Human life, Valued? Protected? Or seen as Puppets dancing to a master’s melody? Imagine yourself in a dark cell, a single light hanging from a crack in the ceiling. Living every solitary moment with the stench of stale food, foul air, and echoes of screaming prisoners finding a way to detach themselves from this horrific life. Try picturing several other people reduced to shivering, skeletal, barely living bodies curled up on the floor. Now, picture torture. Your skin being ripped off, hard metal beating against your body, sharp knives tearing into your skin, and poisonous gas suffocating you to death.
Your crime: thinking the wrong thought.
While most major countries were enjoying the intellectual, political and sexual liberation brought forth by the 60’s, peace and love was not the main agenda in Iraq. 1968 saw huge political turmoil as Saddam Hussein, a leading member of the Ba’ath political party, a party that endorsed the creation of a single Islamic State in the world, overthrew Abdul Rahman Arif and appointed Al-Bakr as the president and himself as his deputy, and deputy chairman of the Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council.This, however, was a farce and in 1969, it became apparent that Hussein was the driving force behind Al-Bakr’s political administrations.
Like most dictators, Hussein began by working towards the benefit of Iraq by introducing free and compulsory education, modernizing the economy, granting free hospitalization, providing subsidies to farmers, supporting the families of soldiers, introducing electricity to most parts of the country, mechanizing agriculture building roads, promoting industries such as mining and nationalizing oil interests, earning, both, admiration and love from his people and an award from UNESCO.
But, as they say, uneasy is the head that wears the crown. Hussein’s work began shifting towards security in terms of, both, himself and his country. He began developing his chemical weapons program in 1972 and signed a 15 year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union.
Knowing that the Ba’athists only held the support of a 20% minority of the Sunnis, Hussein resorted to a “Big Brother” approach in his political ideology. Like his counterpart in Orwell’s 1984, he had thousands of portraits, posters, statues, and murals erected in his honor. One could spot his face on the sides of buildings, shops, walls, schools, airports, elements of clothing and the Iraqi currency. Apart from these, Saddam Hussein also employed the use of the secret police, torture, murders, rape, abductions, deportations, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical weapons, and the destruction of wetlands in order to maintain control over his people.
While the motto of the Ba’ath Party was “Unity, Liberty, and Socialism,” Hussein went as far as denying crucial Human Rights to his people if they did not follow his train of thought. Fearing retaliation, he restricted political participation at the National Level to members of Ba’ath, who constituted only 8% of the total population. Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble in groups unless it was to support the political party and police check points throughout the country restricted their movement inside the country and in terms of travelling abroad.
With paranoia over losing his position gaining strength day by day, Saddam began resorting to genocide, leading to the birth of the Al-Anfal Campaign of 1988. This was aimed towards the extermination of the Kurdish people, mainly the Shiites, who supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Methods of extermination included mass executions and disappearances of many noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas, and nerve killing agents that killed thousands. The capture and imprisonment of women, children, and men, destruction of homes and villages, including schools, mosques, and farms were amongst the many negative things that took place.
The Halabja Massacre, or Bloody Friday, aimed against the Kurdish people, occurred on March 18, 1988, during the end of the Iran-Iraq war and is considered a separate historical event from the Al-Anfal Campaign. The attack lasted five hours and mainly consisted of rockets and napalm. Methods of dying ranged from coughing, just dropping dead, regurgitating green toxic vomit, and hysterical laughter fits before eventually dying.
In 1991, after losing control of Kuwait during the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein massacred more members of the Kurdish community and citizens in southern Iraq who had begun to form an uprising against him. The estimates of deaths during this time range from 20,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shiites.
In 1994, new penalties such as amputation, branding, and extermination were awarded for crimes such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and desertion of the army. Various torture chambers that administered the use of body hooks and electrocution were also found throughout the country.
Saddam Hussein was captured and held in custody by U.S. forces at the U.S. base “Camp Copper,” on June 30th 2004. He along with 11 senior Ba’athist leaders were legally handed over to the Iraqi interim government to stand for trials against the several offences they had committed.
On December 30th 2006, Saddam Hussein met his fate- execution. He was sentenced to death after being charged with crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. His execution was run by media channels all over the globe, and the world watched his last walk to the gallows. Unprofessional as, relaying the execution live seemed, people over the world watched glued to their screens, the death of a man who had caused the death of a million.
Saddam Hussein’s tight regime lead not only to his downfall and execution but also to altering the perception of Iraq from a well-developing country making progress in the late 60’s and early 70’s to one which needed a strong helping hand. Leaders are meant to lead with passion and understanding; however in this case, it was evident that this leader was solely interested in ‘leading.’
ZAHRA AMIRUDDIN-3742
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