Like Shakespeare's tragic villains, Saddam's sons embodied all the worst that the country they trampled on could boast.

The news that Uday and Qusay said goodbye to their lives on the outskirts of Mosul, in northern Iraq, will please everyone except the henchmen of the ex-dictator’s sons.

The psychopathic playboy Uday and the cold, calculating and merciless heir to the throne Qusay represented, as it were, two sides of Iraq. They were living proof of the effectiveness of their father's tyrannical policies, combining boundless cruelty with calculating insight. It was this mixture that allowed Saddam to remain in power for more than thirty years.

Uday is directly responsible for a significant number of crimes, including murder, torture, kidnapping and rape of children.

However, it is possible that Qusei has even more blood on his conscience, simply because he had more power in his hands than his older, rapidly marginalized brother, whose antics exceeded even Saddam’s “achievements.”

Saddam's sons were born shortly before he came to power. Uday was born in 1965, Qusay in 1967, just as Saddam was trying to recover from the consequences of a failed coup.

From childhood, they were well aware of the fear that their father instilled in most Iraqis. Saddam saw his heirs in them, so he prepared his children for the harsh realities of power.

When Saddam came to power in 1979, his offspring joined the clan of the chosen representatives of the human race: they became the heirs of a tyrant, knowing that they were allowed to do whatever they wanted.

Uday was the first to go off the rails. He flew out of school and began driving around the streets of Baghdad in a white BMW.

Many sources claim that he was a real sexual predator. There is no doubt that there was some exaggeration here. However, there is no doubt that in the 80s he picked up girls in nightclubs in Baghdad, after which he took them to his mansion.

Those who resisted had to deal with his bodyguards using force.

In 1988, Uday became the instigator of a major diplomatic scandal. During an official reception, which was attended, in particular, by the wife of Egyptian President Suzanne Mubarak, he beat one of Saddam's aides to death.

Uday accused the aide of plotting against his father. At the time, the dictator was investigating a case in which, much to his wife's displeasure, the wife of the director of Iraqi Airways, Samira Shahbandar, was involved.

After the public murder, Uday's mother witnessed a more than unpleasant quarrel between Saddam and their eldest son. She called King Hussein of Jordan asking for help to reconcile her relatives.

The king immediately flew to Baghdad, where he managed to quell the conflict, mainly due to the fact that Hussein managed to convince Saddam to punish his eldest son and thus restore justice.

This is how Uday ended up in Geneva, where he was engaged in fraud and extortion until the Swiss authorities asked him to leave the country.

Returning to Baghdad, he started another intra-family quarrel, after which Saddam's two sons-in-law were forced to leave Iraq. Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel fled to Jordan, where they announced the existence of a secret biological weapons program in Iraq, carried out in circumvention of UN sanctions.

Saddam lured his sons-in-law back to Baghdad, where they met their deaths. Armed men broke into their house and shot Hussein and Saddam. Uday also took part in the death squad operation, perhaps to prove that he could not only create problems in the family, but also solve them.

After this, Uday's "popularity" reached such a low level that his life began to be in danger.

In 1996, after a night of partying, he was ambushed and riddled with bullets. They say he was paralyzed. After two years spent in the hospital, Uday appeared in public for the first time. This time he became the owner of an astonishing number of tinsel titles.

He became chairman of the Iraqi Football Association, head of the National Olympic Committee, editor of the Babel newspaper and general secretary of the Iraqi Students' Union.

Most of the time he made money by smuggling oil and selling cigarettes. The latter type of business has become extremely profitable and attractive thanks to international sanctions against Iraq.

Again there were accusations. This time it was about Uday beating and torturing the players of his football team for losing matches. These allegations were investigated by FIFA, but were found to be unfounded. However, there is no doubt that there was a special prison in the building of the National Olympic Committee, into which anyone who dared to cross Uday’s path was sent.

The height of absurdity, apparently, was reached in February of this year. Then Uday's newspaper announced that he had been awarded the title of professor of political science at Baghdad's Saddam University for his 300-page doctoral dissertation on international relations in the 21st century.

In this work, Uday predicted the imminent collapse of the United States.

And all this - to cover up a fact that was decisive for the fate of Iraq in the 90s. Instead of disgracing Uday's family, his younger brother, the quiet and hardworking Qusei, was appointed the new heir to the throne.

There is no information that Qusei was personally involved in the rapes or murders. His marriage, apparently, was successful.

