THE ARAB PERSON

BEHIND THE MAJOR

EVENTS IN THE 21ST
CENTURY
OSAMA BIN LADEN
Born : March 10, 1957,
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Died: May 2, 2011
Role in:
911 Attacks & USS Cole
Attack
FOUNDER OF AL-QAEDA
EARLY LIFE
 He was one of more than 50 children
of Muhammad bin Laden.
 Studied Business Administration at
Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah.
 His time at the university was key to
his future role as leader of Al-Qaeda,
not only influencing his radical
views but also in providing him with
the skill to market Al-Qaeda.
AL-QAEDA

“The Base” created

on 1988 that focus on
symbolic acts of
terrorism instead of
military campaigns.
PUBLIC ENEMY #1
 Killed 18 American servicemen 1993
 Attempted assassination of Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarek in 1995
 Bombing of a US National Guard training center
in Riyadh in 1995.
 Truck bomb that destroyed Khobar Towers, an
American residence in Dharan in 1996
 213 people killed and 4,500 were injured of bomb
explosions at the US Embassies in Nairobi ,
Kenya in 1998
 11 people killed and 85 were injured in Tanzania
 Attempted assassination of Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarek in 1995
TRUCK BOMB THAT
DESTROYED KHOBAR TOWERS,
AN AMERICAN RESIDENCE IN
DHARAN IN 1996

Bombing of a US National
Guard training center in
Riyadh in 1995.
 17 sailors killed and 38 were injured of bomb
explosion at USS Cole, an American naval destroyer.
911 ATTACK

On September 11, 2001 , four

American Airplanes Boeing
767, United Airlines Flight
175, Boeing 757, and United
Flight 93 were hijacked and
carried out suicide attacks
against targets in the United
States.
 American Airlines Boeing 767 crashed into the
north tower of the World Trade Center in New
York City that left burning hole near the 80th flr.
Of the 110-story skyscraper.
 United Airlines Flight 175 sliced into the south
tower near the 60th floor. 2,996 people were killed
 American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the
west side of Pentagon military headquarters. 189
people were killed.
 United Flight 93 crashed into the field of
Pennsylvania. 44 people were killed.
DEATH

Osama bin Laden , the

mastermind behind the
September 11th attacks,
remained at large until May 2,
2011, when he was finally
tracked down and killed by U.S
forces at a hideout in
Abbottabad, Pakistan.
SADDAM HUSSEIN
Born : April 28,1937, Al-
Awjah, Iraq
Died: December 30, 2006
Role in: Iraq War, Iran-
Iraq War, Persian Gulf
War
President of Iraq from
1979- 2003
EARLY LIFE
 He was the son of peasants and was born
in a village near the city of Tikrit in
northern Iraq.
 He joined the Ba’th Party in 1957.

 He attended Cairo Law School and

continued his studies at Baghdad Law
College
 In 1959, he participated in an
unsuccessful attempt to assasinate the
Iraqi prime minister, ‘Abd al-Karim
Qasim.
PRESIDENCY
 He became president upon Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr
resignation.
 He was the chairman of the Revolutionary
Command Council and Prime Minister.
 He used an extensive secret police establishment
to suppress any internal opposition in his rule.
 His goals as president were to supplant Egypt as
leader of the Arab world and to achieve
hegemony over the Persian Gulf.
CAUSE OF IRAQ WAR
 Saddam’s failure to cooperate fully with the
investigations on US assertion of his involvement
on 911 Attack as he might provide terrorist
groups with chemical or biological weapons to
renew the disarmament process frustrated the
United States and Great Britain and led them to
declare an end to diplomacy.
 Pres. George W. Bush ordered Saddam to step
down from office and leave Iraq within 48 hours
or face war. Eventually, when Saddam refused to
leave, US and allied forces launched an attack on
Iraq on March 20.
DEATH

 In October 2005, Saddam went on trial

before the Iraqi High Tribunal, a panel
court established to try officials of the
former Iraqi government.
 Charged with the killing of 148
townspeople in Al-Dujayl in 1982. He was
convicted of crimes against humanity
including willful killing, illegal
imprisonment, deportation, torture, and
was sentenced to death by hanging.ee
BASHAR AL-ASSAD
Born : September 11,
1965, Damascus,
Syria
Role in: Syrian Civil
War
President of Syria
from 2000-present
EARLY LIFE
 He was the third child of Hafiz al-
Assad( former Syrian President )
 Studied medicine in Damascus,
graduating as an ophthalmologist in
1988.
 Served as an army doctor at
Damascus military hospital in 1992
moved to London to continue his
studies.
 In 1994,his older brother, Basil who
had been designated by his father as
heir apparent died in a car accident.
He was groomed to take his brother’s
place.
 He gained the rank of colonel in the
elite Republican Guard.
 He became head of a popular anti-
corruption campaign.
 He also became the chairman of the
Syrian Computer Society.
PRESIDENCY
 His father died on June 10,2000.
Hours after the death, the national
legislature approved a constitutional
amendment lowering the minimum
age for the president from 40 to 34,
Bashar al-Assad’s age at the time.
 On July 10, he was elected to a seven
year term as Syria’s president.
CIVIL WAR
 Protesters demanded an end to the authoritarian
practices of the Assad regime, in place since his
father became president in 1977. The Syrian
government used violence to suppress
demonstrations, making extensive use of police,
military, and paramilitary forces.
 Environmental crisis also played a role in Syria’s
uprising. Between 2006 and 2010, Syria
experienced the worst drought in the country’s
modern history. Hundreds of thousands of
farming families were reduced to poverty,
causing a mass migration of rural people to
urban shantytowns.
CIVIL WAR
 By Sept.2011 armed opposition groups had emerged
and begun to stage increasingly effective attacks
against Syrian forces. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
Qatar fund the arm rebels while Iran and militant
group Hezbollah supply Syrian gov’t weapons.
 In 2013 Islamist militants began to take centre
advantage. The Nusrah Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate
operating in Syria partnered with a variety of other
opposition groups was considered the most effective
fighting forces. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of al-
Qaeda in Iraq declared that he would combine his
forces in Iraq and Syria under the name Islamic State
in Iraq and the Levant(ISIL) also known as the
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
 Nusrah Front rejected the merger, and
the two groups ended up fighting with
each other.
 Sept. of 2015, Russia launched its first air
strikes against ISIL in Syria.
 In Sept. 2016, Russia and Syrian gov’t
forces focus to the rebel held in Aleppo,
unleashing fierce bombing campaign.
Rebels collapsed in Aleppo in December.
The intervention was largely successful by
the end of 2017.
 By 2018, Idlib was the last remaining
region of the country that the rebels held.
REBUILD SYRIA
 They included projects to build
infrastructure and new commercial
centres to attract foreign investors,
 “LAW 10”, allowed the gov’t to seize
property if its owners failed to
reregister it. The purpose of the law
was to allow the development or
redistribution of property abandoned
during war by its owners.
REFERENCE

www.britannica.com