by Ray Black
Behind this façade, Saddam also matched Stalin in his ruthlessness and sheer brutality. One of the few constants during his time in power was Saddam’s persecution of the Kurdish people. In the early 1980s, as part of the anti-Kurdish policies the government had implemented, 8,000 men from the Kurdish Barzani tribe were arrested and supposedly deported to Southern Iraq, although no trace of them was ever found. His genocidal crusade against this race continued during the Al-Anfal campaign in 1988 which resulted in huge death tolls. Designed to depopulate the Kurdish areas in the north of the country, the campaign was responsible for the deaths of over 180,000 people; many were killed but the majority were left to starve as their villages were razed to the ground. In the same year, under the command of General Ali Hassan al-Majid, 5,000 people were killed through the use of chemical weaponry in an attack on the Kurdish village of Hallabja; this attack earned the cruel General the nickname ‘Chemical Ali’. Saddam’s torture of the Kurds continued in the aftermath of the Gulf War where uprisings by the Kurds in the north, as well as Shias in the south were suppressed and once again, villages were razed, and thousands of their inhabitants killed. This contempt for human life was the norm throughout his dictatorship.
THE FIGHT FOR OIL
One of his other constants was his desire to have control over more oil supplies. Seeing the opportunity for glory in 1980, Saddam instigated an attack on Iran in order to capture the Shatt al Arab waterway, which leads to the Gulf. A few years into the campaign and Iraq was on the defensive; Saddam asked for advice from his ministers and it was suggested that he temporarily step down to promote peace talks. Saddam took this advice on board but a few weeks later Dr Riyadh Ibrahim, the health secretary who had suggested the plan, was sacked. Speaking publically about it later, he said that he was lucky to escape with his life; his dismembered remains were sent to his wife shortly afterwards. The Iranian army eventually proved to be a much stronger opponent than Saddam had realized, and only after eight years of fighting, hundreds of thousands injured and a suspected one million people dead, did he agree to a cease-fire.
Ten years later Saddam’s greed concerning oil would once again blind his common sense as he ordered an attack on Kuwait. The US had given billions of dollars to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war and had also donated a substantial amount to Saddam to prevent him from forming an alliance with the Soviet Union. Thinking that he could count on American aid once more, Saddam complained to the US that Kuwait had been stealing from Iraqi oil wells on the disputed border between the two countries. Saddam sent his troops to this border as a threat and, after relations between the US and Iraq deteriorated, he agreed a deal with Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union would provide arms and aid to the Iraqi cause. Iraq duly invaded and captured Kuwait, and in doing so, broke its treaty with the US which, backed by the United Nations, drove the Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991 in what was known as Operation Desert Storm. After the invasion of Iraq, Saddam had hundreds of Kuwaiti civilians rounded up, tortured and then brought back to Iraq as hostages. To show anger at the situation, hundreds of oil wells were set alight, thus polluting huge areas of the Gulf.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
In 1991, following the end of the crisis in Kuwait, the United Nations demanded that Iraq destroy its weapons of mass destruction and consent to have UN inspectors monitor the disarmament; by 1996, the UN was convinced that Iraq was hiding information about biological and chemical weaponry and, after this, Iraq stopped cooperating. Two years later, British and American troops, as part of Operation Desert Fox, started bombing Iraqi command centres, airfields and missile factories and these airstrikes continued on for years.
Soon after becoming President of the USA in 2001, in his state of the union address, George W Bush labelled Iraq, Iran and North Korea as ‘the
axis of evil’ and in March 2003, as part of his war on terrorism and with the full support of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, launched an invasion of Iraq. The government of Iraq and its military collapsed within three weeks of the invasion, but Saddam was nowhere to be found. After a tip-off from an intelligence source, US troops found Saddam hiding in an underground bolt hole on a farm near Tikrit. He was taken to a US prison base in Baghdad before he was officially handed over to the interim Iraqi government where he was put on trial for crimes against humanity. On 5 November 2006, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, which took place on 30 December of the same year.
