SADDAM HUSSEIN

Saddam Hussein is the authoritarian president of Iraq since 1979 who has led his country into two devastating wars. Born to a poor farming family in Tikrit, a town north of Baghdad, Hussein was raised by his widowed mother and other relatives. He moved to Baghdad in 1955 and became involved in politics, joining the opposition Baath Party, an Arab nationalist movement. Hussein rose quickly within the party and in 1959 helped organize an assassination attempt on 'Abd al-Karim Kassem, the military president of Iraq. Both Kassem and Hussein were injured in the gun battle, and Hussein fled to Cairo. Hussein studied law in Cairo while continuing party-affiliated activities. He returned to Baghdad in 1963, married, and rose to the post of assistant secretary general of the Baath Party. The party remained in opposition to the government until 1968, when it seized power in a coup. Years of underground work gave Hussein a small core of like-minded friends, many related to him by blood or marriage and most from Tikrit. After the coup, this clique established itself as a Revolutionary Command Council with absolute authority in the country. Hussein became vice chairman of the council in 1969. He worked closely with General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the council's chairman and president of Iraq.

Hussein took a leading role in addressing the country's major domestic problems. He negotiated an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy. The agreement later broke down, leading to brutal fighting between the regime and Kurdish groups. He also played a part in the nationalization of the oil industry, Iraq's major source of wealth. In 1973, oil prices skyrocketed, allowing the government to pursue an ambitious economic development program that included new schools, universities, hospitals, and factories. In foreign affairs, Hussein at first helped Iraq play a leading role in the Middle East. In 1975, he negotiated a settlement with Iran that contained Iraqi concessions on border demarcation. In return, Iran agreed to stop supporting opposition Kurds in Iraq. Hussein also led Arab opposition to the 1979 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. President al-Bakr gradually withdrew from politics during the 1970s and formally retired in 1979. Hussein became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and president of the country. In 1979, Islamic fundamentalists and their supporters overthrew Iran's government, and Hussein feared radical Islamic ideas were spreading inside Iraq, especially among the country's majority Shiite population. In September 1980, Hussein abandoned his 1975 agreement with Iran and invaded. After making some initial gains, Iraq's troops were stopped, and by 1982 Iraq was looking for ways to end the war. Hussein reached out to other Arab governments for financial and diplomatic support and began to target the Iranian oil industry. The Iranians, hoping to bring down Hussein, refused a cease-fire until 1988. The Iran-Iraq War left Iraq devastated with hundreds of thousands of casualties and a debt of about $75 billion. Still, Hussein had an experienced and well-equipped army, which he used to influence regional affairs, for example, by pressuring Kuwait to forgive its share of Iraq's debt. In August 1990, Hussein sent troops into Kuwait and annexed it. An international coalition led by the United States evicted Iraq in January and February of 1991 in a conflict known as the Persian Gulf War. Though briefer than the Iran-Iraq War, it was equally devastating, leaving Iraq isolated and reeling from international economic sanctions.

Despite having led Iraq into two wars and, in so doing, squandering the country's oil wealth, Hussein succeeded in facing down all internal challenges to his rule. In 1991, shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf War, Hussein suppressed an uprising among Shiites in the south. Kurds who rebelled in the north were saved from complete defeat only because the international community protected them. Hussein's small clique of friends and family was divided after the war, and in the following years Hussein arrested, exiled, and killed many among them who were thought to threaten his rule. In the late 1990s, Hussein periodically brought Iraq to the brink of further military conflicts by refusing to comply with United Nations inspection teams assigned to ensure that Iraq had destroyed its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons capabilities. In 1998, he averted conflicts in February and again in November by agreeing to allow inspections to continue. However, when in December he again blocked inspections, the United States and Britain launched a four-day series of air strikes on Iraqi military and industrial targets. In response, Hussein declared that Iraq would allow no further UN inspections and threatened to fire on foreign aircraft patrolling over northern and southern Iraq.

Iraqi challenges to the patrols led to British and U.S. attacks on Iraqi missile launch sites and other targets. In late 1998, the United States passed a resolution to provide economic assistance to Iraqi dissident groups seeking to overthrow Hussein.