Muhammad Awad bin Laden became a billionaire by building his company into the largest construction firm in the Saudi kingdom. Bin Laden married for the first time at age 17, to a Syrian cousin, Najwa. Reportedly walked with a cane and suffered from kidney disease. He remains there for a decade, using construction equipment from his family's business to help the Muslim guerrilla forces build shelters, tunnels and roads through the rugged Afghan mountains, and at times taking part in battle.
Bin Laden is reportedly outraged at their presence, and soon begins to target the United States for its presence near the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. December - US forces land in Somalia , spearheading a UN-authorized humanitarian plan to bring in famine relief supplies.
Part of their challenge is disarming the various warlords who control the country. Prosecutors charge that bin Laden threw himself into the midst of this conflict, sending some of his followers to Somalia to train the warlords to fight the US troops. Six Muslim radicals, who US officials suspect have links to bin Laden, are eventually convicted for the bombing. Although bin Laden is named as a possible unindicted co-conspirator, investigators do not recover conclusive evidence that the al Qaeda leader orchestrated the attack.
October - Eighteen US servicemen, part of a humanitarian mission to Somalia, die in an ambush perpetrated by militants who reportedly trained with al Qaeda.
His family disowns him. He moves with his children and wives to Afghanistan, where he receives harbor from the Taliban. The United States indicts bin Laden on charges of training the people involved in the attack that killed 18 US servicemen in Somalia. It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us.
February - According to court documents, bin Laden orders the militarization of the East African cell of al Qaeda, a move that culminates in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, , eight years to the day after US troops landed in the Saudi kingdom. May 29, - Bin Laden issues a statement entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam," under the banner of the "International Islamic Front for Fighting the Jews and Crusaders," in which he states that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorize the enemies of God.
November - Is indicted by the United States on counts of murder for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. He claims he was trained in urban warfare and explosives at an Afghanistan camp run by bin Laden. May 29, - Four of bin Laden's alleged supporters are convicted of the bombings of the US embassies in Africa. December 25, - The Pakistan Observer publishes details of bin Laden's alleged funeral.
On the front page, the newspaper reports that an unnamed Taliban leader said bin Laden "had a peaceful natural death in mid-December in the vicinity" of the Tora Bora mountains. The report says that his death was the result of a "serious lung complication By the s, he had managed to land several large government contracts to build extensions on the Mecca, Medina and Al-Aqsa mosques. He became a highly influential figure in Jeddah; when the city fell on hard financial times, Mohammed used his wealth to pay all civil servants' wages for the entire kingdom for a six-month period.
As a result, Mohammed bin Laden became well respected in his community. As a father, he was very strict, insisting that all his children live under one roof and observe a rigid religious and moral code. He dealt with his children, especially his sons, as if they were adults, and demanded they become confident and self-sufficient at an early age. Bin Laden, however, barely came to know his father before his parents divorced. After his family split, bin Laden's mother took him to live with her new husband, Muhammad al-Attas.
The couple had four children together, and bin Laden spent most of his childhood living with his step-siblings and attending Al Thagher Model School—at the time the most prestigious high school in Jedda.
His biological father would go on to marry two more times, until his death in a charter plane crash in September At the age of 14, bin Laden was recognized as an outstanding, if somewhat shy, student at Al Thagher. As a result, he received a personal invitation to join a small Islamic study group with the promise of earning extra credit. Bin Laden, along with the sons of several prominent Jedda families, were told the group would memorize the entire Koran, a prestigious accomplishment, by the time they graduated from the institution.
But the group soon lost its original focus, and during this time bin Laden received the beginnings of an education in some of the principles of violent jihad.
The teacher who educated the children, influenced in part by a sect of Islam called The Brotherhood, began instructing his pupils in the importance of instituting a pure, Islamic law around the Arab world. Using parables with often-violent endings, their teacher explained that the most loyal observers of Islam would institute the holy word — even if it meant supporting death and destruction. By the second year of their studies, bin Laden and his friends had openly adopted the attitude and styles of teen Islamic activists.
They preached the importance of instituting a pure Islamic law at Al Thagher; grew untrimmed beards; and wore shorter pants and wrinkled shirts in imitation of the Prophet's dress. Bin Laden was pushed to grow up rather quickly during his time at Al Thagher. At the age of 18 he married his first cousin, year-old Najwa Ghanem, who had been promised to him. Bin Laden graduated from Al Thager in , the same year his first child, a son named Abdullah, was born. He then headed to King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where some say he received a degree in public administration in Others claim he received a degree in civil engineering, in an effort to join the family business.
But bin Laden would have little chance to use his degree. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in , bin Laden joined the Afghan resistance, believing it was his duty as a Muslim to fight the occupation.
From his early teens, Bin Laden, timid and ill at ease, was seeking to live his life according to the most demanding strictures of the puritanical strand of Islam practised in the kingdom. Here, Bergen makes the very good point that this operation was a short-term disaster for the group, leading to the loss of its vital haven, the death of hundreds of fighters and to a life on the run for its leaders.
What saved al-Qaida was the invasion of Iraq , which did not just divert attention and resources but gave the global movement of Islamist militancy a tremendous boost. Bergen angrily demolishes the lies that underpinned US policy under the Bush administration and for which few, if any, have ever been held accountable.
Having spoken to many of the former CIA officials involved in compiling successive intelligence in and early that found no link between Bin Laden and Iraq, Bergen is well placed to nail that particular falsehood. But he also shows other myths for what they are. No, the Pakistanis did not shelter the al-Qaida leader for a decade for their own dastardly purposes. Though all of this has been said before, it is still important to say it all again and refute dangerous, ideological fantasy with solid research and reporting.
At university, he was influenced by Egyptian Islamists from a radical fringe of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, for example.
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