Saddam's road to power
Joining up with the clandestine Baath party, he participated in a failed attempt to assassinate Iraq's then military ruler, General Kassem. In a country where politics was always a violent game, his talents took him swiftly to the top.
He spent six months in prison in the slaying of his brother-in-law, a communist.
Saddam was forced to flee Iraq in 1959 and spent four years in exile in Cairo. When the Baath party finally seized power in 1968, he emerged as the number two figure behind General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr.
Now the power behind the throne, he took over when Bakr was quietly shunted aside in 1979 and began the reign of terror that was to keep him in power for so long.
Within a year, he launched Iraq into a massive and risky adventure.
Seeing himself as the new leader and champion of all the Arabs, he poured his army across the border into western Iran, hoping to defuse a potential threat from the new Islamic revolution there.
The war brought Saddam closer to the United States, which sold his regime arms and other aide as a bulwark against Iran.
They turned a blind eye to Iraq's human rights record and to atrocities like the gassing of the Kurdish villagers of Halabja.
After the ceasefire with Iran in 1988, Saddam's constant striving for regional supremacy intensified. His experts produced special long-range missiles and pursued ambitious nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes.
But war with Iran had crippled the Iraqi economy and the Iraqi leader desperately needed to increase his oil revenues. After accusing Kuwait of driving the price of oil down, he invaded, then annexed, the emirate.
The reality of war over Kuwait, when it came, was terrible. Weeks of US-led bombing, during what Saddam had christened the 'Mother of All Battles', reduced Iraq's infrastructure to ruins, and wrought havoc among front-line troops.
But this time, the Iraqi president's blunders did lead to consequences at home. Encouraged by the first President Bush to rise up, the Shia of southern Iraq revolted.
But the Western powers did nothing, as Saddam ruthlessly restored his grip on the south.
In the north, he attacked the rebellious Kurds. Millions fled into the freezing mountains and the West was forced to impose a "safe haven", maintained by a constant air umbrella, over the area.
To add to his humiliations, after his ejection from Kuwait, the Iraqi leader was forced to agree to the elimination of all his weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations.
But his continual obstruction of the UN weapons inspectors led to Anglo-American air attacks on Iraqi targets in 1998.
Stringent international sanctions remained in full force in the years after the Gulf War, crippling the country's economy and eventually causing a near-collapse of the Iraqi currency.
The election of President George W Bush, in 2000, increased the pressure. Washington now talked openly of "regime change".
And, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the US named Iraq as a "rogue state".
The UN's weapons inspectors returned to Iraq in November 2002 and resumed their search. Iraq destroyed a number of missiles and said it had neutralised its stocks of anthrax.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. But doubts lingered in the minds of many, most notably the US and the UK, which led calls for an attack on Iraq.
Coalition forces eventually invaded Iraq in March 2003, despite not having secured a new UN resolution authorising such action. Despite Iraqi resistance, the outcome was never in doubt.
Saddam's reign was brought to a violent end and he disappeared, to become the US military's most wanted fugitive in Iraq.
His rule was characterised by a mixture of megalomania and paranoia.
Beneath the surface, his power was wielded through the armed forces and a complex web of intelligence organisations.
Though he failed in his ambition of unifying the Arabs under his leadership, Saddam remained, until he was deposed, as defiant and brutal as ever.
Comments