Dan Snow's History Hit - The Rise and Fall of Saddam Hussein

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Perhaps one of the best-known modern dictators, Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq for nearly 30 years before eventually being overthrown in 2003 by the US Coalition. Known for his authoritarian rule, the use of chemical weapons against his own people, and multiple invasions of neighbouring countries - Saddam Hussein's legacy is a dark one. But how did he become President of Iraq in 1979, and what did the Iraqi people really think of him?In the latest episode of our Iraq mini-series, reflecting on 20 years since the invasion of the country, James is joined by Dr Afzal Ashraf to examine just who Saddam Hussein was. Looking at the effect British Colonialism had on his early political career, the relationship between Iraq and the United States, and how lasting Cold War tensions defined this period - how did Saddam Hussein hold onto power for so long, and just who was helping him?The senior Producer was Elena Guthrie. The Assistant Producer was Annie Coloe. Edited by Annie Coloe.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the History Hit Warfare podcast. I'm your host, James Patton Rogers. This episode is part of our special series on the Iraq War, marking 20 years since the start of the war itself. To cover the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein, we have brought in an old friend of the podcast, Dr. Afi Ashraf. Now, Afi was in the Royal Air Force during the Iraq war, and he was actually based out of Saddam's presidential palace once it had been taken over by allied forces between 2004 and 2005. And what Afi provides us is the geopolitics of Iraq and how this made the leader, the dictator, that was Saddam Hussein. Afi, I don't know too much about Saddam Hussein. Really keen to learn more. One thing I do know is that he was born into poverty and that his father died, I think, not long after he was born.

He died when he was very young, right? Well, in think, not long after he was born. He died when he was very young, right? Well, in fact, he died before he was born. And you're absolutely right. He was born on 28th of April 1937 in a village near Tukrut. And that was one of the poorest regions in the country. But it was a tribal society with strict, violent codes, as most tribal societies had. You know, those codes were violent only to the disloyal. Even though he was born in poverty without a father, he was brought up in Baghdad by an uncle who put him through some basic education, obviously looked after him and paid for him and so on. So it's one of those very difficult situations, but very typical situations.

And it's worth remembering that at that time, there was virtually no infrastructure in that country. And that's really worth bearing in mind, because all of these things shape this man when he comes to power, in a way that I think is very surprising to most of us in the West, because there is this image constructed of him. But if we were to sort of very quickly, if you like, encapsulate his life, born in 1937, became formally president of Iraq in 1979, until of course the country was invaded by the US-led coalition in 2003. And then three years later in 2006, he is executed. But to be perfectly honest, he was effectively in power, and we can discuss this in more detail later, from around 1970 onwards. So he was in power for a good typically 30 years. So he did

have considerable control over shaping the country. So how does a man from his background, a man that comes from poverty without a father, how does he rise up to become the leader of Iraq for such a long time? To not only just become leader for a few years, but someone who consolidates that power over decades? Well, that's a very interesting question. And it's one that I think needs to be looked at from very different angles. There's obviously the personality angle, his family, his personality, and how that shaped him. But I think the really two driving shaping factors, as far as he's concerned, both environmental and in terms of his personal ambitions, one is what I would call the geopolitics of Iraq. And I think it's worth going back a little bit in history to explore

that. The second one is the fact that he was weaned, if you like, on an ideology, the Ba'athist ideology, which in itself reflects the geopolitical history of Iraq. And so I think those are sort of things that we really need to look at before we can see how he has a political awakening and how he rises to power and how then his power or time in power, certainly when he's formally president, how that leads to power politics of both internal programs and the three wars that he's involved in, all of which are linked. Afi, I am all ears.

Take us through the geopolitics of Iraq and the geopolitics of Saddam Hussein. So one of the features of Saddam Hussein's behaviour is around the idea of circles of loyalty, so the family, the tribe, and then everybody else. And again, that's an element that was more of its time rather than peculiar to Saddam. And it was this element that the British were masters at using and exploiting. geopolitics of Iraq. A discussion on that is really interesting because Iraq only really came into existence in 1921. And even then, it was under British administration at that stage, or previous to that, of course, it had comprised three governors under the Ottoman rule. So the British combined those three. This was Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, these governors, and made this country. And interestingly, they installed a king, Faisal I, who was Hashemite, who was Jordanian. So you have this British, if you like, administered piece of land, bringing together very different people. So you have the Quds in the

north, you have largely Sunni Arabs in the west, and then you've got the Shias in the majority of the country, but mainly around the south and the central bits. And all of these people are, if you like, held together through this new idea of a nation. But the British Jews, as they've always done in different parts of the world, the idea of martial races and other things, but what they do is they take local Assyrians to be part of their militia force, but provide the Sunni Arabs, the area that Saddam comes from, to administer the country. So they're predominant in administering the country. And of course, they're fighting largely against Kurdish separatists.

