Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:59, 22 March 2006

Usāmah bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Lādin (Template:Lang-ar; born March 10, 1957 ), commonly known as Osama bin Laden or Usama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن) is an Islamic fundamentalist, a founder of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization and a member of the immensely rich bin Laden family.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda have allegedly committed several attacks worldwide, including the allegation that they both were directly responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., which killed at least 2,985 people.

According to an audio tape released after bin Laden's September 11 attacks, bin Laden's main grievances against the West and especially the United States, include their support for the State of Israel, United States support for several dictatorial regimes in the Middle East that Bin Laden opposes for reasons aside from political structure, and the presence of United States military bases in Saudi Arabia, where the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located. The U.S. withdrew from these bases in 2003, stating that they were no longer necessary for their campaign in Iraq.

The United States Department of State is offering a reward of 50 million US dollars for information leading to bin Laden's capture. An additional reward of $2 million is being offered by the Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association. While bin Laden's current whereabouts are unknown, the most popular assumption is that he is hiding in Pakistan's tribal region of Waziristan bordering Afghanistan, or, more specifically, near the small Pakistani market town of Chitral , . If bin Laden is in Pakistan, it is possible that he benefits from local support by the Waziri. With the inhospitable mountainous terrain, the United States faces many difficulties in pursuing his capture, despite a wide array of sophisticated eavesdropping sensors deployed in the region .

Twice newspapers have reported his death. The first report in December 2001 was quickly disproven when bin Laden issued a videotape. The second report that bin Laden died in June 2005 was published in a Pakistani newspaper and although it has not been conclusively confirmed or refuted, few Western publications decided the news was worth reporting. In January 2006, audiotapes purportedly from bin Laden were aired on all popular news media (audio , transcript ). The authenticity of these tapes, while still disputed, has been confirmed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

Bin Laden continues to hold support and loyalty from much of the Muslim world. The West, particularly the United States, persistently sees him as the leader of a terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of the West and the creation of a fundamentalist pan-Islamic caliphate.

Background

Family and childhood

Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Muhammad Awad bin Ladin, a wealthy businessman involved in construction and with close ties to the Saudi royal family.There is no definitive account of the number of children born to Muhammed bin Laden, but the number is generally put at 55. In addition, various accounts place Osama as his seventeenth son. His family originally came from Hadhramaut, Yemen and he was raised as a devout Sunni Muslim.

The large number of bin Laden siblings is the result of polygamy; his father was married ten times, although to no more than four women at a time per Islamic law. Osama is the only son of the elder bin Laden's tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas, who is reportedly of Syrian descent. A woman who in 1971 had attended an English language course with bin Laden recalled him saying with some sadness that his mother was a concubine .

From 1968 to 1976, bin Laden attended the Al-Thager Model School in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Although it has been disputed, bin Laden may have visited the West several times. Reports and photos exist of 22 members of his family vacationing in Falun, Sweden in 1971, dressed in the height of Western fashion. Locals also claim he visited Sweden as an adult to buy real estate.

According to The New Yorker , bin Laden only traveled outside of the Middle East three times: once to London for treatment when he was ten years old, to East Africa sometime in the 1970s, and once to the United States about 1978. Even the truth of these trips has been called into question; the U.S. government has said it has never issued a visa for bin Laden; and it is possible bin Laden has never traveled outside of the Middle East.

In his book Bin Laden: Behind The Mask Of Terror, author Adam Robinson claims that Bin Laden is a fan of the famous London-based football (soccer) club Arsenal, and that he actually visited London several times in 1994 to attend matches at Arsenal's Highbury stadium. Bin Laden is supposed to have been in attendance at midweek European Cup Winners Cup fixtures in March and April of that year, and may even have travelled to Copenhagen in May to attend the Cup Winners Cup final. These claims, though widely reported in the British press in the aftermath of 9/11, are generally regarded by most other researchers as being somewhat dubious and unsubstantiated.

As a college student, bin Laden studied civil engineering and business administration. He earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979 and one in economics and public administration in 1981; both from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah.

After his father died in 1967, bin Laden inherited part of his father's estate in the form of shares in the family company. Salem, Osama's oldest brother, took over the family business.

In 1974, at the age of 17, bin Laden married his first wife (and first cousin), Najwa Ghanem. Bin Laden reportedly married four other women, divorcing one. Sudanese author Kola Boof claims she was kept in Morocco against her will as a mistress for bin Laden in 1996. Bin Laden has fathered at least 24 children. Najwa, a Syrian and his mother's niece, reportedly had 11 children by bin Laden, including Abdallah, Omar, Saad, and Muhammad. Omar and Abdallah were reportedly organizing the U.S. branch of the World Congress of Muslim Youth in Falls Church, Virginia during the 1990s.

