Two images of Saddam when he was captured and after his beard was shaved

CAIRO, December 14 (IslamOnline.net) - Saddam Hussein was born in the Iraqi northern city of Tikrit in 1937 to a poor family.

He led a desperate and austere childhood, describing himself in his bibliography as "a melancholic and introvert child".

His name, which means 'collision or crash', heralded a man of a controversial character and a life rife with coups, battles and uprisings.

His mother, Sobha Daflah al-Musalat, was known for her strong and cruel character.

She died in Tikrit 1982 and buried in a mausoleum built by Saddam and was called by Saddam as "The Mother of all Fighters".

His father, Hussein Majid, died months before Saddam's birth.

In 1947, Saddam moved to reside in Baghdad with his uncle and showed great interest in politics.

In 1957, Saddam joined the fledgling Iraqi Baath Party which expounded a socialist brand of pan-Arab nationalism.

The young Saddam was involved in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Brigadier Abdel Karim Qasim, who overthrew the British-installed Iraqi monarchy in 1958.

After the failed plot, Saddam fled to Egypt where he joined the Cairo Faculty of Law, but later dropped out and returned to Iraq when the Baath party staged a coup in 1963.

But he was jailed within months when Brigadier Qasim's former ally, Col. Abd-al-Salam Muhammad Arif, seized power from the Baathists.

Successful Coup

Saddam escaped in 1966 and was elected assistant general secretary of the party, which then staged a successful coup in 1968.

General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, also from Tikrit and a relative of the then 31 year-old Saddam, assumed power.

The two worked closely and became the dominant force in the Baath party, with Saddam gradually outstripping the president's powers.

In 1979, Saddam forced General Bakr to resign - officially due to ill health - and assumed the presidency.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, relations between Tehran and Baghdad deteriorated. Iraq invaded its neighbor, starting a costly eight-year war.

On August 2, 1990, only two years after the end of the Iran, Saddam ordered his troops into the neighboring emirate of Kuwait and declared it the 19th governrate of Iraq.

The U.N. Security Council – which imposed economic sanctions against Iraq after the invasion – gave Baghdad a deadline for withdrawal and authorized the use of "all necessary means" to force compliance.

An international coalition was formed, hundreds of thousands of troops massed in the region, under the command of U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf.

On Sunday, February 24, 1991, allied forces launched a combined ground, air and sea assault which overwhelmed the Iraqi army within 100 hours.

On March 2, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution establishing the terms of the ceasefire. Saddam yielded to the terms.

Uprisings

A number of uprisings followed afterwards. Shiites in Basra, An-Najaf and Karbala in southern Iraq took to the streets protesting Saddam's regime.

The Kurds, for their part, in the north persuaded the local military to switch sides. Suleimaniyeh was the first large city to fall.

Within a week the Kurds controlled the Kurdish Autonomous Region and the nearby oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

But Saddam's helicopters and jet fighters put down the Kurdish uprising, with thousands of Kurds reported killed en masse.

Inspectors Crisis

In 1998, a crisis between the U.N. weapon inspectors and Saddam became to surface after he denied them access to presidential places and "sovereign" places.

In December 1998, the U.S. and Britain launched a three-day bombing - Desert Fox Operation - campaign on Iraq's suspected targets.

In November 2000, U.S. President George W Bush came to power, vowing a "regime change" if Saddam did not get rid of his alleged weapons of mass.

He later issued an ultimatum to Saddam and his sons to leave Iraq within 48 hours as the only way left to save their country from destruction and war.

Despite months of intense world criticism of Iraq war, the U.S. launched war on Iraq Thursday, March 20, with early-morning air strikes on Baghdad.

After a blistering three-week aggression, U.S. troops poured into Baghdad Wednesday, April 9, and Saddam remained at large ever since until captured by U.S. forces Saturday, December 13, in his hometown of Tikrit.