Born 1957 for Syrian mother, Osama bin Laden was the seventh son among fiftybrothers and sisters.
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In 1969 the father took the task of rebuilding Al-Aqsa mosque after the fireincident. Interestingly the bin Laden family say that they have the credit ofbuilding all the three mosques, because later on their company took over thetask of major extension in Mecca and Medina mosques.
The father was fairly devoted Moslem, very humble and generous. He was so proudof the bag he used when he was a porter that he kept it as a trophy in the mainreception room in his palace. The father used to insist on his sons to go andmanage some projects themselves.
The father had very dominating personality. He insisted to keep all hischildren in one premises. He had a tough discipline and observed all thechildren with strict religious and social code. He maintained a special dailyprogram and obliged his children to follow. At the same time the father wasentertaining with trips to the sea and desert. He dealt with his children asbig men and demanded them to show confidence at young age. He was very keen notto show any difference in the treatment of his children.
Osama was exposed very early on his age to this experience but he lost hisfather when he was 13. He married at the age of 17 to a Syrian girl who was arelative. He grew up as religiously committed boy and the early marriage wasanother factor of protecting him from corruption.
Osama had his primary, secondary and even university education in Jeddah. Hehad a degree in public administration 1981 from King Abdul-Aziz university inJeddah. Countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, andSudan are the only countries he has been to. All stories of trips toSwitzerland, Philippines, and London are all unfounded.
In addition to the general Islamic commitment he started forming an Islamicresponsibility at early age. His father used to host hundreds of pilgrimsduring Hajj season from al over the world. Some of those were senior Islamicscholars or leaders of Muslim movements. This habit went on even after hisfather's death through his elder brothers. He used to make good contacts andrelations through those gatherings.
At secondary school and university he adopted the main trend of many educatedMuslims at that time, Muslim Brotherhood. There was a collection of Muslimscholars in Jeddah and Mecca at that period. There was nothing extraordinary inhis personality and that trend was rather very non-confrontational.Interestingly, the 1980 raid in the Grand Mosque in Mecca was not appealing tohim, neither the theology or that group. He had two distinguished teachers inIslamic studies, which was a compulsory subject in the university. First wasAbdullah Azzam who became later as one of the big names in Afghanistan and thesecond was Mohammed Quttub, a famous Islamic writer and philosopher.
The first encounter with Afghanistan was as early as the first two weeks ofSoviet invasion. He went to Pakistan and was taken by his hosts Jamaat Islamifrom Karachi to Peshawar to see the refugees and meet some leaders. Some ofthose leaders like Rabbani and Sayyaf were common faces to him because he metthem during Hajj gatherings That trip which was [a] secret trip lasted foralmost a month and was an exploratory rather than action trip. He went back tothe kingdom and started lobbying with his brothers, relatives and friends atthe school to support the mujahedeen. He succeeded in collecting huge amount ofmoney and material as donations to jihad. He made another trip to take thismaterial. He took with him few Pakistanis and Afghanis who were working in binLaden company for more than ten years. Again, he did not stay more than a monthThe trip was to Pakistan and the border only and was not to Afghanistan. Hewent on collecting money and going in short trips once or twice a year until1982.
In 1982 he decided to go inside Afghanistan. He brought with him plenty of theconstruction machinery and put them at the disposal of the mujahedeen Hestarted spending more and more time in Afghanistan occasionally joining actualbattles but not in an organized manner. His presence was encouraging to moreSaudis to come but the numbers were still small at that period.
In 1984 he had one further step in strengthening his presence in Afghanistan byestablishing the guesthouse in Peshawar (Baitul'ansar). That house was supposedto be the first station of Arab mujahedeen when they come to Afghanistan beforegoing to the front or start training. At that period Osama did not have his owncommand or training camps. He used to send the newcomers to one of the Afghanfactions.
The guesthouse establishment was coinciding with the formation of Jihad ServiceBureau by Abdullah Azzam in Peshawar. The Bureau was very active in terms ofmedia, publications and charity work. The Bureau publications were important inattracting more Saudis and Arabs to Afghanistan.