In 1994 bin Laden's family publicly disowned him, shortly before the Saudi Arabian government revoked his citizenship. He attended his son's wedding in January 2001, but since 9/11 is believed only to have had contact with his mother on one occasion. His Saudi Arabian citizenship was revoked for anti-government activity.

Turn towards extremism

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan resulted in a call to arms by religious leaders all over the Muslim world to liberate the country from pro-Soviet rule. Bin Laden eagerly sent money, supplies, and weapons to the mujahideen in Afghanistan. Furthermore, under CIA supervision Bin Laden was trained by American special forces in guerilla warfare to counter the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.

When Iraq under Saddam Hussein ordered a military invasion of Kuwait on August 2 1990, Bin Laden called for jihad against Saddam and asked the Saudi government for permission to send jihadists to protect the country and help liberate Kuwait. Instead the government invited a coalition made up of forces from the United States and other non-Muslim nations to establish a base in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden, who had hated the United States even before the Gulf War, was outraged; he considered the presence of non-Muslim forces on Saudi soil as an affront to himself and to Muslims in general. Disagreements and squabbling between Bin Laden and the Saudi royal family soon exploded into full-blown hostility, especially after US forces remained in Saudi Arabia upon liberating Kuwait.

Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1991, moving to Sudan at the behest of its Islamist government. There he began to build al-Qaeda and much of its current militant and governmental structure. He also helped build a motorway and several dental surgeries. According to The History Channel program History's Hotspots- Osama's Hideouts In exchange for helping fund the Sudanese government for a while and opening a pharmaceutical factory, he received a luxury villa in Khartoum and was allowed to set up an early al-Qaeda training camp in the desert.

Appearance and manner

Bin Laden is often described as lanky; the FBI describes him as tall and thin, being 6' 4" (193 cm) to 6' 5" (195 cm) tall and weighing 160 pounds (75 kg). He has an olive complexion, is left-handed and usually walks with a cane. He wears a plain white turban and no longer dons the traditional Saudi male headdress.

In personality, Bin Laden is described as a soft-spoken, mild mannered man, and despite his rhetoric, he is said to be charming, polite, and respectful. It is because of his quiet personality that many wonder how he could be the leader of a militant organization.

U.S. military figures claim that Bin Laden employs at least one double to act as a decoy, in order to evade would-be captors. He is commonly thought to employ more than one. This belief has been expressed several times, from many quarters . No proof of this claim, nor any supporting evidence, has ever surfaced.

He reportedly suffers from various medical conditions including kidney disease.

Names

Osama bin Laden's name can be transliterated in several ways. The form used here, Osama bin Laden, is used by most English-language mass media, including CNN and the BBC. The FBI and Fox News use Usama bin Laden, often abbreviated to UBL (favored by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld). Less common renderings include Ussamah Bin Ladin and Oussama Ben Laden (used in French-language mass media). The latter part of the name can also be found as Binladen or Binladin. Officials at the United States Department of Defense encourage the now more commonly used "Osama" transliteration when his name became associated with the September 11th attacks in order to avoid confusion with U.S.A.M.A., the United States Army Medical Association.

Strictly speaking, under the Arabic naming convention, it is incorrect to use "bin Laden" as though it were a Western surname. His full name means "Osama, son of Mohammed, son of `Awad, son of Laden." However, the bin Laden family (or "Binladin," as they prefer to be known) generally use the name as a surname, in the Western style. The family company is known as the Binladin Brothers for Contracting and Industry and is one of the largest corporations in Saudi Arabia. For this reason, although the Arabic convention would be to refer to him either as "Osama" or "Osama bin Laden," using "bin Laden" is in accordance with the family's own usage of the name and is the near-universal convention in Western references to him.

Bin Laden has several aliases and nicknames, including the Prince, the Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shayekh, Hajj, and the Director.

Osama bin Laden finished second place in an unofficial online poll that Time Magazine conducted alongside its 2001 Person of the Year award.

Military and militant activity

Afghan Jihad

His wealth and connections permitted him to pursue his interest in supporting the mujahideen, Muslim guerrillas fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. (See: the History of Afghanistan.) By 1984 he had established an organization named Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK) (Office of Order in English), which funneled money, arms and Muslim fighters from around the world into the Afghan war.

