Saddam Hussein - a profile

By ALISTAIR LYON

DUBAI - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has survived wars, uprisings, coup plots and assassination attempts in more than two decades at the helm of a powerful police state.

He will need all his street-fighting instincts to emerge alive, let alone in power, following a US-British invasion to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Still a hero to some Arabs for his defiance of the United States and Israel, Saddam is demonised today as evil incarnate by some of the Western powers that armed and supported him in the 1980s as a bulwark against the Islamic revolution in Iran.

US President George W. Bush accuses the 65-year-old Iraqi leader of defying UN demands that he abandon his banned chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic weapons programmes. He says Saddam has links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and poses a deadly threat to the region, the West and his own people.

Saddam says he no longer possesses any prohibited weapons and scorns the idea that his anti-Islamist Baathist government is secretly in cahoots with bin Laden's militant conspirators.

Iraq's Muslim neighbours believe that Saddam's once-vaunted military, crushed in the 1991 Gulf War and further weakened by more than 12 years of UN sanctions, is a paper tiger.

They fear that Iraq might fall apart without Saddam's iron grip, spreading instability across a volatile Middle East where many governments could face challenges to their legitimacy.

However, Arabs, Turks and Iranians can do little to prevent the United States from making Saddam its next target in the "war on terror" declared after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Saddam Hussein's personality cult pervades Iraq.

His craggy visage stares from countless heroic portraits and statues. Some portray him as a new Nebuchadnezzar or Saladin. Others show him in a white suit, military uniform, tribal costume, Kurdish dress, even a Bavarian hunting outfit. Saddam, whose name means "collider", has become the face of Iraq.

Known to admire former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Saddam is no ideologue, but readily appeals to Arab nationalism, Islam or Iraqi patriotism to cement his personal power.

His global fame is partly due to Bush's determination to go after "the man who tried to kill my dad" -- a reference to an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate Bush senior in Kuwait in 1993.

Saddam has led Iraq into two disastrous wars, with Iran from 1980 to 1988, and with a US-led coalition that expelled Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991 after a seven-month occupation.

His disputes with the United Nations over disarmament have helped keep crippling UN sanctions in place since 1990.

UN arms inspectors withdrew in December, 1998, after seven years of cat-and-mouse games with the Iraqis. A US-British bombing blitz ensued and Iraq did not let the inspectors back until November, when the UN Security Council gave Saddam a final opportunity to disarm or face "serious consequences".

Saddam lost control of the Kurdish-held north in 1991, but his grip on power, buttressed by overlapping security agencies and murky clan, tribe and patronage networks, remains strong.

He has outlasted foes ranging from Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Bush's father, former President George Bush. And in an October 2002 referendum, the entire electorate voted to give Saddam another seven years in power, his officials claimed.

Saddam was born on April 28, 1937, according to his official biography, in the village of al-Awja, near the poor and violent town of Tikrit, 150km north of Baghdad.

His two sons, Uday and Qusay, seem as ruthless and violent as their father. Uday nearly died in an assassination attempt in 1996. Qusay runs the Special Security Organisation that protects the president, and commands the 15,000-strong Special Republican Guard, the troops most loyal to Saddam.

On Saturday, Saddam placed Qusay in charge of the vital Baghdad-Tikrit area after dividing Iraq into four military districts to confront a threatened US-led invasion. No new role was announced for Uday as Iraq went onto a war footing.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq