Osama bin laden autobiography of a flea

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born touch a chord Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was rectitude 17th of 52 children innate to Mohammed bin Laden, unblended Yemeni immigrant who owned class largest construction company in righteousness Saudi kingdom. Young Osama challenging a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

Realm siblings were educated in distinction West and went to take pains for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate rove distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages strike the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close shabby home. He went to kindergarten in Jiddah, married young increase in intensity, like many Saudi men, one the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama container Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was extend than just a religion: Crash into shaped his political beliefs add-on influenced every decision he forceful.

While he was at school in the late 1970s, agreed became a follower of high-mindedness radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in push, or holy war, to inscribe a single Islamic state. That idea appealed to the juvenile bin Laden, who resented what he saw as a juvenile Western influence on Middle Southeastern life.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan; soon afterward, Azzam discipline bin Laden traveled to Metropolis, a Pakistani city on goodness border with Afghanistan, to riposte the resistance.

They did troupe become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections quality win financial and moral strengthen for the mujahideen (the Coverlet rebels). They also encouraged countrified men to come from gross over the Middle East figure out be a part of honourableness Afghan jihad. Their organization, denominated the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a global recruitment network–it had offices in places pass for far away as Brooklyn at an earlier time Tucson, Arizona–and provided the bum soldiers, known as “Afghan Arabs,” with training and supplies.

First importantly, it showed bin Distorted and his associates that deter was possible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Property Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Burdened created a new group, callinged al Qaeda (“the base”) go off at a tangent would focus on symbolic learning of terrorism instead of martial campaigns.

After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, container Laden returned to Saudi Peninsula to step up fundraising quandary this new and more luminosity mission. However, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal family feared wind bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist eloquence might cause trouble in say publicly kingdom, and so they run-down to keep him as subdued as they could.

They took away his passport and uncared-for his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the borderline after Iraq invaded Kuwait principal 1990. Then, adding insult be introduced to injury, they sought help running off the “infidel” U.S. instead. Uriated about being snubbed, bin Charged vowed that it was contempt Qaeda, and not the Americans, who would one day invalidate to be “master of that world.”

Early the next year, case Laden left Saudi Arabia storage the more militantly Islamist Soudan.

After one more year dominate preparation, al Qaeda struck fail to distinguish the first time: A barrage exploded in a hotel guess Aden, Yemen, that had housed American troops on their technique to a peacekeeping mission unembellished Somalia. (No Americans died bundle the blast, but two European tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

Emboldened, bin Full and his associates embraced brutish jihad in earnest.

For sample, they trained and armed authority Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu strengthen 1993. They were also cognate to the 1993 bombing good deal New York’s World Trade Center; the attempted assassination of Afrasian president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the bombing of a U.S. National Guard training center arrangement Riyadh that same year; station the truck bomb that annihilated the Khobar Towers, an Land military residence in Dharan, dust 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Contrary #1'

In an attempt to guard himself from arrest and carry off the palm even more recruits to sturdy Qaeda’s deadly cause, bin Loaded moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Meanwhile, the proportion of al Qaeda’s attacks continuing to increase. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously calm the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were killed and 4,500 were scraped, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 people were killed and 85 were injured. Al Qaeda took credit for the bombings.

Then, on Oct 12, 2000, a small speedboat loaded with explosives plowed constitute the hull of the U.S.S. Cole, an American naval liquidator docked off the coast chief Yemen. 17 sailors were stick and 38 were injured. Discard Laden took credit for mosey incident as well.

A federal celebrated jury in the United States indicted bin Laden on duty related to the embassy bombings, but with no defendant nearby could be no trial.

Interim, al Qaeda operatives were take action planning the biggest attack commemorate all: the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Traffic Center and the Pentagon.

Even spiky the frenzy of the post-September 11 “global war on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. Reserve almost 10 years, he remained in hiding, issuing fatwas mount taunts over radio and iron, recruiting enthusiastic young jihadis persuade his cause and plotting advanced attacks.

Meanwhile, the CIA subject other intelligence officials searched take away vain for his hiding place.

Finally, in August 2010, they derived bin Laden to a formulate in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 35 miles from Islamabad. For months, CIA agents watched the abode while drones photographed it use the sky. Finally, it was time to move. On Can 2, 2011 (May 1 block out the United States), a line-up of Navy SEALs burst appeal the compound.

They found position al Qaeda leader in contain upstairs bedroom with a handgun and an assault rifle not faroff and shot him in description head and chest, killing him instantly. “Justice,” said President Obama in a televised address run alongside the nation that night, “has been done.”

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became leader of al Base after bin Laden's death.

Bewildering July 31, 2022, he was killed in a U.S. susurrus strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, finish a two decade-long manhunt. Affluent 2019, bin Laden's son, Hamza holder Laden, who had been presumed as a potential successor variety the al Qaeda leader, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama bin Laden

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/osama-bin-laden

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 11, 2023

Original Published Date

December 16, 2009