During his time as President of Iraq, Saddam divided opinion; some saw him as a great leader, trying to restore Iraq to its former glory; others viewed him as a brutal despot whose vicious dictatorship threatened the safety of the whole of the Gulf region. He was responsible for the deaths of millions of people; whole communities, revolutionaries and fellow politicians were destroyed so that Saddam could remain at the height of his power. Upon his capture, people throughout the world rejoiced and the pulling down of his statues in Iraq will be one of the enduring images of this generation.
Tomas de Torquemada
One of his contemporaries described Tomas de Torquemada as ‘the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honour of his order’, however, with his penchant for book burning, twisted vision of a ‘pure-blooded’ Spain and his attempted eradication of the Jews, it could be argued that he was the Hitler of his time. His legacy is one of zealous fanaticism, single-minded dedication to his faith and to the attempted obliteration of all those he believed to threaten it.
Through the persecution of non-conformists, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands, most of whom were burned at the stake. Among his victims were Jews, Moors, Protestants, Freemasons, criminals and people accused of sorcery, including priests within the Catholic Church.
Born in 1420 in Valladolid, Spain, Tomas de Torquemada was the nephew of a noted theologian and Cardinal and, as a young man, entered into Holy Orders at a Dominican friary. He was later appointed prior at the Monastery of Santa Cruz at Segovia, a position he held for twenty-two years and it was during this time that he was chosen by Queen Isabella as her confessor. This relationship would later see the xenophobic Torquemada rise to a position of great influence in the heart of the monarchy.
THE SPANISH INQUISITION
In 1478, the Catholic Monarchs Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon were granted permission by the Pope to set up the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition or, as it is more commonly known today, The Spanish Inquisition. Under the control of the monarchy, rather than the Pope, the reigning couple were allowed to appoint their own inquisitors, whose chief responsibility it was to protect Catholicism, which was at the very the core of Spanish society at the time.
Fundamental to the protection of Christianity in Spain was monitoring the conversos – Jews and Moorish Muslims who, due to persecution, had been forced to convert to Christianity. The Catholics believed their faith to be under threat from these pseudo-converts and many suspected that they were continuing to practise their own true faith. It was even suggested that they were holding secret ceremonies which mocked the Catholic Church, thus making them guilty of blasphemy. As members of the Church despaired at the lack of understanding of the Christian mass from their own congregation, there was the overriding worry that the conversos would attempt to convert Catholics to Judaism or Islam.
The animosity towards the Moors had been present for the best part of 800 years; in the early eighth century, most of the Iberian Peninsula, other than the north west, was under the control of the Moors – had the Muslim leaders controlled all of land, modern-day Spain may have looked very different, but in 718 AD, a band of Christians secured their first victory over the Moors, thus starting years of warfare to reclaim Spain. The hostility towards the Jews, however, came because they were a race of powerful businessmen; in particular, they were money lenders. Successive councils of the Christian Church forbade the lending of money for profit, condemning the usurers to hell – as this didn’t apply to
the Jews, they suffered massive unpopularity as they became wealthy by lending money with interest.
THE GRAND INQUISITOR
The early days of the Inquisition were considered a period of failure, as it was felt that the Inquisitors had not achieved their main task of protecting the Church from those perceived as heretics. In 1483 Torquemada was bestowed with the title of Grand Inquisitor. He had been an assistant inquisitor prior to this but the title gave him supreme power over all of the tribunal members throughout Spain. On receiving the title, Torquemada got to work immediately and a council of inquisitors was created, the main purpose of which was to help with the hearing of appeals.
