged ambassadors, representing a significant diplomatic breakthrough. The Shah withdrew support of the Kurds, who were promptly defeated by the Iraqis during the Second Iraqi-Kurdish War.
=== Succession === In 1976, Saddam rose to the position of general in the Iraqi armed forces, and rapidly became the strongman of the government. As the ailing, elderly al-Bakr became unable to execute his duties, Saddam took on an increasingly prominent role as the face of the government both internally and externally. He was the de facto leader of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. In 1979, al-Bakr started to make treaties with Syria, also under Ba'athist leadership, that would lead to unification between the two countries. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad would become deputy leader in a union, and this would drive Saddam to obscurity. Saddam acted to secure his grip on power by forcing the ailing al-Bakr to resign on 16 July 1979, and formally assumed the presidency.
Presidency (1979–2003)
Consolidation of power
The first sign of consolidation of power came, when Muhyi Abd al-Hussein Mashhadi, the secretary-general of the Ba'ath Party, was replaced by someone closer to Saddam. Many officers during al-Bakr's time were removed. Few survived, though survivors included Adnan Khairallah and Sa'dun Hammadi. Saddam convened an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders on 22 July 1979. During the assembly, which he ordered videotaped, Saddam claimed to have found a fifth column within the ruling party and directed Muhyi Abdul-Hussein to read out a confession and the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators. These members were labelled "disloyal" and were removed from the room one by one and taken into custody. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. The 68 people arrested at the meeting were subsequently tried together and found guilty of treason; 22 were sentenced to execution. Other high-ranking members of the party formed the firing squad. A second round of purges took place in June 1982, when half of the sixteen RCC members who had survived the 1979 "countercoup" were removed from power. Large number of Shias were removed from the regime. Later the government invited back Shias to hold posts within the government, to gain support. Under Saddam's administration, senior government, military, and security roles were predominantly filled by Arab Sunni Muslims, a minority that made up about a fifth of the population. While key security posts were often reserved for close relatives, he also appointed members of various religious and ethnic minorities to high-ranking positions and as representatives based on loyalty to his regime.
Paramilitary and police organizations
Iraq faced the prospect of régime change from two Shia 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 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, a close associate of Saddam, commanded the Popular 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. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence was the most notorious arm of the state-security system, feared for its use of torture and assassination. Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam's younger half-brother, commanded Mukhabarat. Foreign observers believed that from 1982 this department operated both at home and abroad in its mission to seek out and eliminate Saddam's perceived opponents. Saddam was notable for using terror against his own people. The Economist described Saddam as "one of the last of the 20th century's great dictators, but not the least in terms of egotism, or cruelty, or morbid will to power." Saddam's regime brought about the deaths of at least 250,000 Iraqis and committed war crimes in Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture. Conversely, Saddam used Iraq's oil wealth to develop an extensive patronage system for the regime's supporters. Although Saddam is often described as a totalitarian leader, Joseph Sassoon notes that there are important differences between Saddam's repression and the totalitarianism practiced by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, particularly with regard to freedom of movement and freedom of religion.
=== Economy and infrastructure === Although initially committed to centralized planning and nationalization—particularly in the oil sector—Saddam experimented with privatization, partial deregulation, and limited market liberalization in the late 1980s. The Iran–Iraq War devastated Iraq's economy, causing an estimated US$120 billion in damages and leaving the country with around $90 billion in debt, including approximately $40 billion owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait alone. Following the Gulf War and the imposition of UN sanctions in the 1990s, the Iraqi economy had sharply declined, and the system increasingly shifted toward crony capitalism. Overall, Saddam's government invested heavily in infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, and public buildings. Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. Electricity was also brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He established one hospital, specially for treatment of children with Cerebral palsy. Saddam's government also underwent a large campaign to beautify Baghdad by erecting statues and monuments. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. The government invested in building schools, and literacy rates in Iraq increased significantly during his rule. Saddam established and controlled the "National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy" and the campaign for "Compulsory Free Education in Iraq," and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels and hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program.
Women's rights
Saddam personally emphasized his full support for women's emancipation. Women were strongly encouraged to pursue education and join the workforce, and many rose to high-ranking positions in government, medicine, and academia. The Ba'ath Party is also known to have "popularized women's education" during their rule, leading Iraq to achieve one of the highest female literacy rates among Muslim-majority countries at the time. Saddam's government passed labor and employment laws that guaranteed equal pay, six months of fully paid maternity leave, and legal protections against sexual harassment. According to PeaceWomen, the rights of female workers in Ba'athist Iraq rivaled those of the United States during the same period. In 1980, Saddam's government granted women full suffrage and the right to run for office. By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, women in Iraq held significant roles in society, accounting for 46% of all teachers, 29% of doctors, 46% of dentists and 70% of pharmacists. Women also constituted 40% of the civil service at one point in the 1980s. Legal reforms were enacted to grant equal rights in marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody, and Iraqi women could pass citizenship to their children even if married to non-Iraqis. Access to higher education was expanded, and women were given the same academic opportunities as men. Unlike other Arab or Muslim majority countries, women in Iraq played an important role in the society. According to a report in 1985 by The New York Times: "Iraqi women, historically among the most emancipated in the Arab world, hold jobs in all the professions, dress as they please, vote and hold more than 10 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. At the University of Baghdad, 55 percent of the enrollment is female. Day care is provided by the state free of charge, and with the war, women have taken on more traditional men's jobs and now make up 25 percent of the entire work force."
=== Wealth === Saddam exercised centralized control over Iraq's financial resources, including oil revenues, foreign exchange reserves, and state-controlled enterprises and diverted significant sums of Iraqi state funds through opaque financial networks under his authority. Prior to the Gulf War, Saddam and his inner circle diverted billions of dollars into foreign accounts via a network of front companies and intermediaries used to move funds through international financial centers, including banks in Europe and the Middle East. As much as several billion U.S. dollars may have been transferred abroad; however, the precise total was uncertain due to the secrecy of the transactions and the reliance on fragmentary intelligence. The funds served to safeguard regime assets against sanctions and potential military defeat, as well as financing procurement networks operating outside international oversight. Early in his presidency, Hussein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a church in Detroit and received a key to the city. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam's government, Iraqi authorities initiated efforts to identify and repatriate assets believed to have been transferred abroad during his rule. In 2007, the Iraqi government formally requested assistance from France in locating funds allegedly deposited in French financial institutions. Saddam once owned a trust fund known as Montana Management, which had a 2% holding in Lagardère Group; however all of its holdings—including its $90 million stake—were frozen following the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Iran–Iraq War: 1980–1988
Background
In early 1979, Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's Pahlavi dynasty were overthrown by the Islamic Revolution, thus giving way to an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The influence of revolutionary Shia Islam grew apace in the region, particularly in countries with large Shia populations, especially Iraq. Saddam feared that the radical Islamic ideas—hostile to his secular rule—were rapidly spreading inside his country among the majority Shia population. Despite Saddam's fears of massive unrest, Iran's attempts to export its Islamic Revolution were largely unsuccessful in rallying support from Shias in Iraq and the Gulf states. Most Iraqi Shias, who comprised the majority of the Iraqi Armed Forces, chose their own country over their Shia Iranian coreligionists during the war that ensued. 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 Shia holy city of Najaf. There he involved himself with Iraqi Shias and developed a strong religious and political following against the Iranian government, which Saddam tolerated. When Khomeini began to urge the Shias 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 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. The outbreak of the war in September 1980 was preceded by a long period of tension between the two countries throughout 1979 and 1980, including frequent border skirmishes, calls by Khomeini for the Shia Muslims in Iraq to revolt against the ruling Ba'ath Party, and allegations of Iraqi support for ethnic separatists in Iran. There were frequent clashes along the Iran–Iraq border throughout 1980, with Iraq publicly complaining of at least 544 incidents and Iran citing at least 797 violations of its border and airspace. On 1 April 1980, the Islamic Dawa Party, an Iraqi Islamist group with supportive ties to Iran, attempted to assassinate Tariq Aziz, Iraq's then deputy prime minister at the University of Baghdad campus, in retaliation for a 30 March decree declaring "membership of Dawa [to be] a capital offense". On 30 April, Iraq organized an attack on the Iranian embassy in London. On 10 September 1980, Iraq forcibly reclaimed territories in Zain al-Qaws and Saif Saad that it had been promised under the terms of the 1975 Algiers Agreement but that Iran had never handed over, leading to both Iran and Iraq voiding the treaty, on 14 September and 17 September, respectively.
