Editing Saddam Hussein (section)

==== Paramilitary and police organizations ====
{{Main|Human rights in Ba'athist Iraq}}
[[File:Fedayeen of Saddam militants marching.jpg|thumb|Fedayeen of Saddam militants marching through Baghdad, 1999]]
Iraq faced the prospect of régime change from two Shi'ite factions — [[Islamic Dawa Party|Dawa]] and [[Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq|SCIRI]] which aspired to model Iraq on its neighbour Iran as a Shia theocracy.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2020-12-03 |title=Thinking About the History of Militias in Iraq {{!}} Wilson Center |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/thinking-about-history-militias-iraq |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=www.wilsoncenter.org |language=en}}</ref> A separate threat to Iraq came from parts of the ethnic Kurdish population of [[Iraqi Kurdistan|northern Iraq]] which opposed being part of an Iraqi state and favored independence, an ongoing ideology which had preceded Ba'ath Party rule.<ref name=":1" /> To alleviate the threat of revolution, Saddam afforded certain benefits to potentially hostile population.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2006-09-11 |title=Saddam defends killing of Kurds |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/11/iraq1 |access-date=2025-04-30 |work=The Guardian |language=en-GB |issn=0261-3077}}</ref> Membership in the Ba'ath Party remained open to all Iraqi citizens regardless of background, and repressive measures were taken against its opponents.<ref name="Iraq: A Country Study">[[Helen Chapin Metz]] (ed) ''[http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/iqtoc.html Iraq: A Country Study:]'' "[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+iq0115) Internal Security in the 1980s"], [[Library of Congress Country Studies]], 1988</ref>

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| quote = "There is a feeling that at least three million Iraqis are watching the eleven million others."
| source = —"A European diplomat", quoted in ''[[The New York Times]]'', April 3, 1984.<ref name="Makiya 62-65">{{cite book|author-link=Kanan Makiya|last=Makiya|first=Kanan|title=Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, Updated Edition|url=https://archive.org/details/republicoffearpo00maki|url-access=registration|publisher=University of California Press|year=1998|isbn=978-0-520-92124-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/republicoffearpo00maki/page/62 62]–65}}</ref>
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The major instruments for accomplishing this control were the paramilitary and police organizations. Beginning in 1974, [[Taha Yassin Ramadan]], a close associate of Saddam, commanded the [[Popular Army (Iraq)|Popular Army]], which had responsibility for internal security. As the Ba'ath Party's paramilitary, the People's Army acted as a counterweight against any coup attempts by the regular armed forces. In addition to the People's Army, the Department of General Intelligence was the most notorious arm of the state-security system, feared for its use of [[torture]] and assassination. [[Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti]], Saddam's younger [[Sibling|half-brother]], commanded Mukhabarat. Foreign observers believed that from 1982 this department operated both at home and abroad in its mission to seek out and eliminate Saddam's perceived opponents.<ref name="Iraq: A Country Study" /><ref>{{cite web |title=U.S. Relations With Anti-Saddam Groups |url=https://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/58276.pdf |access-date=15 April 2012 |publisher=Congressional Research Service}}</ref>

Saddam was notable for using terror against his own people. ''The Economist'' described Saddam as "one of the last of the 20th century's great dictators, but not the least in terms of egotism, or cruelty, or morbid will to power."<ref name="economist2007" /> Saddam's regime brought about the deaths of at least 250,000 Iraqis<ref name="250k">{{cite web |date=25 January 2004 |title=War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention |url=https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/01/25/war-iraq-not-humanitarian-intervention |access-date=31 May 2017 |publisher=[[Human Rights Watch]] |quote=Having devoted extensive time and effort to documenting [Saddam's] atrocities, we estimate that in the last twenty-five years of Ba'ath Party rule the Iraqi government murdered or 'disappeared' some quarter of a million Iraqis, if not more.}}</ref> and committed [[war crime]]s in Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. [[Human Rights Watch]] and [[Amnesty International]] issued regular reports of widespread [[imprisonment]] and torture. Conversely, Saddam used Iraq's oil wealth to develop an extensive [[patronage]] system for the regime's supporters.<ref name="Sassoon 2017">{{cite journal |last=Sassoon |first=Joseph |date=February 2017 |title=Aaron M. Faust, ''The Ba'thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Totalitarianism'' [Book Review] |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/aaron-m-faust-the-bathification-of-iraq-saddam-husseins-totalitarianism-austin-tex-university-of-texas-press-2015-pp-296-5500-cloth-isbn-9781477305577/3E2A3E4D523556848C0E24AC9318B019 |journal=[[International Journal of Middle East Studies]] |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=49 |issue=1 |pages=205–206 |doi=10.1017/S0020743816001392 |s2cid=164804585 |quote=First, Faust totally ignores the economy in his analysis. This oversight is remarkable given his attempt to trace how the regime became totalitarian, which, by definition, encompasses all facets of life.&nbsp;... Second, the comparison with Stalin or Hitler is weak when one takes into consideration how many Iraqis were allowed to leave the country. Although citizens needed to undergo a convoluted and bureaucratic procedure to obtain the necessary papers to leave the country, the fact remains that more than one million Iraqis migrated from Iraq from the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 until the US-led invasion in 2003. Third, religion under Stalin did not function in the same manner as it did in Iraq, and while Faust details how the Shia were not allowed to engage in some of their ceremonies, the average Iraqi was allowed to pray at home and in a mosque.&nbsp;... it is correct that the security services kept a watch on religious establishments and mosques, but the Iraqi approach is somewhat different from that pursued by Stalin's totalitarianism.}}</ref> Although Saddam is often described as a [[Totalitarianism|totalitarian]] leader, Joseph Sassoon notes that there are important differences between Saddam's repression and the totalitarianism practiced by [[Adolf Hitler]] and [[Joseph Stalin]], particularly with regard to [[freedom of movement]] and [[freedom of religion]].<ref name="Sassoon 2017" />