It was awaiting these appeals where the worst of the Spanish Inquisition’s heinous acts were committed; even before the prisoners were tortured, the guards were encouraged to whip anyone who spoke. Outside the prisons, the Inquisitors, under the fierce authority of the cruel Torquemada, visited every district in Spain to weed out any enemies of the desired status quo. Torquemada is thought to have instigated a series of non-Christian book-burning events throughout the nation and tall tales of evil Jews kidnapping Christian children were propagated. This all established a state of suspicion, paranoia and fear where few could be trusted. Anyone could be taken at any time and subjected to questioning and torture from as little as an anonymous tip-off. The minimum age of those who were accountable to the inquisition was twelve years for girls and fourteen for boys. Once the arrest order had been made, the condemned would be taken by armed guard, bound and gagged and locked up in a dark, inquisitorial torture chamber. The prisoners were given the opportunity to confess before any torture began, but the captives were often oblivious as to why they had been arrested, therefore finding it impossible to defend themselves. The torture was many and varied; many of those who resisted arrest had a metal implement inserted into their mouths which, by using a small crank, opened up to such an extent that the victim’s teeth and jaw would invariably break. Another favourite of the master torturer was the ‘Inquisition Chair’, a large wooden seat covered in metal spikes where a wooden board would be tightened over the victim’s thighs and shins and a belt could be tightened round the chest to inflict varying degrees of concentrated agony. The torturers also used branding while in the stocks, subjection to the pulley device and near-drowning to extract confessions. The accused weren’t allowed any legal representation and, after days, months or sometimes years of torture, had to take an oath before they stood before the jury – refusal to take this oath resulted in immediate incarceration and further torture.
PUBLIC BURNINGS AND PAPAL WARNINGS
The punishment for those found guilty of heresy was the auto da fé – literally ‘act of faith’ – a public ceremony in which the judgement from the authorities would be read out. This usually ended in the victim being burned at the stake; the spectacle was very popular with devout Catholics who flocked to watch in the great public squares where the events took place. It also served as a warning what woe betide those who were disloyal to the Catholic faith.
As his hateful orders were carried out, an increasingly ruthless Torquemada finally invoked the wrath of the Pope in Rome, but as it was the monarchy and not the Pope in charge of the inquisition, the papal warnings were ignored. Finally, no doubt with the words of Torquemada ringing in their ears, the King and Queen decided that Spain must be rid of all non-Christians and, as the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over the Jews, an order was put out expelling them from the country in 1492. According to legend, this order provoked a number of Jewish families to attempt to bribe the King, offering 30,000 ducats to take back the expulsion order. This prompted Torquemada to challenge the King’s integrity by likening him to Judas Iscariot. He appeared before him bearing a crucifix aloft, and exclaimed: ‘Judas Iscariot sold Christ for thirty pieces of silver; Your Highness is about to sell him for 30,000 ducats. Here He is; take Him and sell Him.’ The King weakened in the presence of the evangelical friar and the order for the expulsion of the Jews continued. This proved to be of great benefit to the countries to which they went, though that was not part of the Spanish plan. In the same year, the King and Queen drove the Moors out of their last foothold in Spain, the kingdom of Granada, so the Inquisition under Torquemada then had a completely free hand to impose its brand of Christianity on the whole country.
Torquemada continued as Grand Inquisitor until his death in 1498 at Ávila, Spain. He left behind a name that has become synonymous with cruelty and attempted genocide. He is remembered as a man who was loathed by his nation and was responsible for the torture of innocents and the deaths of between 2,000 and 6,000 people. Somewhat ironically, given his evil obsession with ‘pure-bloods’, some historians have argued that he actually descended from a converso, one of those who, in his view, most threatened his faith and purity of his country.
Vlad Tepes
Nearly half a century before Bram Stoker used him as inspiration for the 1897 novel Dracula, Vlad Tepes was notorious throughout Europe for his cruelty and rabid resolve for revenge upon the people who murdered his father and brother. Over the course of almost three decades, Vlad would cement his place in the history books as an indiscriminate killer with a lust for blood that overshadowed even that of Stoker’s titular terror, and was responsible for the deaths of between 40,000 and 100,000 people.
