Welcome! Online: 136

Moldova



Saddam Hussein, megalomaniac who terrorized his own country

December 30, 2006
Subscribe to: RSS, Email


Baghdad (dpa) - Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator for nearly 30 years until he was overthrown by a US-led military invasion in 2003, was executed Saturday at the age of 69 for crimes against humanity.

Born on April 28, 1937 in a village near the Iraqi town of Tikrit, from whence the great Islamic hero Saladin also hailed, Saddam liked to identify with the 12th-century Kurdish warrior who drove the crusaders out of Jerusalem.

Born to a lowly farming family, Saddam, whose name means "the one who confronts," endured bullying as a boy and joined the then illegal socialist Baath Party while still at school.

He is said to have carried out his first contract murder as a young man, and in 1959 was part of a failed assassination attempt on Iraqi strongman General Abdul-Karim Qassim.

When the Baath Party took power in the 1960s, he began his steady rise to power, eliminating his political rivals mercilessly, and finally arriving at the top in July 1979 - becoming simultaneously Baath party general secretary, supreme head-of-state and commander- in-chief.

Saddam's clan was the chief buttress of his rule - he distributed top posts and government funds among members of his family and the wider clan.

But neither politicians nor officers - even from his own family - were safe when the virtually friendless ruler, who survived several assassination attempts, felt threatened. Part of the minority Sunnis, he fought Shiites and Kurds with fury, leaving thousands of victims in mass graves.

The state-managed personality cult around him took on increasingly grotesque proportions as the years passed. His idealized portrait hung in front of every public building, and state-funded artists provided a never-ending supply of Saddam busts, statues and eulogies.

Iraqis stood in such fear of their leader and had absorbed the personality cult over decades to such an extent, that some of them paused to salute his statues even when they believed they were not being watched.

"The leader sees everything," children were taught repeatedly at school.

Saddam rarely left Iraq and spent his last years in a world of unreality. He surrounded himself with submissive military leaders and politicians who did not dare utter the least criticism of his cruel leadership.

Initially he and the socialist Baath Party maintained good relations with the Soviet Union, acquiring most of Iraq's arms from that source.

Only a year after coming to power, and taken by the idea that he, like Saladin, would be ruler of historic importance, Saddam led his country into war with Iran. During the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War, in which hundreds of thousands of died on each side, he sought and secured the increasing support of Washington.

Everything changed with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The West, which had barely protested at the use of poison gas on the Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq, now referred to Saddam as the "Madman of Baghdad" and assembled a coalition to drive him out of Kuwait the following year.

The allies at the time baulked at the thought of fighting all the way to Baghdad and held back from supporting the ensuing uprisings, fearing the country could fragment. Saddam was able to regroup his forces and put down the uprisings against his regime.

Throughout the 1990s, Iraqis lived under strict United Nations sanctions. Saddam still managed to increase his grip on power, making use of an intricate network of spies and overlapping secret services that kept the military under close surveillance.

Under US-led pressure, he agreed to allow UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq in the autumn of 2002. Despite international efforts for a peaceful solution, the US government of President George W Bush pushed for war, citing what later turned out to be faulty intelligence, and Saddam's proven willingness to use weapons of mass destruction.

The final confrontation came when the US and Britain invaded the country in April 2003, ending Saddam's regime.

Despite calling a "Holy War" to be fought by his army and all paramilitary forces, Saddam went into hiding. His equally brutal sons Uday and Qusay were killed in a US missile strike.

Saddam himself was found by US soldiers December 13, 2003 near a farmhouse in a hole in the ground. He was presented for the cameras as a defeated figure: thin, frail, his beard and hair long and unkempt, his eyes bloodshot.

Brought before a controversial Iraqi court in October 2005, he regained the confrontational mien for which he was infamous. Railing against the "foreign occupiers," he announced: "I am still the true president of Iraq."

Saddam and six of his former top government aides were found guilty on November 5, 2006 of ordering the killing of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982 in retaliation for an attempt on Saddam's life.

He was sentenced to death. He was not granted his demand to be shot like a military leader, rather than hanged like a criminal.

Many Iraqis, however, may remember a prophesy which he made repeatedly during the Iraq-Iran war: "When I go, I will leave behind scorched earth."

Even after the death of Saddam Hussein, his former country continues to writhe under the throes of violence and chaos. // © 2006

 
A file picture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein (C) chairing a meating with high ranking Iraqi leadership 16 September 2002. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed early Saturday 30 December 2006 Iraqi television reported. The execution came just four days after an Iraqi court upheld the death sentence handed down after Saddam was convicted for the 1982 massacre in the Iraqi city of Dujail. EPA/INA

Tags:, ,