David Blair charts the career of Saddam Hussein,
                    from back-street assassin to Iraq's vicious
                    dictator 

                    Beneath the garish signs reading "Down with USA", an
                    immaculate guard of honour presented arms on the
                    tarmac of Saddam International Airport. Two Arab leaders
                    walked along a red carpet towards a Lear jet, before
                    bidding farewell with warm smiles and an apparently
                    genuine embrace.

                    It was Dec 5, 1990, the
                    Gulf war was about to
                    erupt, and Saddam
                    Hussein was seeing off
                    King Hussein of Jordan,
                    the nearest thing the
                    Iraqi dictator had to an
                    ally. Yet on that winter
                    morning in Baghdad only
                    the anti-aircraft guns
                    beside the runway
                    indicated that anything
                    was unusual.

                    "The entire universe is
                    against us and God is
                    with us. Victory will be
                    ours, so don't worry and
                    don't trouble yourself,"
                    Saddam told the King.

                    His parting words left the
                    hapless monarch dumbfounded. "I shall return to my
                    country feeling sad, worried and full of sorrow," King
                    Hussein replied. "What I have heard is beyond my ability
                    to deal with."

                    For much of his 65 years, Saddam has been beyond the
                    ability of anyone to deal with.

                                     The closing years of the 20th
                                     century were a difficult time for
                                     the West's caricature tyrants.
                                     Ceausescu, Honecker, Mobutu,
                                     Milosevic, one by one they fell.
                                     Saddam's great achievement was
                                     to survive into the 21st century.
                                     Whether as youthful assassin,
                                     political chess player or murderous
                                     dictator, he succeeded in
                                     bewildering or terrifying all who
                                     crossed his path.

                                     Now, after almost 24 years in
                    power, Saddam the Anointed One, the Glorious Leader,
                    Direct Descendant of the Prophet, President of Iraq and
                    Field Marshal of its Armies, is facing the end.

                    To many Iraqis, Saddam is first and foremost a tribal
                    leader, the product of a violent upbringing in an obscure
                    corner of poor, lawless, rural Iraq.

                    He was born into the al-Bejat clan of the al-Bu Nasir tribe
                    on April 28, 1937. His family lived in the village of
                    al-Ouja, near the town of Tikrit, 100 miles north-west of
                    Baghdad. Saddam's birth, like those of most Iraqi children
                    at the time, was never registered and there is doubt
                    about his exact age.

                    His childhood could scarcely have been more traumatic.
                    Saddam's mother, Subha, eked out an existence as the
                    village fortune-teller. His father, Hussein al-Majid,
                    disappeared soon after his birth. A singularly brutal
                    stepfather, Hassan al-Ibrahim, raised the boy.

                    This man, known in al-Ouja as "Hassan the liar", beat
                    Saddam incessantly and denied him any education. As a
                    fatherless child, Saddam was singled out for torment by
                    local children and took to carrying an iron bar for his
                    protection.

                    The hardships of village life, where rival clans waged
                    brutal vendettas, marked Saddam for life - quite literally
                    so. He still carries the tattoo on his right hand - three
                    dark-blue dots in a line - traditionally given to village
                    children at that time.

                    The only sympathetic figure in his boyhood was an uncle,
                    Khairallah Tulfah. He rescued Saddam from al-Ouja and
                    took him to Baghdad when he was 10, ensuring the
                    illiterate boy went to school. Saddam would later marry
                    Khairallah's daughter.

                    Exactly how his kindly uncle
                    influenced him can be judged by
                    Khairallah's political views. He
                    nursed a passionate hatred of
                    Britain, then Iraq's colonial
                    overlord, and a fervent admiration
                    of Hitler.

                    Khairallah spent six years in jail
                    after joining a pro-Nazi uprising in Baghdad, which the
                    British Army crushed in 1941. He later wrote a pamphlet
                    entitled Three whom God should not have created -
                    Persians, Jews and Flies. In this work, Khairallah
                    described Jews as a "mixture of dirt and the leftovers of
                    diverse people".

                    From Khairallah, Saddam imbibed this toxic mixture of
                    nationalism and xenophobia. From his violent rural
                    upbringing, he learned to distrust anyone, absolutely
                    anyone, beyond his immediate family. Saddam the
                    paranoid tyrant can be traced back to Saddam the
                    persecuted village boy.

                    In the political ferment of 1950s Baghdad, where British
                    dominance through a puppet monarchy was faltering,
                    Saddam was a natural recruit into the Ba'ath party.
                    Formed in Syria in 1944, this movement sought to sweep
                    away the Middle East's colonial boundaries and forge a
                    united Arab state.

