By the time Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed under the might of the American and allied attack on Iraq, Uday Hussein was, to some degree, already in decline. His excesses had long since cost him his birthright. Though he was the first-born son of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam had decided that Uday would not succeed him. That honor was to have gone to Qusay, who was, in comparison, a far more grounded young man.
Of course that was not the path Uday had imagined for himself, nor was it the one that Saddam had initially imagined for him.
In fact, Uday was not born into power as much as he was born into a power struggle. At the time of Uday's birth, on June 18, 1964, Saddam was in prison, serving a sentence for his part in an unsuccessful coup. Uday, then just an infant, became his father's unknowing confederate, according to a 2003 profile of Uday published in the London-based newspaper The Telegraph. According to the newspaper, Uday's mother, Sajida took Uday to prison to visit his father with secret messages from other Ba'ath party officials hidden in the boy's diaper.
By 1967, Saddam has escaped from jail, and there is ample evidence that Saddam had hoped to tutor his eldest son in the finer points of tyranny and oppression.
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| King Faisal II |
According to Don Yaeger's landmark profile of Uday in Sports Illustrated, "as an infant he reportedly played with disarmed grenades. By 10 he was accompanying his father to the torture chamber at Qasr-al-Nihayyah (the Palace of the End, where many political enemies, including deposed King Faisal II, were killed) to watch Saddam deal with dissidents."
By the time he was 12, Uday was a card carrying member of the Ba'ath party, and there is some evidence that he yearned for a closer relationship with his father, who by now had sired five children, including Qusay and the boys' three sisters, Raghad, Rina and Hala.
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| Uday Hussein, youth |
According to the Telegraph, "Saddam was an affectionate if often absent father to the young Uday," and his mother largely dominated his childhood. In fact, she was the head mistress of the prestigious Al Kharkh Al Namouthajiya School in Baghdad, where both Uday and Qusay were enrolled. There is some question about the quality of Sajida's child rearing skills, as well as questions about her aptitude for managing a school.
It may be apocryphal, but it has long been rumored in Iraq that Uday killed his first man when he was just 16. The victim, it is said, was a teacher who had embarrassed him in front of a girl at school.
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