Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
Iraq under the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party saw severe violations of human rights. Secret police, state terrorism, torture, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, deportations, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical warfare, and the destruction of the Mesopotamian marshes were some of the methods Saddam Hussein and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, which violated the Charter of the United Nations. The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown, but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.
Abdul-Karim Qasim Muhammad Bakr al-Fadhli al-Zubaidi was an Iraqi military officer and nationalist who came to power in 1958 when the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown during the 14 July Revolution. He ruled the country as the prime minister until his downfall and execution during the 1963 Ramadan Revolution.
Michel Aflaq was a Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement; he is considered by several Ba'athists to be the principal founder of Ba'athist thought. He published various books during his lifetime, such as "The Road to Renaissance" (1940), The Battle for One Destiny (1958) and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution (1975).
The history of the Jews in Iraq is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BCE. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities.
From 1951 to 1952, Operation Ezra and Nehemiah airlifted between 120,000 and 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel via Iran and Cyprus. The massive emigration of Iraqi Jews was among the most climactic events of the Jewish exodus from the Muslim World.
Kanan Makiya is an Iraqi-American academic and professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. He gained international attention with Republic of Fear (1989), which became a best-selling book after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and with Cruelty and Silence (1991), a critique of the Arab intelligentsia. In 2003, Makiya lobbied the U.S. government to invade Iraq and oust Hussein.
The United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in covert actions and contingency planning in Iraq ever since the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, although the historiography of Iraq–United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s.
Diplomatic relations between Iraq and the United States began when the U.S. first recognized Iraq on January 9, 1930, with the signing of the Anglo-American-Iraqi Convention in London by Charles G. Dawes, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The historiography of Iraq—United States relations prior to the 1980s is considered relatively underdeveloped, with the first in-depth academic studies being published in the 2010s. Today, the United States and Iraq both consider themselves as strategic partners, given the American political and military involvement after the invasion of Iraq and their mutual, deep-rooted relationship that followed. The United States provides the Iraqi security forces hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid and training annually as well as uses its military bases.
Shafiq Ades was a Syrian-born Iraqi-Jewish businessman. He was widely known as the wealthiest and best-connected Jew in the country. Based out of Basra, he had all of his assets confiscated by the Iraqi government and was subsequently sentenced to death during a rushed show trial, which alleged that he was a Zionist and a communist; it had become a criminal offense in Iraq and the other Arab countries for both Jews and non-Jews to be affiliated with Israel in any way following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. More specifically, Ades was tried on charges of supplying weapons to Israel and of supporting the Iraqi Communist Party, though neither of these claims were backed up with any evidence in court and Ades was not given the right to a proper defense. Four months after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, he was executed by hanging at his residence in front of a crowd of over 12,000 people. His execution was among the events that contributed to the Jewish exodus from Iraq.
The Ramadan Revolution, also referred to as the 8 February Revolution and the February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq, was a military coup by the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party which overthrew the Prime Minister of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qasim in 1963. It took place between 8 and 10 February 1963. Qasim's former deputy, Abdul Salam Arif, who was not a Ba'athist, was given the largely ceremonial title of President, while prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was named Prime Minister. The most powerful leader of the new government was the secretary general of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, Ali Salih al-Sa'di, who controlled the National Guard militia and organized a massacre of hundreds—if not thousands—of suspected communists and other dissidents following the coup.
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, also referred to as the pro-Iraqi Ba'ath movement, is a neo-Ba'athist political party which was headquartered in Baghdad, Iraq, until 2003. It is one of two parties which emerged from the 1966 split of the original Ba'ath Party.
The 17 July Revolution was a bloodless coup in Iraq in 1968 led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif, and Abd ar-Rahman al-Dawud that ousted President Abdul Rahman Arif and Prime Minister Tahir Yahya and brought the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power. Ba'athists involved in the coup as well as the subsequent purge of the moderate faction led by Naif included Hardan al-Tikriti, Salih Mahdi Ammash, and Saddam Hussein, the future President of Iraq. The coup was primarily directed against Yahya, an outspoken Nasserist who exploited the political crisis created by the June 1967 Six-Day War to push Arif's moderate government to nationalize the Western-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in order to use Iraq's "oil as a weapon in the battle against Israel." Full nationalization of the IPC did not occur until 1972, under the Ba'athist administration. In the aftermath of the coup, the new Iraqi government consolidated power by denouncing alleged American and Israeli machinations, publicly executing 14 people including 9 Iraqi Jews on fabricated espionage charges amidst a broader purge, and working to expand Iraq's traditionally close relations with the Soviet Union.
Abd al-Khaliq al-Samarra'i was an Iraqi Ba'athist politician and leading member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Iraq. He was a member of the Regional Command from 1964 to 1973, and considered a serious rival of Saddam Hussein for leadership of the civilian faction of the Ba'ath Party. He was arrested in 1973 for his alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow the government, and executed in 1979 by Hussein.
Munif al-Razzaz was a Jordanian-Syrian physician and politician who was the second, and last, Secretary General of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, having been elected to the post at the 8th National Congress held in April 1965.
Ba'athism, also spelled Baathism, is an Arab nationalist ideology which promotes the creation and development of a unified Arab state through the leadership of a vanguard party over a socialist revolutionary government. The ideology is officially based on the theories of the Syrian intellectuals Michel Aflaq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. Ba'athist leaders of the modern era include the former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein, former president of Syria Hafez al-Assad and his son, the current president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.
The 1950–1951 Baghdad bombings were a series of bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad, Iraq, between April 1950 and June 1951.
Iraqi Jews in Israel, also known as the Bavlim, are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Iraqi Jewish communities, who now reside within the state of Israel. They number around 450,000.
Mohamed Makiya was an Iraqi architect and one of the first Iraqis to gain formal qualifications in architecture. He is noted for establishing Iraq's first department of architecture at the University of Baghdad and for his architectural designs which incorporated Islamic motifs such as calligraphy in an effort to combine Arabic architectural elements within contemporary works.
Ali Salih al-Sa'di was an Iraqi politician. He was General Secretary of the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party from the late 1950s until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état. From February 8, 1963 until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, he was Deputy Prime Minister under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Minister of the Interior and as Commander of the National Guard.
