Khairallah Talfah

Khairallah Talfah (Arabic: خير الله طلفاح Khayr Allāh Ṭilfāḥ; 1910 – 20 April 1993) was an Iraqi military officer, politician, and author. He was the maternal uncle and father-in-law of Saddam Hussein. He was the father of Saddam's first wife Sajida Talfah and of Iraqi defense minister Adnan Khairallah. Under the Saddam regime, Talfah served as governor of Baghdad from 1979 to 1981, when he was removed from his position on charges of corruption.

Born in the village of Al-Awja near Tikrit, many of Talfah's family members were Arab nationalists who opposed the Ottoman Empire. Talfah himself would also adopt the ideology against British rule in Iraq, eventually participating in the 1941 coup d'état, which brought the anti-British Rashid Ali al-Gaylani to power with aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. However, the British quickly suppressed al-Gaylani's government in the ensuing Anglo-Iraqi War, leading to Talfah's imprisonment. Following his release, his anti-British political activities continued, and he played a role in the founding of the Arab nationalist Iraqi Independence Party in 1946, though it was dissolved a decade later. Talfah's career as a politician would not particularly grow in notability until the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party took control of Iraq through the 1968 coup d'état.

Under Saddam's regime, Talfah reportedly spent most of his tenure as Baghdad's governor conducting morality policing against Iraqi citizens, particularly women, who were seen as adopting "Westernized" clothing styles. These actions, along with his mishandling of government funds and other resources, contributed to the removal of Talfah from his position by Saddam two years after his appointment.

Talfah authored a pamphlet titled Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies in 1940. The work, which overtly expresses anti-Persian sentiment and antisemitism, has been described by British journalist Con Coughlin as a "weak Iraqi attempt at imitating Mein Kampf" and is believed to have had an influence on Saddam's policies, owing to the Arabization campaigns in northern Iraq and the Iran–Iraq War.