Osama Bin Laden Has Risen

Osama Bin Laden has risen to iconic status as the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. His message and his movement resonate not only throughout the Middle East, but also throughout the world. Bin Laden is the most wanted man in the world today and is considered the symbol for terrorism.

As Dennis Piszkiewicz writes in his 2003 book, Terrorism's War with America: A History, Bin Laden's background "emerges from a fog of vague and often contradictory tales," and warns that the details should be taken with a small helping of skepticism (Piszkiewicz 2003). Even the exact date of his birth is unclear, however he is believed to have been born sometime in the mid-1950's. One of the youngest of fifty siblings, he was born into one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia (LeVine 1999). His father, Mohammed Bin Laden moved from Yemen in to Saudi Arabia and eventually built up that country's largest construction company. Beginning in the 1950's, the Saudis began to build hospitals, schools, and roads, and on the "back of royal patronage," the Bin Ladens became incredibly rich in the process (LeVine 1999). Osama's mother was one of the last and least regarded of his father's many wives, thus with little status in the family, when Mohammed died in 1967, Osama turned to religion. Although there have been rumors that he was a playboy in London and Beirut during the 1970's, this is almost certainly false since he speaks poor English and no French, and appears to have been pious even as a child (LeVine 1999).

Bin Laden attended King Abdul Aziz University in Jedda, and it is here that his faith was polished. With its atmosphere of freewheeling Islamic thought, the university was home to two Arabs who would later play an important role in Afghanistan: Bin Laden, and a noted teacher, Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, who "personified the intertwined worlds of Arab politics and religion" (LeVine 1999). Azzam was a Palestinian who had once been a confidant of Yasir Arafat, but had become disillusioned with the corruption of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and believed that Islam needed to return to its roots, to a jihad against the unbelievers (LeVine 1999).

The word jihad means "struggle" or "striving" in the way of God, or to work for a noble cause with determination. Literally, it does not mean "holy war" (Knapp 2003).

However, unlike its medieval Christian counterpart term, "crusade" or war for the cross, for Muslims, the term jihad has kept its religious and military association into the modern era (Knapp 2003). In the Islamic world, the term jihad is sometimes referred to as the "sixth pillar" of the faith (Knapp 2003).

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. In the United States, old fears of the Soviets surfaced, which led the Reagan administration to back Islamic rebels against the Russians (LeVine 1999). Robert Oakley, who was on the staff of the National Security Council said that the policy was straightforward, "This was to be a struggle of Islam vs. evil," and Washington turned heroes into those who fought the Soviets and "encouraged religious young Arabs to take up arms against the ungodly" (LeVine 1999). The plan was a success, and by the time the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, "a cohort of bloodied, well-armed, Islamic soldiers were ready to be unleashed, like some medieval plague, on an unsuspecting world" (LeVine 1999). It is from this group of Arab Afghans that the "terrorist cadres" of the world emerged, and by the end of the war, Bin Laden was set to become leader of many of them (LeVine 1999)

According to accounts, Bin Laden joined the Afghan rebels almost immediately after the Soviet invasion, and at first he used his expertise in the construction industry and his organizational skills to help refugees who had escaped to Pakistan (Piszkiewicz 2003). By 1986, he had made the personal transition from logistical support to combat, and according to various reports, he and the his unit were remarkably brave in confrontations with the "better-equipped" Soviet army (Piszkiewicz 2003). It was about this time when Israeli intelligence began to take note Bin Laden's skills, and his reputation grew as someone who was "honest, modest, respectful and able" (LeVine 1999). In Afghanistan, Bin Laden built roads and tunneling hideouts for the advancing mujahedin. In 1984, he contributed to an organization, the Maktab al-Khidamat (Services Office) that Azzam set up to proselytize for the Afghan cause, which acted as a type of recruiting center and clearinghouse for Islamic charities worldwide (LeVine 1999). In fact, the MAK had offices in Detroit and Brooklyn, and its recruiting effort was actually encouraged by the Reagan administration. Ironically, in 1998, the MAK was identified as the root of a worldwide conspiracy against the United States, and the Brooklyn office was used by those responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (LeVine 1999). However, during the mid-1980's, the Soviets were enemies of both Bin Laden and United States. When Bin Laden moved from logistics to fighting, he proved a worthy opponent, and the Russians reportedly put a price on his head. As one Israeli observed, Bin Laden's forces "were crazy brave" (LeVine 1999).

As the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet's drew to a close, Bin Laden began to think "globally," and in 1988, he formed a new organization called Al Qaeda, "the military base," whose members included leaders of terrorist organizations intent on worldwide expansion of radical Islamic groups (Piszkiewicz 2003). Although the war in Afghanistan ended in 1989 when the Soviets withdrew its forces, warfare continued as rival Afghan forces vied for control of what was left of the country (Piszkiewicz 2003).

After the Soviets left, the mujahedin and Arab volunteers advanced on Jalalabad, intent on capturing a major city and collapsing the pro-Moscow government. Although the town was strongly defended, the mujahedin were encouraged by a U.S. backed Pakistani leadership that desired an easily controlled Afghan government, and so attacked (LeVine 1999). As one writer reported, "they were butchered. In a battle like something out of the Bible - but more murderous - wave after wave of Arab Afghans were mown down" (LeVine 1999). When his forces attacked the airport, Bin Laden was wounded by shrapnel. Soon after, Azzam, who had made powerful enemies in the Islamic world, was killed by a bomb, along with his two sons as they walked to prayer one Friday in Peshawar (LeVine 1999).

Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, joined the family business, and established a welfare organization for Afghan vets, who were soon volunteering for duty in Bosnia, Chechnya, Somalia, the Philippines, "wherever Muslims took up a gun against the infidel" (LeVine 1999). He was looking a cause, and when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bin Laden offered to mobilize 10,000 mujahideen to defend the kingdom, arguing that "only Muslims should defend the holy mosques" (Lesch 2002). As Ann Lesch reports in the June 2002 issue of Middle East Policy, "When King Fahd brought in foreign troops, Bin Laden called for a boycott of U.S. goods, sent up to 4,000 men to Afghanistan for renewed military training, and even smuggled arms into the Asir region from Yemen" (Lesch 2002). Piszkiewicz writes, "He was horrified to learn that the Americans - the infidels, the friend of Israel and the Jews - would base troops on the sacred soil that was the site of Islam's holy shrines at Mecca and Medina" (Piszkiewicz 2003). By this time, Bin Laden had become popular in Saudi Arabia, and when his opposition to U.S. intervention became known, he was confined to Jedda. He left Saudi Arabia in April 1991, and by 1992 he was in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan (LeVine 1999).

With the approval of the Sudanese government, Bin Laden pursued his two main interests: "he invested in banks, agriculture, and construction, and under the umbrella of Al Qaeda, he set up training camps for Islamic warriors" (Piszkiewicz 2003). His revolutionary efforts stretched throughout East Africa. It was his agents who set up the blundering attack in Yemen against U.S. troops on their way to join the United Nations task force in Somalia, and they trained the Somalis who were involved in the 'Black Hawk Down' incident that left eighteen U.S. soldiers dead (Piszkiewicz 2003). In 1993, Bin Laden agents began planning an attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Saudi Arabia, "tiring of Bin Laden's militant escapades," revoked his citizenship in 1994 (Piszkiewicz 2003). The United States began to pressure the Sudanese government to expel him, and by the spring of 1996, Bin Laden had made his way back to Afghanistan (LeVine 1999).

As yet, Bin Laden had focused his attention on reform and renewal in the Islamic world, and had never publicly challenged the United States, however in a Declaration of Jihad dated August 23, 1996, he called for religious youths to murder the American occupiers of the kingdom (LeVine 1999). And in his "Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," dated February 23, 1998, he went further:

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his Messenger, and Muslims.... [T]he jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries... As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty... On that basis, and in compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies-civilian and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it" (Knapp 2003).

In August, 1998, the African embassies were bombed. On August 23, he issued "The Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places (Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia)," and little more than a month later, "the Taliban drove the remnants of the Afghan government out of Kabul and declared themselves the legitimate government of that country" (Piszkiewicz 2003).

The relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban was based mainly on its fundamentalist religious philosophy. Taliban is the plural of Talib, which means "religious student," and these young Afghans were led by an Islamic cleric named Mullah Mohammed Omar, with whom Bin Laden developed a close personal friendship (Piszkiewicz 2003). Bin Laden declared Mullah Omar caliph, the leader of the faithful, and swore an Islamic oath of fealty to him, and Al Qaeda gave financial support to its Taliban hosts. In return, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden received the country's hospitality and influence over the Afghan government (Piszkiewicz 2003). Bin Laden believed that he at last had found a home and a secure base from which to launch his war against the infidels.

The foundation had been laid in the war against the Soviets, and paid for, in part, by the CIA, who had laundered the money it spent to support the mujahideen by funneling it through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (Piszkiewicz 2003). The ISI spent the money, some $3 million, on its own priorities, while a large part of it went to building training camps and other infrastructure controlled by Islamic zealots. After the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan, many of these camps eventually fell under control of Bin Laden, and by 1997, he was establishing additional training camps that catered to Arab recruits (Piszkiewicz 2003).

According to documents collected by U.S. forces after the assaults on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in late 2001 and early 2002, the camps had organized and sophisticated curricula, and were divided into two tiers of instruction. The general program, designed to produce irregular ground troops, taught the basics of firearms, land mines, and stinger missiles (Piszkiewicz 2003). The training manuals, which the students copied by hand, were based on Soviet and American military training manuals.

Students who demonstrated superior abilities were moved into advanced courses where they learned terrorist techniques, such as how to make explosives from common, innocuous materials, and enough electrical engineering to allow them to construct timing and detonation devices (Piszkiewicz 2003).

No one knows the exact number of guerrillas these camps graduated during their five years of operation, however French intelligence officials estimate that as many as ten thousand were trained and then dispersed to cells in more than fifty countries. Although the United States estimate that the camps trained some twenty thousand men, the exact number is somewhat irrelevant considering that the September 11th attacks were caused by only nineteen terrorists (Piszkiewicz 2003).

According to Lesch, "there is widespread condemnation o the U.S. military presence, its sanctions against Iraq, its support for a hegemonic Israel and its apparent endorsement of repressive regimes" (Lesch 2002). These militants "Islamized the traditional discourse of Western anti-imperialism" in their call for a religious-based confrontation, and Bin Laden explicitly essentialized the struggle when he declared that "this war is fundamentally religious....this enmity is based on creed" (Lesch 2002). For many people in the Middle East, this approach is very disturbing, since essentializing the conflict makes it impossible to negotiate political resolutions based on calculations of interest. Shaikh Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Lebanon's Hizballah movement, condemned the September 11th attacks, as "not compatible with Shariah law" or with the true meaning of jihad, which could not involve killing innocent people in a distant land and could not mean "aggressive combat" (Lesch 2002).