Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti ; , ; also known mononymously as Saddam. in Modern Standard Arabic, is his personal name, and means "the stubborn one" or "he who confronts". ''Hussein'' (sometimes also transliterated as Hussayn or Hussain) is not a surname in the Western sense but a patronymic or ''nasab'', his father's given personal name; ''Abid al-Majid'' his grandfather's; ''al-Tikriti'' is a ''laqab'' meaning he was born and raised in, or near, Tikrit. He was commonly referred to as ''Saddam Hussein'', or ''Saddam'' for short. The observation that referring to the deposed Iraqi president as only ''Saddam'' is derogatory or inappropriate may be based on the assumption that Hussein is a family name, thus ''The New York Times'' refers to him as "Mr. Hussein", while ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' uses just ''Saddam''. A full discussion can be found in the reference preceding this note.}}}} (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 Ba'ath Party in 1957, and later in 1966 the Iraqi and Baghdad-based Ba'ath parties. He played a key role in the 17 July Revolution and was appointed vice president of Iraq 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 about 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. At the end of the war, he carried out the brutal Anfal campaign against Kurds, recognized by Human Rights Watch as an act of genocide. Later, Saddam accused its ally Kuwait of slant-drilling the oil reserves in Iraq 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 coalition of 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. Provided by Wikipedia