Osama Bin Laden : The Mild Mannered Mastermind

After his first visit to Afghanistan during the first few weeks of the Soviet Invasion, he became involved in supporting the mujahdeen, a ruling party in Afghanistan at the time. After this point, he became heavily involved in fighting jihad, or holy war, and began to build up his own military training camps (Frontline: A biography). Beginning in his childhood, Osama was inundated with a strict Islamic way of life. Looking at the people who played the biggest roles in his life at this time: his authoritarian father, Islamic scholars, movement leaders, and Afghani soldiers fighting jihad, the reasons for him being who he is become more apparent. He has been fighting holy wars since he was a teenager (Frontline: Edicts), and jihad has become a way of life for him.

In response to growing Western influence in the Middle East, Osama bin Laden formed al-Qaeda, a global militant Sunni Islamist Organization, in 1988. The terrorist activities of this group resulted in the creation of America's Operation Neptune Spear which successfully led to his capture and death in 2011. Osama bin Laden was born on March 10, 1957 to Mohammed bin Laden and Hamida Ghanem. His father was a Saudi millionaire, however, his mother was only a slave to the bin Laden family when Osama was born. In 1962, Saudi Arabia banned all forms of slavery, enabling Osama to become more part of the bin Laden family. In addition, as more U.S. troops began to occupy countries in the Middle East, extremists like bin Laden were infuriated and declared a jihad, or holy war, on the United States. After al-Qaeda was formed and initiated a number of terror attacks against Americans, including the 9/11 acts, the United States launched an operation to eliminate their number one enemy (PBS, 1).

He was the 17th of 52 children born to Mohammed bin Laden, a Yemeni immigrant who owned the largest construction company in the Saudi kingdom ( History.com Staff ). Osama lived a privileged, and carefree youth. His siblings were educated in the West and would later go and become employees at his father's company. Osama bin Laden chose rather to stay close to home. He went to school in Jeddah, decided to married young and, alike all if not most Saudi men, Osama decided to join the pact of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. In 1988, bin Laden created a new group of anti-american semites called al Qaida, that would focus on acts of terrorism instead of trying to start military campaigns. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden saw this as a golden option so he returned to Saudi Arabia to step up fundraising for this new and more complicated project. After al Qaeda started to really blossom, Osama decided it was time to better protect himself and his family from arrest, or death, and win even more recruits to al Qaeda's mission, bin Laden moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. During the movement of bin Laden, the scale of al Qaeda's attacks continued to increase. Osama and his forces began to ramp up their attacks. Now bin Laden was conducting large scale raids, attacks, and incersions, such as the attacks on two United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam,

Everyone knows who Osama Bin Laden is and about his horrendous lasting impact on our country and our planet, but have you ever wondered why someone would do something so awful? Osama Bin Laden became the world’s most wanted man because of his early life education, the forming of Al Qaeda, and his attacks on the United States in 2001. Bin Laden grew up in a good, very successful home, and then moved onto one of the most prestigious high schools in Jedda and was very successful. It was through an exclusive Islamic study group with a teacher where Osama learned “the principles of violent jihad” and that the Arab world should go by those rules “even if it meant supporting death and destruction” (Osama bin laden). These extreme views may have never

“A declaration of Jihad,” on August 23, 1996 deals with Osama bin Laden order to sanction a defensive war (jihad) after he gained refuge in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is a well-known terrorist and is the leader and founder of al-Qaeda. In 1979, the origins of al-Qaeda can be traced back to this year because that is when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Originally, Osama bin Laden used al-Qaeda as a way to enlist Muslim into the resistance. After, the Soviets left not shortly after the United States came and establish military bases in the homeland of bin Laden in conjecture to the First Gulf Wars. The actions of the United States infuriated bin Laden because the United States intruded to one of Islam’s holiest shrines. In addition, bin Laden isolation from the Saudi ruling family causing him launch a series of bombings directed at the United States embassies, ships, barracks, and then the awful attacks on New York (twin towers) and Washington in 2001. The insert begins with bin Laden shifting the blame to Judeo-Christian alliance and supporters (e.g. the United States). He elaborates by recounting the amount of Muslim blood has spilled across the Middle East and Asia because of their enemies. Bin Laden progresses by saying the reason of the meeting is to find a plan to rectify what has happened to the Islamic world, particularly in Saudi Arabia. The passage details how Americans in Saudi Arabia have unrightfully incarcerated righteous scholars of Islam. It continues with

Osama bin Laden, son of a wealthy Saudi contractor, joined many young Arab men of his generation in Afghanistan. While he appears to have played a very minor role in the fighting, his wealth enabled him to recruit, train, and supply fighters for the insurgency. It was founded in Afghanistan. America started to support israel against palestine which made al qaeda mad and wanted to fight back against the US which lead to the truck bombing in 1993.