Among other things, nature endowed Kusei with intelligence and abilities. In the late 1990s, he became Saddam's main confidant. Having received the post of chairman of the Iraqi Security Council, Qusay found himself in the very center of the country's political life.

He was also responsible for disguising chemical and biological weapons and hiding them from the eyes of UN weapons inspectors.

In solving this problem, Qusay did a great job, thanks to which Iraq was able to hide the real volume of the program for the production of illegal weapons for several years.

In 2000, Qusay was entrusted with control over the structures that Saddam trusted the most. He became the head of the Special Republican Guard and the Special Security Committee. These relatively small structures, staffed with well-trained personnel, were well financed and served as pillars of Saddam's regime.

According to American experts, today members of these organizations are responsible for most of the terrorist attacks committed against American soldiers.

The most significant indicator of the importance Saddam placed on his youngest son was his appointment as commander-in-chief of troops in Baghdad and the dictator's hometown of Tikrit a week before the war began.

Qusay was responsible not only for the defense of Baghdad, but also for the survival of the regime as a whole.

However, despite his efforts, the defense of Baghdad proved extremely ineffective, leading to the rapid collapse of the regime.

In the end, the dictator was left with two sons: the never-grown murderer Uday and the devoted and capable assistant Qusei. Now they too have left him.

Now, for the first time in their lives, the Saddams will have to taste real loneliness.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

Unwanted son

ON THIS TOPIC

According to the official version, Hussein was born on April 28, 1937. But researchers believe that this date is not true, and the real time of his birth is not known. The elder brother of the future dictator died of cancer at the age of 12.

At the time, Saddam's mother was pregnant. Because of the loss, she became depressed, tried to terminate the pregnancy and commit suicide. But the future dictator was still born. But the mother did not want to see the newborn child, so his maternal uncle took him in to raise him. In fact, he saved Saddam's life. A relative raised Hussein harshly, was very demanding of him, and constantly instilled in him the idea of ​​becoming the new Saladin - a powerful medieval ruler of the Middle East, a threat to the crusaders.

Family ties

Saddam's first wife was his relative, Sajid's cousin. From her the dictator had five children: sons Uday and Qusay, and daughters Ragad, Ranu and Halu. However, they were matched when Saddam was still five years old, and Sajida was barely seven. The couple got married in Cairo, and Saddam personally planted a bush of elite white roses, which he named after his wife.

The second marriage was very scandalous and received wide publicity even outside of Iraq. In 1988, Hussein, already president, met the wife of the president of Iraq Airways. Saddam urgently asked his husband to divorce. He seemed to agree, but the dictator’s cousin Adnan Khairallah, who held the post of Minister of Defense at that time, began to object to the marriage. He soon died in a plane crash under mysterious circumstances. Many believe that Saddam had a hand in his death.

"Golden" dictator

Hussein was one of the richest men in the Middle East. He had a truly royal hobby - building luxurious palaces. According to official data, the dictator had 28 residences and villas, but eyewitnesses claim that there were much more - 80, or even 100.

Thus, the Makar et Tartar (Green Palace) palace was built on the shores of Lake Tartar in 1993, its total area is 6.5 square kilometers. More than $50 million was spent from the treasury on its construction. The residence was striking in its splendor: it had 45 bedrooms, and from the southern windows there was a picturesque view of the lake. In addition, the Green Palace had underground bunkers and even underground laboratories. It is noteworthy that the dictator did not spend the night in the same palace for more than two days.

There were rumors that the dictator had mountains of treasure, some of which he managed to hide after his overthrow in 2003. There is a version that one of the planes with a huge amount of cash that belonged to Saddam is parked at one of the Moscow airports. However, so far no one has supposedly decided to come for the wealth.

Difficult child

Saddam's eldest son, Uday, caused his father a lot of trouble. Rumors about his sexual exploits constantly circulated in Iraq and beyond. One day he offered to have fun with the wife of the Danish ambassador. Such unbridled behavior of the son greatly angered the dictator, who summoned his son to his place and severely beat him with a cane. After this, the “golden boy” moved around in a wheelchair for a month, and one of his broken legs never completely healed, for which he received the nickname “lame.”

Faith and blood

One of the mosques houses the Koran, which was written in Hussein’s blood. The holy book was demonstrated to the public in 2000. 27 liters of blood donated by the dictator were used to make special ink. However, experts are sure: this is an unrealistic figure for one person at a time.

After the overthrow of Saddam, religious leaders could not decide what to do with this Koran. On the one hand, this is a sacred book, which is prohibited from being destroyed. On the other hand, writing the Koran in blood is prohibited; this act was immediately condemned by Muslims in many countries.

