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country, The grave sites contained the remains of at least 300,000
murdered Iraqis. Most of the victims were believed to be Kurds,
Shiites, or opponents of Saddam’s regime or the Baath Party.
Saddam himself was finally capured on December 13, 2003,
when U.S. soldiers found him hiding in a tiny tunnel on a farm in
Adwar, a town about 10 miles (16 km) from his hometown of Tikrit.
In July 2004, Saddam and a number of his top aids were arraigned
by the Iraqi Special War Crimes Tribunal. The charges against him
included: the arrest and execution of religious figures between
1974 and 1984; the murder of the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983;
the 1986–88 Anfal campaign against the Kurds; the gassing of
Halabja in 1988; the 1990 invasion of Kuwait; and the suppression
of uprisings by Kurds and Shiites in 1991.
In October 2005, Saddam and seven associates went on trial in
an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity. The charges stemmed
from the 1982 killing of nearly 150 Shiites in Dujail, a town north
of Baghdad where an attempt to assassinate Saddam had been
made. After a yearlong trial, Saddam was found guilty and sen-
tenced to death. On December 30, 2006, the former dictator of Iraq
was hanged.
F
IGHTING THE
I
NSURGENCY
American troops suffered thousands of casualties trying to bring
order to Iraq. Bush administration officials and the CPA hoped that
elections and the handover of the government to Iraqis would
stanch the violence. In January 2005, Iraqis voted for a transition-
al national assembly. In December of that year, following the adop-
tion of a constitution, Iraqis went to the polls and voted for a per-
manent government.
Unfortunately, hopes that the elections would bring peace were
soon dashed. Violence remained high throughout 2005. And in
February 2006, a deadly attack on an important Shiite shrine in
I
RAQ
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