Saddam Hussein 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 its Iraqi regional branch. Ideologically, he espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, while the policies and political ideas he championed are collectively known as Saddamism.
The Suez Crisis also known as the Second Arab–Israeli War, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and as the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 5 November, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had earlier nationalised by transferring administrative control from the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company to Egypt's new government-owned Suez Canal Authority. Shortly after the invasion began, the three countries came under heavy political pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as from the United Nations, eventually prompting their withdrawal from Egypt. Israel's four-month-long occupation of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula enabled it to attain freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, but the Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 to March 1957.
The Oil-for-Food Programme (OIP) was established by the United Nations in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to boost its military capabilities.
Field Marshal Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was an Iraqi politician who served as the fourth president of Iraq, from 17 July 1968 to 15 July 1979. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, also known as Barazan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Barasan Ibrahem Alhassen and Barzan Hassan, was one of three half-brothers of Saddam Hussein, and a leader of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service. As the head of the Mukhabarat, he was responsible for ordering the killings of dissidents. Despite falling out of favour with Saddam at one time, he was believed to have been a close presidential adviser at the time of his capture by U.S. forces in 2003. On 15 January 2007, Barzan was hanged for crimes against humanity. He was decapitated by the hangman's rope after errors were made calculating his body weight and length of drop from the platform.
Jacques Santer is a Luxembourgish politician who served as the ninth president of the European Commission from 1995 to 1999. He served as the finance minister of Luxembourg from 1979 until 1989, and the 22nd prime minister of Luxembourg from 1984 to 1995, as a member of the Christian Social People's Party (CSV), which was the leading party in the Luxembourg government between 1979 and 2013. As Prime Minister of Luxembourg he also led the negotiations on the Single European Act, which effectively set aside the 20-year-old Luxembourg Compromise.
Elf Aquitaine is a French brand of oils and other motor products for automobiles and trucks. Elf is a former petroleum company which merged with TotalFina to form "TotalFinaElf". The new company changed its name to Total in 2003 and TotalEnergies in 2021. Elf has been as a major brand of TotalEnergies since then.
Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz is a British politician who served as the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester East for 32 years, from 1987 to 2019. He is the UK Parliament's longest-serving British Asian MP.
Major-General Sir Percy Zachariah Cox, was a British Indian Army officer and Colonial Office administrator in the Middle East. He was one of the major figures in the creation of the current Middle East.
Nicholas F. Oppenheimer is a South African billionaire businessman. He was formerly the chairman of De Beers diamond mining company and of its subsidiary, the Diamond Trading Company, and former deputy chairman of Anglo American. He is the third richest man in Africa.
The Mesopotamian campaign or Mesopotamian front was a campaign in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I fought between the Allies represented by the British Empire, troops from Britain, Australia and the vast majority from British Raj, against the Central Powers, mostly the Ottoman Empire. It started after British amphibious landings in 1914 which sought to protect Anglo-Persian oil fields in Khuzestan and the Shatt al-Arab. However, the front later evolved into a larger campaign that sought to capture the key city of Baghdad and divert Ottoman forces from other fronts. It ended with the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, leading to the cession of Iraq and further partition of the Ottoman Empire.
The General Mediterranean Holding (GMH) is Luxembourg financial holding company that was founded by Anglo-Iraqi businessman Nadhmi Auchi.
The Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, generally referred to from 1982 as Paribas, was a French investment bank based in Paris. In May 2000, it merged with the Banque Nationale de Paris to form BNP Paribas.
Osama Maukhlif Tawfiq al-Tikriti is a former leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab religious party which was the largest Sunni Arab led party in the Iraqi legislative election of December 2005.
Nemir Amin Kirdar was an Iraqi banker, billionaire, businessman, financier and author. As a founding father of private equity, and an economic and cultural bridge-builder, he was the founder and CEO of Investcorp, a global alternative investment group that operates in Manama, New York, London, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha, and Singapore. He spent much of his life in London, and held British citizenship. He was of Iraqi Turkmen background from Kirkuk.
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.
The Mandate for Mesopotamia was a proposed League of Nations mandate to cover Ottoman Iraq (Mesopotamia). It would have been entrusted to the United Kingdom but was superseded by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, an agreement between Britain and Iraq with some similarities to the proposed mandate. On paper, the mandate lasted from 1920 to 1932.
The Cordoba Foundation is a UK-based research and advisory group with the stated aim of “bridging the gap of understanding between the Muslim World and the West”.