                    Saddam's first job for the party was as an assassin. He
                    shot dead his first victim, Saadoun al-Tikriti, a leading
                    communist and hence a sworn enemy of the Ba'athists, in
                    1958. Later that year, Iraq's royal family was murdered in
                    a bloody revolution and a military dictatorship under
                    Abdul Karim Qassem, a senior general, seized power.

                    The Ba'athist leadership decided to kill Qassem in 1959
                    and gave the job to Saddam. The young assassin formed
                    a four-man hit-squad and lay in wait for Qassem's
                    motorcade.

                    Accounts of what followed vary, but there is no doubt
                    Saddam's bid to kill the president was a fiasco. One
                    version claims Saddam planned to drive a car into the
                    path of Qassem's motorcade and open fire. But the
                    would-be driver forgot his car keys. Saddam and his men
                    were reduced to blazing away as Qassem swept past.
                    They wounded the president, killed his driver and
                    managed to shoot one another in the confusion. Saddam
                    may well have killed one of his fellow assassins, Abdel
                    Wahab Goreiri. That was before he was wounded himself,
                    probably by one of his colleagues.

                                     With a bullet in his left leg,
                                     Saddam was carried to safety. If
                                     the official account is to be
                                     believed, he cut the bullet out of
                                     his thigh with a pair of scissors and
                                     then escaped Baghdad on
                                     horseback. Despite his wound, he
                                     swam the Tigris to reach the
                                     safety of al-Ouja, his birthplace,
                    and then escaped into Syria.

                    The bungled assassination was later transformed into a
                    heroic saga which became the centrepiece of The Long
                    Days, a film of Saddam's life made after he seized power.

                    This epic was edited by Terence Young, who earlier in his
                    career had directed Dr No, Thunderball, and From Russia
                    With Love. After receiving Young's treatment, the film was
                    cut to a mere six hours and became obligatory viewing in
                    1980s Iraq.

                    For almost four years after failing to kill Qassem, Saddam
                    lived in exile in Damascus and then Cairo. The Ba'athist
                    leadership overlooked his incompetence and rewarded
                    Saddam by making him a full party member. His political
                    star rose.

                    During his years in Egypt, Saddam became engaged to
                    his first cousin, Sajida, whom he married in 1964, and
                    made a leisurely effort to study law at Cairo University.
                    He was smuggled back to Iraq in 1963, only to be jailed
                    after an abortive Ba'athist putsch.

                    Saddam was behind bars from
                    1964 until 1966. Yet the
                    foundations of his political success
                    were laid during these years.
                    Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, his cousin
                    and fellow Tikriti, became leader
                    of the Iraqi wing of the Ba'ath
                    party. Those clan loyalties were
                    crucial and al-Bakr consistently
                    favoured Saddam. After his
                    release from prison, the failed
                    assassin became more than simply
                    a gun for hire.

                    When the Ba'ath party was ready
                    for revolution, Saddam was
                    al-Bakr's deputy. On July 17,
                    1968, a date immortalised in
                    Saddam's propaganda, the
                    Ba'athists seized power by capturing the presidential
                    palace in Baghdad.

                    The official account describes how Saddam burst through
                    the palace gates on a tank, firing its gun and leading the
                    attack. This is widely dismissed as fanciful but there is no
                    doubt that he played a key role, and when al-Bakr
                    became president, he rewarded his clansman by making
                    him vice-president. If any period of Saddam's life was
                    distinguished by genuine achievement, it was his 11 years
                    as vice-president. Using billions of dollars of oil revenues,
                    he launched a huge modernisation campaign.
 

                              Saddam in 1998 visting a small town
 

                    Baghdad was transformed from a crumbling backwater
                    into a modern city, complete with tower blocks,
                    motorways and flyovers. Saddam began one of the
                    world's most ambitious literacy programmes, building
                    schools across Iraq and compelling adults to attend
                    classes on pain of three years' imprisonment. Unesco
                    gave him a prize.

                    In contrast to most of his co-tyrants, Saddam proved
                    himself a gifted administrator.

                                     But his idea of national greatness
                                     did not rest on building schools. By
                                     the mid-70s, he was obsessed with
                                     the ambition that was to consume
                                     his rule. Saddam wanted to
                                     dominate the Middle East through
                                     the possession of oil and nuclear
                                     weapons. Allah had given him the
                                     former, it was up to Iraqi ingenuity
                                     to acquire the latter. He began
                                     spending the oil money on an ever
                    larger military machine.

                    In 1975, he visited France and Jacques Chirac, then prime
                    minister, took him on a tour of Provence. M Chirac went
                    on to sell Saddam a nuclear reactor for £2 billion and
                    signed a Nuclear Co-operation Treaty.

                    This agreement bound Paris to help Saddam's nuclear
                    programme and also excluded "all persons of Jewish
                    origin" from participating, whether in France or Iraq.

