Saddam Hussein

Youth
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on April 28, 1937 in the town of Al-Awja, 13 km from the Iraqi town of Tikrit, to a family of shepherds from the al-Begat tribal group. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, named her newborn son Saddam, which in Arabic means "One who confronts." He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abid al-Majid, who disappeared six months before Saddam was born. Some accounts say that his father was killed; others say he abandoned his family. Shortly afterward, Saddam's thirteen-year-old brother died of cancer. The infant Saddam was sent to the family of his maternal uncle, Khairallah Talfah, until he was three.

Saddam's mother soon remarried a man who was illiterate, immoral and brutal, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return. At around ten, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle, Kharaillah Tulfah. Tulfah, the father of Saddam's future wife, was a religious Sunni Muslim and a veteran from the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War between Iraqi nationalists and the United Kingdom. He was also radically against Jews, Iranians, Shiites, and to some degree, Kuwaitis and Westerners. Later in his life, relatives from his native Tikrit would become some of his closest advisors and followers.

Saddam didn't start primary school until he moved in with his uncle at age 10. At age 18, Saddam graduated from primary school and applied to military school. Joining the military had been Saddam's dream and when he wasn't able to pass the entrance exam he was devastated. (Though Saddam was never in the military, he frequently wore military-style outfits later in life). 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, before dropping out in 1957, at the age of twenty, to join the new Arab Ba'ath Party, of which his uncle was a supporter. During this time, Saddam apparently supported himself as a secondary school teacher.


Family
While Saddam has no official marital history he is believed to have been married to at least four women, two of whom have been confirmed as his wives, and has had five children.

Saddam married his first wife and cousin Sajida Talfah in 1963 in an arranged marriage. Sajida is the daughter of Khairallah Talfah, Saddam's uncle and mentor. Their marriage was arranged for Hussein at age five when Sajida was seven; however, the two never met until their wedding. They were married in Egypt during his exile. The couple had five children.

Uday Hussein (June 28, 1964 - July 22, 2003) was Saddam's oldest son who ran the Iraqi Football Association, Fedayeen Saddam and several other media corporations in Iraq including Iraqi TV and the newspaper Babel. Uday, while being raised to succeed Saddam, eventually fell out of favour with his father due to his unpredictable behaviour, being responsible for many car crashes and rapes around Baghdad, constant feuds with other members his family, and killing his father's favourite valet and food taster Kamel Hana Gegeo at a party in Egypt. He was widely known for his paranoia, his use of torture against people who disappointed him in any way, friends who disagreed with him (even on minor issues) and most notoriously, whenever Iraqi athletes performed poorly. He was also well known for his excessively lavish lifestyle, owning hundreds of cars (most likely stolen), wines, paintings and palaces equipped with luxury goods while the ordinary Iraqi starved. He was briefly married to Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri's daughter but later divorced her. The couple had no children. He was killed in a gun battle with US Forces in Mosul.

Qusay Hussein (May 17, 1966 - July 22, 2003) was Saddam's second and favourite son. Qusay was believed to have been Saddam's intended successor as he was less unreliable than his older brother and kept a low profile. He was second in command of the military (behind his father) and ran the elite Iraqi Republican Guard and the SSO. He was believed to have ordered the army to kill thousands of rebelling Marsh Arabs and frequently ordered airstrikes on Kurdish and Shiite settlements. He was also believed to have assisted Ali Hassan al-Majid in the 1988 Halabja and Dujail chemical attacks. He was married once and had three children. His oldest son Mustapha Hussein was killed along with his Uday and Qusay in Mosul.

Raghad Hussein (September 2, 1968) is Saddam's oldest daughter. After the war, Raghad fled to Amman, Jordan where she received refuge from the royal family. She is currently wanted by the Iraqi Government for allegedly financing and supporting the rebellion and the now banned Iraqi Ba'ath Party. The Jordanian royal family refused to hand her over. She married Hussein Kamel and has five children from this marriage.

Rana Hussein (1971) is Saddam's second daughter. She, like her sister, fled to Jordan and has stood up for her father's rights. She was married to Saddam Kamel and has had four children from this marriage.

Hala Hussein (1972) is Saddam's third and last daughter. Very little information is known about her. Her father arranged for her to marry General Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti in 1998. She fled with her children and sisters to Jordan. The couple have two children.

Saddam married his second wife Samira Shahbandar, in 1988. She was originally the wife of an Iraqi Airways executive but later became his mistress and then had her divorced from him to become his second wife. There have been no political issues from this marriage. After the war, Samira fled to Beirut, Lebanon. She is believed to have mothered Hussein's sixth child Ali, but members of Hussein's family have denied this.

Saddam had allegedly married a third wife, Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Centre in the Council of Scientific Research. They had no children

Wafa el-Mullah al-Howeish is rumoured to have married Saddam as his fourth wife in 2002. There is no firm evidence for this marriage. Wafa is the daughter of Abdul Tawab el-Mullah Howeish, a former minister of military industry in Iraq and Saddam's last deputy Prime Minister. There were no children from this marriage.


Rise to Power
It was Talfah who first introduced Hussein to politics and hatred towards Westerners. After schooling in Baghdad, Hussein joined the Baath Party, a communist political group committed to Arab nationalism. In 1956, he took part in an unsuccessful mission attempt against King Faisal II of Iraq. Two years later, a non-Baathist group led by General Abdul Qassim overthrew the king. In 1959, Hussein and other Baath supporters tried to assassinate General Qassim. They failed, so Hussein fled to Syria and then Egypt where he temporarily studied law.