"Super Dangerous Person"

According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, almost 300 thousand people disappeared during the years of Hussein's rule. CIA psychologist Gerald Post assessed Saddam's personality this way: not paranoid or crazy, but an extremely dangerous person, a pronounced narcissist, devoid of a sense of compassion for others. During Hussein's reign, 17 ministers were sentenced to death, and he executed two of his own sons-in-law. Moreover, after 1990, the former ruler of Iraq did not leave the country. Perhaps he was afraid of attempts on his life.

A fall

Saddam's government fell on April 17, 2003, when the remnants of the elite Medina Division capitulated under pressure from the Americans and their allies. The interventionists established control over the entire country on May 1, and then began to look for representatives of the now former Iraqi leadership. In the end, the dictator himself was caught. He was arrested on December 13, 2003 in the basement of a village house near the village of Ad-Daur.

Much thinner, dirty and overgrown, he looked nothing like the powerful dictator he had been just six months ago. As the commander of the US armed forces in Iraq, Ricardo Sanchez, noted, Saddam gave the impression of a man tired of life and resigned to his fate.

Imprisonment and execution

Saddam was held in prison along with other prisoners. He was placed in a tiny solitary cell of four square meters. The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq did not have access to the media; he spent his time reading books, writing poetry and praying. Occasionally he was taken out for a walk in the prison yard, where he organized his own mini-kindergarten. True, only weeds grew in it, nevertheless, Saddam carefully looked after them.

Sergeant Robert Ellis recalled that the overthrown dictator often remembered his dead daughter and made almost no mention of his sons Uday and Qusei, who were killed by the Americans. True, he once mentioned that he really missed them.

Saddam was frequently interrogated. To make him more cooperative, he was shown video footage of jubilant Iraqis knocking over statues of their former leader. According to eyewitnesses, this brought suffering to Hussein, his face became red, his eyes filled with anger, and his voice changed. According to some reports, Saddam was tortured, but there is no evidence of this.

The overthrown dictator was executed early on the morning of December 30, 2006, a few minutes before the start of the Eid al-Adha (Day of Sacrifice) holiday. The time was chosen so that the moment of execution did not coincide with the beginning of a holiday according to the Shiite calendar. However, according to Sunni it has already begun.

ALL PHOTOS

Uday aspired to fame, big muscles and a beautiful life. In 1984, he was appointed chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee as well as the main Iraqi Football Association, where he developed a terrible reputation for brutally punishing foul play.

They were known to the Iraqis as "The Wolf" and "The Snake."

Hussein's eldest son, 39-year-old Uday, is a sadist who tortured athletes for losing in competitions, a libertine for whom women and girls were dragged straight from the street, an explosive man who beat his subordinates and rivals to death, a poseur who collected sports cars and exotic animals.

Qusay, 37, is a son who formally reported to his father but has quietly amassed unimaginable power, controlling the state's intelligence and security forces and overseeing brutal crackdowns on opposition political movements. He was considered Hussein's heir.

Together, the two men - killed last night, US officials said, during an assault on a villa in the northern city of Mosul - symbolized the two faces of a family dictatorship that did evil both secretly and openly.

Although Hussein has not yet been found, the death of his two sons and closest aides is likely to have a strong impact on the liberation of the country, The Washington Post writes today (translation on the Inopressa.ru website).

As Cohn Colin wrote in Saddam: King of Terror, even as teenagers, Uday “was loud and vulgar, while Qusay was calm and calculating.” Both of them had first marriages that ended in failure, but Udey’s wife left with no living space from cuts and bruises, and Qusai’s union broke up peacefully.

After Saddam came to power in 1979, the brothers took very different positions in their father's empire - Uday received high positions in sports and propaganda, and Qusay's functions played an important, sometimes key role in Hussein's consolidation of power.

Uday aspired to fame, big muscles and a beautiful life. In 1984, he was appointed chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee as well as the main Iraqi Football Association, where he developed a terrible reputation for harshly punishing players and officials for losing major competitions.

Iraqi athletes who fled to the West told human rights groups that when the team lost, Uday would "prescribe" the players spankings, dunking them in sewage, forcing them to crawl on hot asphalt and kick concrete walls.

As the owner of a daily newspaper and a youth television channel, and as head of the Iraqi Union of Journalists, he was involved in propaganda work. These positions allowed him to dominate the Iraqi media. His former assistants on radio and television say that he often beat their feet with iron rods for even minor mistakes - typos or being late for work.

