Original Item: One-Of-A-Kind. This is an extremely interesting piece of history from the Iraq Iran War! This handwritten letter was written on April 30, 1985 and we believe was given to his personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud, honoring Sudanese and Somali volunteers who volunteered to fight against Iran. He also requested that a list be made of the volunteers to award them a Medal for Courage and a financial reward.

Included is a rough translation, as it is difficult to read the script in which the Arabic was written. We are not professional translators, but we will include the English transcript we received with the letter.

This is a wonderful piece of history and the letter even has traces of fingerprints on it! Comes ready to translate and display.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Institute, the Soviet Union, France, and China together accounted for over 90% of the value of Iraq's arms imports between 1980 and 1988.

The United States pursued policies in favor of Iraq by reopening diplomatic channels, lifting restrictions on the export of dual-use technology, overseeing the transfer of third-party military hardware, and providing operational intelligence on the battlefield. France, which from the 1970s had been one of Iraq's closest allies, was a major supplier of military hardware. The French sold weapons equal to $5 billion, which comprised well over a quarter of Iraq's total arms stockpile. Citing French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur as the primary source, but also quoting French officials, the New York Times reported France had been sending chemical precursors of chemical weapons to Iraq, since 1986. China, which had no direct stake in the victory of either side and whose interests in the war were entirely commercial, freely sold arms to both sides.

Iraq also made extensive use of front companies, middlemen, secret ownership of all or part of companies all over the world, forged end-user certificates, and other methods to hide what it was acquiring. Some transactions may have involved people, shipping, and manufacturing in as many as 10 countries. Support from Great Britain exemplified the methods by which Iraq would circumvent export controls. Iraq bought at least one British company with operations in the United Kingdom and the United States, and had a complex relationship with France and the Soviet Union, its major suppliers of actual weapons. Turkey took action against the Kurds in 1986, alleging they were attacking the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which prompted a harsh diplomatic intervention by Iran, which planned a new offensive against Iraq at the time and were counting on the support of Kurdish factions.

Sudan supported Iraq directly during the war, sending a contingent to fight at the frontlines. The Sudanese unit consisted of a large degree of Ugandan refugees from the West Nile Region, recruited by Juma Oris.

The United Nations Security Council initially called for a cease-fire after a week of fighting while Iraq was occupying Iranian territory, and renewed the call on later occasions. However, the UN did not come to Iran's aid to repel the Iraqi invasion, and the Iranians thus interpreted the UN as subtly biased in favor of Iraq.