Warfare
Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980, first launching airstrikes on numerous targets in Iran, including the Mehrabad Airport of Tehran, before occupying the oil-rich Iranian province of Khuzestan, which also has a sizable Arab minority. The invasion was initially successful, as Iraq captured more than 25,900 km2 (10,000 sq mi) of Iranian territory by 5 December 1980. Khuzestan and Basra were the main focus of the war, and the primary source of their economies. With the support of other Arab states, the United States, and Europe, and with major financial support from the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Saddam became "defender of the Arab world" against a revolutionary, fundamentalist Shia Iran. Consequently, many viewed Iraq as "an agent of the civilized world." He fought Iran mainly to prevent the expansion of Shia radicalism. 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. Meanwhile, Saddam's efforts to develop nuclear weapons faced a setback when Iraq's nuclear reactor was destroyed on 7 June 1981 by an Israeli air attack. By 1982, Iraq was on the defensive and looking for ways to end the war. Iraq quickly found itself bogged down in one of the longest and most destructive wars of attrition of the 20th century. During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces fighting on the southern front and Kurdish separatists who were attempting to open up a northern front in Iraq with the help of Iran. Tariq Aziz later acknowledged Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran, but said that Iran had used them against Iraq first. The Iranians, demanding that the international community should force Iraq to pay war reparations to Iran, refused any suggestions for a cease-fire. Despite several calls for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August 1988. It was not until 20 July 1988 that Iran accepted Resolution 598, mainly due to poor morale, economic collapse, and Iraq's highly successful Tawakalna ala Allah Operations, which reversed all of Iran's territorial gains and effectively brought the war to an end. Encyclopædia Britannica states: "Estimates of total casualties range from 1,000,000 to twice that number. The number killed on both sides was perhaps 500,000, with Iran suffering the greatest losses." Neither side had achieved what they had originally desired and the borders were left nearly unchanged. The southern, oil rich and prosperous areas were almost completely destroyed and were left at 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. This backfired on Iraq and Arab states, as Khomeini was widely perceived as a hero by his supporters 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 Shia population. Faced with rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and internal resistance, Saddam desperately re-sought cash, this time for postwar reconstruction.
Anfal campaign: 1986–1989
The Anfal campaign was a campaign that took place during the war against the Kurdish people and many others in Kurdish regions of Iraq led by the government 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 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. The campaign was in retaliation to Kurd's support for Iran and their rebellion. This campaign also targeted Shabaks and Yazidis, Assyrians, Turkoman people 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. It considers the campaign as an act of genocide. Some Kurdish sources put the number higher, estimating that 182,000 Kurds were killed. On 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people, and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more, mostly civilians. The attack occurred in conjunction with the Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces. Following the incident, the U.S. State Department took the official position that Iran was partly to blame for the Halabja massacre. A study by the Defense Intelligence Agency held Iran responsible for the attack, an assessment that was subsequently used by the Central Intelligence Agency for much of the early 1990s. Despite this, few observers today doubt that it was Iraq that executed the Halabja massacre. According to Joost Hiltermann: "Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show (1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and (2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack."
