That name probably doesn't mean anything to most people, but some will know Al-Douri as one of the key figures of the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party, which ruled Iraq until 2003. Al Douri was Saddam Hussein's right-hand man by most respects, with their families marrying into one-another and Douri holding several important posts in the regime. He was perhaps most famous for issuing the order during the Anfal Campaign to use chemical weapons to defend an Iraqi Army outpost near the Kurdish village of Halabja, resulting in the massacre of several thousand civilians. He was also a general during the 1990-91 Gulf War, in which Iraq was decisively defeated by an international coalition headed by the United States. Following the Gulf War, Douri led the so-called "Faith Campaign" which attempted to emphasize religion as an important factor in Arab history and nationalism. Since 2003, Al-Douri has led an insurgency against the government installed by the United States, and briefly escaped being captured and killed by ISIS following a brief attempt to collude with them which ended when Al-Douri attempted to seize ISIS leaders, resulting in a purge of former Ba'ath officers from ISIS' ranks. He was born on the first of July in 1942 in the village of Ad-Dawar, to poor Iraqi farmers, he has died on October 26, 2020 at age 79.
I have little to say except that he was a relic of a by-gone middle east where Arab Nationalism and not Islamism was the driving force of politics, and so his death should be a cause for greater reflection.
