Admission/Application Essay, Other
ENVI

Project description
Watch the 4-minute video clip in which former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the US government created, trained, armed, and funded the jihad’

in Afghanistan in the 1980s in collabotation with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. She described how the Republican administration of President Reagan and the Democratic-led

Congress at the time supported the brilliant idea of recruiting mujahedeen’ with a Wahhabi brand of Islam’ in order to beat the Soviet Union (but she did not

explain that the main reason was to force the Soviet Union to lift a long time ban on the emigration of Soviet Jews to Palestine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=kzQ2KZWfjgs. In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan called the Afghan mujahedeen freedom fighters who are our brothers. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz,

Saudi ambassador to US at the time was quoted: Bin Laden used to come to us when America€”underline, America€”through the CIA and Saudi Arabia, were helping our brother

mujahideen in Afghanistan, to get rid of the communist secularist Soviet Union forces. Osama bin Laden came and said Thank you. Thank you for bringing the Americans

to help us. At that time, I thought he couldn’t lead eight ducks across the street (watch also .
Based on the above, write a concise critical thinking essay (200-300 words) in which you compare and contrast the jihad’ in Afghanistan in the 1980s (as described in

the video clip) with the jihad’ in Syria since 2011 (based on the last 13 or so PowerPoint slides of topic 1).