Iraq's unilateral abolition of the state of Kuwait and its annexation as a province of Iraq was accompanied by crimes of war documented by Kuwaitis and Allied forces. Iraqis, who had not yet recovered from the consequences of the war with Iran, witnessed the destruction of their country and more needless deaths. The sanctions regime imposed as a result of the Iraqi leadership's policies, has killed children, reduced Iraqis to the status of paupers, and set back Iraq's development by decades. The history of internal repression is a story of repeated state violence against the Iraqi people, mass murder, execution, torture, extra-judicial detention, rape, forced displacement and deportation. In pursuit of the hegemonic appetite of its leader, the regime forced Iraqis into two wars that killed hundreds of thousand of Iraqis, ruined Iraq's economy, and robbed Iraqi children of their future.
State violence is practiced against any form of real or imagined political opposition or rivalry.
Thus some of the first victims of the regime were military officers who had aided the Ba'thist coup of 1968. Non-Ba'thists were purged from state institutions. Fellow Ba'th party members who were viewed as possible future rivals were either removed or liquidated. Elimination of Ba'thists continued throughout the 1970s, and was stepped up on the accession of Saddam Hussein to the presidency in 1979. Finally, the party became a pliant tool in the hands of a single individual.