Ra'ad al-Hamdani () was a Lieutenant-General in the Iraqi Republican Guard of Ba'athist Iraq under Saddam Hussein who became one of his favorite officers.
Biography[]
Ra'ad al-Hamdani was born in Baghdad, Iraq to a secular Sunni Muslim family, and in 1966 he graduated from the Jordanian Military Academy before graduating from the Iraqi Military College in 1970. He served as a Lieutenant with the Iraqi 3rd Armored Division in the Golan Heights during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and Hamdani joined the Iraqi Republican Guard in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq War. He became one of Saddam Hussein's favorite officers, and Uday Hussein, Qusay Hussein, and Tariq Aziz's son served in his unit as a symbol of their participation in the war; Hamdani protected them, and he became one of Saddam's favorite officers. In 2003, the Battle of the Karbala Gap showed Hamdani's ability to inflict heavy losses against the United States' forces at the start of the Iraq War, but he was later defeated. He was cleared of political crimes by the MNF-I, but he fled to Jordan to avoid being killed by Shi'ite militias.