Some argue that MAK was supported by the governments of Pakistan, the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that the three countries channelled their supplies through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This account is vehemently denied by the U.S. government, which maintains that U.S. aid went only to Afghan fighters, and that Afghan Arabs had their own sources of funding, an account also supported by Al Qaeda itself. . The State Department quotes CNN analyst Peter Bergen as saying:

"While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy, they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray. The United States wanted to be able to deny that the CIA was funding the Afghan war, so its support was funneled through Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). ISI in turn made the decisions about which Afghan factions to arm and train, tending to favor the most Islamist and pro-Pakistan. The Afghan Arabs generally fought alongside those factions, which is how the charge arose that they were creatures of the CIA. Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency's Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says, "The CIA did not recruit Arabs," as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were "very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass." Similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs' holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. ... There was simply no point in the CIA and the Afghan Arabs being in contact with each other. ... the Afghan Arabs functioned independently and had their own sources of funding. The CIA did not need the Afghan Arabs, and the Afghan Arabs did not need the CIA. So the notion that the Agency funded and trained the Afghan Arabs is, at best, misleading. The 'let's blame everything bad that happens on the CIA' school of thought vastly overestimates the Agency's powers, both for good and ill."

The accounts of some journalists and investigators, however, do suggest that CIA money and weapons reached the Afghan Arabs and bin Laden indirectly through the ISI . According to Ahmed Rashid, Central Intelligence Agency Chief William Casey in 1986 "committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982 and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors. And the Saudis saw an opportunity to promote Wahabbism and get rid of its disgruntled radicals. None of the players reckoned on these volunteers having their own agendas, which would eventually turn their hatred against the Soviets on their own regimes and the Americans." (Ahmed Rashid, Taliban New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 129.) This account is also substantially backed up by John Cooley, Unholy Wars : Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, New York, Pluto Press, 2002. And while Marc Sageman, former CIA officer who worked closely with the mujahedin under Milton Bearden, makes clear that he does not believe the CIA ever came in direct contact with the foreign volunteers (an account refuted by Coll, see p. 201) and calls the notion of CIA training of future al Qaeda terrorists "sheer fantasy," he also notes that U.S. support for the Arab Afghan volunteers was funnelled through the Pakistani ISI at Pakistan's insistence. "The global Salafi jihad," he writes, "is without doubt an indirect consequence of U.S. involvement in that Afghan-Soviet war." (Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, p. 59, emphasis added).

Formation of al-Qaeda

By 1988, bin Laden had split from the MAK and established a new militant group, later dubbed al-Qaeda by the U.S. government, which included many of the more militant MAK members he had met in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and bin Laden was lauded as a mujahideen hero in Saudi Arabia. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered to help defend Saudi Arabia (with 12,000 armed men) but was rebuffed by the Saudi government. Bin Laden publicly denounced his government's dependence on the U.S. military and demanded an end to the presence of foreign military bases in the country. According to reports (by the BBC and others), the 1990/91 deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in connection with the Gulf War profoundly shocked and revolted bin Laden and other Islamist militants because the Saudi government claims legitimacy based on their role as guardians of the sacred Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. After the Gulf War, the establishment of permanent bases for non-Muslim U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia continued to undermine the Saudi rulers' legitimacy and inflamed anti-government Islamist militants, including bin Laden. Bin Laden's increasingly strident criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the government to expel him to Sudan in 1991.

Assisted by donations funneled through business and charitable fronts such as Benevolence International established by his brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in Sudan to disseminate Islamist philosophy and recruit operatives in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States. Bin Laden also invested in business ventures, such as al-Hajira, a construction company that built roads throughout Sudan, and Wadi al-Aqiq, an agricultural corporation that farmed hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum, gum arabic, sesame and sunflowers in Sudan's central Gezira province. Bin Laden's operations in Sudan were protected by the powerful Sudanese government figure Hassan al Turabi. The funding from these ventures was used to run several training camps on his farmland, where Islamist militants could receive instruction in firearms use and the use of explosives from former Afghan mujahideen.

Around this time, bin Laden and his associates began developing and executing a series of meticulously-planned terrorist attacks. In 1995, the Saudi Arabian government stripped bin Laden of his citizenship after he claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. and Saudi military bases in Riyadh and Dahran.

