Osama bin Laden
Who was Osama bin Laden?
Saudi-born civil engineer who founded the jihadist organization al-Qaeda in 1988 and orchestrated numerous terrorist attacks including September 11, 2001.
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Osama bin Laden (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Osama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden was born on March 10, 1957, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was the seventeenth of Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden's fifty-two children. Muhammad was a billionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family. Raised in a wealthy and devout Sunni Islamic household, bin Laden went to Al-Thager Model School in Jeddah and later attended King Abdulaziz University, studying civil engineering and economics. It was during his university years that he started following radical Islamist thinkers, including Abdullah Azzam, whose ideas about global jihad heavily influenced bin Laden's future. In 1974, he married his first wife, Najwa Ghanem, and later married four more women: Khadijah Sharif, Khairiah Sabar, Siham Sabar, and Amal Ahmed al-Sadah.
In 1979, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, bin Laden traveled to support the Afghan mujahideen. He used his wealth and family’s construction expertise to fund weapons, recruit fighters, and build infrastructure like tunnels and roads in difficult terrains. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat with Abdullah Azzam to help channel foreign volunteers and funding to the Afghan resistance. By 1988, with the Soviet withdrawal nearing, bin Laden established al-Qaeda, aiming for a jihadist group that could work globally beyond the Afghan conflict. After the Soviet exit in 1989, he stayed involved in the Afghan civil war before returning to Saudi Arabia.
Back in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden criticized the government for allowing American military forces into Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War of 1990-1991. He saw the presence of non-Muslim troops near Islam’s holiest sites as a major offense. As a result, the government expelled him in 1991. Bin Laden then moved first to Afghanistan, then to Sudan, where he led al-Qaeda operations throughout the early 1990s. During this time, al-Qaeda was linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City and attacks on American forces in Somalia. Under international pressure, Sudan expelled bin Laden in 1996; he returned to Afghanistan and formed a close partnership with the Taliban government.
From Afghanistan, bin Laden issued two formal declarations of holy war against Americans, targeting both military and civilian personnel, in 1996 and 1998. Al-Qaeda orchestrated the bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in August 1998, killing over two hundred and injuring thousands more. The United States retaliated with missile strikes on suspected al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan and Sudan. The September 11, 2001 attacks, involving nineteen al-Qaeda operatives who hijacked four planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, led to 2,977 deaths and sparked a global war on terror. The U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, dismantling the Taliban regime and pushing bin Laden into hiding in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Bin Laden lived in hiding for about a decade, occasionally releasing audio and video messages to media outlets. He was eventually found at a heavily guarded compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs conducted Operation Neptune Spear, storming the compound and killing bin Laden. His body was buried at sea within twenty-four hours of his death, according to American officials, following Islamic customs. He was fifty-four when he died.
Before Fame
Osama bin Laden grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in a wealthy non-royal family. His father's company, the Saudi Binladin Group, took on major projects like renovating the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, giving the family huge prestige in the Muslim world. Bin Laden went to Al-Thager Model School and then to King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where he studied civil engineering.
At university, bin Laden became more interested in political Islam after meeting scholars linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and exploring ideas from figures like Sayyid Qutb. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that year were significant for many young Muslims his age, and bin Laden was influenced by these events too. He used his wealth and engineering skills to aid Afghan resistance fighters, becoming involved with a group of international Islamist activists before he turned thirty.
Key Achievements
- Founded al-Qaeda in 1988, building it into a globally operating jihadist network with cells across dozens of countries
- Co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat in 1984, which organized and financed thousands of foreign fighters during the Soviet-Afghan War
- Orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks, the deadliest terrorist strikes on American soil in history, killing 2,977 people
- Directed the 1998 simultaneous bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing over 200 people
- Issued two declarations of holy war against the United States in 1996 and 1998, framing global jihadist violence as a religious obligation
Did You Know?
- 01.Bin Laden is believed to have fathered between twenty and twenty-six children across his five marriages.
- 02.His father, Muhammad bin Laden, died in a 1967 plane crash in Saudi Arabia when Osama was approximately ten years old, leaving him a substantial inheritance.
- 03.During the Soviet-Afghan War, bin Laden personally helped design and oversee the construction of cave complexes and roads in the Tora Bora mountain region using engineering knowledge from his university training.
- 04.Al-Qaeda's name translates from Arabic as 'the base' or 'the foundation,' reflecting its original conception as a database and organizational structure for foreign mujahideen fighters.
- 05.The compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was killed had walls as high as eighteen feet topped with barbed wire and was built between 2004 and 2005, suggesting he had lived there for up to six years before his death.