Militant career of Osama bin Laden
Although bin Laden was never indicted
Jihad in Afghanistan
Bin Laden's wealth and connections assisted his interest in supporting the
After leaving college in 1979 bin Laden joined Azzam
By 1984, with Azzam, bin Laden established a Saudi Arabian funded organization named
Alleged CIA involvement
Whether Osama bin Laden and his group are "blowback" from CIA's Operation Cyclone to help the Afghan mujahideen is a matter of some debate.
However, CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, calls the idea "that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden ... a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. ... Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. ... The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."[13]
Break with Azzam
Osama bin Laden was recruited to be part of Azzam's Maktab al-Khidamat (Services Bureau), the support network of Arab fighters in Pakistan that was helping resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.[14] For a while, bin Laden worked at the Services Bureau working with Abdullah Azzam on Jihad Magazine, a magazine that gave information about the war with the Soviets and interviewed mujahideen. Although bin Laden and the other Afghan Arabs were considered a minor "sideshow" in the war, bin Laden did establish a camp in Afghanistan and, with other volunteers, fought the Soviets and Marxist Afghan troops. One of his most significant battles was the battle of Jaji, which was not a major fight, but it earned him a reputation as a fighter.
As time passed, Ayman al-Zawahiri encouraged bin Laden to split away from Abdullah Azzam. This stemmed from al-Zawahiri's differences with Azzam such as their conflicting interpretations of the jihad. Some believe that al-Zawahiri's motive was driven by his desire to exploit bin Laden's finances as well as the ambition to control the fractured Egyptian jihadist movement[14] and so al-Zawahiri favored an aggressive view. On the other hand, Azzam pushed for a limited and defensive conception of jihad, where it becomes obligatory only when the enemy enters the land of Muslims.[15] This doctrine, however, proved ambiguous and invited several interpretations. Bin Laden began gravitating towards Zawahiri's position as he pursued a more expansive warfare strategy that allowed "insurrections against apostate Muslim regimes."[14] Azzam rejected this because he eschewed intra-Muslim conflict and the dispute finally led to a power struggle, which bin Laden won. By 1988, he finally broke away from his mentor, establishing al-Qaeda with the most extremist of the Muslim militants from Azzam's network[16] and began a radical form of jihad that pursued the violent overthrow of governments in the Muslim world deemed apostate.[17]
Years later, in 1989, Azzam was blown up in a massive car bombing outside the mosque. Bin Laden is thought by some to be behind the assassination due to the rift about the direction of the jihad at that time.[18] Others, however, doubt this claim; Ahmad Zaidan, for instance, author of the Arabic-language book Bin Laden Unmasked, told Peter L. Bergen in an interview, "I rule out totally that bin Laden would indulge himself in such things, after all, Osama bin Laden, he's not type of person to kill Abdullah Azzam. Otherwise, if he be exposed, he would be finished, totally." Bergen also cites Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who speculates that there were more likely candidates than bin Laden: "It could be Hekmatyar, it could be KHAD, it could be the Mossad, the Egyptians [around Ayman al Zawahiri] ... I met with Hekmatyar, an arrogant, self-centered person. I think Hekmatyar had a secret organization to eliminate his enemies."[19]
Formation of Al-Qaeda
By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat because of strategic differences. While Azzam and his MAK organization acted as support for the Afghan fighters and provided relief to refugees and injured, bin Laden wanted a more military role in which the Arab fighters would not only be trained and equipped by the organization but also led on the battlefield by Arabic commanders. One of the main leading points to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was the insistence of Azzam that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming their separate fighting force.[20]
In 1990 Bin Laden returned to
[Bin Laden:] I am ready to prepare 100,000 fighters with good combat capability within three months. You don't need Americans. You don't need any other non-Muslim troops. We will be enough.
[Prince Sultan:] There are no caves in Kuwait. What will you do when he lobs missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?
[Bin Laden:] We will fight him with faith.[22]
Bin Laden was rebuffed and publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military, demanding an end to the presence of foreign military bases in the country. Other Saudi Muslims were also greatly upset that non-Muslim troops would be on the same peninsula as the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Anti-government Islamist militants in Saudi Arabia were even more inflamed when the foreign bases remained after the Gulf War was over.
Bin Laden's increasingly strident criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the government to attempt to silence him. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, "with help from a dissident member of the royal family, he managed to get out of the country under the pretext of attending an Islamic gathering in Pakistan in April 1991.[23]" Another report has bin Laden retrieving his passport from the Saudi government to go to Peshawar in March 1992 to mediate the Afghan Civil War. In any case Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the National Islamic Front, had invited bin Laden to "transplant his whole organization to Sudan" in 1989. Bin Laden's agents had begun purchasing property in Sudan in 1990. Bin Laden moved to Sudan in 1992.
Yugoslav wars (1991–1999)
One of the former State Department officials described Bosnia and Herzegovina of that time as a safe haven for terrorists, after it was revealed that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting extremists include hard-core terrorists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden.
