War on terrorThe war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks and is also the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. The main targets of the campaign were militant Islamist and Salafi jihadist armed organisations such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their international affiliates, which were waging military insurgencies to overthrow governments of various Muslim-majority countries.
Islamic StateThe Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; ˈaɪsᵻl), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; ˈaɪsᵻs), and by its Arabic acronym Da'ish or Daesh (داعش, Dāʿish, ˈdaːʕɪʃ), is a transnational militant Islamist terrorist group and former unrecognized quasi-state that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam. It was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in 2014, when it captured a large amount of Iraqi territory, and took advantage of the civil war in Syria to take control of chunks of territory in Eastern Syria.
Iran–Iraq WarThe Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides.
Saddam Hussein'Saddam Husseinefn|sʌˈdɑ:m huːˈseɪn; صدام حسين, sʕɐdˈdɑːm ɜħsɪe̯n;efn|Saddam, pronounced sʕɑdˈdæːm, is his personal name, and means the stubborn one or he who confronts in Arabic. Hussein (sometimes also transliterated as Hussayn or Hussain') is not a surname in the Western sense, but a patronymic, his father's given personal name; Abid al-Majid his grandfather's; al-Tikriti means he was born and raised in (or near) Tikrit. He was commonly referred to as Saddam Hussein, or Saddam for short.
TikritTikrit (تِكْرِيت Tikrīt ˈtɪkriːt) is a city in Iraq, located northwest of Baghdad and southeast of Mosul on the Tigris River. It is the administrative center of the Saladin Governorate. , it had a population of approximately 160,000. Originally a fort during the Assyrian empire, Tikrit became the birthplace of Muslim military leader Saladin. It was the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and the city from where a significant portion of those he appointed to government roles originated during the time of Ba'athist Iraq until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