Uday's personal life consisted of drunken quarrels, family squabbles and sex a la playboy - and all this against the backdrop of luxury and abundance, including income from international smuggling. He was one of the richest men in Iraq, owned dozens of European sports cars and kept lions in his palaces.

By nature, Uday was cruel and uncontrollable. He beat a servant to death, killed an army officer for not allowing him to dance with his wife, and in 1998 killed his father's beloved bodyguard. The latter incident finally changed Hussein's opinion of his eldest son and heir presumptive.

Finally, in 1996, after a series of brutal family feuds during which he attempted to kill his uncle and participated in the execution of two more relatives who had fled the country and then returned, Uday barely survived an assassination attempt that left him partially crippled and led to to further political weakening.

Kusai, in contrast to his brother, quietly took power into his own hands, becoming his father’s indispensable confidant, a man ready to do dirty work. At public events, he sat quietly next to Saddam in discreet clothes and took notes, leaving the conversations to others.

Hussein, who was obsessed with security and repression of dissidents, entrusted his youngest son with increasingly important and sensitive tasks. In 1991, Qusay personally oversaw the brutal suppression of a Shiite Muslim uprising. He also led an operation to drain swamps in southern Iraq to prevent anti-government insurgents from using them as a refuge.

By the mid-1990s, having proven his loyalty and ruthlessness, Qusay had gained control of the elite Republican Guard and the Special Security Organization, which included Hussein's personal guard, the secret police and was responsible for liaison with the military.

Perhaps the most delicate assignment was the appointment of Qusay to head the organization that oversaw Iraq's unconventional weapons and their concealment from UN inspectors.

Thanks to his close relationship with his father and the fact that he controlled much of the special operations, Qusay became the number 2 man in Iraq.

Although few people know it, he could be just as cruel as his brother. One American analyst called him a "brutal killer." It is known that it was Qusay who gave the order to reduce the number of prisoners in Iraqi prisons, for which mass executions were carried out, and also personally supervised the killing of some prisoners using a particularly sophisticated method: their bodies were passed through a meat grinder.

Qusay led a luxurious life, raising peacocks and gazelles on private farms and sending his assistants to Europe for the best whiskey. However, according to Iraqis, the indelible image of the overthrown regime is still formed by the exotic excesses and causeless cruelty of Uday. A regime whose power just three months ago seemed limitless.

For about a week now, a film called “The Devil’s Double” has been playing in our cinemas. Unfortunately, due to our travels, we didn’t make it to the premiere; we only watched it yesterday. And the film made such an impression that I have been watching it for the second day...
It was filmed based on real events. We are talking about the son of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Uday Hussein, and his double, Latif Yahya, whom Uday forced to work for himself. Honestly, while watching the film, I kept asking myself the question, is it really autobiographical, can a young man, rich, smart, who has a lot of opportunities with such and such a father, really be such a monster and sadist? But today I re-read Uday’s biography! Haha, the film does not show all of his atrocities that he committed in reality.
It all starts with Uday deciding that in his position (the son of the president, after all), he is always in danger. In addition, he does not want to be on the road all the time, giving speeches to the public, which was his responsibility due to his numerous positions - he was the head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, the Iraqi Union of Journalists and much more. So, if so, then he decides that he, like his father, needs a double who, if necessary, will do all this. And he finds it among his former classmates. Latif Yahya is perhaps a little shorter than Uday, but he is as similar to him as two peas in a pod.
Really, that's the problem. Latif cannot stand the whole lifestyle that Uday leads. And Uday does not tolerate even the slightest objection. I won't tell you the plot, because I highly recommend everyone who is interested in the topic (with the exception of pregnant virgins) to watch this film.
Was Uday Hussein, from a medical point of view, a normal person, in your opinion?
He was obsessed with women. But just as in all other matters, he did not tolerate anyone objecting to him. He kidnapped the girls he liked from nightclubs in Baghdad (this will probably come as a surprise to some, but the clubs there were of the same level as in Europe, and no one was forced to wear burqas - miniskirts were acceptable). If they resisted, then his bodyguards came to his aid; they held the girls while Uday raped them. He stole pretty schoolgirls when they returned home from school. There was a case that he raped the 14-year-old daughter of a former governor (the film also contains this thread), and when the father turned to the president for help, he was told to keep quiet. Uday forced pop stars, European tourists, and attractive married women in Baghdad to have sex. He once forced the wife of an Iraq war veteran to sleep with him (the film tells an even creepier story), and after she resisted, he raped her anyway, and then killed both her and her husband. After a sexual act, he branded the body of each of his lovers - he burned the letter "U" - the first letter of his name.
But Uday Hussein directed his sadism not only at women. As chairman of the Olympic Committee, when the Iraqi sports team lost, he subjected athletes to torture - he “prescribed” floggings with batons to the football players, dipped them in sewage, ordered them to throw people from a bridge, forced them to crawl on hot asphalt and kick concrete walls.
When he owned a daily newspaper and a youth television channel, he often beat employees on the feet with iron rods for even minor mistakes such as typos or being late for work. Former close associates told how Uday once ordered two students to be fed to lions. The reason why Uday dealt with the young people is simple and banal - they began to court women who the “Iraqi prince” liked, and he did not tolerate rivals in the field of love. After such executions, he ordered the bodies of the dead to be brought to their relatives, and different parts of the bodies - in separate bags. In general, horror!..
Can such a person be mentally healthy? Somehow I doubt it. Why then did his father not begin to treat him? After all, for all the atrocities that he committed, he punished him quite powerfully. Once the case even almost ended in execution. True, Uday fled to Geneva in time.
Basically, watch the movie. It is staged competently and most of the atrocities committed by Uday Hussein are only hinted at in the film; they are not shown in close-up, so you don’t have to hide under a chair with your eyes closed. Well, maybe in some places.
But when you watch, don’t look one-sidedly, don’t immediately conclude that Uday is like that because he was born in Iraq, and, like, everyone there is like that. His double Latif was also born in Iraq, however, I repeat, he did not support Uday’s lifestyle at all, just as most other normal people did not support him. And Latif, by the way, managed to find a way to get rid of him...

