Tag: history

• 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.

• Robben Island was known as the South African penal colony for political prisoners.
• Nelson Mandela served an imprisonment term on Robben Island for his support to the violent overthrow of the government.

• F.W. de Klerk was the last white president of South Africa.
• Nelson Mandela helped him negotiate an end to apartheid and organise free elections.