sadam hussein

Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003. He previously served as the vice president from 1968 to 1979 and also as the prime minister from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. Saddam was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later its Iraqi regional branch. Ideologically, he espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, while the policies and political ideas he championed are collectively known as Saddamism.
Saddam was born in the village of Al-Awja, near Tikrit in northern Iraq, to a 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 that brought the Ba'athists to power and made him vice president under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. During his tenure as vice president, Saddam nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, diversifying the Iraqi economy. He also presided over the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War (1974–1975), crushing Kurdish rebels until the Algiers Agreement with Iran ended their support and settled territorial disputes along the Iran–Iraq border. Following al-Bakr's resignation in 1979, Saddam formally took power although he had already been the de facto leader of Iraq for several years. During his presidency, positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunni Arabs, a minority that made up only about a fifth of the Iraqi population.
Upon taking office as President of Iraq in 1979, Saddam purged rivals within the Ba'ath Party. In 1980, he ordered the invasion of Iran in a purported effort to capture Iran's Arab-majority Khuzestan province, and end Iranian attempts to export its 1979 revolution to the Arab world. Following the end of the Iran–Iraq War in a stalemate in 1988, Saddam ordered the Anfal campaign against Kurdish rebels who sided with Iran which was recognized as an act of genocide by Human Rights Watch. Later, he accused his former ally, Kuwait, of slant-drilling Iraq's oil reserves and subsequently invaded the country. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait ultimately led to the Gulf War (1990–1991), which ended in Iraq's defeat by a United States-led multinational coalition. In the war's aftermath, Saddam's forces brutally suppressed the 1991 Iraqi uprisings launched by Kurds and Shias to gain independence and bring about a regime change. After reconsolidating his hold on power, Saddam adopted an anti-American stance and pursued an Islamist agenda for Iraq by instituting the Faith Campaign.
In 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, falsely accusing Saddam of developing weapons of mass destruction and of having ties with al-Qaeda. After the quick coalition victory in the war, 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 Dujail massacre of over 140 Shia Muslims and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on 30 December 2006.
A highly polarizing and controversial figure, Saddam dominated Iraqi politics for 35 years and was the subject of a cult of personality. Many Arabs regard Saddam as a resolute leader who challenged Western imperialism, opposed the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and resisted foreign intervention in the region. Conversely, many Iraqis, particularly Shias and Kurds, perceive him negatively as a tyrant responsible for numerous acts of repression, mass killing and other injustices. Human Rights Watch estimated that Saddam's regime was responsible for the murder or disappearance of 250,000 to 290,000 Iraqis. Saddam's government has been described by several analysts as authoritarian and totalitarian, and by some as fascist, although the applicability of those labels has been contested.

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