So this idea of these circles of loyalty is not peculiar to these tribal. It's something that certainly the British and other European countries understood and exploited to their benefit. And often, sadly, their legacies led to asymmetric, unfair, if you like, relationships. Very often they would take a minority and give it power over a majority. And of course, that's not sustainable. And we see this time and again. So what we see is that in 1921, we have this independent nation with a foreigner as king. But Faisal persuades the British to give him independence in 1932. So Iraq becomes not an administered country, but a state in its own right. But that's done on the condition that Britain retains military bases and the local Assyrian militia are still there

and the British forces have transit rights. So it's a foreign country but Britain can effectively do what it's like in it for its own geopolitical purposes. And this was a relatively common move as Britain tentatively stepped back from empire. It was able to maintain all of its bases, also an awful lot of economic influence and tap some of the profits and money, if not the majority of such, whilst stepping back from the day-to-day politics of the nation. Yeah, and this is what I would describe as neo-colonialism, proxy colonialism. It's a much more efficient way of doing it. It becomes pretty clear, this, if you like, latent importance of the country in 1941, when Britain feared that the Iraqis may block oil supplies, and they then invade Iraq. And the war from that invasion lasted less than a month,

just a couple of days short of a month in May. But the forces remained in Iraq, British forces remained in Iraq until 1954. And I think that's something that very few people know about. And that, I think, is another very important point. So this relationship between oil supplies and imperial and strategic control is a really important feature and certainly very important for those Iraqis who are shaping their thinking, political thinking. Now, going back to the issue of dictators, well, if you've grown up and you've been occupied by various empires like the Ottoman Empire, then the British Empire, particularly in the case of the British Empire, you've seen how it's really only there for its own strategic

interest of which oil is a crucial one. It's an absolutely crucial one. So it shapes your thinking, it shapes your threat. And if you like your opportunity analysis, if you're going to do a SWOT analysis. So would you say, Afi, that it's in this moment, because of course, Saddam is growing up during this time with this heavy British military presence. Is it at this time that Saddam has his own political awakening? It is. And I think that's absolutely right. So what we have, of course, is King Faisal in charge. He obviously isn't delivering the sort of equality of development. He's running a country that's based very much along traditional lines with huge amounts of poverty, a very underdeveloped country. You know, obviously, he's got a great

life in his palaces. And then, of course, we have, this is the post-Cold War era, and the ideas of communism, of equality, of emancipation, anti-imperialism, all of these are rife. And so you have a revolution in 1958 called the 14th of July Revolution, led by Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qasim. And it's a very bloody revolution, unfortunately for Faisal. He doesn't survive it. And many, many people are killed in this. But the revolt is inspired by anti-imperial, anti-monarchical ideas and very strong socialist ideas. From a Western perspective, this is really important.

Iraq has gone from what the West, mainly the UK, but increasingly the US, saw as a new imperial vessel into a potential Soviet asset. And this is then accentuated in the minds of the West because what Qasim does is he starts flirting with the Soviets, buying weapons from them. And of course, there's in all parts of the Middle East, indeed all parts of the world, of course, we have these communist parties desperate to change the politics of their countries, their traditional countries. So for Qasim at this time, when he takes power in this very bloody revolution and he starts to cozy up to the Soviet Union, is this a relationship of convenience or does he

believe in the Soviet communist project? No, I don't see any real evidence of Karsim being a communist. What he has done is, as you say, for convenience, he has approached the Soviets, because they're the people who lack influence in this region, so they're keener to assist, to increase their influence. So he takes weapons from them. And what he does is to pacify the local communists who are useful to his agenda of socialism, of trickle-down wealth and development of society. They're much more sympathetic and helpful, so he starts giving them important positions in government. And all of this, of course, starts to ring alarm bells in Washington, London, etc. And I think what we then see is an alternative ideology emerging. So the idea of drifting towards communism doesn't really sit well anywhere where there's a traditional society, because traditional tribal societies are hierarchical in many ways,

although they have socialist undertones of looking after, nobody is allowed to go hungry, or they will provide, if you like, an infrastructure. They don't have this equality. It's a hierarchical society. But also religion and communism made the grave mistake of setting itself up against religion. So what we get is the development of something which begins in 1947 in Damascus, and that is the Ba'ath ideology. And this, incidentally, is very interesting. The major architect or the primary architect is Michael Aflac, who's an Antiochian Orthodox Christian. And then we have Salahuddin al-Bathar, who's a Sunni Muslim.