International support and opposition
Backed by the United States, the United Kingdom, several European nations, and heavily financed by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Saddam positioned himself as "the defender of the Arab world" against a revolutionary, fundamentalist and Shia Islamist Iran. The only exception was the Soviet Union. It initially refused to supply Iraq on the basis of neutrality in the conflict. In his memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev claimed that Brezhnev initially refused to aid Saddam due to anger over the regime's treatment of Iraqi communists. However, by 1982, the Soviet Union began supplying Iraq with military aid, and in the final years (1986–1988), it actively supported Iraq. In a U.S. bid to open full diplomatic relations with Iraq, the country was removed from the U.S list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in February 1982. Ostensibly, this was because of improvement in the regime's record, although former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Noel Koch later stated, "No one had any doubts about [the Iraqis'] continued involvement in terrorism ... The real reason was to help them succeed in the war against Iran." Middle East special envoy Donald Rumsfeld met Saddam on 19–20 December 1983 at Baghdad. After which, Saddam sent his deputy Aziz to visit the United States in 1984. He met with President Ronald Reagan and then vice-president George H. W. Bush at the White House and secured further U.S support for Iraq. The Soviet Union, France, and China together accounted for over 90% of the value of Iraq's arms imports between 1980 and 1988. While the U.S. supplied Iraq with arms, dual-use technology and economic aid, it was also involved in a covert and controversial illegal arms deal, providing sanctioned Iran with weaponry. This political scandal became known as the Iran–Contra affair. Saddam reached out to other Arab governments for cash and political support during the war, particularly after Iraq's oil industry severely suffered at the hands of the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf. Chemical weapons were developed by Iraq from materials and technology supplied primarily by West German companies as well as using dual-use technology imported following the Reagan administration's lifting of export restrictions. The United States government also supplied Iraq with "satellite photos showing Iranian deployments." This satellite imagery may have played a crucial role in blocking the Iranian invasion of Iraq in 1982. However, Saddam's government later blamed the Iraqi defeat in the First Battle of al-Faw in February 1986 on "misinformation from the U.S."
Gulf War: 1990–1991
==== Tensions with Kuwait: 1988–1990 ==== The end of the war with Iran served to deepen latent tensions between Iraq and its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. Saddam urged the Kuwaitis to waive the Iraqi debt accumulated in the war, some $30 billion, but they refused. Saddam pushed oil-exporting countries to raise oil prices by cutting back production; Kuwait refused, then led the opposition in OPEC to the cuts that Saddam had requested. Kuwait was pumping large amounts of oil, and thus keeping prices low, when Iraq needed to sell high-priced oil from its wells to pay off its huge debt. Saddam had consistently argued that Kuwait had historically been an integral part of Iraq, and had only come into being as a result of interference from the British government; echoing a belief that Iraqi nationalists had supported for the past fifty years. This belief was one of the few articles of faith uniting the political scene in a nation rife with sharp social, ethnic, religious, and ideological divides. The extent of Kuwaiti oil reserves also intensified tensions in the region. The oil reserves of Kuwait (with a population of 2 million next to Iraq's 25) were roughly equal to those of Iraq. Taken together, Iraq and Kuwait sat on top of some 20 percent of the world's known oil reserves; Saudi Arabia held another 25 percent. Saddam still had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs. He later ordered troops to the Iraq–Kuwait border. As Iraq–Kuwait relations rapidly deteriorated, Saddam was receiving conflicting information about how the US would respond to the prospects of an invasion. For one, Washington had been taking measures to cultivate a constructive relationship with Iraq for roughly a decade. The Reagan administration gave Iraq roughly $4 billion in agricultural credits to bolster it against Iran. Saddam's Iraq became "the third-largest recipient of US assistance." Reacting to Western criticism in April 1990, Saddam threatened to destroy half of Israel if it moved against Iraq. In May 1990, he criticized US support for Israel warning that "the US cannot maintain such a policy while professing friendship towards the Arabs." In July 1990 he threatened force against Kuwait and the UAE saying "The policies of some Arab rulers are American ... They are inspired by America to undermine Arab interests and security." The US sent warplanes and combat ships to the Persian Gulf in response to these threats.
