Abstract
In the fourteenth century the Mongol hordes of Tamerlane swept across Mesopotamia, destroying cities and slaughtering entire populations. In 1394, at the small town of Tikrit on the Tigris river, a hundred miles north of Baghdad, the Mongols erected a memorial pyramid with the skulls of their slaughtered victims.1 The fortress of Tikrit — Edward Gibbon’s ‘impregnable fortress of independent Arabs’2 — had fallen to the invaders, but the reputation of the town lived on. Here it was that Saladin was born in 1138. Here it was, some eight centuries later, that Saddam Hussein was born.
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Notes
P. Hitti, The Arabs: A Short History, Chicago, Gateway, 1970, p. 248.
S. Lloyd, Twin Rivers: A Brief History of Iraq from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 1943, p. 126.
There are several biographies of Saddam. The official work is Amir Iskander’s Saddam Hussein: The Fighter, the Thinker and the Man, Hachette, Paris, 1980;
Fouad Matar’s Saddam Hussein — A Biography, Highlight Productions, London, 1990 is often quoted;
and other recent works include: Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautski, Saddam Hussein, A Political Biography, Futura, London, 1991
and (with some biographical material) Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, Unholy Babylon, Victor Gollancz, London, 1991;
and Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, Times Books, Random House, New York, 1990.
J. Bulloch and H. Morris, Saddam’s War, Faber & Faber, London, 1991, pp. 31–2.
Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear, Hutchinson-Radius, London, 1990, pp. 29–30.
Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1978, pp. 985–90.
A. Baram, ‘The ruling political élite in Ba’thi Iraq, 1968–1980: the changing features of a collective profile’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 21, 1989, p. 452.
Abbas Kelidar, Iraq: the Search for Stability, Conflict Studies, No. 59, The Institute for the Study of Conflict, London, 1975, p. 9.
Saddam Hussein, al-Thawra wa al-Nadhra al-Jadidah, Dar al-Hurriyah, Baghdad, 1981, p. 149; quoted by Karsh and Rautski, op. cit., pp. 176–7.
Saddam Hussein, al-Dimuqratiyya Masdar Quwwa Li al-Fard wa al-Mujtama, al-Thawra, Baghdad, 1977, p. 19; quoted by Karsh and Rautski, op. cit., p. 177. ‘Teach students and pupils to contradict their parents’ — compare with Matthew 10:34.
Colonial Office Sessional Papers, CO 696/3, Administrative Reports for Iraq 1920, Mesopotamian Ministry of Justice Reports for 1920, Amarah Division, p. 7; quoted by Deborah Cobbett, ‘Women in Iraq’, in Saddam’s Iraq: Revolution or Reaction?, Zed Books and CARDRI (Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq), London, 1989, p. 123.
Colonial Office, Administrative Reports for Occupied Territories of Iraq, 1917, Department of Education, Annual Report; quoted by Cobbett, op. cit., p. 124.
Colonial Office, Special Report by His Majesty’s Government on the Progress of Iraq 1920–1931 (HMSO for the League of Nations, 1931); quoted by Cobbett, op. cit., p. 124.
Saddam Hussein, ‘The Revolution and the Historical Role of Women’, speech no. 5, in On Social and Foreign Affairs in Iraq, Croom Helm, London, 1979.
Amal al-Sharqi, ‘The Emancipation of Iraqi Women’, in Tim Niblock (ed.), Iraq: the Contemporary State, Croom Helm, London, 1982, pp. 83–5.
Christine Moss Helms, Iraq: Eastern Flank of the Arab World, The Brookings Institution, Washineton, DC, 1984, p. 99.
Cited by Patrick Brogan, World Conflicts, Bloomsbury, London, 1989, p. 296.
Majid Abd al-Ridha, al-Masal al-Kurdiya fi’l-Iraq (The Kurdish Question in Iraq), al-Tariq al-Jadid, Baghdad, 1975, p. 83; quoted by Peter Sluglett, ‘The Kurds’ in Saddam’s Iraq, Revolution or Reaction?, op. cit., p. 182.
Sluglett, op. cit., p. 189; cites Mustafa Nazdar, ‘The Kurds in Syria’, in Gerald Chailand (ed.), People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan, Zed Press, London, 1980, pp. 211–19.
O. Bengio, Mered ha-Kurdim be-Iraq, Hakibutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv, 1989, pp. 67–9; quoted by Karsh and Rautski, op. cit., p. 75.
Saddam Hussein, Khandaq Walind am Khandaqan, Dar al-Thawra, Baghdad, 1977, p. 31; quoted by Karsh and Rautski, op. cit., p. 80.
J. M. Abdulghani, Iraq and Iran: The Years of Crisis, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md, and Croom Helm, London, 1984, pp. 156–7.
Tareq Y. Ismail, Iraq and Iran: Roots of Conflict, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, 1982, p. 66.
D. Dowell, The Kurds, Minority Rights Group Report 23, London, 1985, pp. 22–3.
Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War, I. B. Tauris, London, 1989, p. 23.
Jumhouri-ye Islami, 2 January 1980; quoted by Dilip Hiro, The Longest War, Paladin, London, 1990, p. 34.
Alexandre de Marenches and Christine Ockrent, Dans le Secret des Princes, Stock, Paris, 1986, p. 234.
Dilip Hiro, Iran Under the Ayatollahs, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1985. p. 168.
Frederick W. Axelgard, ‘War and Oil. Implications for Iraq’s Postwar Role in Gulf Security’, in Frederick W. Axelgard (ed.), Iraq in Transition, Mansell, London, 1986, p. 4.
Hella Pick, The Guardian, London, 6 July 1988.
D. Middleton, The New York Times, 23 September 1985.
Another 1985 estimate (L. Bushkoff, Boston Sunday Globe, 22 September 1985) puts the total casualties at 1.5 million.
R. O. Freedman, ‘Soviet Policy Towards Ba’athist Iraq 1968–1979’, paper delivered at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, 10 June 1980; cited by A. Abbas, ‘The Iraqi Armed Forces, Past and Present’, in Saddam’s Iraq, Revolution or Reaction?, op. cit., p. 220.
Quoted by Kenneth R. Timmerman, The Death Lobby, How the West Armed Iraq, Fourth Estate, London, 1992, p. 21.
Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, Bodley Head, London, 1992, pp. 323–4.
Jimmy Carter, The Blood of Abraham, Inside the Middle East, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1985, pp. 45–6.
Robert Lacey, The Kingdom, Fontana, London, 1982, p. 456.
Richard M. Preece, United States-Iraqi Relations, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, July 1986, p. 12; The New York Times, 11 January 1984.
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© 1994 Geoff Simons
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Simons, G. (1994). Into the Era of Saddam. In: Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23147-8_7
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