Whilst paramilitary, the Fedayeen were not an elite military force, often receiving just basic training and operating without heavy weapons.

[citation needed][dubious – discuss] The Fedayeen were among the most loyal organizations to the regime of Saddam Hussein and were a politically reliable force against domestic opponents.

The Fedayeen caught the attention of the international community in 2000 when it was reported that 30 prostitutes were beheaded in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities.

[3] Another example of Fedayeen's brutality was in the spring of 2000, when it was reported that the militia cut out the tongues of four men accused of slandering Saddam Hussein with a pair of shears in Nasiriyah.

[6][7] In 1995 Uday Hussein formed the Fedayeen Saddam with ten to fifteen thousand recruits to maintain internal security in Iraq.

Whereas the Iraqi army and the Republican Guard quickly collapsed, Fedayeen forces put up stiff resistance to the coalition invasion.

They were attempting to sustain the rapid advance by bringing up food, water, ammunition, medical supplies and mail from back home.

These were very lightly armed cargo trucks driving as fast as they could on dirt roads mainly in southern Iraq, after loading supplies in Kuwait.

During the invasion, Fedayeen fighters mostly wielded AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and truck-mounted artillery and mortars.

On 9 April, Baghdad fell to U.S. forces with only sporadic resistance by Fedayeen irregulars, foreign volunteers, and remnants of the Special Republican Guard, effectively ending the regime of Saddam Hussein.

On 30 November 2003, a U.S. convoy traveling through the town of Samarra in the Sunni Triangle was ambushed by over 100 Iraqi guerrillas, reportedly wearing trademark Fedayeen Saddam uniforms.

Four former members of Fedayeen Saddam were arrested in the volatile Salah al-Din province on 14 May 2004, for the abduction, transfer, and gruesome beheading of American Nicholas Berg.

Fedayeen Saddam committed torture and executions involving beatings, breaking bones, gouging out eyes, throwing people off of high buildings, chopping off fingers, ears and genitals, cutting out tongues, piercing hands with electric drills, ritualized mutilations and amputations.

[22] In the last two years of Hussein's rule, a campaign of beheadings, mainly targeting women suspected of prostitution and carried out by his elite Fedayeen unit, killed more than 200 people, human rights groups reported at the time.

Fixed to the right side was a moulded rubber Fedayeen badge, which consisted of a silhouette of Saddam and the motto; Allah al-watan qa'ed (God, homeland, leader).