Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003 during the United States-led invasion of Iraq. He previously served as the vice president from 1968 to 1979 and also as the prime minister from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. A leading member of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, he was a proponent of Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism. The policies and ideologies he championed are collectively known as Saddamism, a right-wing variant of Ba'athism.

Born near the city of Tikrit to a Sunni Arab family, Saddam joined the revolutionary Ba'ath Party in 1957. He played a key role in the 17 July Revolution that brought the Ba'athists to power in Iraq and made him vice president under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. During his tenure as vice president, Saddam nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company, diversified the economy, introduced free healthcare and education, and supported women's rights. He also presided over the defeat of the Kurdish insurgency in the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War and signed the Algiers Agreement with Iran in 1975, thereby settling territorial disputes along the Iran–Iraq border. Following al-Bakr's resignation in 1979, Saddam formally took power. During his presidency, positions of power in the country were mostly filled with Sunni Arabs, a minority that made up only about a fifth of the Iraqi population.