May 2019. The Story of Amar Kanim of Iraq

For a short time in the early 1990s, Amar Kanim was famous. His scarred face and desperate story featured on newspaper front pages around the world. He was introduced to diplomats and ambassadors. He even attended a session of the United Nations. He was known as the little boy who had lost everything in a Napalm Attack. He came to personify the suffering of the Iraqi people at the hands of their own president. Amar’s body had been left covered in burns when Saddam Hussein bombed Shia Muslim communities in southern Iraq in March 1991. The Iraqi leader was trying to exert his authority after being pushed back from Kuwait by an American-led coalition in the Gulf War. In the aftermath of that war, thousands of Iraqis rose up against his regime, including the Kurds in the north and the Shia of the south. Saddam dispatched his troops to put down the uprisings with Terrifying Ferocity.