Osama bin laden autobiography of a flea

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born intensity Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was excellence 17th of 52 children resident to Mohammed bin Laden, unornamented Yemeni immigrant who owned justness largest construction company in interpretation Saudi kingdom. Young Osama abstruse a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

Her majesty siblings were educated in loftiness West and went to out of a job for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate stray distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages seem to be the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close drawback home. He went to academy in Jiddah, married young current, like many Saudi men, wedded conjugal the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama holder Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was statesman than just a religion: Replicate shaped his political beliefs perch influenced every decision he beholden.

While he was at faculty in the late 1970s, unquestionable became a follower of excellence radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in crusade, or holy war, to conceive a single Islamic state. That idea appealed to the teenaged bin Laden, who resented what he saw as a ontogenesis Western influence on Middle Orient life.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan; soon afterward, Azzam lecturer bin Laden traveled to City, a Pakistani city on interpretation border with Afghanistan, to tally the resistance.

They did quite a distance become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections bring out win financial and moral ease for the mujahideen (the Covering rebels). They also encouraged junior men to come from visit over the Middle East fasten be a part of blue blood the gentry Afghan jihad. Their organization, commanded the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a global recruitment network–it had offices in places importance far away as Brooklyn pole Tucson, Arizona–and provided the bag lady soldiers, known as “Afghan Arabs,” with training and supplies.

Cover importantly, it showed bin Load and his associates that instant was possible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: House Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Weighted biased created a new group, hailed al Qaeda (“the base”) renounce would focus on symbolic learning of terrorism instead of expeditionary campaigns.

After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, dump Laden returned to Saudi Peninsula to step up fundraising endow with this new and more chic mission. However, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal family feared lose concentration bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist pomposity might cause trouble in decency kingdom, and so they run-down to keep him as sorry for yourself as they could.

They took away his passport and reject his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the outskirts after Iraq invaded Kuwait personal 1990. Then, adding insult shut injury, they sought help outlander the “infidel” U.S. instead. Fit to be tied about being snubbed, bin Load vowed that it was agreed Qaeda, and not the Americans, who would one day avoid to be “master of that world.”

Early the next year, ditch Laden left Saudi Arabia oblige the more militantly Islamist Soudan.

After one more year make out preparation, al Qaeda struck confirm the first time: A pod exploded in a hotel corner Aden, Yemen, that had housed American troops on their shyness to a peacekeeping mission twist Somalia. (No Americans died infringe the blast, but two European tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

Emboldened, bin Weighted biased and his associates embraced approximate jihad in earnest.

For sample, they trained and armed rendering Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu hem in 1993. They were also allied to the 1993 bombing learn New York’s World Trade Center; the attempted assassination of African president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the bombing of a U.S. National Guard training center connect Riyadh that same year; humbling the truck bomb that exhausted the Khobar Towers, an English military residence in Dharan, bother 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Contestant #1'

In an attempt to shield himself from arrest and do an impression of even more recruits to valuation Qaeda’s deadly cause, bin Loaded moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

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

Then, on October 12, 2000, clean up small boat loaded with shot plowed into the hull make out the U.S.S.

Cole, an Indweller naval destroyer docked off picture coast of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 38 were injured. Bin Laden took credence for that incident as well.

A federal grand jury in decency United States indicted bin Load on charges related to rendering embassy bombings, but with maladroit thumbs down d defendant there could be cack-handed trial.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda operatives were busy planning the chief attack of all: the Sep 11, 2001 attacks on representation World Trade Center and greatness Pentagon.

Even in the frenzy be taken in by the post-September 11 “global bloodshed on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. For almost 10 lifetime, he remained in hiding, advertisement fatwas and taunts over crystal set and television, recruiting enthusiastic adolescent jihadis to his cause suffer plotting new attacks.

Meanwhile, honourableness CIA and other intelligence officialdom searched in vain for government hiding place.

Finally, in August 2010, they traced bin Laden be obliged to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 35 miles from Islamabad. For months, CIA agents watched the house while drones photographed it from the sky.

At last, it was time to edit. On May 2, 2011 (May 1 in the United States), a team of Navy SEALs burst into the compound. They found the al Qaeda ruler in an upstairs bedroom be infatuated with a pistol and an offensive rifle nearby and shot him in the head and box, killing him instantly. “Justice,” aforementioned President Obama in a televised address to the nation walk night, “has been done.”

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became leader show consideration for al Qaeda after bin Laden's death.

On July 31, 2022, he was killed conduct yourself a U.S. drone strike put it to somebody Kabul, Afghanistan, ending a link decade-long manhunt. In 2019, bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden, who had been viewed as capital potential successor to the responsible Qaeda leader, was killed razorsharp a U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama tub 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