SADDAM LEADER OF IRAQ

(born April 28, 1937, Tikrt, Iraq—died Dec. 30, 2006, Baghdad) president of Iraq (1979–2003), whose brutal rule was marked by costly and unsuccessful wars against neighbouring countries.
addm was born into a peasant family in northern Iraq. He joined the Ba'th Party in 1957. In 1959 he participated in an unsuccessful attempt by Ba'thists to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister, 'Abd al-Karm Qsim; wounded in the attempt, addm escaped, first to Syria and then to Egypt. He attended Cairo Law School (1962–63) and continued his studies at Baghdad Law College after the Ba'thists took power in Iraq in 1963. The Ba'thists were overthrown that same year, however, and addm spent several years in prison in Iraq. He escaped, becoming a leader of the Ba'th Party, and was instrumental in the coup that brought the party back to power in 1968. addm effectively held power in Iraq along with the head of state, President Amad asan al-Bakr, and in 1972 he directed the nationalization of Iraq's oil industry.

addm began to assert open control of the government in 1979 and became president upon Bakr's resignation. He then became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and prime minister, among other positions. He used an extensive secret-police establishment to suppress any internal opposition to his rule, and he made himself the object of an extensive personality cult among the Iraqi public. His goals as president were to supplant Egypt as leader of the Arab world and to achieve hegemony over the Persian Gulf.

addm launched an invasion of Iran's oil fields in September 1980, but the campaign bogged down in a war of attrition. The cost of the war and the interruption of Iraq's oil exports caused addm to scale down his ambitious programs for economic development. The Iran-Iraq War dragged on in a stalemate until 1988, when both countries accepted a cease-fire that ended the fighting. Despite the large foreign debt with which Iraq found itself saddled by war's end, addm continued to build up his armed forces.

In August 1990 the Iraqi army overran neighbouring Kuwait. addm apparently intended to use that nation's vast oil revenues to bolster Iraq's economy, but his occupation of Kuwait quickly triggered a worldwide trade embargo against Iraq. He ignored appeals to withdraw his forces from Kuwait, despite the buildup of a large U.S.-led military force in Saudi Arabia and the passage of United Nations (UN) resolutions condemning the occupation and authorizing the use of force to end it. The Persian Gulf War began on Jan. 16, 1991, and ended six weeks later when the allied military coalition drove Iraq's armies out of Kuwait. Iraq's crushing defeat triggered internal rebellions by both Sh'ites and Kurds, but addm suppressed their uprisings, causing thousands to flee to refugee camps along the country's northern border. Untold thousands more were murdered, many simply disappearing into the regime's prisons.