In 1963, the Baath Party assassinated General Qassim. He then returned to Iraq and became an interrogator and torturer for the Baath Party. The party went through various commotions and Hussein was imprisoned, yet eventually, in 1966, he became Secretary-General of the party with the help of his cousin, General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. In 1968, Bakr's section of the Baath Party seized power and Hussein became Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. This put him in charge of Iraqi security and gave him the number-two position in the Baath Party. By 1973, Hussein was vice president of Iraq under President Bakr.
Throughout the 1970s, Hussein strengthened his power. He placed many of his own family members and people from his hometown in important positions in the Iraqi government and military. Family and tribal connections are essential in Iraq and Hussein used these ties to his advantage throughout his political career. He also used criminals to torture and murder people he saw as threats.

In 1979, President Bakr resigned under pressure from Hussein, who then became president. Immediately after, Hussein called a Baath Party meeting and had all of his opposition murdered. As president, Hussein continued to reinforce his power base by increasing security forces and employing family members in the government. One 1984 analysis showed that 50 percent of Iraqis were either employed by the government or military or had a family member who was -- thus making the population intimately connected to and dominated by Hussein.


War Crimes
Political Oppression:
Hussein idolized the former Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, a man known for his paranoia-induced execution sprees. In July 1978, he had his government issue a note declaring that anyone whose ideas came into conflict with those of the Baath Party leadership would be executed. Most, but definitely not all, of Hussein's targets were ethnic Kurds and Shiite Muslims.

Ethnic Cleansing:
The two main ethnicities of Iraq have traditionally been Arabs in south and central Iraq, and Kurds in the north and northeast, predominantly along the Iranian border. Hussein perceived ethnic Kurds as a long-term threat to Iraq's survival, and the oppression and extermination of the Kurds was one of his government’s highest priorities.

Religious Persecution:
The Baath Party was dominated by Sunni Muslims, who made up only about one-third of Iraq's general population; the other two-thirds was made up of Shiite Muslims, Shiism also happening to be the official religion of Iran. Throughout Hussein's time as President and especially during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), he saw the eventual elimination of Shiism as a necessary goal, by which Iraq would cleanse itself of all Iranian influence.

The Dujail Massacre of 1982:
In July of 1982, several Shiite militants attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein while he was riding through the city. Hussein responded by ordering the slaughter of some 148 residents, including dozens of children. This is the only war crime on which Hussein has been charged, and he will almost certainly be executed before any other charges go to trial.

The Barzani Clan Abductions of 1983:
Masoud Barzani led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), an ethnic Kurdish radical group fighting Baathist oppression. After Barzani spread his lot with the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, Hussein had some 8,000 members of Barzani's clan, including hundreds of women and children, abducted. It is assumed that most were slaughtered. Thousands have been discovered in mass graves in southern Iraq.


The al-Anfal Campaign:
The worst human rights abuses of Hussein's time took place during the genocidal al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989), in which Hussein's government called for the extermination of every living thing, human or animal, in certain areas of the Kurdish north. Some 182,000 people, men, women, and children, were slaughtered, many through use of chemical weapons. The Halabja poison gas massacre of 1988 alone killed over 5,000 people. Hussein later blamed the attacks on the Iranians, and the Reagan government, which supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.

The Campaign against the Marsh Arabs:
Hussein did not limit his genocide to Kurdish groups. He also targeted the predominantly Shiite Marsh Arabs of south-eastern Iraq, the direct descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians. By destroying more than 95% of the region's marshes, he effectively depleted its food supply and destroyed the entire millennia-old culture, reducing the number of Marsh Arabs from 250,000 to approximately 30,000.

The Post-Uprising Massacres of 1991:
In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the United States encouraged Kurds and Shiites to rebel against Hussein's regime, then withdrew and refused to support them, leaving an unknown number to be slaughtered. At one point, Hussein's regime killed as many as 2,000 suspected Kurdish rebels every day. Some two million Kurds trudged the dangerous trek through the mountains to Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands dying in the process.


Health
Saddam Hussein’s psychology can be explained in terms of the syndrome of malignant narcissism. The main components of this syndrome are pathological narcissism, antisocial features, paranoid traits, and unconstrained aggression.

1. Pathological narcissism
Saddam displays extreme vanity, overconfidence and selfishness to a degree that makes him unable to understand the pain and suffering of others. He doesn’t feel sympathetic and unmoved by human suffering, which allows him to commit atrocities against his own people as willingly as he is ready to brutalize his enemies.

2. Antisocial features
The weak social principles of malignant narcissists are led mainly by self-interest. Malignantly narcissistic leaders like Saddam Hussein are driven by power motive and to enhance their status. They are not frightened by the threat of punishment, which makes them surprisingly resistant to pressures short of force.

3. A paranoid outlook
Malignant narcissists they are small-minded, plan their own conflicts onto others and fail to recognize their own role in creating opponents. These real or imagined enemies are then used to justify their own aggression against others.

4. Unconstrained aggression
Malignant narcissists are cold, ruthless and atrocious, yet capable at hiding their aggressive intentions behind a public mask of politeness or unrealistic worries.

Political implications
Because selfishness is the direct force that drives Saddam, the only reasonable scenario under which he would voluntarily give up political power would be the belief that it would give him a “second lease on life” and permit him to survive the current crisis, eventually to return to power. His personality profile implies that Saddam Hussein will use all means to cling to power. If backed into a corner, there is an elevated risk that he will take his own life rather than surrender.