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In March 2003, the U.S. military launched the Iraq War, and only nine months later completed the capture of Saddam. Just when the US military thought that it was safe, a haunted "ghost" appeared on the battlefield in Iraq, so that the US military could not search and arrest it, but was disturbed by it, and lost thousands of soldiers over the years.
Who is he? And how did you embark on the road of retaliation against the US military?
The birth of the Great Warlord
Saddam Hussein's early career was indispensable to the help of the United States, but he gradually escaped American control in the process of moving step by step to the center of power.
After becoming president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein took back ownership of oil mines in Western countries and nationalized the oil industry, which seriously damaged the interests of the United States.
In addition, considering Iraq's important strategic position, the United States wants to re-establish a pro-American regime.
So on March 20, 2003, the United States suddenly launched a war against Iraq without obtaining the authorization of the United Nations Security Council!
The United States Secretary of Defense has declared that Iraq harbors weapons of mass destruction and terrorists who want to overthrow Saddam Hussein's rule and provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.
At the same time, they will provide "security protection" for Iraq's oil and other natural resources. This last point reveals the true purpose of the United States, Sima Zhao's heart, which is known to passers-by!
At the beginning of the war, the Anglo-American coalition wanted a quick victory, so they mercilessly dropped more than 2,000 precision-guided bombs and 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and other cities and ports. But the indiscriminate bombing did not help the coalition to achieve a quick victory.
The commander sitting in the northern theater at this time was called Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri, the second-in-command of Saddam's regime. Under his command, the Iraqi army resisted stubbornly, putting coalition ground forces in heavy obstacles.
Ibrahim
The supply lines of the coalition forces are stretched too long, and on the Iraqi side, hundreds of patriots rush back from abroad every day to join the army and resist the invasion of the British and American empires.
The war once fell into a state of stalemate, but soon after, the British and American forces relied on the superiority of the air force and high-tech equipment, divided into multiple routes, attacked the city, and then formed a siege of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
By April 8, 2003, coalition forces approached Baghdad from the north and south and soon captured the military airport southeast of the city.
Then, the mighty American army advanced into Baghdad to declare the occupation of the city, and they tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein and began a brutal plunder.
Saddam
Saddam himself was not killed in the fall of the capital, but after eight months of difficult flight, he was arrested around Tikrit.
The U.S. military achieved its goal, and although they failed to provide any evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, they shamelessly claimed to bring peace and humanitarianism to Iraq.
It's just that the war seems to be over, but the conflict and turmoil are far from stopping, and the United States, which thinks it is at ease, will continue to pay the price for this illegal war.
According to a spokesman for the US military in Iraq, after Saddam's arrest, coalition forces will still be attacked more than 20 times a day, not much different from before Saddam's arrest.
Only then did the U.S. military realize what kind of quagmire it was in.
The three main forces that continue to resist are Iraq's native tribes, foreign jihadists, and remnants of Saddam's regime.
Among the remnants of Saddam's forces, another person stands out, he is Saddam's right hand - Ibrahim.
In fact, when the US military issued the "Playing Card Wanted" in the early days, it chose Ibrahim as an important target and printed his portrait on the "Plum Blossom K". But even though the targets on the wanted warrant were arrested one after another, Ibrahim was still difficult to find.
Until 2006, when Saddam Hussein was hanged after being tried by court, Ibrahim publicly stated in the media that he would inherit Saddam's will and continue to retaliate against the US troops who invaded Iraq.
The US military who received the news was not very nervous. They felt that winning the Iraq war was easy. The famous Saddam Hussein has been arrested, how big a storm can you make with a second-in-command?
Soon, the US military paid a heavy price for their arrogance and ignorance.
After Saddam's death, his second-in-command became the feared avengers on the battlefield in Iraq. The U.S. military has been wanted many times in Iraq without success, and has paid the price of thousands of soldiers' lives over the years.
His name was Ibrahim, and after the defeat in the Iraq War, why was he still loyal to Saddam Hussein and continued to resist the US military? What was his upbringing?