Duvalier, who terrorized Haiti. A new story is about the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who single-handedly ruled the country for 24 years.

First things first - boats

“A helipad, 27 bedrooms with bulletproof windows, taps made of gold, a small theater, several swimming pools and a prayer room, as well as a passage to a submarine,” this is what one of the dozens of yachts that once belonged to one of the richest men looked like in the world according to the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti.

In addition to sea trips, the former Iraqi leader was an avid gardener (he bred new varieties of roses himself), had a weakness for expensive Western suits, and collected ancient and modern weapons and luxury cars. According to the dictator, more than anything in the world he loved to rush through the streets of Baghdad at high speed with a Havana cigar in his teeth.

Another passion of Hussein was books. Earlier this year, a romance novel written by the tyrant himself was found online. The book is called "Zabiba and the King". The dictator composed the romantic work in 2000; it has 160 pages. The action takes place several thousand years ago. The main character, the king, is clearly based on Hussein himself. According to the plot, every night the village girl Zabiba comes to him, with whom they talk about religion, nationalism and the role of the people.

Hussein also loved to build palaces - each more beautiful and richer than the other - for himself and his loved ones. During his 24-year period of absolute power in Iraq, more than 80 residences were built. Moreover, Arab media claim that their number could be twice as large. Under the Republican Palace, which the Americans later nicknamed the “Palace of Believers,” there was a bunker “capable of withstanding a nuclear attack similar to the one that occurred in Hiroshima.”

Such a number of luxurious palaces and villas was necessary for the dictator, who feared assassination attempts and preferred not to spend the night in the same place two nights in a row. Subsequently, some of Hussein’s palaces were converted into luxury hotels, some villas are used by the American military for their needs, and one of the residences of the former dictator was turned into the world’s largest US embassy building.

Apple from an apple tree

The sons of the dictator also loved to drive through the streets in the breeze with a Cuban cigar in their teeth: boxes of cigars were delivered from Liberty Island especially for them. For the older sons of the dictator Uday and Qusay, who could become successors to the Iraqi leader, there were virtually no prohibitions. They could afford anything. The diamond on Uday's finger alone was worth half a million dollars. The collection of cars of the dictator's eldest son numbered 10 thousand expensive cars.

One order from the ruler's son was enough for any woman he liked to be brought to his bedroom. She could have been kidnapped right on the street. Those who resisted were killed. The dictator's son is credited with sadistic tendencies. They say that he once beat two offending subordinates to death, and also carried out torture in secret prisons in Iraq. Qusei, who headed the secret police, was not far removed from his older brother: according to rumors, he also participated in brutal punitive actions against the opposition.

However, entertainment did not always go unpunished. One day, Uday, who spent his days at debauched parties with marijuana, heroin and other drugs, shot several people and wounded several others as a joke. Even Uncle Udey got it. “I was just shaking with anger, and then I ordered all his cars to be burned,” the guards quoted the former leader as saying.

