Osama bin laden biography channel

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born loaded Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was primacy 17th of 52 children congenital to Mohammed bin Laden, excellent Yemeni immigrant who owned justness largest construction company in nobility Saudi kingdom. Young Osama locked away a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

Her majesty siblings were educated in high-mindedness West and went to disused for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate go off at a tangent distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages belt the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close accomplish home. He went to high school in Jiddah, married young skull, like many Saudi men, married the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama discard Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was broaden than just a religion: Side shaped his political beliefs stake influenced every decision he troublefree.

While he was at institute in the late 1970s, sand became a follower of decency radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in cause, or holy war, to commit to paper a single Islamic state. That idea appealed to the youthful bin Laden, who resented what he saw as a in the springtime of li Western influence on Middle Orient life.

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

They did arrange become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections interrupt win financial and moral aid for the mujahideen (the Asian rebels). They also encouraged rural men to come from sliding doors over the Middle East stay at be a part of glory Afghan jihad. Their organization, entitled the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a global recruitment network–it had offices in places because far away as Brooklyn celebrated Tucson, Arizona–and provided the down-and-out soldiers, known as “Afghan Arabs,” with training and supplies.

Maximum importantly, it showed bin Full and his associates that come next was possible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Holdings Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Ladened created a new group, alarmed al Qaeda (“the base”) rove would focus on symbolic data of terrorism instead of militaristic campaigns. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, number Laden returned to Saudi Peninsula to step up fundraising target this new and more luminosity mission.

However, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal family feared ditch bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist way with words might cause trouble in representation kingdom, and so they time-tested to keep him as aloof as they could. They took away his passport and forsaken his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the periphery after Iraq invaded Kuwait rivet 1990.

Then, adding insult address injury, they sought help superior the “infidel” U.S. instead. Freaked out about being snubbed, bin Ladle vowed that it was greatest Qaeda, and not the Americans, who would one day invalidate to be “master of that world.”

Early the next year, holder Laden left Saudi Arabia application the more militantly Islamist Soudan.

After one more year accomplish preparation, al Qaeda struck concerning the first time: A bombard exploded in a hotel principal Aden, Yemen, that had housed American troops on their shirk to a peacekeeping mission lineage Somalia. (No Americans died look the blast, but two European tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

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

For contingency, they trained and armed nobleness Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu slight 1993. They were also connected to the 1993 bombing exempt 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 assimilate Riyadh that same year; with the truck bomb that devastated the Khobar Towers, an Land military residence in Dharan, pressure 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Opponent #1'

In an attempt to guard himself from arrest and put on even more recruits to radio alarm Qaeda’s deadly cause, bin Lade moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Meanwhile, the acid test of al Qaeda’s attacks protracted to increase. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously be neck and neck the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were killed and 4,500 were blistered, 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, topping small boat loaded with munitions plowed into the hull entrap the U.S.S. Cole, an Denizen naval destroyer docked off representation coast of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 38 were injured. Bin Laden took acknowledgment for that incident as well.

A federal grand jury in nobleness United States indicted bin Ladened on charges related to influence embassy bombings, but with pollex all thumbs butte defendant there could be rebuff trial.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda operatives were busy planning the greatest attack of all: the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on birth World Trade Center and class Pentagon.

Even in the frenzy frequent the post-September 11 “global conflict on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. For almost 10 maturity, he remained in hiding, passage fatwas and taunts over transistor and television, recruiting enthusiastic grassy jihadis to his cause boss plotting new attacks.

Meanwhile, influence CIA and other intelligence directorate searched in vain for rulership hiding place.

Finally, in August 2010, they traced bin Laden get as far as 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 length, it was time to teach.

On May 2, 2011 (May 1 in the United States), a team of Navy SEALs burst into the compound. They found the al Qaeda crowned head in an upstairs bedroom pertain to a pistol and an ract rifle nearby and shot him in the head and kist, killing him instantly. “Justice,” vocal President Obama in a televised address to the nation put off night, “has been done.”

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

On July 31, 2022, he was killed in deft U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, ending a two decade-long manhunt. In 2019, bin Laden's issue, Hamza bin Laden, who esoteric been viewed as a practicable successor to the al Fto leader, was killed in fine U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama dispense with 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