Saddam Hussein

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 to 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 a purported effort to 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 cost somewhere around 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. Saddam 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.