THE RISE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

The Rise of Osama Bin Laden



The Rise of Osama Bin Laden

The Beginning of his Journey

Founder and spiritual leader of the international terrorist organization al-Qaeda and prime suspect in ordering the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. A member of one of the wealthiest families in the world, Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1957, the last son of 52 siblings. In 1968, his father, Mohammed bin Laden, died in a helicopter accident, and at the age of 10 Osama inherited around $80 million. Osama bin Laden's religious beliefs were shaped by the influences of his childhood. He spent his youth in a strictly conservative part of Saudi Arabia known as the Hejaz. His education was based on the Koran and Sharia law, the Muslim religious code for living.

As one of the 52, or maybe 54, offspring that Muhammad bin-Awad bin Laden sired with his 22 wives, perhaps that is understandable. The elder bin Laden emigrated to the kingdom around 1930. A porter in his native Yemen, he found a new calling in construction, building a palace on the cheap for King Abdel Aziz ibn Saud and securing a lifelong patron. Lucrative contracts for roads and bridges followed, as well as prestigious commissions to renovate Islam's holiest sites in Medina and Mecca. By the time of Osama's birth, Muhammad was among the country's wealthiest men. But, he remained renowned for his piety-praying at three different mosques each day, never having more than four wives at one time in accordance with religious law, and renovating the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem at cost. He was also a fierce believer in the prevailing Arab cause. In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War with Israel, Osama once told an interviewer, Muhammad tried to have his company's 200 bulldozers converted to tanks so he could launch his own invasion. (Yoram, 1998)

He had met Osama's mother, Alia, during a visit to Syria in the mid-1950s. The marriage-his 10th-lasted only a few years and produced just the one child. By some family accounts, Alia was more of a concubine than wife. In others, she was a headstrong and sophisticated woman who demanded a divorce and adopted Western dress when outside the country. What is certain is that Osama adored her. "First comes God and then his mother," Osama's half-brother Ahmad Muhammad al-Attas told journalists in the months after 9/11. During his years of exile in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, bin Laden made a point of calling her frequently, even though security officials at home and in the U.S. were surely monitoring the calls. (Simon, 1999)

Soon after, Azzam left Saudi Arabia for the border regions of Pakistan to minister to the mujahedeen. Some sources suggest the two men worked together raising money and setting up training camps for the fighters. Others like Michael Scheur, in his recent biography of the terrorist leader, claim Osama spent five years doing the bidding of Saudi intelligence, ...