In 1937, in a small village in Tikrit, a woman named Sabha gave birth to a boy, and when Sabha became pregnant, her husband and eldest son died, and Sabha tried to commit suicide in great grief, but was fortunately saved by a neighbor. The woman blamed her tragic fate on the fetus in her womb and named him "Saddam Hussein," which means "antagonist" in Arabic. After the birth of the child, Sabha gave the baby directly to his brother Hilara, who served in the Iraqi army, and then turned around and married another.
Four years later, Hilala was sentenced to six years in prison for her involvement in an anti-British military coup. At the age of 4, Saddam was sent back to her mother, who by this time had three children with his stepfather, and the family was very unwelcome to Saddam Hussein, who had arrived unexpectedly. After six miserable years in his stepfather's house, his uncle was released from prison, and his stepfather immediately sent him to his uncle again. With the help of his uncle, 10-year-old Saddam Hussein attended elementary school. In 1955, Hilala secured a position as a primary school teacher in Baghdad and the family moved to Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein in his youth
At that time, the Middle East nationalist movement was in full swing, and Egypt's victory in the Suez Canal War in 1956 completely ignited national enthusiasm in the Arab world and set off a wave of resistance to British and French rule in the Middle East. Egypt, though militarily defeated, won politically and succeeded in recovering the Suez Canal. We'll talk about the Suez Canal in a separate article, incidentally talking about one of the hottest topics on the Internet, the Kra Isthmus, and think that as long as the Thai government's brain does not enter the water, the Kra Isthmus project cannot be launched. Nasser, who led Egypt to victory, became a political icon in the Arab world, he was hailed as saladin of the new era, and his advocacy of pan-Arabism became the mainstream of the Arab world. Many young people were inspired by him to join the revolutionary tide of Arab nationalism, and it was during this period that Saddam Hussein joined the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which originated in Syria with the aim of reviving pan-Arabism, and the central idea was that the Arab world should not exist in so many countries, but should exist as a unified state, and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party was only one of them.
The absolute central figure in the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, Egyptian President Nasser, the one on the left does not need me to introduce
The situation in Iraq at that time was strikingly similar to that in Egypt, the same British-backed royal rule, the same important economic lifeline of the country was controlled by the British, and the Iraqi oil fields at that time were controlled by the Iraqi Oil Company, which was controlled by Britain, France, the United States and the Netherlands, and Iraq could only share one-eighth of the huge oil trade profits. In this context, on July 31, 1958, a coup d'état against the Iraqi royal family, led by two junior officers in the Iraqi army, Qasim and Arif, broke out, which was so tragic that all members of the royal family except King Fisher's sister were killed by rebel soldiers. At this time, the British Empire was already weakening, and it was no longer able to send troops to Iraq to re-establish the royal family as it did in 1941, and the Iraqi royal family was extinct at this time.
But serious clashes ensued shortly after the coup d'état between Qasim and Arif, which was supported by the Iraqi baath party and the Kurdish-dominated Communist Party of Iraq, in addition to the Iraqi army. The Ba'ath Party-backed Arif's demands for Iraq to be incorporated into the newly formed United Egypt-Syria Republic may seem inconceivable to us today that one country would give up its independence to join another. If you know the history of Arabia and the origins of the countries of the modern Middle East, you can understand why such a trend of thought appeared, Iraq is a new state formed by the British forcibly merging the three provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra of the Ottoman Empire, you can understand it as the Middle East version of the Yugoslav Federation. Qasim, the leader of the other revolution, was inclined to the Predominantly Kurdish Communist Party of Iraq, where Arif was exiled in defeat and baath party was hit hard.
In 1959, the Baath Party launched an uprising against Qasim in Mosul, but it soon failed under the suppression of Qasim, which was supported by the Kurds, and a large number of Baath Party members were killed or exiled. The Ba'ath Party, which failed the uprising, decided to take the assassination method to deal with Qasim, which seemed to Chinese to be a child, but there was a tradition of assassination in the Middle East, such as the death of two of the four Muslim caliphs, Umar and Ali, who died in the assassination, and the immortality of these two people would have a huge change in history.
On October 7, 1959, as Kassem's convoy crossed the street, Saddam and his accomplices fired wildly at the convoy, the driver was beaten into a sieve on the spot, and he himself was shot in a pool of blood, Qasim's guards immediately began to fight back, and during the battle Saddam Wast was shot in the leg, one of his companions was killed on the spot, and when he saw Kasem fall down, Saddam thought the assassination was successful, so he fled the scene.
Who knew that the next day he learned that Qasim had only been shot in the chest, but he was not dead, and that a full hunt ensued. In a panic, Saddam Hussein hid for one night at the home of one of his Fellow Tikrits, but saddam hussein was so terrified that he had to return to Tikrit only where he would feel safe.
The level of poverty in Tikrit is also among the highest in Iraq, where the people are aggressive but extremely grouped, in our words, poor and miserable, and absolutely loyal to their tribe. This characteristic of the Tikrit people also profoundly affected Saddam Hussein's life, in his life years as long as he felt danger he would return to Tikrit, even if the whole world is against him, the people of Tikrit will inevitably protect him, the final outcome also proves this, after the 2003 Iraq War no country dared to take Saddam Hussein, only his hometown still provided him with shelter, on December 13, 2003 Saddam Hussein was captured in his hometown of Tikrit.