And we have the followers of Zaki al-Rusuzi, who's an Alawite who later becomes an atheist. So what we have is a very secular ideology. And to put this whole thing into perspective, this time in history, or the time almost 100 years before 1947, is the time which, in my humble opinion, really leads to the great change in humanity. People talk about the Industrial Revolution, but I think the biggest change is what I call the ideological revolution. So you've got the development of communism, you've got the development of nationalism and fascist ideas, and then you've got this Middle Eastern world and this Eastern world saying, well, you know, we don't want any of

this Western stuff, but we need an ideology. So you've got, actually, 1944, or slightly earlier, establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ikhwani Muslimin, which is an Islamist ideology, takes Islam but melds it with communist ideas. In fact, got this sort of development of ideologies to deal with this new world. And so coming back to the Ba'ath party, it's ironically or unsurprisingly characterized by the features of Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism. So that basically means that we are a nation, but we are not a state-based nation, but a, if you like, a linguistical nation, a cultural nation. So there are moves to combine Syria and Iraq into one super state, and it's a form of Arab socialism, not communist Western and Arab socialism. And above all, it's a bulwark to imperialists who are still there in a slightly modified guise in the form of West European powers and, of course, emerging influence of the US. So it's a reactionary ideology to imperialism because all of those things, its motto encapsulates them.

Unity, liberty and socialism are, by by definition anti-imperialist. And so you've got this ideology that is effectively anti-Western in the political sense, not in the cultural sense, but in the political sense. So it's a reaction to that. So what happens there is that Saddam Hussein is directed towards the Ba'ath Party. It's much more culturally in tune with him. It is nationalist, hierarchical, but it is socialist in that it echoes the social justice that's inherent in tribal societies, but is hugely important, actually actually in Islam as a religion. You know, most people don't appreciate this and the Islamists have talked about sovereignty in Islam, but that really didn't exist as a driving force. But the bulk of Islamic teaching is about social justice. It's about the rights of man,

woman and society and the importance of fulfilling the rights of your neighbour, particularly of poor people, etc, etc. So Saddam is brought up in this crucible of a novel evolving ideology and he becomes incredibly loyal to that. And this movement isn't a peaceful one, is it, Afi? No, it isn't. And he joins it in 1957, a year before the fall of Faisal. So he's there. And in 1959, he participated in what turned out to be an unsuccessful Baathist attempt to assassinate the Iraqi Prime Minister Qasim, Abdul Karim Qasim. And it's a botched attempt. And of course, Saddam, as people really spinned it into some heroic event where he was wounded and escaped. He escaped from prison, made his way to Syria and then to Egypt. But as you mention it, actually,

when he gets to Syria, he is lauded by Michael Affleck. But Michael Affleck is very critical of the Iraqi Ba'athists for participating in this violent revolution. He didn't think that was the right thing to do. And he actually expels some of these Iraqi Ba'athists as a sort of, if you like, a show of disapproval. But not Saddam? Not Saddam, no. Saddam is very young here. We're talking about early 20s. And he's seen as one of the gun carriers. Apparently, he was bought into this attempt late. Some versions of the story suggest he was responsible for botching it by opening fire before his mates were ready to do so because they'd planned it. Anyway, so but the point is that he is very much a low lying individual.

