Faith Campaign

[1] The campaign was conducted under the supervision of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who would later become Saddam Hussein's successor as leader of the Ba'ath party.

This campaign targeted women accused of prostitution, and according to contemporary reports by human rights groups killed more than 200 people.

[9] Dr. Samuel Helfont, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, says that while "the Faith Campaign is normally portrayed in ideological terms—as the regime shifting away from secular nationalism toward a more religious outlook" in fact, "Iraq’s internal archives show that the campaign had much more to do with the regime’s institutional capacity to incorporate its views on religion into its policies without empowering hostile elements of the Iraqi religious landscape."

In contrast the former Prime Minister Sa'dun Hammadi, and former Intelligence Director Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, were noted opponents of the campaign.

Barzan in particular was fearful that the Islamist groups Saddam wished to placate would eventually seek to replace him and establish themselves in his place, and argued that in the meantime any alliance with Salafists would alienate both Iraqi Shiites and also other Arab states in the region.

This manifested itself in the late 90s in the form of a low level terrorist campaign, including the kind of car bombings and assassinations that would later characterize the Iraqi insurgency.