Vlad the Impaler, the moniker by which he would later be known, was born into a noble family in Sighisoara, Transylvania in 1431. His father, Vlad II, was a revered military governor and a respected member of the Order of the Dragon, a secret fraternity for selected nobility, created to defend Christian Europe against the Ottoman Empire – Vlad III was sworn into the order at the age of five. It was this secret society where his father adopted the name Dracul. From the Latin draco, Dracul means ‘dragon’; it can also translated as ‘devil’. Vlad III added ula meaning ‘son of’. After his father, Vlad II, took over the throne of Wallachia through the assassination of the previous incumbent, his family took up residence at the palace of Tirgoviste and enjoyed a very lavish lifestyle. A few years later, Vlad II betrayed the Order by forming an alliance with the Turks in return for retaining his position on the throne of Wallachia, even going as far as handing over his two younger sons, Vlad III and Radu the Handsome, as insurance against any future uprisings.
During his time as Sultan Murad’s hostage, Vlad became increasingly hateful towards the Ottoman Turks. His brother Radu toed the line and became friends with the Sultan’s son, Mehmet; he converted to Islam and was rewarded by becoming commander of the Janissary. Vlad, however, was insubordinate and was frequently beaten for his abuse towards his teachers. He was eventually sent away to be educated in the teachings of the Quran as well as Turkish language and literature and warfare.
BLOODY RETRIBUTION
In 1448, at the age of seventeen, Vlad Dracula became Vlad III, viovode of Wallachia, after his father and elder brother Mircea were killed in battle by John Hunyadi, a relative who was opposed to Vlad Dracul’s alliance with the Turks. The news that his father had been assassinated and that his brother had been buried alive, set the teenaged Vlad on the path of retribution. His original tenure as viovode, or leader, of Wallachia was short lived as he was deposed by Hunyadi after only a few months. Succession to the throne was hereditary, but not by the laws governing at the time. The boyars, the land owning nobles, had the right to elect the prince of Wallachia from various eligible members of the royalty and this often meant that assassination and violence would run riot in overthrowing the current leader. For Vlad, this deposition would start a lifetime’s dedication to regaining his father’s seat and, as a member of the Order of the Dragon, exacting revenge upon the enemies of Christianity, namely the Ottoman Turks.
Having shrewdly offered his loyalty to Hunyari, Vlad was given a duchy in Transylvania to oversee and, upon Hunyari’s death eight years after he was deposed, Vlad resumed his tenure at the throne of Wallachia where he was in charge for six years from 1456 to 1462.<
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After years of warfare, Wallachia was in a bad state. Vlad needed to boost the country’s economy and concentrated on trade and strengthening the agricultural output. This problem would highlight his ambivalence towards his subjects – the building of new villages and the strengthening of trade eventually gave way to the obliteration to those he saw as being surplus to his vision of a prosperous society.
EXTERMINATION OF BEGGARS AND VAGRANTS
He noticed that his country was beginning to have numerous poor people, vagrants, beggars and cripples. He therefore issued an invitation to all the poor and sick in Wallachia to come to Tirgoviste for a great feast, claiming that no-one should go hungry in his realm. When they arrived, they were ushered into a great hall where they were presented with a wonderful feast. The guests ate and drank late into the night. Then Vlad appeared and asked them: ‘What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in the world?’ The poor and crippled responded positively, so Vlad had the hall boarded up and set on fire, so that no-one escaped the flames. Vlad told the boyars that he did this ‘in order that they represent no further burden to other men, and that no one will be poor in the realm.’
It was during this time that Vlad would commit the atrocities for which he would gain his infamy. Early in his reign, he gave a feast for his boyars and their families to celebrate Easter, knowing that many had been involved in the deaths of his father and elder brother. All the nobles were arrested and those who were lame or elderly were impaled on the spot. The younger ones and those in good health were sent north to rebuild Poenari Castle, his home on the Arges River, which lay in ruins: many were forced to work naked as their clothes had disintegrated due to excessive wear. Vlad enjoyed torturing and punishing his workers and few survived. He continued to eradicate the boyar class and replace them with free peasants and the middle classes who would be loyal to him.