The Second Razing of Baghdad was the mass destruction of the Iraqi capital by forces belonging to The Caliphate of Sadati Arabia in late 1962, marking one of the most infamous war crimes of the 20th century. Following the collapse of The United Arab Kingdom’s frontlines, Sadat's forces advanced into Mesopotamia with shocking speed, reducing Hashemite resistance to scattered, desperate holdouts. As their forces crumbled, Shiite militias in Baghdad mounted a last stand against the invaders, turning the city into a dense urban warzone. This insurgency infuriated Anwar al-Sadat, who saw Iraq’s Shiite population as apostates, an obstacle to his grand vision of a purified Islamic empire. His response was total annihilation.
On November 20th, 1962, ANS artillery and aircraft began a relentless bombardment of Baghdad, flattening entire districts. Civilian evacuation routes were intentionally bombed to trap the population within the city. Over the next two weeks, Sadati forces deployed their most horrifying weapon—Sarin gas. Hundreds of canisters were dropped into the streets and infrastructure of the ancient capital, seeping into underground bunkers, hospitals, and mosques where thousands had sought refuge. Within hours, entire neighbourhoods suffocated in silence. The last transmissions from the city came from resistance fighters broadcasting prayers, screams, and desperate pleas for international intervention. By early December, Baghdad had ceased to exist as a functioning city; its population, once exceeding three million, had been reduced to a few thousand survivors hiding in the ruins. It was, by all accounts, the fastest genocide in human history.
Though the war itself was widely condemned, no immediate military intervention had come—the world's nations, focused on the Cuban Missile Crisis, hesitated to escalate tensions further. Baghdad's razing, however, horrified the world, cementing Sadat’s reputation as the most dangerous leader of his era. Journalists covering the aftermath described Baghdad as a "poisoned corpse rotting under the desert sun." Now, the world's powers were quick to act. On December 3rd, 1962, the United Nations (UN) Security Council convened and voted unanimously to intervene in this conflict which, with a much greater scope and much bigger stakes at hand, became the Black Sand War.
Baghdad is, to this day, abandoned. It is considered the most poisoned and most dangerous part of The South Arab Security Zone, a symbolic tombstone for the Hashemite dynasty and a grim warning to those who defied Sadati Arabia. The international press was quick to catch onto the name "Second Razing", which evoked the Mongol sack of the city in 1258, but historians would later argue that Sadat's actions surpassed even that atrocity—not for their brutality alone, but for the cold, calculated extermination of an entire metropolis.