1958. His prospect of advancement then looked slim. He was uneducated, uncouth and without connections; crucially he lacked any military position, a serious deficiency in view of the domination of the Ba’ath both in Iraq and Syria by young army officers, who were also the leaders of the revolutionary movement in Egypt. Saddam had sought admission to the Iraqi military academy but did not take the entrance examination. Frustrated in that ambition, he had become little more than a semi-criminal drifter, with a reputation for troublemaking and a talent for violence. Possessed of exceptional self-confidence and a ruthless will to succeed, qualities contained in a large and strong physical frame, he was nevertheless determined to become a man of power. In doing so, during the decades of the 1960s and ’70s, he single-handedly defined an entirely new form of Arab leadership, dependent neither on birth nor position nor assumption of religious authority but on the use of force and his personal skills in political manipulation. Saddam’s Arabism was irrelevant; had he been born German or Russian in the age of the dictatorships – and he greatly admired Stalin – he would have understood how to exploit disorder and instability to his advantage and could well have risen to dominance in the Nazi or Marxist-Leninist systems.
Saddam was born in the village of al-Ouja, a small and poor village on the Tigris near the provincial centre of Tikrit, sometime between 1935 and 1939; his birth date was not officially recorded and he is believed, in any case, to have altered it on marriage to make himself appear older than his wife. His father may not have been married to his mother, Subha Tulfah, whowas the dominant influence on his life. A strong-willed and outspoken peasant woman, who made a living as a clairvoyant, Subha was certainly married after Saddam’s birth to a fellow villager whom Saddam came to hate; he was scorned and mistreated. Subha, however, had a brother, Khairallah Tulfah, who assumed the role of surrogate father to Saddam and guided his early development. Khairallah, despite his humble origins, had been commissioned as an officer in the prewar Iraqi army, a status that greatly impressed Saddam. Khairallah also fixed Saddam’s political outlook. He hated foreigners, particularly the British, declared his admiration for Hitler and the Nazis and was a supporter of Iraq’s wartime ruler, Rashid Ali, who in 1941 had tried to arrange an alliance with Nazi Germany and for a German expeditionary force to enter Iraq. For his complicity in the plot Khairallah had been cashiered from the army and jailed for five years.
During Khairallah’s imprisonment Saddam, still a child and apparently often driven from the hut which was the family home by his stepfather, kept himself alive by thievery and odd jobs. He had, however, conceived the idea of getting an education and when Khairallah was released, joined him in Tikrit, where his uncle got him into school and supported him. Khairallah was a survivor. He found teaching jobs himself, joined the fledgling Ba’ath party and became sufficiently well-regarded as an educationist to be appointed director of education in Baghdad after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958. By then he had moved to the Karkh district of the capital, taking Saddam with him. Saddam enrolled at Karkh high school and appears to have applied himself. He was still, however, the local provincial rough who ran a street gang and who fought with anyone who opposed him, mocked his peasant ways or supported the pro-British, monarchical government which represented the established order before the revolution of 1958.
The revolution of July 1958 led to Saddam’s initiation into the culture of political violence and opened his eyes to the possibilities of personal advancement to power by killing. He had joinedthe Ba’ath party in 1957, apparently for idealistic reasons; since it then had only 300 members in Iraq the
Saddam was born in the village of al-Ouja, a small and poor village on the Tigris near the provincial centre of Tikrit, sometime between 1935 and 1939; his birth date was not officially recorded and he is believed, in any case, to have altered it on marriage to make himself appear older than his wife. His father may not have been married to his mother, Subha Tulfah, whowas the dominant influence on his life. A strong-willed and outspoken peasant woman, who made a living as a clairvoyant, Subha was certainly married after Saddam’s birth to a fellow villager whom Saddam came to hate; he was scorned and mistreated. Subha, however, had a brother, Khairallah Tulfah, who assumed the role of surrogate father to Saddam and guided his early development. Khairallah, despite his humble origins, had been commissioned as an officer in the prewar Iraqi army, a status that greatly impressed Saddam. Khairallah also fixed Saddam’s political outlook. He hated foreigners, particularly the British, declared his admiration for Hitler and the Nazis and was a supporter of Iraq’s wartime ruler, Rashid Ali, who in 1941 had tried to arrange an alliance with Nazi Germany and for a German expeditionary force to enter Iraq. For his complicity in the plot Khairallah had been cashiered from the army and jailed for five years.
During Khairallah’s imprisonment Saddam, still a child and apparently often driven from the hut which was the family home by his stepfather, kept himself alive by thievery and odd jobs. He had, however, conceived the idea of getting an education and when Khairallah was released, joined him in Tikrit, where his uncle got him into school and supported him. Khairallah was a survivor. He found teaching jobs himself, joined the fledgling Ba’ath party and became sufficiently well-regarded as an educationist to be appointed director of education in Baghdad after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958. By then he had moved to the Karkh district of the capital, taking Saddam with him. Saddam enrolled at Karkh high school and appears to have applied himself. He was still, however, the local provincial rough who ran a street gang and who fought with anyone who opposed him, mocked his peasant ways or supported the pro-British, monarchical government which represented the established order before the revolution of 1958.
The revolution of July 1958 led to Saddam’s initiation into the culture of political violence and opened his eyes to the possibilities of personal advancement to power by killing. He had joinedthe Ba’ath party in 1957, apparently for idealistic reasons; since it then had only 300 members in Iraq the
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