The most trusted second-in-command
Ibrahim was born in July 1942 in a small village called Dürr near Tikrit, where his family was very poor and his father sold ice to make a living.
Despite the hardships of life since childhood, Ibrahim grew into a relatively strong young man, which also provided the conditions for him to later join the army and change his fate.
As a teenager, Ibrahim was sworn in to join the Iraqi Baath Party, and was arrested and imprisoned in 1959 and 1962.
By 1963, Ibrahim had joined the National Guard of the Baath Party, and after the Baathist Party overthrew Qassem and established the Baathist regime, he became a member of the Baghdad National Guard.
But the newly appointed President Arif soon staged a coup d'état, forcing the Ba'ath Party to go underground again, and Ibrahim was arrested and imprisoned after his resistance failed.
But it was this imprisonment that brought Ibrahim and Saddam Hussein together. The two young men share similar ambitions and interests, and they are very similar in political views and family ideals.
Even more coincidentally, the two were born very closely, and they can even be counted as fellow countrymen. No one knows exactly what they talked about in prison, but they undoubtedly forged an unbreakable friendship ever since.
In July 1968, after their release from prison, the two men participated in a revolution led by Becker, which successfully overthrew the Arif regime and officially put Ibrahim on the political stage.
He successively served as editor-in-chief of the official Baath Party, chairman of the Supreme People's Labour Council, member of the Revolutionary Command Committee, Minister of Agrarian Reform, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of the Interior, and so on. It was not until September 1977 that Ibrahim finally entered the senior leadership of the Baath Party and officially became Saddam's right-hand man.
It is difficult to say that behind this promotion, there is no Saddam Hussein's promotion. Saddam Hussein admired Ibrahim's sharp mind and straightforward personality, and regarded him as his best friend and loyal follower.
And Ibrahim was also impressed by Saddam's temperament as a commander, recognized Saddam Hussein in his heart, and admired his unremitting efforts for Iraq's development.
By 1979, Becker had resigned due to illness. Saddam Hussein was crowned president of the republic and concurrently served as general secretary of the Baath Party, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Committee, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, reaching the pinnacle of power.
Accordingly, Ibrahim was promoted to deputy secretary of the Baath Party, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and even allowed to act as chairman and president of Iraq on special occasions.
Since then, Ibrahim has become a veritable number two figure in Saddam's regime. It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of his presidency, Saddam Hussein paid great attention to his own security work.
He has been in the chaos of Iraqi politics for many years, assassinating presidents and participating in coup d'état operations many times, so he knows the fragility of power, the unpredictability of people's hearts, and he has created too many enemies along the way.
It was in this context that Saddam deliberately appointed Ibrahim as his head of security.
In addition, he ordered that anyone who met him should undergo a strict body search and that no weapon should be carried.
And the trusted Ibrahim not only did not have to be examined, but could even go to Saddam Hussein with a gun and talk closely with him.
Later, Ibrahim married Saddam's sons and daughters, and on the basis of their close friends, the two added a layer of in-laws and became more inseparable.
All of this may reveal why Ibrahim was trusted and why he was loyal to Saddam. But we still cannot ignore his own military command skills.
Ibrahim has participated in the military invasion of Iran, commanded the suppression of Kurdish military riots, as well as the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Gulf War in 1991, and the attack on Saudi Arabia.
Until the 2003 Iraq War, Ibrahim was based in the north and served as commander of the northern theater.
It's just that under the crushing of military strength, he can't escape the fate of defeat after all. Ibrahim watched as patches of land were encroached upon by the U.S. military, watched the capital fall, and watched his best friend Saddam Hussein be arrested and hanged.
The war failed, the government collapsed, and many high-ranking officials and dignitaries fled abroad, but Ibrahim strengthened his belief that he wanted to avenge his friends and make the US military that invaded Iraq pay!
"Plum K" that brought terror to the US military
After Saddam's death, the U.S. military thought they were at ease, but at this time a "ghost" named Ibrahim appeared on the battlefield, making the U.S. military unable to hunt down and be disturbed, losing thousands of soldiers over the years.
How exactly did Ibrahim gather forces in secret and retaliate against the U.S. military? First, we have to start with Saddam, who was well aware of the power gap between Iraq and the United States and prepared for the worst.
When U.S. forces captured Baghdad in April 2003, he embarked on a flight while delegating most of the decision-making power to his "leadership."
This measure not only preserved a certain resistance force, but also made it possible to prevent the country from falling into a leaderless chaos after his arrest.
With this premise in mind, Ibrahim responded and secretly reorganized the remnants of the Ba'ath Party.
Among them were not only Saddam's loyal followers, but also the Iraqi army, which was disbanded after the war, and the Republican Guard, which was not properly placed.
It was not until December 30, 2006, that Saddam was hanged, and Ibrahim, who learned the news, burst into tears. Just a few days later, he announced his successor to the leadership of the Iraqi Baath Party.
In a propaganda document, Ibrahim vowed to free the country from shameless and brutal criminals and bring about the reunification of Iraq.
In the course of his war against the U.S. military in Iraq and the Iraqi government that the U.S. had fostered, Ibrahim gave full play to the essence of guerrilla warfare.
Taking advantage of his familiarity with the terrain, he launched surprise attacks on the enemy from all sides and by various means. Or sniping from a distance, or setting bombs in advance, often retreating in a hurry after one hit. 、
Such a long and continuous harassment has made the US military miserable. The U.S. government sees Ibrahim as a big problem and tries in every possible way to catch him. Increasing bounties, buying informants, and setting traps were all easily defused by Ibrahim.
The U.S. military even made many high-profile publicity that Ibrahim had been killed, but the elusive Ibrahim always used his actions to debunk the lies of the U.S. military and make them pay for provocations.
According to statistics, to win the initial Iraq war, the United States only spent $23 billion on military spending, and 262 soldiers were killed.
In the subsequent security war, the United States put in a total of more than 4,000 soldiers and hundreds of billions of funds!
Under the counterattack of the resistance army led by Ibrahim, Iraq has become an endless quagmire, which makes the easily involved US military deeply trapped in it.
It was not until 2010 that Obama declared the end of the Iraq War and gradually withdrew his combat troops from Iraq, and by the end of the following year, all US troops in Iraq had been withdrawn, marking the official end of the nearly decade-long Iraq War.
But Ibrahim's legacy did not end there, and his Baath Party remained active in the subsequent Iraqi civil war.
By uniting with ISIS, Ibrahim launched a fierce offensive against the Iraqi government. And with the legend of Ibrahim is the news of his death.
As early as April 17, 2015, a lieutenant general of the Iraqi government army claimed to have seen the body of suspected Ibrahim and had sent it to Baghdad for DNA testing. At the same time, there are also relevant photos circulating on the Internet, and the person is indeed somewhat similar to Ibrahim.
For a while, opinions were divided. An armed group claimed that Ibrahim was dead, but the Baath Party quickly denied it, and Kurdish news reported that the Iraqi government had no DNA to test against.
Until April 2016, television footage broadcast in Saudi Arabia showed Ibrahim in military uniform.
In 2018, the news of Ibrahim's death from a blood disease spread, and people thought it was another fake news, but this time Ibrahim's own daughter also came forward to confirm this fact.
The remnants of the Iraqi Baath Party did not announce Ibrahim's death on their social accounts until October 2020.
A generation of heroes has finally fallen, and as outsiders, it is difficult for us to measure Ibrahim's merits. But looking back at the long war in Iraq, we cannot but be in awe of the suffering.
We thank the motherland for its prosperity and strength today, which has provided us with a harmonious and stable development environment. It is precisely for this reason that individual talents should work hard to contribute to the collective cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics!
What do you think about this hero who has made the US military unstable for more than ten years? Welcome to leave your thoughts in the comment area.