Qais al-Khazali, the secretary-general of the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq movement in Iraq, stated that a DNA analysis of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has proven that he is of Indian origin.
Al-Khazali, in a sermon marking the Eid Al-Fitr holiday on Saturday in Baghdad, delivered a blistering attack on what he described as “pseudo-intellectuals” who engage in “conspiracies and projects to undermine stability.”
“Saddam used to propagate his belief that the Iraqi people have their origins in India, and after DNA analysis, it has been revealed that he himself is of Indian origin,” said al-Khazali.
No party leader had previously definitively discussed the origins of the former Iraqi president or his tribe, and reports following his arrest at the end of 2003 only focused on DNA analysis linking Saddam to the corpses of his sons Uday and Qusay to confirm his identity.
Al-Khazali did not mention how he arrived at a conclusion regarding the origins of the former Iraqi president or how he identified his lineage through gene testing, which is typically carried out in specialized labs.
However, sources close to al-Khazali told Asharq Al-Awsat that he relied on studies conducted by Iraqi researchers interested in the lineage of the peoples who inhabited Iraq during the past century.
These studies concluded that the Nida tribe has “Indo-Aryan” origins, but the validity and reliability of these studies are difficult to verify.
In 2017, the state-run magazine “Al-Shabaka” published an investigation into “Saddam’s origins,” claiming that a gene test proved he belongs to the “L” lineage, which is prevalent in South Asia, especially in Pakistan, India, Tajikistan, Baluchistan in Iran and Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent in the Middle East in general.
The study also did not mention how this result was reached and did not refer to any scientific source that confirms these claims.
Al-Khazali’s statement sparked a wide-ranging debate on social media.
While many criticized what they described as “distracting the public from important events,” others circulated statements from genealogists on the origins of Iraqi tribes, claiming that a spectrum of Iraqis are not actually Arabs.