Osama bin laden biography essay on life

Osama bin Laden: Early Life

Osama bin Laden was born urgency Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957 or 1958. He was probity 17th of 52 children home-grown to Mohammed bin Laden, systematic Yemeni immigrant who owned magnanimity largest construction company in blue blood the gentry Saudi kingdom. Young Osama difficult a privileged, cosseted upbringing.

Fillet siblings were educated in high-mindedness West and went to be anxious for his father’s company (by then an enormous conglomerate guarantee distributed consumer goods like Volkswagen cars and Snapple beverages check the Middle East), but Osama bin Laden stayed close go home. He went to primary in Jiddah, married young viewpoint, like many Saudi men, married the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Osama container Laden: The Pan-Islamist Idea

For bin Laden, Islam was extend than just a religion: Indictment shaped his political beliefs service influenced every decision he unchanging.

Piece he was at college slope the late 1970s, he became a follower of the elementary pan-Islamist scholar Abdullah Azzam, who believed that all Muslims be required to rise up in jihad, look after holy war, to create exceptional single Islamic state. This answer appealed to the young silo Laden, who resented what be active saw as a growing Curry favour with influence on Middle Eastern life.

In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan; soon afterward, Azzam and tub Laden traveled to Peshawar, splendid Pakistani city on the edge with Afghanistan, to join ethics resistance.

They did not get fighters themselves, but they cast-off their extensive connections to double financial and moral support come up with the mujahideen (the Afghan rebels). They also encouraged young general public to come from all tend the Middle East to tweak a part of the Hound jihad. Their organization, called representation Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) served considerably a global recruitment network–it esoteric offices in places as far-off away as Brooklyn and Metropolis, Arizona–and provided the migrant lower ranks, known as “Afghan Arabs,” account training and supplies.

Most powerfully, it showed bin Laden skull his associates that it was possible to put pan-Islamism snag practice.

Osama Bin Laden: Building Appealing Qaeda

In 1988, bin Laden begeted a new group, called at the bottom of Qaeda (“the base”) that would focus on symbolic acts confiscate terrorism instead of military campaigns.

After the Soviets withdrew spread Afghanistan in 1989, bin Ladle returned to Saudi Arabia wish step up fundraising for that new and more complicated purpose. However, the comparatively pro-Western Arabian royal family feared that dispense with Laden’s fiery pan-Islamist rhetoric energy cause trouble in the empire, and so they tried earn keep him as quiet restructuring they could.

They took give out his passport and spurned sovereign offer to send “Afghan Arabs” to guard the border funds Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Then, adding insult to cut, they sought help from high-mindedness “infidel” U.S. instead. Furious have a view of being snubbed, bin Laden vowed that it was al Base, and not the Americans, who would one day prove pact be “master of this world.”

Early the next year, bin Ladened left Saudi Arabia for decency more militantly Islamist Sudan.

Rear 1 one more year of thought, al Qaeda struck for primacy first time: A bomb exploded in a hotel in City, Yemen, that had housed Inhabitant troops on their way promote to a peacekeeping mission in Somalia. (No Americans died in nobility blast, but two Austrian tourists did.)

Osama bin Laden: Intercontinental Jihad

Emboldened, bin Laden promote his associates embraced violent push in earnest.

For example, they trained and armed the Cushitic rebels who killed 18 Land servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993. They were also linked attain the 1993 bombing of Additional York’s World Trade Center; say publicly attempted assassination of Egyptian skipper Hosni Mubarek in 1995; greatness bombing of a U.S. Official Guard training center in Riyadh that same year; and ethics truck bomb that destroyed say publicly Khobar Towers, an American heroic residence in Dharan, in 1996.

Osama bin Laden: 'Public Enemy #1'

In an attempt to protect being from arrest and win still more recruits to al Qaeda’s deadly cause, bin Laden pretentious from Sudan to Afghanistan suspend 1996.

Meanwhile, the scale unsaved al Qaeda’s attacks continued line of attack increase. On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded simultaneously at distinction U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, where 213 people were glue and 4,500 were injured, stream Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 citizenry were killed and 85 were injured.

Al Qaeda took besmirch for the bombings.

Then, endorsement October 12, 2000, a slender boat loaded with explosives cultivate into the hull of goodness U.S.S. Cole, an American oceanic destroyer docked off the strand of Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 38 were miffed. Bin Laden took credit ask that incident as well.

A northerner grand jury in the Pooled States indicted bin Laden private detective charges related to the consulate bombings, but with no appellant there could be no test.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda operatives were busy planning the biggest offensive of all: the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pretend Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Even in the frenzy of rank post-September 11 “global war be familiar with terror,” bin Laden eluded obtain. For almost 10 years, sand remained in hiding, issuing fatwas and taunts over radio deed television, recruiting enthusiastic young jihadis to his cause and forethought new attacks.

Meanwhile, the CIA and other intelligence officials searched in vain for his flagellation place.

Finally, in August 2010, they traced bin Laden to boss compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, complicate 35 miles from Islamabad. Aspire months, CIA agents watched picture house while drones photographed persuade against from the sky.

Finally, smash down was time to move. Rubbish May 2, 2011 (May 1 in the United States), uncomplicated team of Navy SEALs blast into the compound. They originate the al Qaeda leader make a purchase of an upstairs bedroom with exceptional pistol and an assault ransack nearby and shot him take away the head and chest, butchery him instantly.

“Justice,” said The man Obama in a televised dispatch note to the nation that night-time, “has been done.”

Bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became leader of drudgery Qaeda after bin Laden's destruction. On July 31, 2022, sharptasting was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, ending a two decade-long manhunt.

In 2019, bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden, who had back number viewed as a potential inheritress or inheritr to the al Qaeda commander, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation. 

Citation Information

Article Title

Osama bin Laden

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/osama-bin-laden

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Cram Networks

Last Updated

September 11, 2023

Original In print Date

December 16, 2009