11 – Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein’s fall from power is not long enough ago that we really need to go deep into the circumstances by which his end came. For those of short memory, or who cannot remember the events of the spring of 2003, his fall was spectacular and swift: Iraq was invaded by a US-led coalition, his regime was overthrown and he went to the ground: quite literally, as it transpired, as he was discovered outside the city of Tikrit, hiding in a hole in the earth, bedraggled and a shadow his imposing former self. It was hard to remember the tyrant that he had once been.
Saddam Hussein was, for decades, one of the most notorious autocrats in the world. He was born in Tikrit and raised in Baghdad, joining the Ba’ath Party – part of an Arab-focussed socialist movement – at the age of 20. Ba’athism was based on ideas of unity between Arabs, state control of industry and of authoritarian leadership. It had already been part of a successful revolution in Egypt, but when the King of Iraq was overthrown in 1958, the generals who had taken power refused to join the United Arab Republic that had been founded in Cairo. Saddam, who was in favor of this Arab union, was part of a group that tried to assassinate the Prime Minister and found himself exiled to Syria.
His actions in the assassination attempt had made his name among Ba’athists and by the time he returned to Iraq in 1964, he was well known. This got him arrested but he escaped in 1967 and began his meteoric rise. He first took office as Deputy President after an internal Ba’athist coup in 1968 and set about on what would be two of his biggest themes: crushing internal opposition and national unity. Iraq was a nation split between Sunni and Shia Muslims, as well as a significant Kurdish minority, not to mention economic and tribal divisions, but Saddam sought to bring them all together under the one banner. He enacted economic reforms, largely based on Iraq’s oil wealth, which brought many to his side and was internationally praised for campaigns to raise literacy and reduce poverty.
Behind this all, of course, was the ever-strengthening hand of the state. Saddam’s secret police ensured that dissent got nowhere and, in 1976, he became the undisputed leader of Iraq. He purged the Ba’ath Party in 1979, executing 22 close party rivals, further cementing his power. When neighboring Iran (and Shia) had an Islamic Revolution in that same year, a war swiftly broke out between the two. Saddam’s stranglehold was yet strengthened and, though the 8-year conflict ended in a stalemate, it showed just how far the Iraqi dictator was willing to go: he used chemical weapons against the Iranians, as well as against his own people in Kurdistan. Half a million died in the war and Iraq was all but bankrupt.
At this time, Saddam was relatively popular in the West, and funded extensively by the United States, which saw him as a bulwark against Islamic Iran. When he invaded Kuwait in 1990, however, that relationship ended and Iraq was bombed and invaded by American and British forces. The Allies also stoked dissent within Iraq – among Shia and Kurds, as well as political rivals to Saddam – leading to a huge internal crackdown by Saddam. Though internationally isolated and facing huge economic sanctions, the rule of the Ba’ath Party within Iraq was steadfast, largely because of the huge repression of the population.
When he was finally overthrown in 2003, the scenes were beamed around the world. The cult of personality that Saddam had developed, like the hundreds of statues of himself that he had erected, came falling down and the once unassailable leader was forced to go into hiding. When he was discovered in his hole in Tikrit, he was a shadow of his former self. He was put on trial and, in the grand tradition of the tyrants we have discussed, refused to recognize the authority of the court to judge him. As we have seen, that is rarely a successful defense and, just after Christmas 2006, he was executed. The final humiliation was for a shaky mobile phone video of the execution to make it out to the media, showing his last moments to the world.
Saddam had once been the West’s biggest bogeyman in the Middle East, but his death passed that title back to Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya. His time was soon to come as well, and in a far more chaotic fashion than Saddam Hussein’s.