How the criminal son reacted to his father’s rage is unknown. However, there was something to be sad about: his collection included hundreds of custom-made Rolls-Royce and Porsche cars. They say that Hussein always laughed and talked about how he watched the violent flames that consumed his son’s cars.

For everything about everything 12 dollars

Americans are still puzzling over where the huge money that belonged to Hussein’s family went. Media reported that at midnight on March 18, 2003, two days before the US invasion of Iraq, three trucks pulled up in the Iraqi capital. In one of them sat the dictator’s youngest son, Qusei, who demanded that the bankers give him a billion dollars in cash. They obeyed without question. It took several hours to fill the cars to capacity with suitcases with banknotes. That night, similar operations were carried out in all major cities of the country: currency and gold were confiscated. On the same day, the dictator's proxies in Switzerland, Lebanon and the Netherlands emptied his bank accounts in those countries.

When the Americans tried to find out how much money was in the accounts of the dictator and his family, it turned out that there was only $12 left. Hussein's clan made capital from the sale of oil: the head of state, since 1991, pocketed five percent of the income from Iraqi exports of black gold. However, it's not just about oil. The dictator and his family took a percentage for the export of any goods from the country.

President of all Iraqis

Saddam Hussein, who had been involved in revolutionary activities since 1956, became one of the most influential politicians in Iraq in 1968, after another coup. Then the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party came to power (since 1966, Saddam headed its security service). In 1969, Hussein became deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and deputy general secretary of the Baath Party, then vice president of Iraq.

Photo: Muhannad Fala"ah / Getty Images

The behind-the-scenes and open struggle for absolute power took about 10 years. In 1979, Hussein legitimized his status quo by dismissing formal President Al-Bakr “due to illness” (they said in the country that the old man was simply put under house arrest), and got down to business. While still vice president, the head of Iraq was known as an effective and progressive politician, managing to unite a country that was divided along ethnic, religious and social lines. Thanks to rising oil prices, Iraq, which nationalized its oil industry in 1971, was flush with money. The economy grew rapidly, education and healthcare became free. The standard of living of Iraqis increased so much that in 1982 Hussein was even awarded a special prize.

Not everyone liked the dictator’s policies, but they did not stand on ceremony with those who disagreed: dissidents were tortured and drowned in blood. According to Western media estimates, during Hussein's reign, about 250 thousand people were killed in the country, suspected of disapproving of the government's activities. By the end of the 1970s, he began to single-handedly rule Iraq, concentrating all power in his hands. A cult of personality flourished in the country: statues of Hussein stood on all corners, the walls of hospitals, schools and other government institutions named in his honor were decorated with portraits of the dictator.

As the price of oil began to fall, Iraq's economy gradually fell into disrepair due to sanctions imposed by other countries. The habitually luxurious lifestyle of Hussein and his family did not help improve the situation. Legends were made about Saddam's extravagance. However, he really wasted money. Saddam lavished foreign leaders and his aides with gold pens and diamond-encrusted Rolexes. The Iraqi tyrant once sent a plane filled to the brim with gifts to Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. The African leader did not remain in debt and sent Hussein a personal sorcerer.

Magic rituals and amulets, however, did not help. In 2002, the US President declared that Iraq was located on the “axis of evil” and accused Hussein of developing weapons of mass destruction and contacts with terrorists. A year later, the Americans, without receiving sanctions, invaded Iraq under a flimsy pretext, and a couple of weeks later, Hussein’s regime fell.

Throughout the city, statues of the former dictator were toppled and his portraits were torn from the walls. The country in which Saddam Hussein was both king and god collapsed in a few weeks, and those who had recently assured the Iraqi leader of eternal devotion and love were the first to rush to destroy his statues. The Iraqi tyrant himself was discovered in an underground shelter in his hometown of Tikrit. The Americans imprisoned the overthrown dictator and hanged him on December 30, 2006. Uday and Qusay, who tried to hide from the Americans in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, did not escape: they were killed back in 2003. The sons of the tyrant were betrayed by their cousin Sheikh Mohammed Az-Zeidan.

Ironically, more than 10 years after Hussein's execution, the dictator's reign in Iraq is remembered with increasing fondness. As he writes, in Baghdad, many local residents claim that what is happening in the country now is much worse than what happened under Hussein. Iraqis believe that if he had remained in power, the country would have avoided the horrors of civil war. For ordinary people, a tyrant was the personification of a strong leader capable of stopping chaos.