Skip to main content
Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of Saddam Hussein in a suit, 1979.

Portrait: Photograph, 1979, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Public domain

Saddam Hussein

Country
Iraq
Era
1937–2006
Tradition
Ba’athism, personalist dictatorship

Iraqi president for twenty-four years, who nationalised the oil industry and expanded education and health provision while building a personalist police state, and who launched wars against Iran and Kuwait.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Completed the nationalisation of the Iraq Petroleum Company and used the revenue for infrastructure, health and literacy programmes
  • Built a one-party Ba’athist state with an extensive security apparatus and a personality cult
  • Invaded Iran in 1980, beginning an eight-year war, and used chemical weapons during it
  • Invaded and annexed Kuwait in 1990, precipitating the Gulf War
  • Maintained a formally secular legal code and relatively expansive women’s employment and education rights by regional standards
  • Added religious language and symbolism to state ideology in the 1990s during the sanctions period
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Wealth and inequality

30

Evidence: Documented

The state in the economy

18

Evidence: Well documented

Personal liberty

2

Evidence: Well documented

Tradition and change

45

Evidence: Documented

Nation and the world

94

Evidence: Well documented

Religion and the state

40

Evidence: Documented

Power and its limits

2

Evidence: Well documented

Crime and punishment

4

Evidence: Well documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Environment and growth

Sources

  • Human Rights Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds · 1993
  • Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq · Cambridge University Press · 2007

Last verified: