Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr ruled Iraq for eleven years and spent them being gradually replaced by his own deputy. He was a career officer from Tikrit and a Ba'athist from the 1950s, and he had been prime minister during the party's first brief spell in power in 1963. When the Ba'ath returned in July 1968 he took the presidency. Within a fortnight he had removed the non-party officers who had helped him do it. His deputy was a young civilian relative from the same town, who took charge of internal security. The decade that followed was the most prosperous in Iraqi history. The oil industry was nationalised in 1972, and the price quadrupled the following year after the October war. The revenue paid for electrification, free schooling and hospitals, and Iraqi social indicators became the best in the Arab world. It also paid for an army, a security apparatus modelled on eastern European practice, and a party that reached into every workplace. An autonomy agreement with the Kurds in 1970 was the most generous ever offered and collapsed within four years. Power drained from him steadily. His deputy controlled appointments, the security services and the oil ministry, and by the late 1970s foreign governments dealt with the deputy directly. In July 1979 al-Bakr resigned for reasons of health, in a broadcast most Iraqis did not believe. His successor convened the party leadership days later, read out a list of conspirators, and had them taken from the hall and shot. Al-Bakr lived under house arrest until 1982.
- Lived: 1914 CE – 1982 CE
- Nationality: Iraqi
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