                    M Chirac insisted that the nuclear reactor and technical
                    help were for civilian purposes. Saddam was more
                    honest. "The agreement with France is the first concrete
                    step toward production of the Arab atomic bomb," he
                    said.

                    While seeking arms abroad, Saddam ruthlessly
                    undermined his political rivals at home. By the mid-70s,
                    he had become de facto ruler of Iraq. In July 1979,
                    Saddam was confident enough to insist that al-Bakr retire
                    and hand over the presidency. He celebrated his success
                    by calling a meeting of the Ba'athist leadership,
                    announcing a wholly fictitious "Syrian plot" and having 66
                    colleagues led out and shot. The chilling video of the
                    meeting was later shown on Iraqi television.

                    With this round of bloodletting, Saddam began his
                    presidency as he meant to continue. His lavishly equipped
                    military machine was ready for use and he launched it
                    against the old Persian foe, neighbouring Iran, in
                    September 1980.

                    This was the first of Saddam's
                    monumental follies. The peasant
                    boy who had sat at his uncle's
                    knee and heard the stories of
                    Nebuchadnezzar, who captured
                    Jerusalem, and Saladin, who
                    defeated the Crusaders, sought to
                    become an incarnation of these
                    immortal heroes of the Arab world.

                    With typical vainglory, he
                    christened the invasion of Iran "Qadissiya II".

                    The first battle of Qadissiya was a great Arab victory over
                    the Persians in AD 637. Saddam, steeped in Arab folklore,
                    was less well versed in military strategy. He had made
                    himself a field marshal after assuming the presidency,
                    despite having failed the entrance exam for the Baghdad
                    Military Academy in 1956.

                    Saddam gambled on a swift Iranian collapse that would
                    allow him to secure the Shatt al-Arab waterway linking
                    Iraq's port of Basra with the Gulf. This reckless throw of
                    the dice proved catastrophic.

                    Eight years and one million lives later, the war petered
                    out. Saddam had used chemical weapons and thrown
                    millions of Iraqis into battle. At the end, Iraq gained
                    nothing. Saddam quietly reaffirmed an agreement with
                    Iran that placed their frontier in the same position as it
                    had been at the outset. 

                    In the disastrous aftermath of "Qadissiya II", loathing of
                    Saddam became almost universal among Iraqis. Virtually
                    every family had lost someone and everyone knew that
                    the sacrifice had been in vain.

                    Saddam was detached from all of this. His imagination,
                    fuelled by Arabian legends, conceived the war with Iran
                    as a great victory.

                    Anyone who tours the monument to Saddam's "victory",
                    which dominates central Baghdad, gains a penetrating
                    insight into his state of mind. Two giant statues of crossed
                    swords, wielded by vast hands rising from the earth,
                    tower over either end of a gigantic parade ground. No one
                    is fooled.

                    After this Saddam curtailed public appearances, stopped
                    receiving ambassadors and began the draconian security
                    precautions that have surrounded him ever since. He
                    personally shot his health minister after the unfortunate
                    man dared to suggest that Saddam resign.

                    Catastrophe in Iran coincided with rebellion at home. The
                    Kurdish minority in northern Iraq rose in revolt in 1987
                    and Saddam launched the punitive "Anfal" campaign in
                    retaliation.

                    Typically, he would only trust his immediate family with
                    this task and Ali Hassan al-Majid, his cousin, led the
                    onslaught. Scores of villages were bombarded with
                    mustard and sarin gas, including Halabja in March 1988
                    when some 5,000 died.

                    As this genocidal campaign progressed, Saddam's
                    thoughts returned to glory. The old ambition of pulling off
                    a coup that would transform Iraq into a great power still
                    possessed him. His eyes turned south, towards the tiny
                    emirate of Kuwait.

                    The war with Iran had saddled Iraq with £50 billion of
                    debts and a reconstruction bill exceeding £140 billion. By
                    1989, Saddam's creditors were taking over half of his oil
                    revenues. He needed cash and glory. Kuwait offered both.
                    At an Arab League summit in May 1990, he proposed that
                    all Arab nations should guarantee one another's borders.
                    Soon afterwards, he threatened to invade Kuwait unless
                    the Emir wrote off Iraq's debts and reduced oil production
                    to drive up prices.

                    Under pressure from Saudi Arabia in July, Kuwait agreed.
                    Saddam invaded anyway. On Aug 2, 1990, the Iraqi army
                    rolled south and Field Marshal Saddam blithely declared
                    the emirate his 19th province. He convinced himself that
                    he had stunned the world with an irreversible coup.

                    Surrounded by sycophants, Saddam bungled over and
                    over again. He ignored the huge build-up of allied forces
                    and spurned at least three opportunities for an
                    honourable retreat.

