Tag: end of colonialism and the cold war

• The Olympic Games of 2008 took place in Beijing, China.
• An estimated 4.7 billion people watched the Olympic Games in Beijing, which cost 20 billion pounds to stage.

• During Saddam’s rule, Al-Qaeda had not operated in Iraq, but the power vacuum created by the invasion of Iraq by the US allowed them in.
• Al-Qaeda aimed to force the withdrawal of foreign troops by making Iraq ungovernable.

• Despite huge economic changes, political power in China was under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
• The communists violently suppressed a student movement demanding democratic reform in 1989. It even succeeded in forcing internet companies to censor their content.

• By 1988, Osama bin Laden had established an organisation called Al-Qaeda.
• It was a network of jihadis that outlasted Soviet defeat in 1989.

• On 11th September 2001, thousands of people were getting about their daily business in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in Newyork.
• Suddenly, out of a clear blue sky, an airliner crashed into one of the towers, followed later by a second plane into the other tower.

In 1966, to consolidate his grip over the Communist Party, Mao Zedong launched a Cultural Revolution, urging the youthful Red Guards to criticise their communist elders.

• Saddam Hussein was the leader of Iraq.
• In 2003, the US invaded Iraq in a bid to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and to free the Iraqi people.

• The active Muslim supporter of holy war was called Jihadis.
• In 1984, Bin Laden moved to Peshawar in Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan, where he organised Muslims from abroad, mostly from Arab countries, who were willing to fight as jihadis against the Soviets.

• On 20 March 2003, a coalition of forces led by the USA began the invasion of Iraq.
• President Bush claimed that the aim of the war was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and to free the Iraqi people.

• Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president attended the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final in Johannesburg, hoping to rally the country’s divided black and white population around the largely white national rugby team, the Springboks.
• He donned a Springboks green and orange shirt to greet the players.