In 1986 Osama decided to have his own camps inside Afghanistan and within twoyears he built more than six camps. Some were mobilized more than once. Hedecided to have his own front and to run his own battles with his own command.Among the Arab fighters he had, there were senior Arab ex-military men fromSyria and Egypt with good military experience. The story of the guesthouse andthe camps was very attractive for more Arab mujahedeen to come and there was asignificant surge in their numbers at that period.
In addition to many exchanges of fire and small operations, the first majorbattle he had face to face with the Soviet army with pure Arab personnel wasthe battle of Jaji in the province of Baktia 200 kilometers away from Khost.From then until 1989 he had more than five major battles with hundreds of smalloperations and exchanges of fire. During the period 1984-1989 he was stayingmore in Afghanistan than Saudi Arabia. He would spend a total of eight months ayear or more in Afghanistan.
In 1988 he noticed that he was backward in his documentation and was not ableto give answers to some families asking about their loved ones gone missing inAfghanistan. He decided to make the matter much more organized and arranged forproper documentation. He made a tracking record of the visitors, be theymujahedeen or charity or simple visitors. Their movement between the guesthouseand the camps had to be recorded as well as their first arrival and finaldeparture. The whole complex was then termed Al-Qa'edah which is an Arabic wordmeaning "The Base." Al-Qa'edah was very much public knowledge. It was funny tosee some people triumphing because they discovered it!
Late 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, he went to the kingdomin an ordinary trip. There he was banned from travel and was trapped in thekingdom. The Soviet withdrawal might have been a factor but the main reason forthe travel ban were his intentions to start a new "front" of jihad in SouthYemen. In addition, he embarrassed the regime by lectures and speeches warningof impending invasion by Saddam. At that time the regime was at very good termswith Saddam. He was instructed officially to keep low profile and not to givepublic talks. Despite the travel ban he was not hostile to regime at thisstage. Indeed he presented a written advice in the form of a detailed,personal, private and confidential letter to the king few weeks before theIraqi invasion of Kuwait.
He reacted swiftly to Iraqi invasion and saw it fulfilling his prophecy. Heimmediately forwarded another letter to the king suggesting in detail how toprotect the country from potentially advancing Iraqi forces. In addition tomany military tactics suggested, he volunteered to bring all the Arabmujahedeen to defend the kingdom. That letter was presented in the first fewdays of the incident, and the regime response was of consideration!
While he was expecting some call to mobilize his men and equipment he heard thenews which transferred his life completely. The Americans are coming. He alwaysdescribes that moment as shocking moment. He felt depressed and thought thatmaneuvers had to change. Instead of writing to the king or approaching othermembers of the royal family, he started lobbying through religious scholars andMuslim activists. He succeeded in extracting a fatwah from one of the seniorscholars that training and readiness is a religious duty. He immediatelycirculated that fatwah and convinced people to have their training inAfghanistan. It was estimated that 4000 went to Afghanistan in response to thefatwah. The regime was not happy with his activities so they limited hismovement to Jeddah only. He was summoned for questioning twice for some of hisspeeches and activities and was given warnings. To intimidate him, the regimeraided his farm in the suburb of Jeddah by the National Guard. He was not thereduring the raid and was very angry when told. He wrote a letter of protest toPrince Abdullah. Abdullah apologized and claimed he is not aware and promisedto punish who ever were responsible.
Osama was fed up with this almost house arrest situation and did not imaginehimself able to stay in the country with the American forces around. One of hisbrothers was very close to King Fahad and also close to Prince Ahmed, deputyminister of interior. He convinced his brother that he needed to leave thecountry to sort out some business matters in Pakistan and come back. There wasa difficult obstacle, the stubborn Prince Nayef, minister of interior. Hisbrother waited until Nayef went in a trip outside the kingdom and extractedlifting the ban from prince Ahmed. When he arrived in Pakistan around April1991 he sent a letter to his brother telling him that he is not coming back andapologized for letting him down with the royal family.