Saddam Hussein in court
What followed was like a legendary journey, because there was no corroboration but the dictation of Saddam Hussein himself, who swam across the Tigris River with his wounded leg. Shortly after returning to Tikrit, he and a group of some 500 Ba'ath Party members were transferred to Syria, where Saddam Hussein became acquainted with The Ba'ath Party founder Michel Affleck, who had a great influence on Saddam's political career. Soon after, the Ba'ath party members were transferred to Egypt, where he studied law at Cairo University and became formally engaged to his cousin, Sajida Hellala. Saddam Hussein, with Affleck's support, served as head of the Cairo branch of the Ba'ath Party, but in fact this position survived in name only because the Egyptian-Syrian United Kingdom under Nasser strictly enforced the party ban policy, and the Ba'ath Party was ordered to be dissolved, and the founder of the Ba'ath Party, Michel Afflek, was carried out by the founder of the Ba'ath Party, which was met with great opposition from the Ba'ath Party and indirectly contributed to the rise of the Syrian Alawite faction.
On 8 February 1963, with the support of the Baath Party, the exiled Abdul Salam Arif made a comeback to stage another coup d'état. The Ba'ath Party learned the lessons of the previous failed Uprising in Mosul and stepped up its infiltration of Iraqi forces. The day before the coup, the Ba'ath Party assassinated the Iraqi Air Force commander loyal to Khasem, while planes supporting the rebels raided baghdad airfields that night, blowing up runways. Kassem fled into the Ministry of Defence building after learning of the coup, and the next day Arif mobilized two brigades of troops to besiege the Ministry of Defence, and the next day Kasem was killed. The coup was far more tragic than the 58-year coup, in which more than 5,000 people died directly, and the ruling Arif government began a bloody massacre of the Iraqi Communist Party that supported Qasim, killing tens of thousands of Communists in less than a month, until the Soviets calmed down under the threat of severing diplomatic relations. Therefore, the time of the coup d'état was during the Month of Ramadan in the Islamic calendar, so it was called the "Ramadan Coup".
Saddam Hussein was still a little transparent in the Ba'ath Party, he only got news of the Ramadan coup on television, and after four years in exile he was finally able to return to Iraq. After the Ramadan coup d'état Arif became the president of Iraq, and the leader of the Baath Party became Hassan Becker and became the prime minister of Iraq. Hassan Becker is also a Tikrit and, like Saddam, is from the Albnash tribe and a former comrade-in-arms of Saddam's uncle, Hirara. We have said that the people of Tikrit are extremely exclusive, and with these connections, Saddam Hussein, who returned to Baghdad shortly after his return to Baghdad, became an assistant to Hassan Becker, whose main job was to massacre the Iraqi Communist Party and the Kurds. In less than a year since, the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein's command has carried out a large-scale purges of The Kurds, village by tribe, using chemical weapons in addition to tanks and artillery, creating more than 100,000 Kurdish refugees. It was also this bloody experience that taught Saddam Hussein a truth, and the most important governing idea of his life, that fear is the best means of conquest, and if it is not enough, continue to kill. Saddam Hussein did not hide his tyrannical tactics, and even recorded the process on television during the Ba'ath Party purge on July 22, 1979.
But just nine months later, the Ba'ath Party and Arif fell out over political discord, And Arif, a huge fan of Nasser, was a big fan of Nasser's policies, and Nasser was resolute in enforcing the party's policy of banning, and soon Arif raised a butcher's knife against the Ba'ath Party, Hassan Becker was dismissed, members of the Ba'ath Party within the government were either killed or arrested, and all Ba'ath Party-owned media were banned. The Ba'ath Party's way of resisting Arif was assassination, and the task fell on Saddam Hussein, who had experience in assassination, and the operation failed unexpectedly, and Saddam was arrested and imprisoned. But two years later the turnaround came, Arif died in an accident - the helicopter he was riding on crashed, Arif's brother took over after Arif's death, the big Arif's tactics were far less tough than his brother's, the dying Ba'ath Party, which had been beaten by Arif, became active again, and Saddam Hussein successfully escaped from prison.
Saddam Hussein was not a soldier, but he always appeared as a soldier
The success of the Ramadan Revolution was also due to the support of the CIA, and Arif's return to power and the cessation of the nationalization of the Iraqi oil company were greatly appreciated by the Americans, and Arif claimed to be the third pillar of the United States in the Middle East world after Israel and Saudi Arabia. But the Third Middle East War on June 5, 1967, slapped the Arif administration with a strong slap, and iraq and Israel sent missions to the United States at the same time as the war was about to break out, and while the Americans were playing diplomatic rhetorical games with Iraqi representatives, the U.S. government had reached an aid agreement with Israeli representatives about the impending war, and the Iraqi government knew nothing about it. The Defeat of the Arab World in the Third Middle East War, the bankruptcy of Nasserism, or pan-Arabism, and the heavy blow to the pro-American Arif government.
The Ba'ath Party took the opportunity to raise the slogan "Iraq of iraqis" and in 1968 launched another coup d'état to overthrow the Government of Grand Arif, and Iraqi Baath Party leader Hassan Bakr became President of Iraq. The people of Tikrit were extremely united, and Hassan Becker's son had married Hilara's second daughter, Saddam had done years of dirty work for him, and now had another layer of in-law relations, and Hassan Becker had promoted Saddam to the position of vice president.
At the age of 31, Saddam Hussein became iraq's president and chairman of the Iraqi Revolution Steering Committee, Iraq's number two figure. But if we look back at Saddam Hussein's experience, it is really lackluster except for two failed assassination attempts, especially since he has not achieved anything on the road to power by the Ba'ath Party. Watch the next episode, The Pretender's Victory!