Hussein bin Talal was King of Jordan from 11 August 1952 until his death in 1999. As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of Jordan since 1921, Hussein was a 40th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad.
Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, simply called Ansar al-Islam, is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al-Qaeda volunteers, which were coming back from Afghanistan in 2001 after the Fall of Kabul. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state around the Kurdistan region and to protect Kurdish people from other armed insurgent groups. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border. Its ideology follows a traditionalist interpretation of the Quran and Salafism.
Ayatollah al-Sayyid Muhammad Baqir Muhsin al-Hakim at-Tabataba'i, also known as Shaheed al-Mehraab, was a senior Iraqi Shia Islamic Scholar and the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Al-Hakim spent more than 20 years in exile in Iran and returned to Iraq on 12 May 2003 following the US-led invasion. Al-Hakim was a contemporary of Ayatollah Khomeini, and The Guardian compared the two in terms of their times in exile and their support in their respective homelands. After his return to Iraq, al-Hakim's life was in danger because of his work to encourage Shiite resistance to Saddam Hussein and from a rivalry with Muqtada al-Sadr, the son of the late Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who had himself been assassinated in Najaf in 1999. Al-Hakim was assassinated in a bomb attack in Najaf in 2003 when aged 63 years old. At least 75 others in the vicinity also died in the bombing.
Ayad Allawi is an Iraqi politician. He served as the vice president of Iraq from 2014 to 2015 and 2016 to 2018. Previously he was interim prime minister of Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and the president of the Governing Council of Iraq in 2003.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was an Islamic extremist Salafi jihadist terrorist group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
Following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a protracted insurgency began and lasted for the duration of the Iraq War. The initial outbreak of violence was triggered by the fall of Saddam Hussein and preceded the establishment of the new Iraqi government by the Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF–I), which was led by the United States. From around 2004 to May 2007, Iraqi insurgents largely focused their attacks on MNF-I troops, but later shifted to targeting the post-invasion Iraqi security forces as well.
After the invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, the Iraqi insurgency began. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War.
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq is a group of religious leaders in Iraq. It was formed on the April 14, 2003, four days after the U.S.-led invasion demolished the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein, by a group of scholars who aimed to represent Sunnis in Iraq. Though not a political party, the association is considered to be politically influential. It also administers a charitable fund set up for the upkeep of religious buildings.
The Saddam–al-Qaeda conspiracy theory was based on false claims made by the United States government, alleging that a highly secretive relationship existed between Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda between 1992 and 2003. The George W. Bush administration promoted it as a main rationale for invading Iraq in 2003.
Ihab el-Sherif served as Egypt's ambassador to Iraq until Iraqi kidnappers murdered him in July 2005. He previously served as Egypt's chargé d'affaires to Israel.
The 2006 al-Askari Shrine bombing occurred on 22 February 2006 at approximately 6:44 a.m. local Iraqi time, and targeted the al-Askari Shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq. The attack on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, has not been claimed by any group; the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, claimed that the bombing was an al-Qaeda plot. Although the mosque was severely damaged from the blast, there were no casualties.
The following lists events that happened during 2006 in Iraq.
This article is a chronological listing of allegations of meetings between members of al-Qaeda and members of Saddam Hussein's government, as well as other information relevant to conspiracy theories involving Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Adel Alexander Darwish is a Westminster-based British political journalist, a veteran Fleet Street reporter, author, historian, broadcaster, and political commentator. Darwish is currently a parliament lobby correspondent based at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, the Palace of Westminster, specialising in foreign affairs, especially Middle Eastern politics; London University Graduate/Post Graduate 1965/1966–1967.
Ismail Hafidh al-Lami — known as Abu Deraa is an Iraqi Shia militant whose men have been accused of retaliatory terrorizing and killing Sunnis.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
Al-Qaeda in Iraq or al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, officially known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn or TQJBR, was an Iraqi Salafi Sunni jihadist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda, for two years.
The Islamic State of Iraq, previously referred to as al-Qaeda in Iraq, is a militant Salafist jihadist group that aimed to establish an Islamic state in Sunni, Arab-majority areas of Iraq during the Iraq War and later in Syria during the Syrian Civil War.
The Iraqi conflict refers to a near-continuous series of events that began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which led to the fall of erstwhile Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. During the Iraq War, the Multi-National Force (MNF–I) of the United States helped to establish a Shia-dominated federal government under Iraqi politician Nouri al-Maliki. Around this time, the Iraqi insurgency had emerged with a predominant focus on fighting the occupying MNF–I troops and the new Iraqi government. However, the insurgency also involved inter-Iraqi sectarian violence, primarily between Shias and Sunnis. In 2011, the MNF–I withdrew from Iraq, leading to renewed sectarian violence from 2011 to 2013. During this period, the Islamic State (IS) emerged, triggering a a renewed war and an American-led intervention in 2014. In 2017, full-scale fighting in the country came to a close after the Islamic State was defeated by the Iraqi government and its allies, but a low-level IS insurgency remains ongoing in the rural northern parts of the country.
The group that became The Islamic State was founded in 1999 by Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād. A document captured in 2004, thought to indicate the group's strategy and modus operandi, urges Al-Qaeda to help al-Zarqawi start a "sectarian war" against Shia in Iraq to rally Sunni Arabs to its side.
