Special to WorldTribune.com

Life was just as brutal for the Yazidis … under former dictator Saddam Hussein as it is now under the threat from Islamic militants, contradicting recent claims about the former Iraqi government.

The plight of the Yazidis attracted international attention in recent days as thousands sought refuge from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), a jihadist group that has pledged to exterminate non-Sunni Muslims who do not convert [and that has extensive ties with former Saddam loyalists]. The potential for genocide prompted President Barack Obama to order airstrikes and airdrops of food and water.

Some commentators on both the left and right are now arguing that the United States and Iraqis were better off with the government led by Hussein, who they view as a secular and more tolerant leader. American forces toppled the dictator when they invaded in 2003, and he was executed in 2006.

However, the Yazidis had to fear for their lives and safety during Hussein’s reign. The religious sect was a casualty of Hussein’s devastating campaign against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, which included a poison gas attack that murdered thousands of women and children in 1988. Iraqi forces destroyed about 100 Yazidi villages during the campaign, the New York Times reported in 1993. …

Hussein’s offensive against the Kurds and Yazidis later morphed into a “Stalinesque forced migration program,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 2003.

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  Iraq, Islamists, LIFE, Saddam’s horrific terror campaigns resurrected by ISIL, WorldTribune.com, Yazidis