Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on the 28th April 1937 in Al-ĘżAwjah, Iraq, and he died on the 30th December 2006 in Baghdad. He was a politician, a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party and the Baghdad-based Ba’ath Party, but best known all over the world for being the fifth President of Iraq, from 1979 until 2003. In 2006, he was executed for crimes against the Shi’ite people.
Have you ever wondered how rich Saddam Hussein was? According to estimates from authoritative sources, Saddam counted his net worth at the impressive amount of $2 billion. Obviously, most of his income was the result of his successful involvement in politics, in particular when he was named President of Iraq and very effectively controlled the economy.
Saddam Hussein Net Worth $2 Billion
Saddam Hussein was born in the village, Al-Awja, which is near Tikrit, a city in the north-central Iraq, to Hussein ‘Abid al-Majid and his wife Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat; his family was a family of shepherds. The name “Saddam” in Arabic language has the meaning – “the one who confronts”. When he was a baby, his father abandoned the family, and later his older brother passed away from cancer, thus he stayed alone with his mother, who later remarried, so Saddam moved to Baghdad and was raised by his uncle Khairallah Talfah, who was a politician. Under the influence of his uncle he went to a nationalistic high school in Baghdad, after which he enrolled at Cairo Law School. According to sources, he never graduated as he quit education in 1957 to become a member of the revolutionary pan-Arab Ba’ath Party, in which his uncle was one of the supporters. However, he later continued education at Baghdad Law College.
Two years after he joined the Ba`ath Party, the members tried to overthrow the president of Iraq, Abd al-Karim Qasim, however, their attempt to assassinate him failed, and Saddam fled to Syria, and later Egypt.
After the president was finally overthrown, in the Ramadan Revolution, Saddam returned to Iraq, but was soon arrested because of internal fights of the Ba`ath Party. Although he was imprisoned, Saddam stayed in politics, and slowly began to climb his way up. By 1966 he had become the deputy secretary of the Regional Command, which marked the beginning of his reign. Two years later, Saddam was a part of the Ba’athist coup which proved successful, as Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became the president of Iraq, appointing Saddam as his deputy. Little by little, Saddam proved himself worthy of the president`s trust, and was allowed more and more serious decision-making, becoming the real political power such that in 1979 Saddam turned against Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr when he tried to unite Iraq and Syria, and the latter resigned from his presidential position.
Since that point, Saddam`s net worth began to increase dramatically, continuing until the end of his reign in 2003. His position of president was the main source of his net worth in those years, especialy as any opposition was eliminated with a loss of Iraqi people estimated at a minimum of 250,000. However, in 2003 he was overthrown, when the US President at the time George W Bush, organized an invasion of Iraq alongside British Prime Minister Tony Blair, accusing Saddam that he collaborated with the terrorist organization Al-Quaeda, and that he also possessed weapons of mass destruction. As a result, when he was eventually captured/arrested, he was sentenced to death by hanging, and was executed on 30 December 2006.
Regarding his personal life, Saddam Hussein was in a polygamous marriage with three wives. His first wife was his cousin Sajida Talfah (m. 1958), the daughter of his uncle; with her he had five children. Hi second wife Samira Shahbandar he married in 1986, and third Nidal al-Hamdani, who was the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center, he married in 1990.
