Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (/hʊˈseɪn/;[3] Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي, romanized: Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Tikrītī;[a] 28 April 1937[b] – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003.[8] 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 played a key role in the 1968 coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflicts between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalised the Iraq Petroleum Company and independent banks, eventually leaving the banking system insolvent due to inflation and bad loans.[9] Through the 1970s, Saddam consolidated his authority over the apparatus of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy grow rapidly. Positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunni Arabs, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.[10]
Saddam formally took power in 1979, although he had already been the de facto head of Iraq for several years. He suppressed several movements, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements which sought to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively,[11] and maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War. He ran a repressive authoritarian government,[12] which several analysts have described as totalitarian,[c] although the applicability of that label has been contested.[13] Saddam's rule was marked by numerous human rights abuses, including an estimated 250,000 arbitrary killings[14] and bloody invasions of neighboring Iran and Kuwait.[15]
In 2003, a coalition led by the United States invaded Iraq to depose Saddam. U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair erroneously accused Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to Al-Qaeda. Saddam's Ba'ath party was disbanded and the country's first democratic elections were held. After his capture on 13 December 2003, the trial of Saddam Hussein took place under the Iraqi Interim Government. On 5 November 2006, Saddam was convicted by an Iraqi court 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.[16]
Saddam's brother and father died of cancer before his birth. These deaths made Saddam's mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, so depressed that she attempted to abort her pregnancy and commit suicide. When her son Saddam was born on 28 April 1937 in Awja, a small village near Tikrit, Subha "would have nothing to do with him," and Saddam was taken in by an uncle.[17]
His mother remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly after his return and, according to a psychological profile created by the CIA, beat him regularly, sometimes to wake him up.[18][19] At about age 10, Saddam fled the family and returned to live in Baghdad with his uncle Khairallah Talfah, who became a fatherly figure to Saddam.[20] Talfah, the father of Saddam's future wife, was a devout Sunni Muslim and a veteran of the 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War between Iraqi nationalists and the United Kingdom, which remained a major colonial power in the region.[21] Talfah later became the mayor of Baghdad during Saddam's time in power, until his notorious corruption compelled Saddam to force him out of office.[20]