Some time ago, I found myself discussing the complexity of the Middle East with a friend – the history of Iraq’s repeated foreign domination, the scars of war that still line the streets of Syria, and the impossibility of a truly warm alliance between Iran and Saudi Arabia. But midway through our thoughtful exchange, he casually dropped a sentence that derailed the entire conversation: “Saddam Hussein was such a hero though. He stood against the West and saved Islam.”
I blinked. “You mean the Saddam Hussein? The Ba’athist dictator of Iraq?”
“Yes, yes,” he replied confidently. “The guy who was hanged live by the Americans. He was brave. He recited the Shahadah before he died.”
And that’s when it hit me. We are living in a time where stories travel faster than facts, and myths mutate into accepted truths. My friend didn’t know anything about the Ba’ath Party. He had never heard of Halabja or the Anfal campaign. He had no idea about the Kurdish genocide, the mass executions of Shia civilians, or the cruel state-orchestrated torture chambers. But he had heard from “someone” that Saddam had died with dignity and that, apparently, was enough to forgive a legacy built on blood.
This isn’t just a one-off interaction. It is a recurring tragedy. Misinformation spreads like wildfire through word of mouth – a phrase here, a clip there, a dramatic death made viral and romanticized. The story, detached from evidence, becomes an emotional shortcut. One person believes it, the next repeats it, and soon it’s passed along like a box of jellies: sweet on the outside, sour at the core. No label, no ingredients, just endless mouths chewing on unverified stories.
But the truth – the actual, documented truth – is not sweet. It is brutal.
Saddam Hussein rose to absolute power in 1979, but his appetite for control started long before. Under his rule, Iraq became a place where fear was a currency and silence was survival. Anyone who dared to question the regime was met with torture, forced disappearances, or public execution. Entire families were punished for the alleged crimes of one member. Children were jailed. Women were raped. Opponents were killed slowly electrocuted, whipped, mutilated, all in the name of loyalty to the state.
The campaign against the Kurds is one of the darkest chapters in modern Middle Eastern history. Between 1986 and 1989, Saddam’s regime launched what came to be known as the al-Anfal campaign, a genocidal operation against Iraqi Kurds. Over 4,000 villages were destroyed. According to Human Rights Watch, an estimated 182,000 Kurds were killed, many buried alive in mass graves. One of the most horrifying incidents occurred in the town of Halabja in 1988, where Iraqi forces dropped chemical weapons – including mustard gas and nerve agents – killing 5,000 civilians in a single day and injuring more than 10,000.
Photographs from that day show bodies sprawled across streets – fathers clutching babies, children frozen mid-run, entire families gasping for air as they died in seconds. The skies rained poison, and yet today, some still call the man behind it a “hero.”
And the terror wasn’t limited to the Kurds. After the first Gulf War in 1991, a mass uprising in southern Iraq was met with unimaginable brutality. Saddam’s forces killed up to 200,000 Shia Marsh Arabs in the months that followed. The marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates once home to a unique civilization were drained to flush out rebels, turning a cradle of culture into cracked, dead earth. People were not only killed but erased ethnically, environmentally, historically.
The Fayli Kurds, a Shia minority, were also targeted. Over 300,000 of them were stripped of citizenship, deported to Iran, and vanished from official Iraqi memory. Many were forced to walk for miles across the border, their possessions looted, their families torn apart.
And inside Saddam’s prisons, the air reeked of blood and electricity. Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi woman who was detained and tortured during the 1970s, recounted in an interview with NPR how she was blindfolded and handcuffed for days, denied basic hygiene, and electrocuted during interrogation. Another former prisoner told researchers in the Torture Journal how his fingernails were pulled out, and he was forced to sign false confessions while watching others beaten to death.
Women were not spared. Sexual violence was used as a tool of terror. Mothers were tortured in front of their children. In Saddam’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, long before the Americans took it over, the Ba’ath regime used rape and psychological torture as standard procedures. Survivors have spoken of being tied naked to metal beds, assaulted with electric prods, and filmed the footage later used to blackmail their families.
These are not stories from one biased source or whispered conspiracy theories. They are documented in court proceedings, human rights reports, UN investigations, and survivor testimonies. They exist in archives, photos, and the fading memories of those who barely made it out alive.
So how does a man responsible for genocide, torture, and mass murder become “brave” in the public eye?
Because the public doesn’t always read. Because one viral quote, “He recited Shahadah before he was hanged” overshadows decades of horror. Because defying America, in some circles, automatically earns your sainthood no matter the cost in human lives.
But standing against the West doesn’t cleanse a soul soaked in blood. Dying with religious words on your tongue doesn’t rewrite history. And bravery in death does not redeem cowardice in life cowardice that showed itself every time Saddam murdered dissenters, exiled scholars, or poisoned innocent children.
To confuse a tyrant with a hero is not just a mistake. It is an injustice to the dead and a betrayal of the survivors. It erases pain. It whitewashes war crimes. It tells the next generation that the truth is optional and history can be revised if told with enough conviction.
We owe the victims of Saddam Hussein more than silence. We owe them truth no matter how sour it tastes.