And so whilst he's in exile, he goes to Cairo Law School in 62 and 63. And then in the meantime, in 63, the Ba'athists take power briefly for the first time. And he comes back to Baghdad to continue his studies at the Baghdad Law College. So he's just a student, really, doing some part-time assassination. So Ba'athists, later that year, overthrown. So he ends up with two years in prison. He was in prison for just two years and then he escapes, you know, through, again, a very stylized reinterpretation of history. He becomes a bit of a hero and becomes a leader in the Bath Party by the time he's come back. And he's now a bit of a hero figure, because he's been imprisoned,

he's escaped, he's now one of the movers and shakers, albeit still quite young. And he is instrumental in the coup that brings the Ba'ath Party back to power in 1968. So we see this sort of almost, if you like, a graduation into life through political revolutions and use of violence, torture and imprisonment, which he suffered. Although there isn't a great deal of torture, but I mean, he's risen rapidly through the ranks from relatively unimportant stuff to become the president's right-hand man. And the president at the time was Hassan al-Bakr. And he's an old man. And Saddam's a very young man. And Saddam becomes his right-hand man really because of what are seen as very successful deliverable social policies. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So is he power sharing at this point, Afi, or is he kind of seen as the heir apparent? Well, he's in a transition from relatively junior to an increasingly influential individual. And throughout this time, he's cultivating networks of influence within the Ba'ath party. But these aren't just political influence. It is backed up by what I think most people will see as good or rather effective political social strategy and that I can tell is a bit of a surprise and because again our western perspective is limited to the power relationship we have.

We see him as somebody in a uniform and, you know, is killing people and torturing people. But I think if we were to research him, one of the reasons why he rose to power was that he started with a very clear aim, which, again, if we look at his background, becomes understandable. He aimed for a stable rule in what he recognised as a diverse and divided country. So he pursued a combination of social living standard improvements and massive repression. The thing was that stability, for him to deliver his policies, he needed stability. In order to get that stability, he needed to prevent and suppress opposition. He couldn't actually deliver both. It's a very difficult task. And it is a wider point to think about how can you have democracy when you don't have a certain level of development. And in order to deliver a certain level of development for democracies to flourish,

you need to avoid distractions which come about. And a lot of the time, the government's energy is used to deflect the attacks of the opposition and vice versa. And so what we're getting here is this what I think is a relatively natural political behavior in those environments. But his main effort and what's his success relies on is a policy of modernization of the Iraqi economy and the strong security apparatus to prevent coups. If we roll back, he's grown up and experienced and witnessed not just coups that make the government unstable, but basically destroy, kill hundreds of people. He can't afford that. He certainly can't afford that for him and his family. And that's why he is not

going to take any chances with any opposition. So what policies does he enact then, Afi, to keep the people happy whilst having this quite violent, hardcore crackdown? One of the most significant policies is the nationalisation of the oil in 1972. Something that's not going to make you very happy with Britain or the West, I'm sure. No, but I think that the West had learnt in 1953, Mossadegh had nationalised the oil in Iran. They'd successfully managed to replace him with a CIA-MI6 joint coup. And they can't play that card twice. And I think they sort of accepted because at that time, Iraq's oil infrastructure, although important, had been eclipsed to a large degree

by the Saudi infrastructure and other alternatives. And oil wasn't an issue until 1973. A year later, And oil wasn't an issue until 1973. A year later, of course, we have this oil crisis, the OPEC price hikes, etc., etc. And suddenly he is just into huge amounts of money. to eradicate illiteracy, compulsory free education, supporting soldiers' families, free health care, the most modern health care system in the Middle East and getting better, and then agricultural subsidies. So he's actually introducing some really attractive social development policies. And guess what? He has now money to accelerate them. from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And that's what he does. And he does it so well that even he wins a unesco award for his work and this is something i think we forget he's not just come in and said right i'm gonna have power

and i'm gonna he is now working as number two in government people are thinking this guy delivers young guy delivering these social changes which are benefiting everybody. And then, of course, in 1972, Saddam had signed, as you quite rightly suggested, a 15-year treaty of friendship and cooperation with the USSR, which adds to the concerns in the West. And in response to this nationalization of oil and this friendship treaty, the USA did what it usually did, and the UK also did the same, was to teach him a lesson by covertly financing the Kurdish opposition, which then led to the second Iraq-Kurdish war. What we get is, again, this is a brilliant success. They know that foreign forces are

involved in destabilizing the country, which adds to the paranoia that he's already experienced through and it to some degree explains that sort of very intolerant attitude to power and in 1979 he's got a gradually ailing al-Bakr and al-Bakr actually is looking at moving the country much more in a different direction. And it's a time that Saddam feels that, you know what, I think it's time for you to resign, sir, if you know what's good for you, and I'll take over. And that's what happens. And Baccarat sees the writing on the wall and signs off and resigns. Now, it's very important to step back. He's taken power in July of 1979. He's become president. Within days, I think just a few days, I can't remember, maybe a week or two, he has a meeting, which you might have seen videos of, where he reads out a list of alleged disloyal people who were treasonous against Iraq.

