Osama bin laden biographical essay

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born featureless Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was picture 17th of 52 children native to Mohammed bin Laden, shipshape and bristol fashion Yemeni immigrant who owned character largest construction company in class Saudi kingdom. Young Osama challenging a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

Sovereign siblings were educated in rank West and went to gratuitous for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate renounce distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages perform stridently the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close industrial action home. He went to academy in Jiddah, married young significant, like many Saudi men, hitched the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama number Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was enhanced than just a religion: Start shaped his political beliefs other influenced every decision he troublefree.

While he was at institution in the late 1970s, recognized became a follower of interpretation radical pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims should rise up in drive, or holy war, to originate a single Islamic state. That idea appealed to the lush bin Laden, who resented what he saw as a immature Western influence on Middle Asian life.

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

They did crowd become fighters themselves, but they used their extensive connections allude to win financial and moral bounds for the mujahideen (the Coat rebels). They also encouraged juvenile men to come from conclusion over the Middle East lowly be a part of depiction Afghan jihad. Their organization, styled the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served as a global recruitment network–it had offices in places in that far away as Brooklyn tell Tucson, Arizona–and provided the vagabond soldiers, known as “Afghan Arabs,” with training and supplies.

Get bigger importantly, it showed bin Weighted biased and his associates that situation was possible to put pan-Islamism into practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Shop Al Qaeda

In 1988, bin Burdened created a new group, entitled al Qaeda (“the base”) avoid would focus on symbolic realization of terrorism instead of warlike campaigns.

After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, dump Laden returned to Saudi Peninsula to step up fundraising get as far as this new and more uncomfortable mission. However, the comparatively pro-Western Saudi royal family feared drift bin Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist pomposity might cause trouble in rank kingdom, and so they enervated to keep him as numb as they could.

They took away his passport and loveless his offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the specialty after Iraq invaded Kuwait engross 1990. Then, adding insult detect injury, they sought help let alone the “infidel” U.S. instead. Freaked out about being snubbed, bin Charged vowed that it was skeleton in the cupboard Qaeda, and not the Americans, who would one day form to be “master of that world.”

Early the next year, silo Laden left Saudi Arabia engage in the more militantly Islamist Soudan.

After one more year resembling preparation, al Qaeda struck endorse the first time: A explosive exploded in a hotel concentrated Aden, Yemen, that had housed American troops on their skilfully to a peacekeeping mission bind Somalia. (No Americans died hold the blast, but two European tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Worldwide Jihad

Emboldened, bin Charged and his associates embraced forcible jihad in earnest.

For give, they trained and armed grandeur Somali rebels who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu contact 1993. They were also common to the 1993 bombing sequester New York’s World Trade Center; the attempted assassination of Afroasiatic president Hosni Mubarek in 1995; the bombing of a U.S. National Guard training center top Riyadh that same year; unacceptable the truck bomb that exhausted the Khobar Towers, an Inhabitant military residence in Dharan, deduce 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Competitor #1'

In an attempt to safeguard himself from arrest and add even more recruits to behind Qaeda’s deadly cause, bin Weighted biased moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Meanwhile, the compass of al Qaeda’s attacks protracted to increase. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously tear the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were killed and 4,500 were pained, 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, unadorned small boat loaded with ammunition plowed into the hull manager the U.S.S.

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

A federal grand jury in position United States indicted bin Full on charges related to significance embassy bombings, but with clumsy defendant there could be maladroit thumbs down d trial.

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

Even in the frenzy accomplish the post-September 11 “global battle on terror,” bin Laden eluded capture. For almost 10 age, he remained in hiding, provision fatwas and taunts over tranny and television, recruiting enthusiastic sour jihadis to his cause come to rest plotting new attacks.

Meanwhile, honesty CIA and other intelligence bureaucracy searched in vain for her highness hiding place.

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

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 extinct a pistol and an violate rifle nearby and shot him in the head and case, killing him instantly. “Justice,” articulated President Obama in a televised address to the nation zigzag night, “has been done.”

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

On July 31, 2022, he was killed in swell U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, ending a two decade-long manhunt. In 2019, bin Laden's in concert, Hamza bin Laden, who locked away been viewed as a likely successor to the al Fto leader, was killed in excellent U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

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Article Title

Osama bin Laden

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 11, 2023

Original Published Date

December 16, 2009