IRAQ - Profile - Saddam Hussein 'Al Takriti'.

On April 28, 1999, Saddam Hussein celebrated his 62nd birthday in events of gigantic proportions. While massive festivities were staged across the central areas which his Baathist regime controls, he kept to his tradition of spending his birthday with children in Baghdad.

This time the children and students came from all of Iraq's provinces, including the Kurdish north. As Saddam entered the hall, they sang happy birthday. A boy read from the Koran. Then a girl gave a speech seeking permission to present a play. Later each province gave a performance reflecting the differing traditions of the area.

Izzat Ibrahim 'Al Douri', the man next to Saddam in the ruling hierarchy in his capacity as deputy chairman of the Revolution Command Council (RCC), presided over celebrations in Takrit - Saddam's hometown. About 7,000 invited Baath Party leaders, officers and dignitaries took part in a rally, which was also attended by Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister whose rank usually is next to that of Vice President Ramadan (see below). During a huge parade there, a woman dressed in white emerged from a giant flower, carrying Saddam's portrait.

Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan 'Al Jazrawi', the man next to Izzat Ibrahim in the ruling hierarchy, presided the inauguration of a new resort town called Saddam's Thar Thar City. The 1.5 million sq km site dominates the Thar Thar lake, Iraq's largest, and includes all the modern amenities of a new town.

This was the first town to be built in Iraq since 1979, when Saddam became president and RCC chairman. Addressing several thousand guests who filled the main square and grandstand, Ramadan said: "This city was built in the age of Saddam Hussein and during this period of sanctions... This shows our ability to build such a beautiful city and to fight as well".

Among many projects inaugurated on the occasion of Saddam's birthday were a $10m dam on one of the tributaries of the Tigris river and five mosques. In 1998 Saddam gave instructions for a new mosque to be built every year to mark his birthday.

Born in Takrit on April 28, 1937, of a Sunni peasant family, Saddam's career has become a mix of reality and myth. This has been enhanced by the fact that

Takrit, on the Tigris, was previously known as the birthplace of Saladin. Takrit became the Sunni base from which the Baath Party emerged after World War Two.

Saddam formally became a member of the Baath Party in 1957, when he was aged 20. He soon gained a reputation as a ruthless man, participating in the failed attempt to assassinate Iraq's then dictator Gen. Abdel Karim Kassim in 1959. He kept shooting at Kassim's forces until he was wounded in the leg and ran out of bullets. He was captured and jailed. Later he fled to Syria and then to Egypt, where he resumed his studies.

Saddam's flight and subsequent return to Iraq has become part of the legend surrounding him. He was well placed in the Baath Party's civilian leadership, when its military wing under Gen. Ahmad Hassan Al Bakr (a relative of Saddam's) overthrew the nationalist government of Gen. Abdel Salam Aref on July 16, 1968. With the somewhat paternal support of Bakr, Saddam quickly pushed himself upwards in the Baath hierarchy. In 1969 he became RCC vice chairman and emerged as the strongman of Iraq. In July 1979, Saddam took over from Bakr and executed his Syria-backed opponents (see Saddam's detailed profile in OMT Vol. 36).

Saddam's July 1979 coup was against both the military wing of the Iraqi Baath Party and Syria's rival military Baathists of President Hafez Al Assad. In late 1978, Assad and Bakr had agreed on merging Iraq with Syria and Saddam had been strongly opposed to that as the Syrian ruler intended to control the union.

King Hussein of Jordan (who died in February 1999) had played a key role against that union in the first half of 1979. When Saddam Hussein visited Amman in May 1979, King Hussein gave him an intelligence file which showed that Bakr and Assad were plotting to remove from power or liquidate the entire civilian faction of Iraq's Baath regime. That was to be done after the merger was in place and Saddam Hussein was to be killed.

On his return to Baghdad, Saddam secretly began a thorough investigation and in July 1979 announced "the big plot" inspired by Syria. Saddam put Bakr and all the main Baath military leaders under house arrest. Saddam arrested and immediately executed more than 20 Baathist leaders accused of taking part in the plot, and cut all links with Syria.

The US and Israel, as well as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, were against the proposed Syria-Iraq union. As he killed that merger, Saddam gradually became the man in whom Washington saw the best candidate to confront the Khomeini regime of Iran.

The Khomeini Shiite Islamic movement had come to power in Iran in early 1979 and had begun to threaten the Arab Gulf states as well as the US interests in the Middle East. In May 1980, then King Khalid of Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein held a summit meeting in Ta'if, together with the Emir of Kuwait Shaikh Jabir Al Ahmad Al Sabah. It was Shaikh Jabir who, at the summit, asked Saddam to begin a war against Iran; and Shaikh Jabir pledged that Kuwait would cover the cost of such a war. King Khalid and then Saudi Crown Prince Fahd also pledged that Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states would contribute heavily in covering the war's costs.

In 1979-80 Iran was threatening Kuwait, Bahrain and the other Gulf regimes. Iranian Ayatullahs repeatedly promised that Kuwait would have a Shiite revolution to become an Islamic republic. Similar threats were faced by Bahrain and others. In Saudi Arabia, the Shiites of the Eastern Province revolted in the autumn of 1979, and the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979 was followed in December by the seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca by radical Saudi Islamists.

It was said that, during the Ta'if summit, Fahd relayed to Saddam an oral message from then US President Carter pledging that the US would give Iraq all satellite intelligence information on Iran's military movements in the event of such a war. It became clear to Saddam that the world was on his side against Iran, since the Soviet Union was Iraq's ally at the time as well. Reportedly Saddam agreed that he would start a war against Iran but asked the Saudi and Kuwaiti rulers to work against an alliance between Iran and Syria because, he said, such an alliance would be against both Iraq and the Arab Gulf regimes as well as against US interests in the Middle East.

Saddam began the war against Iran in September 1980. Immediately, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other Arab Gulf states poured billions of dollars into Baghdad. Iraq in late 1980 and throughout 1981 had an unprecedented economic boom. It was the busiest and most profitable workshop in the Middle East.

During that Gulf war, 1980-1988, Saddam's regime was the only state in the world and in the history of the Cold War to enjoy full support from the two rival super-powers: the US and the USSR. That was because both super-powers wanted to see Khomeini's regime fall and to them Saddam was a hero in August 1988, when a humiliated Khomeini accepted the UN ceasefire offer. Thus, Iran was defeated.