And 68 people are arrested. 22 of them are sentenced to execution. And high-ranking party members form the firing squad. And so by the 1st of August, a month later, hundreds of high-ranking Ba ranking Bath Party members have been executed. And he puts the blood on the hands of those around him. So they're complicit. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's the first thing he does to consolidate power within the party and send out a message. And of course, this looks very, if you like, internal. But we mustn't, I think, ignore the fact that a lot of it is influenced by these external threats from the Soviet Union, or less from the Soviet Union, potentially from the US and the West, but threats also from across the border. So you have,

if you like, in 1980, the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, which he does tell the US that actually, you know what, I'm going to do this. And he's going to invade a certain part. And then he does this. But of course, Iran fights back. And during this period, we mustn't also forget that by this time, we've had the really horrible situation for the U.S. of the Iranian hostage crisis. We've also had the humiliation of their failed, disastrous rescue mission that Jimmy Carter set in, where planes were destroyed, people were killed without actually rescuing anybody. And so the Americans have a score to settle. And so suddenly, Saddam Hussein's designs to pacify the opposition in Iran become a very useful way of extracting vengeance and putting the Ayatollahs in place in Iran for the United States. So you get a great deal of

cooperation and support from the United States of America. So you have this complete political shift where the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend and the US starts to see the Saddam regime as someone they can work with. Absolutely. That's incredible. If you think about the history that you've just taken us through, that's almost unbelievable. You know what they say, history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. And there are many similar analogies. You see that there are shifts of power and your enemy, there's a prioritization of enemies. And it's the analogy of the nearest crocodile to the canoe. And so for the US, what had happened in Iran was the worst thing at the time, and it needed to be addressed. And so he was doing this. And the really unpleasant side of all of this is that very early in the war, Saddam Hussein started to use

chemical and biological weapons, but mainly chemical weapons. And there is very strong evidence through release documents that the US knew about this and actually facilitated this by sharing intelligence. So throughout this war, the US was providing intelligence to Saddam Hussein on the disposition of Iranian forces. But just to sort of look at the wars, because these are really what define Saddam's time in power. You have this war, the Iran-Iraq war that we've talked about, and maybe the end of this war, which is, you know, nearly a decade later, results in massive costs. So Saddam has been paying for weapons from the West and other places. He's spending a great deal on his infrastructure development, but at the same time, he's spending a great deal on the war. He's effectively broke. And so what he says is that he's going to invade Kuwait. And historically, Kuwait was a province of Mesopotamia. It was only an arbitrary decision on the part of the British to carve it off as a separate country.

has done at this stage is to try and persuade Kuwait and the other Gulf countries to not allow the oil prices to go down. So his first solution is to try and find an economic solution to it. Now, it's worth looking at, and I've never really looked at this, the degree to which Kuwait and others were, if you like, working in line with Western approval by keeping the oil prices down to put pressure on Saddam. But whether that happened or not, the fact is the oil prices were down and that put him in a difficult situation. So he decides to invade. But he invades after telling the ambassador in Baghdad that that's what he was going to do. And he gets a response from her that, well, this is your own business. We're not really interested. There's an infamous moment where he believes he has some sort of implicit consent and that he's going to get away with this violation of a nation state sovereign territory.

Yes, indeed. And that's because he's mentioned it to the ambassador. And she said, it's none of our business. But of course, it does become her business. Well, once you have the amassing of a million troops on either side and the first Gulf War, then you certainly do see it has the business of the rest of the world. Yeah, it was April Gillespie who was the ambassador. And I spoke with the chap who was our British ambassador there at the time. He was just young and he'd just arrived.

