Osama bin Laden

Osama (sometimes spelled Usama) bin Laden is one of the most famous terrorists in history, who began his activism in the Afghanistan War (1978-92), supported terrorist activities, and co-founded al-Qaeda.

It is not always clear when "bin Laden's involvement" in an incident was a matter of his involvement or financing as an individual, of the Services Office (run by bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam) and other support groups, of "al-Qaeda central", of groups allied with Al Qaeda, or of local cells of individuals that either simply are motivated by al-Qaeda principles or perhaps obtained seed money but no operational diection.

Michael Scheuer, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency officer whose responsibilities included both tracking bin Laden, as well as recommending that he be captured or killed, also observed that understanding him is best illustrated by comparison to seminal Western figures, especially the abolitionist John Brown, but also John Bunyan, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Paine.

According to his closest Muslim associates and many of the Westerers who have interviewed him, Osama bin Laden appears to be a genuinely pious Muslim; a devoted family man; a talented, focused and patient insurgent commander; a frank and eloquent speaker; a successful businessman; and an individual of conviction, intellectual honesty, compassion, humility and physical bravery. It is ironic that this man today leads an ideological and military force with more lethal potential than any other nonstate threat faced by the United States.

Early life

Osama bin Laden's father, Mohammed, had multiple wives, and he grew up with dozens of half-siblings. It was a wealthy family; his father had founded an extremely successful construction business. In a 1999 interview with al-Jazeera, while he spoke highly of his father, he did not mention his mother, who was Syrian.

The young Osama was described as being religiously conservative, even when growing up. He and his siblings were exposed to the West. They went on group tours of Europe. Osama bin Laden worked in the family construction business as a young adult.

Khalid Batarfi, who was his neighbor when bin Laden was sixteeen, said "he was a natural leader. He just sets an example and expects you to follow, and sometimes you follow even if you are not 100 percent convinced." Batarfi said that his mother was not as religiously conservative as her son.

He studied at King Abdul Aziz University in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. Among his teachers were Abdullah Azzam and Mohammed Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb. Some reports indicate he first went to Afghanistan shortly after the 1979 invasion, while others indicate he went there after he graduated in 1981. His degree was in economics and public administration.

First trip to Afghanistan

See also: Afghanistan War (1978-1992)

Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1979; the domestic resistance, while split among tribal groups, was generically called the mudjahadeen.

As part of its Cold War strategy, the United States, primarily through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), aided the Afghans opposing the Soviets. Their aid, however, was channeled through Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence was the CIA proxy and Pakistan was intensely opposed to direct U.S. operations in Afghanistan.

It has been suggested that he was recruited by the CIA, but there is little evidence, however, that the CIA directly funded the young bin Laden, or, at first, was even aware of his existence other than as a wealthy Saudi who "supported the same Afghan rebels that the Agency armed in their fight against the Soviet aggressors." Those that make the suggestion tend to regard the CIA as an all-powerful manipulator of the world, where those that argue against the position come from both the positions that the CIA is incompetent, or that there was very little direct contact between the CIA and the Afghan resistance.

Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said that the CIA first became aware of bin Laden individually when he was in Sudan in the early 1990s. By 1993, they saw him as a major financial backer of terror, but not involved operationally.

Pakistan

He moved from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan in 1986, and was active in the Muslim Brotherhood there. He was closely allied with Abdullah Azzam and the Services Office, which provided critical external support to the Mudjahadeen.

Combat role

In 1986, he formed a small fighting organization, Masada al Ansar (Lion's Den of the Supporters). While all agreed this Arab unit was ferociously brave, neither it nor bin Laden had strong military skills. Bin Laden spoke of martyrdom being extremely desirable, a cultural difference from the Afghans, ferocious fighters more concerned with providing their enemies with the opportunity for martyrdom.

Services Office

Azzam and bin Laden had been extremely close, but their differing interpretations of jihad caused an irrevocable break. Azzam was assassinated in November 1989; there are many conjectures but no consensus on who did it. Bin Laden took over the Services Office, which had a U.S. branch called al-Khifa. There are links, although not definitive ones, between either MAK and al-Khifa and terrorist acts before the formal founding of al-Qaeda, and before bin Laden's fatwa declaring war against the U.S. Al-Qaeda's actions often do not follow a strict organization table; there may well have been informal support or actual support under a cover identity.

By the summer of 1989, Azzam became concerned with the approach of bin Laden and Zawahiri, who wanted to expand the fight. Azzam's concern was finishing Afghanistan, and then dealing slowly with other Muslim states. Zawahiri wanted to act against Hosni Mubarrak of Egypt. Bin Laden thought worldwide. Others were concerned with Pakistan. Zawahiri told his son-in-law, Abdullah Anas, that he was worried about Bin Laden if he stayed with the radicals: "This heaven-sent man, like an angel; I am worried about his future if he stays with these people."

Al Qaeda

According to Bergen, the first written mention of "al Qaeda", in the sense of an organization rather than a physical base, was in an article by Abdullah Azzam, in April 1988.

Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while forcing its way into society, pus up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. There is no ideology, neither earthly nor heavenly, that does not require such a vanguard that gives everything it possesses in order to achieve victory for this ideology. It carries the flag all along the sheer endless and difficult path until it reaches its destination. This vanguard constitutes the solid base (al Qaeda al Sulbah) for the expected society.

Al-Qaeda proper was created in 1989, organized by Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi and bin Laden. Volunteers gave an oath of bayat to bin Laden. Their motivation was to carry on after the Soviets left. Some reports put its creation in 1988; there are also reports of terrorist acts where the jihadists, outside Afghanistan, were in contact with the Services Office. Besides bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri, others have been associated with its formation, such as Abu Ayoub al-Iraqi. Their immediate followers changed with time and war; Mohammed Atef was the first military commander, killed in action in 2001.

According to Richard Clarke, Prince Turki al-Faisal, head of Saudi intelligence, had "empowered" bin Laden to get Arab volunteers into Afghanistan.

Return to Saudi Arabia

In 1990, he left Afghanistan, irritated with the infighting of the mudhaheddin, and went back into the family business. He founded an organizations to assist veterans returning from Afghanistan. The Kingdom's response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, however, shocked him: he had offered his forces, but the King, instead, invited the Americans, deeply offending him. Prince Turki al-Faisal saw bin Laden's personality change as a result of that decision, "...from a calm, peaceful gentle man interested in helping Muslims to a person who believed he would be able to amass and command an army to liberate Kuwait. It revealed his arrogance and his haughtiness."

Stay in Sudan

Osama bin Laden left Afghanistan after the ouster of the Soviets, and lived in Sudan. While he was under the political patronage of Hassan al-Turabi, who was then the extremely powerful speaker of the Parliament, he was also involved in a number of construction business projects. In particular, his company was involved in building the major "Revolutionary Highway" between the capital of Khartoum and Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Both Turabi and bin Laden were more willing than other jihadists to form a broad front, obtaining cooperation from Sunnis and Shiites for attacks against the United States and Israel. In contrast, it was during this period when Takfir wal-Hijra considered bin Laden insufficiently Muslim and tried to kill him.

By 1995, several countries put pressure on Sudan to expel bin Laden. These included Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United States, according to the last U.S. Ambassador in Sudan, Donald Petterson Petterson said the Sudanese claims that they offered to turn him over to Saudi Arabia in 1996, but the Saudis were concerned about retaliation if they took bin Laden. Petterson said that the U.S. pressure was not specific to bin Laden, but to a variety of terrorist groups then in Sudan.

Jamal al-Fadl was an aide in Sudan, but left over a financial dispute and walked in to American intelligence, where he became a key source of information on bin Laden and on al-Qaeda. It was from al-Fadl, roughly in 1996, that American intelligence learned that bin Laden was more than a financier. The U.S., concerned with security, closed the Khartoum embassy in 1996, but, according to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, that cut off a valuable source of information.

Return to Afghanistan

Yunis Khalis invited him to return to Afghanistan, according to Michael Scheuer: ""Khalis had an avuncular interest in bin Laden...Osama lost his father when he was young, and Khalis became a substitute father figure to him. As far as Khalis was concerned, he considered Osama the perfect Islamic youth."

Subsequently, he put himself and his followers under the protection of the Taliban, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar, and provided them with major funding.

Osama bin Laden was also courted by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the rival militia Hezb-i-Islam Gulbuddin, and invited him to return to the areas of Afghanistan under his control.

In Afghanistan Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization set up dozens of training camps, where trainees received religious indoctrination and training to prepare them to engage in jihad.

He held a press conference, on February 23, 1998, at a camp in Khost, and announced the International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders. Ayman al-Zawahiri was among the signers of the declaration. While the two had worked together in Sudan, al-Zawahiri initially went to Chechnya, attempting to start a branch of Islamic Jihad; he escaped custody and went to Afghanistan. The two complemented one another, bin Laden's inspirational abilities and al-Zawahiri's operational skills..

From Afghanistan, he authorized and funded the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Africa.

Capture or killing

By 1998, there was U.S. interest in capturing or killing him, but the practical problems were immense. The U.S. had no paramilitary personnel of its own in Afghanistan; the Afghan allies were not considered capable of attacking the known bases.

The attacks of 9-11

Osama bin Laden is credited with ordering the September 9th, 2001 assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance. Many believe this was in preparation to cripple Afghan opposition when the 9-11 attack, approved by bin Laden, took place two days later.

The detailed 9-11 "Planes operation" was under the command of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), with the explicit approval of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaeda military commander, Mohammed Atef. KSM had collaborated with bin Laden in the past, but did not swear bayat until 1999 or 2000. He, like his nephew Ramzi Yousef, were examples of how bin Laden could be a coordinator and financier but not have operational control, as with their Operation BOJINKA.

Afghanistan War (2001-)

In response to the attacks of 9-11 the United States attacked Afghanistan. The United States called on anti-Taliban elements within Afghanistan to rise up to overthrow the Taliban. Capturing or killing bin Laden was a high priority.

It is generally accepted that bin Laden escaped into Pakistan's border areas from the Battle of Tora Bora.