                    He could have staged a partial pullback, leaving Kuwait a
                    crippled rump state and keeping the Rumaila oilfield and
                    Bubiyan island - the only bits of the emirate's territory he
                    needed.

                    Instead, he conjured
                    up a vision of
                    Nebuchadnezzar's
                    capture of Jerusalem
                    in 586BC. On Jan 14,
                    1991, with war
                    imminent, he assured
                    his commanders that
                    "victory is certain"
                    and said: "I see the
                    gates of Jerusalem
                    opening before me."

                    Three days later, the
                    allied juggernaut
                    began smashing his army. In 43 days of bombing and 100
                    hours of lightning ground war, the Western armada
                    achieved one of the most crushing victories in history.

                    Yet again this owed much to the mistakes of Saddam.
                    Fooled by the Allied deception plan, and worried about an
                    attack in the east, he failed to extend his western flank on
                    the Iraq-Kuwait border far enough. The US and UK forces
                    swept round his dug in troops in a huge armoured thrust
                    attacking deep into the heart of his army.

                    On March 3, 1991, Saddam agreed the second humiliating
                    ceasefire of his career. His response to cataclysm was
                    wearily predictable. He declared a "great victory" and told
                    the "glorious" Iraqi people: "You have won, you have
                    won." What followed was, perhaps, reassuringly familiar
                    for Saddam. The Kurds rose in revolt and the Shia
                    majority in southern Iraq joined in. Saddam had little
                    grasp of the outside world, but he knew how to deal with
                    rebellions. His Republican Guard tank units had escaped
                    the allied onslaught and he deployed them to restore
                    control. Yet Iraq remained embargoed by international
                    sanctions and subjected to American and British air raids.

                                     Saddam retreated further and
                                     further into a fantasy world. He
                                     wrote two romantic novels,
                                     Zabibah and The King and The
                                     Fortified Castle, both inevitable
                                     best-sellers. But his isolated
                                     refuge was progressively less
                                     comfortable, for the unity of his
                                     family steadily crumbled.

                                     Before achieving power, Saddam
                    portrayed himself as a kindly father. Photographs taken in
                    the late 1960s show him building sandcastles with his
                    sons, Uday and Qusay. But Saddam became increasingly
                    ruthless.There are persistent accounts of him taking his
                    sons, then barely in their teens, around his regime's
                    torture chambers. Absolute power corrupted Saddam's
                    family life as absolutely as it corrupted every other aspect
                    of his existence.

                    In 1995, his sons-in-law, Hussein Kamel and Saddam
                    Kamel, defected to Jordan. Saddam was distraught. He
                    guaranteed their safety in order to lure them back. They
                    returned, full of contrition. He killed them anyway.

                    The price of this act of vengeance was estrangement from
                    his daughters, Rana and Raghda. Saddam had already
                    wrecked his marriage with Sajida by conducting an affair
                    with Samira Shahbandar, the wife of the director of Iraqi
                    Airways.

                    Meanwhile, his elder son Uday beat an aide to death in
                    1988 and was later wounded in an assassination attempt.
                    Saddam transferred his trust to Qusay. Saddam has not
                    appeared in public for two years. He has not left Iraq for
                    13 years. He has only been outside the Middle East on
                    three occasions in his entire life. Today, he leads the most
                    solitary existence in the world.

                    Behind the walls of his 20 palaces, he lives well but is no
                    hedonist. He rises at about 3am and swims in one of his
                    carefully-tended pools. This helps him fend off signs of
                    age and physical weakness. To preserve his authority,
                    any appearance of frailty must be avoided.

                    He chooses his food fastidiously. Red meat found on most
                    Iraqi tables is shunned. Saddam lives on a diet of fish,
                    fruit and fresh vegetables. He likes wine, although his
                    favourite tipple - Mateus rose - hardly reveals him as a
                    connoisseur.

                    When not working he reads Arab history and watches
                    Western films. The Day of the Jackal and The Godfather
                    trilogy are said to be his favourites.

                    He is thought to sleep in a different bed every night and
                    subject the few who see him to the most thorough
                    security checks known to man.

                    Saddam has at least three doubles, who occasionally
                    meet foreign dignitaries. Jorg Haider, the far-Right
                    Austrian politician, was criticised for meeting Saddam last
                    year. In fact, Saddam did not trouble to entertain him
                    and, according to a BBC documentary, left the task to a
                    double.

                    No one knows his day-to-day movements. But with war
                    imminent and the might of the West mobilised against
                    him, the fortune-teller's son from al-Ouja must realise
                    that soon there will be nowhere left for him to hide.

                    Sources: "Tales of the Tyrant", Atlantic Monthly, May
                    2002. "Saddam Hussein: An American Obssession" by
                    Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Verso, London
                    2002. "Saddam: The Secret Life," by Con Coughlin,
                    Macmillan, London 2002.

                         © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.