And he told me that, according to him, April Gillespie was heartbroken about what had happened. She appears, according to certainly this British ambassador in Baghdad, that she appears to not really have understood the implications of that conversation she had. Anyhow, we have this invasion. And of course, you're well aware of what happened. The UN supported an expulsion. And Saddam, again, this is his intransigence, his inability to look weak. He must have known that, you know, with the world lined up in one of the largest coalitions against him, that he was never going to come out of it very well. Well, despite his rhetoric,

of course, Afi, because I remember him saying, yours is a country that can't take 10,000 dead in one battle and this will be the mother of all battles. Well, yes. And that's something he said in both Gulf Wars or words to that effect. And what I think there was some at least belief, I believe, and we can't be entirely sure that the West, Western powers. be entirely sure that the West, Western powers, and incidentally, I was involved in Germany when we launched the first ever aircraft in August, you know, just a few days after the invasion, you know, literally, I think it was 72 hours. I'm a very young squad leader, and I was told everybody's on holiday, you're in charge charge you've got to get a squadron's worth of aircraft ready and quite frankly I had no idea that we weren't ready to go to war we had to do everything from paint those aircraft to add new radios encrypted radios to them and and do other

stuff to make them more stealthy and it was was just day and night, literally 24 hours a day, work on those aircraft. So the point is that nobody really knows to what extent, why George Bush Senior stopped when six weeks into the war, they had driven Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. And I think there was a very real belief at the time that if the forces had gone any further, then there would have been far greater number of casualties. And certainly, we mustn't underestimate the casualties. Although there were a few in number, they were of very high impact. And so having these young people, very gifted young people, dying in even those relatively small numbers could not be sustained. I personally believe there is an element of that rhetoric being partly believed. And so is it at this moment, Afi, where Saddam had this period during the Iran-Iraq war where he was almost an ally of convenience for

the West. It's now that Saddam's reputation is set in stone for the US and its allies in the region and its allies in the West. Saddam, from this point on, does take up that mantle within the axis of evil as it becomes later and as we mentioned earlier. I think you're right I think that's exactly what happens and the interesting thing is how he responds to that and that really leads to the second war and what I believe happens is that Saddam is now going back to his ideological roots as a Ba'athist. He is now thinking, you know what I believe in? All of this stuff that's happening to us in the region, these Soviets and this Western interference that we're suffering from, continuous exploitation of our oil wealth, etc., etc., the only way to confront it is through mobilizing this Arab identity. And so he now starts to not join with the Islamist,

if you like, chorus against Israel and Palestinian cause, but the first time, starts to speak up rhetorically, champion the cause of the Palestinians and make overtures against Israel. Now, the reason I say this is that when I was in Iraq, the headquarters, you might know, was in the presidential palace in Baghdad. In one of the ballrooms, we have this amazing mural in the ceiling. So on one end of the ceiling, this huge ceiling, you have these Scud missiles being launched from presumably Iraq towards the other end of the room, which is Israel. So this mural depicts his ideological, rhetorical threat against Israel. So it was so deeply ingrained, it was literally painted on

the walls. I mean, we could talk about murals and their importance in depicting ideology, whether it's in the Foreign Office murals there or Pax Britannica, incidentally, in which Faisal I is painted as one of the homages to Britannica. But ironically, when I was in the presidential palace, the other mural that impacted me greatly was one that was painted by Americans, American forces. And this was a mural that used to amuse the British, small, very British, small contingent of which I was a member. And this is a mural of the Twin Towers in New York. So you had a picture of the Twin Towers in New York and a sort of scroll at the bottom saying words to the effect, and I wish I'd taken a picture of it, we will not forget or we will never forget or something. And for the vast majority of my American colleagues and I was working in my team of 30, 40 people as a sole Brit, all of them were American.

They were there because of 9-11. Well, that's how it was conflated deliberately within the politics. It was, but it was really conflated at the internal American level. But for the rest of the world, for us, it was all about weapons of mass destruction. And of course, there was no evidence whatsoever. In fact, all the evidence was contrary that he had anything to do with the al-Qaeda. And the one good thing, Iraqis will tell you now, is we never had any terrorism, no terrorist groups. The only thing that terrorized us was stepping out of line, you know, as far as Saddam was

concerned. And he was a very, very fair-minded person. You don't tread on my power. You don't threaten my power. You can do what you like. But it's all of those factors combining together in that incredibly turbulent post-9-11 moment with the war on terror that most certainly seals Saddam's fate. Afi, thank you so much for your time today. You've taken us through the rise and the fall of Saddam Hussein. But I think most importantly, you've taken us in depth into the geopolitics behind Iraq. And so the geopolitics behind the making of Saddam himself and why he became the leader that he was.

Afi, thank you so much. You are always welcome on the Warfare podcast. It's a pleasure Thanks for listening but before you go, a reminder that you can now follow along online on Twitter at HistoryHitWW2 on Instagram at JamesRogersHistory and on TikTok also at

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