The story begins in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to defend a puppet dictator against rebels. Many men from the Middle East traveled to fight alongside the rebels as they see it as a religious battle. Among these rebels were Osama bin-Laden and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the rebels went home, at this time Osama bin-Laden forms Al-Qaeda while Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi forms his own group. Bin-Laden grew Al-Qaeda to be a global force while Zarqawi’s organization dwindled. They later returned to Afghanistan which was under Taliban control around 1996. On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacked the United States from its base in Afghanistan. The United States then invaded Afghanistan and Bin-Laden fled

The main leader of Al Qaeda is Ayman al Zawahiri, who was born in 1951 in Cairo. He comes from an Egyptian middle class family. Even though he was trained to be a doctor, during his teens he became extremely involved in Islamist groups. He decided to join the Islamic Jihad in 1973. At this time, the Jihad aimed at overthrowing the government in Egypt. He was accused and imprisoned in 1981 for having something to do with the assasination of Anwar al Sadat, the president of Egypt. He went to Pakistan in 1985 to assist in the fight against Soviet troops fighting in Afghanistan. He decided to join Osama bin Laden in 1998 and became one of the most important spokespersons for al Qaeda’s ideaology during the 2000s. When bin Laden was killed

He grew up privileged, as his father, Muhammad bin Laden, was the billionaire owner of the largest construction company in all of Saudi Arabia. Osama was one of his father’s 50 children and was born to his tenth wife, Alia Ghanem. Muhammad was a very strict parent, and ironically, wanted all of his kids to grow up with strong moral and religious values, as well as to be confident and independent at a young age. Osama’s actions were clearly affected by his self reliant personality and upbringing. He received the best education available at a school in Jiddah and married at a young age. During his time at school, Osama joined the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood, and became a follower of the pan-Islamic scholar Abdullah Azzam (“Osama bin Laden”). This religious and political group believes that “Islam is not simply a religion, but a way of life” (“What is the Muslim Brotherhood”). Azzam believed that the followers of the Muslim religion should rise up in a holy war, or jihad, to create one large Islamic State. The basic goal of this group was to one day dominate the world. Born during the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, bin Laden joined the Afghan Resistance in 1979. During his time in Afghanistan, he received aid from the CIA in Operation Cyclone. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Osama returned to Saudi Arabia as a war hero (Cullinano and

He envision turning MAK into a force that would come to the aid of all Muslims wherever they needed help. When Osama came back from the front lines he realized that with the increasing forces of MAK he was not able to keep track of their movements and personal information. To solve this Osama developed a new department named Al-Qaeda (The Base). Al-Qaeda was in charge of monitoring MAK’s movements and the soldiers’ personal information. Several soldiers began coming to Bin Laden asking how they could still help the Muslim population. Osama told them to set up anti government groups against the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries that were being influenced the the American way of life. Osama also encouraged these anti government groups to use terrorism to achieve their goals. Abdullah greatly disapproved of this and tried to get Osama to not encourage terrorism. All of this ceased when on November 24, 1989 Abdullah was assassinated by a bomb in his own car. Osama began to hate and speak out against the Royal family of the al-Sauds because he felt they had betrayed god by squandering their great wealth in the luxurious homes and fancy western cars. Osama was greatly distracted when the country of Iraq invaded the small and weak nation of Kuwait. Osama saw this as an opportunity and he forgot his differences with the al-Sauds and immediately went to the palace where he told the Kings that he could

For the majority of the free world, the character of Osama Bin Laden is relative to the attacks of September 11th, 2001. In the years to follow, the evidence collected as a result of a worldwide, multinational manhunt, revealed the complexity of the Al-Qaeda leader. In her published memoirs, former wife of bin Laden, Najwa bin Laden claims her husband had conflicting personalities (Farmer, 2009). Najwa cited her husband as a disciplinarian who would often beat their (his) children for displaying to much joy, laughing too much

The beginnings of Al-Qaeda were small, but decisive. Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan not long after the Soviets started to invade Afghanistan in 1979, using some of his own money to make a name for himself as the primary fiscal supporter of the Afghan mujahedin and the main recruiter of Arab and other willing participants/ soldiers for the war at the time (Katzman, 2005). Bin Laden aligned with Azzam in 1984 and structured a level of assistance by creating an intensive organization network of offices in the Arab region, parts of Europe and in America; this network was referred to as the Maktab al Khidamat (Services Office) (Katzman, 2005). Scholars and professionals largely view the Maktab as the organization lead of Al Qaeda; this time also marked a period when Bin Laden fought in the war, sustaining

His mother, Hamida al-Attas, married Mohammad bin Laden when she was twenty-two and according to many sources she was his eleventh wife. (Zalman, n.d.) His father died in a helicopter accident in 1969 when Osama bin Laden was eleven and he ended up inheriting a huge sum of money from the father. (The Telegraph, 2012)

Both American and Saudi officials were aware of this and reduced the number of American troops from 500,000 in 1990 to less than one thousand in 1993; however, Saddam's deployment of troops near Kuwait's border in 1994 caused the US to send an additional 30,000 troops to the Gulf. In 1995, members of the “Islamic Movement for Change” called for the withdrawal of US troops from Arabia and warned that failure to do so would result in various attacks; that November, a US military building in Riyadh was bombed and in 1996, the Khobar Towers were bombed. Evidently, Saddam was well-aware of the Saudi’s dilemma and used religious opposition to American presence to his advantage. Likewise, the arrival of US forces in the holy land provoked Bin Laden to break ties with the Saudi royal family and issue two fatwas in which he expressed numerous grievances against the US: “the US has been occupying the lands of Islam, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors”. Over the follow years, suicide bombers blew up bombers blew up the US embassy in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the USS Cole in the port of Aden. The increasing effectiveness of these earlier attacks not only served as warnings of

Although Bin Laden, desired to establish a Caliphate, he was insistent on first defeating the Infidel and did not foresee a Caliphate in his lifetime, so instead he entrusted his legacy on the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar. Mullah Omar was a fighter who had successfully retaliated against injustices against the southern Afghani people by the Soviet forces. His large following granted Bin Laden protection and believed that he would create a Caliphate under which Muslims could live under their own laws (Shideler, et al., 2015).