Mujahideen

“The implications of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan could pose the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War.” In 1980, Jimmy Carter was able to recognize the political threat of the Soviet Union colonization and its potentially damaging consequences on global security. Amidst the political clash of the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union engaged in an unsuccessful invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to expand their communist empire. The…

On September 11th, 2001, four separate attacks on the United States were coordinated and carried out by an Islamic extremist terrorist group known as al-Qaeda. Four planes were hijacked by 19 different terrorists, with two of the planes flying into both buildings of the World Trade Center in New York City, one plane flying into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the final plane crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. The attacks followed a growing unrest towards the western world and the USA…

To endure means to suffer patiently, or to just simply exist taking everything that life throws your way without breaking down. “There is only one, only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life, and they don’t teach it in school . . . Only one skill. And it’s this: tahamul. Endure . . . It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have.” (Nana pg. 17) . When talking about endurance, Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” comes to mind. In “To Kill a Mockingbird”…

Arab countries could become communist. Iran mostly resented capitalism and communism, but some people favored either one. Additionally, Afghanistan felt that if Iran could overthrow, then they did not need capitalism or communism either. The mujahideen fought the communist government in Afghanistan and it was back by US forces. The Taliban resulted from this because there was resentment from foreign interference from the Cold War, which later lead to terrorism. This shows that American…

Has social media truly impacted activism? This is a question Malcolm Gladwell answers In his article, “Small Changes”. Gladwell pushes back the notion that social media has helped us become better organizers of protests than we’ve been before and that sites such as twitter are accountable for the surges of uprisings we’ve been experiencing. The core of his argument is that internet activism, while having reinvented social activism, is inefficient in regards to challenging the status quo, and I…

Throughout the late 20th century, the Middle East had been struggling with instability and hostility. Afghanistan had been locked in war between the Soviets and the Mujahideen. Israel and Palestine continue to fight each other after Israel was established in 1948. OPEC raised oil prices after the United States sent aid to Israel causing the oil embargo of 1973. Among these conflicts, a little-known president, Saddam Hussein, would grow to become one of the worst leaders since World War II, and…

The Chinese proverb, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, is routinely used when glancing through a group of images. The main purpose of pictures is to forever preserve the moment in time and look back to appreciate the memory. The purpose of preservation can be found through a collection of images taken at a family gathering, or pictures at a museum event, so people could understand what it was like during that time in history. What if the photographer was trying to capture more than a…

Slayden Hayes expresses that Islamic fundamentalists continued to oppose the government. With help from the United States, camps were set up in order to provide the proper training on how to use the mass of large weaponry they also received. They saw themselves fighting in a "Holy War" and the Arabs joined in to try to help them out and hopefully defeat the Soviet Union (33). The people who most opposed the form of government chosen by the Soviets did have some help from outside groups and…

They, however, stressed that they were not a part of the government in Kabul, so how could they enforce the action of delinking Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. The Taliban argue that Osama bin Laden was invited by Mujahideen regime whom the Taliban overthrew from power. They further claim that their ideologies are very different from Al-Qaeda’s and that they had no idea about the 9/11 conspiracy that they hatched. The Taliban are not educated in western ways and rely…

see value in expanding their influence to Afghanistan, they saw value in thwarting Soviet attempts at spreading communism to that region. Similar to the way the Soviets provided arms to North Korea and North Vietnam, the US provided arms to the Mujahideen and other rebel groups in Afghanistan to sabotage the Soviets. Even without a direct struggle between these two powers, they were still able to deliver heavy blows to one another through these proxy wars. Nuclear Weapons v.…