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 The regime responded by killing thousands. Many Shia tried to escape to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Some of the Shia hostile to the regime sought refuge in the marshland of southern Iraq. In order to subjugate the area, Saddam embarked on a large-scale programme to drain the marshes to allow Iraqi ground forces to eliminate all opposition there. The rural population of the area fled or were forced to move to southern cities or across the border into Iran.

Saddam Hussein’s Wars 

As well as ensuring his absolute control inside Iraq, Saddam has tried to make Iraq the dominant power of the region. In pursuit of these objectives he has led Iraq into two wars of aggression against neighbours, the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Kuwait. With the fall of the Shah in Iran in 1979, relations between Iran and Iraq deteriorated sharply. In September 1980 Saddam renounced a border treaty he had agreed with Iran in 1975 ceding half of the Shatt al-Arab waterway to Iran. Shortly thereafter, Saddam launched a large-scale invasion of Iran. He believed that he could take advantage of the state of weakness, isolation and disorganisation he perceived in post-revolutionary Iran. He aimed to seize territory, including that ceded to Iran a few years earlier, and to assert Iraq’s position as a leader of the Arab world. Saddam expected it to be a short, sharp campaign. But the conflict lasted for eight years. Iraq fired over 500 ballistic missiles at Iranian targets, including major cities.

It is estimated that the Iran-Iraq war cost the two sides a million casualties. Iraq used chemical weapons extensively from 1984. Some twenty thousand Iranians were killed by mustard gas and the nerve agents tabun and sarin, all of which Iraq still possesses. The UN Security Council considered the report prepared by a team of three specialists appointed by the UN Secretary General in March 1986, following which the President made a statement condemning Iraqi use of chemical weapons. This marked the first time a country had been named for violating the 1925 Geneva Convention banning the use of chemical weapons. The cost of the war ran into hundreds of billions of dollars for both sides. Iraq gained nothing. After the war ended, Saddam resumed his previous pursuit of primacy in the Gulf. His policies involved spending huge sums of money on new 46