Refuge in Afghanistan

Sudanese officials whose government was under international sanctions offered to extradite bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s. However, Saudi Arabia refused because of the political difficulties of accepting such a controversial figure into their custody. Thus, in May 1996, under increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States, Sudan expelled bin Laden to Afghanistan. He chartered a plane and flew to Kabul before settling in Jalalabad, after being invited by leading Afghan Mujaheddin figure, Abdul Rasuul Sayyaf. After spending a few months in the border region hosted by local leaders, bin Laden forged a close relationship with some of the leaders of Afghanistan's new Taliban government, notably Mullah Mohammed Omar. Bin Laden supported the Taliban government with financial and paramilitary assistance and, in 1997, he moved to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold.

Bin Laden is suspected of funding the 1997 massacre of 62 tourists in Luxor, Egypt conducted by Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an Egyptian militant Islamist group. The Egyptian government convicted Bin Laden's colleague, one of the leaders of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, and sentenced him to death in absentia for the massacre.

Attacks on United States targets

December 29, 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden, Yemen that killed a Yemeni hotel employee and an Austrian national, and seriously injured the Austrian's wife. About 100 U.S. soldiers, part of Operation Restore Hope, had been staying at the hotel for two weeks but had left two days earlier for Somalia. U.S. investigations have established financial and logistical links between bin Laden and Ramzi Yousef, prime suspect of the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Bin Laden is also connected to the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu that killed 18 U.S. troops in Somalia and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar military complex in Saudi Arabia that left 19 U.S. soldiers dead.

Osama bin Laden’s terror network was responsible for plots in Asia orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef, who was later arrested in Pakistan, brought to the United States, and convicted in November 1997 of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing. The plots in Asia, all of which failed, were to assassinate the Pope during his late 1994 visit to the Philippines and President Clinton during his visit there in early 1995; to bomb the US and Israeli embassies in Manila in late 1994; and to bomb US flights across the Pacific in 1995. Bin Laden and the Indonesian militant known as Hambali allegedly funded, then aborted the Operation Bojinka conspiracy when police discovered the plot in Manila, Philippines on January 6, 1995.

In 1998,Varman bin Laden and Jibran al-Zawahiri (a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad) co-signed a fatwa (binding religious edict) in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, declaring, "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.'" For more information, see Osama bin Laden Fatwa.

Bin Laden is officially wanted by the United States in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 225 people and injured more than 4000. Since June 1999, bin Laden has been listed as one of the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and FBI Most Wanted Terrorists. Al-Qaeda was allegedly involved in several unsuccessful conspiracies, including the 2000 millennium attack plots to bomb Los Angeles airport, several tourist sites in Jordan and the USS The Sullivans, and well as the subsequent Paris embassy terrorist attack plot. The al-Qaeda organization was allegedly responsible for the successful USS Cole bombing in October, 2000.

In response to these attacks, President Bill Clinton ordered a freeze on assets linked to bin Laden. Clinton also signed an executive order authorizing bin Laden's arrest or assassination. In August 1998, the U.S. military launched an assassination attempt using cruise missiles. The attack failed to harm bin Laden but killed 19 other people. The U.S. offered a US$25 million reward for information leading to bin Laden's apprehension or conviction and, in 1999, convinced the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite him.

September 11

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the United States government named bin Laden as the prime suspect. However, in an interview published in Ummat Karachi, on 28 September 2001, although not widely reported at the time, bin Laden stated:

"I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.... The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself.... intelligence agencies in the U.S., which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush Administration approved a budget of 40 billion dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance. Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the U.S. secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat."

In December 2001 U.S. forces in Afghanistan captured a videotape during a raid on a house in Jalalabad, which allegedly shows bin Laden discussing the September 11th attacks with a group of followers. However, the quality of the tape is poor, and bin Laden is seen writing with his right hand, although according to the FBI he is left handed. Furthermore, he is shown wearing a gold ring, which some claim is forbidden for men by orthodox Islam. This idea has been disputed by numerous videos and photos of Bin Laden wearing the same ring on many different occasions. In some low resolution pictures of the video, bin Laden appears smiling with a more round face and a nose which is different to the one seen in previous images of him. However, this is also disputed by higher resolution photos of the same video which show a man who does resemble bin Laden . Still, because of the anomalies surrounding this video, the authenticity of the tape remains highly disputed. According to the official U.S. translation of this tape bin Laden says:

"We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for". (full text of the tape transcript)

• 1957 births
• Al-Qaeda members
• Bin Laden family
• Disappeared people
• Muslims
• Saudi Arabian terrorists
• September 11, 2001 attacks
• Terrorists
• War on terror