After his arrival to Pakistan he went straight to Afghanistan because he knewthe Pakistani intelligence would hand him back to the Saudis. There, heattended the collapse of the communist regime and the consequent disputebetween the Afghan parties. He spent great effort to arbitrate between them butwith no success He ordered his followers to avoid any involvement in theconflict and told them it was a sin to side with any faction. During his staythe Saudis tried more than once to kidnap or kill him in collaboration with thePakistani intelligence. His friends in the Saudi and Pakistani establishmentswould always leak the plan and make him ready for it. After his failure insorting the Afghani dispute, he decided to leave Afghanistan. The onlyalternative country he had was Sudan. He left Afghanistan disguised in privatejet only few months after his arrival. That was late 1991.
His choice of Sudan had nothing to do with jihad or "terrorism." He wasattracted to Sudan because of what was at that time an Islamic banner raised bythe new regime in Sudan. He wanted to have good refuge as well as help thegovernment in its construction projects. There was no intention from his sideor from the Sudanese regime to have any military activity in Sudan. Indeed theSudanese government refused even sending some of his followers to the front inthe south. He was treated in Sudan as a special guest who wanted to help Sudanwhen everybody was turning away. In Sudan he mobilized a lot of constructionequipment and enrolled himself in busy construction projects. He spent goodeffort in convincing Saudi businessmen to invest in Sudan and had reasonablesuccess. Many of his brothers and Jeddah merchants had and still haveinvestment in real estate, farming and agricultural industry. In Sudan he hadagain escaped an assassination attempt which turned out later to be the plan ofSaudi intelligence.
During his stay in Sudan anti-American incidents happened in Somalia and SouthYemen. Neither of the two incidents was performed by his group in the propersense of chain of command. Both were performed by people who had training inAfghanistan and had enough anti-American drive. He might have given somesanctioning to the operations but one thing was certain, the Sudanese werecompletely unaware of either.
Between his arrival to Sudan and early 1994 he was not regarded publicly asSaudi opposition and Saudi citizens were visiting him without too muchprecautions. Only the well-informed people would know that he was classified asenemy to the Saudi regime. His assets were frozen sometime between 1992 and1994 but that was not published. The Saudis decided to announce their hostilityearly 1994 when they publicized withdrawing his citizenship.
After long silence and tolerance, bin Laden replied by issuing acommuniqué condemning the Saudi decision and saying that he does notneed the "Saudi" reference to identify himself and it is not up to Al-Saud toadmit or expel people from Arabian Peninsula. He then formed together withactivists and scholars from the kingdom a group called "Advice and ReformCommittee" (ARC). The ARC was, according to its communiqués andpublished agenda, a purely political group. The ARC published around 17communiqués which might have contained harsh criticism of the Saudiregime and plenty of religious rhetoric but never contained reference forviolence or incitment of violence.
The car bomb in spring 1995 in Riyadh was the first major anti-American actionin the kingdom. Bin Laden never claimed responsibility, but the Saudigovernment tried to link the incident to bin Laden by showing video confessionsof four "Arab Afghans" involved in the bombing.
Sudan was exposed to huge international pressure for hosting bin Laden and hisfollowers, and bin Laden felt that he is becoming an embarrassment to theSudanese. Early in 1996 he started making contacts with his old friends inAfghanistan to prepare for his reception. He fled Sudan in a very well plannedtrip with many of his followers to go straight to Jalalabad in EasternAfghanistan.
When he arrived there, the situation in Afghanistan was very unsettled betweenthe many factions, but he had very good relations with all factions and allwould protect him. The area he arrived to was under control of Yunis Khalis, avery influential warlord who later on joined Taliban.
June 1996, after his arrival in Afghanistan was the Khobar bombing. Nobodyclaimed responsibility, but sources from inside the Saudi ministry of interiorconfirmed involvement of Arab Afghans, with possible link to bin Laden TheSaudi government wanted to frame Shi'a, at the beginning but Americans werevery suspicious of the Saudi story. Bin Laden himself never claimedresponsibility but gave many hints that he might have been involved. The Saudigovernment has acknowledged recently that bin Laden's men were behind thebombing.