According to several sources,
Connections between bin Laden and
In Sudan
Assisted by donations funneled through business and charitable fronts such as
Bin Laden continued his verbal assault on Saudi King Fahd, for example by financing an Advice and Reformation Committee in London that "sent faxes by the hundreds to prominent Saudis" denouncing the king and corruption in the kingdom. On 5 March 1994, the King retaliated by personally revoking his citizenship and sending an embassary to Sudan to demand bin Laden's passport so that he no longer travel. His family was persuaded to cut off his monthly stipend equivalent of about $7 million a year.[38]
By now Bin Laden was strongly associated with
Refuge in Afghanistan
Sudanese officials, whose government was under international sanctions, offered to expel Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s provided that the Saudis pardon him. The Saudis refused because they had already revoked his citizenship and would not accept him in their country.[40] Consequently, in May 1996, under increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States, Sudan asked bin Laden to leave. Bin Laden was forced to make a distress sale of his assets in Sudan that left with almost nothing.[41]
He returned to Afghanistan on a chartered plane and flew to
In Afghanistan, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were able to raise some money from "donors from the days of the Soviet jihad," and from the Pakistan ISI which paid them to train militants for the fight against India in Kashmir. This was done at the old al-Qaeda camps in Khost which the ISI had persuaded the Taliban to return to al-Qaeda control.[43]
Early aid for attacks
Several years before bin Laden was well known outside of Saudi and Islamist circles, he assisted and/or funded what he believed to be physical jihad against impiety involving attacks on civilians.
While still in Saudi Arabia in 1989, he angered the Saudi royal family by preaching for and financing assassinations of socialist leaders in the neighboring country of
In 1992 or 1993, bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists there and warn them against compromise with the impious government. Making jihad merely "for politics, not for God" would be a sin, they were told; total war was the only solution. Total war did follow involving many massacres of civilians and a declaration of takfir of Algerians by one of the Islamist factions (the GIA).[45] An estimated 150,000–200,000 Algerians were killed by the end of the war, but the government prevailed over the Islamists. Abdullah Anas, an Algerian Islamist witness to the Al-Qaeda advice, later lamented, `This simple argument destroyed us.`[46]
Another unsuccessful effort by bin Laden was the
A later attack that did succeed, at least temporarily, was that on the northern Afghan city of
Attacks on United States targets
It is believed that the first terrorist attack involving bin Laden was the 29 December 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden, Yemen. The attack was intended to kill American troops on the way to Somalia, but the soldiers were staying in a different hotel.[53] The bombs killed a Yemeni hotel employee and an Austrian national and also seriously injured the Austrian's wife.[54]
It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justificiation for the killing of innocent people, such as the two bystanders at the hotel. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (aka, Abu Hajer al Iraqi), the most Islamically knowledgeable of Al-Qaeda's members, the killing of someone merely standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander, like the Yemeni hotel worker, will find their proper reward in death, going to Paradise (heaven) if they were good Muslims and to hell if they were bad or non-believers.[55] The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the public.
In 1998, Osama bin Laden and
[t]he ruling to kill the Americans and their allies civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'.[56][57]
In response to the
On 4 November 1998, Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal
In an interview with journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai published in Time magazine, 11 January 1999, Osama bin Laden is quoted as saying:
"The International Islamic Front for Jihad against the U.S. and Israel has issued a crystal-clear fatwa calling on the Islamic nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Muhammad has responded to this appeal. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate Al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka'aba Islamic shrines in the Middle East is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal."[60]
Following the 2000 USS Cole bombing, Mohammed Atef was moved to Kandahar, Zawahiri to Kabul, and Bin Laden fled to Kabul, later joining Atef when he realized no American reprisal attacks were forthcoming.[61]
11 September attacks
The
Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the
I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation.[64]
God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest buildings, praise and blessing to Him.[65]
Bin Laden claimed the Taliban were being attacked by American forces
because of their religion, not just because of the presence of Osama bin Laden ... It is a known fact that America is against the establishment of any Islamic state.[65]
In early November 2001, the Taliban government announced they were bestowing official Afghan citizenship on him, as well as Zawahiri, Mohammed Atef, and Shaykh Asim Abdulrahman.[66]
In November 2001, U.S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in
Another bin Laden video was released on 27 December 2001, with much the same message as his first. America had accused him of organizing the attacks because of "Crusader hatred for the Islamic World.
Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to ... the continuous injustice inflicted upon our sons in Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, southern Sudan, and ... Kashmir.[69]
Shortly before the U.S. presidential election in 2004, another taped statement was released and aired on Al Jazeera in which bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he told viewers he had personally directed the 19 hijackers,[6][70] and gave what he claimed was his motivation:
I will explain to you the reasons behind these events, and I will tell you the truth about the moments when this decision was taken, so that you can reflect on it. God knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.[71]
According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.[72]
In two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announces,
I am the one in charge of the 19 brothers ... I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers ... with the raids [5-minute audiotape broadcast May 23, 2006],[73]
and is seen with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they make preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast 7 September 2006).[74]
Despite this, bin Laden is reported to have complained as recently as November 2007 of the lack "of evidence admissible in court" tying him and his organization to the 9/11 attack.[75]
References
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