How did Osama Bin Laden become the world’s most
wanted man? This is how the Al Qaeda leader went from nobody to monster.
As a young man, the son of a Saudi billionaire and his tenth wife,
Osama Bin Laden had a fairly normal childhood. He inherited millions of dollars from his
father’s family, went to college for economics and business administration,
and combined a deep devotion for Islam with a love of secular elements in culture - like
soccer. He even studied briefly at Oxford and became a fan of the English soccer club Arsenal.
And his personal life didn’t give away a future terrorist either.
Osama Bin Laden got married for the first time in 1974 - and then kept getting married. By 1987,
he had four wives, although he was divorced once. This wasn’t uncommon for Saudi elites,
and he was soon a father many times over. He was described as a strict father and someone
who lived a humble, frugal lifestyle - but certainly not a dangerous man.
But tragedy would soon enter his life - and that might have been his start of darkness.
Bin Laden’s father died in 1967 in a plane crash - caused by his American pilot. In 1988,
his half-brother would also die in a plane crash - while visiting the United States. Did
these two family tragedies start him on the path to hatred of the United States? It’s possible…
But the roots of his hatred might be found in another conflict.
Bin Laden was a millionaire, and he chose to use that money in an unlikely way - buying his way
into an ongoing war. The Soviet Union was at war with Afghanistan, having invaded the central Asian
nation to ensure their hegemony in the region. Bin Laden watched as the powerful army routed the
Afghan rebels - and he was enraged. The devoutly Muslim Bin Laden felt like he had to do something,
so he traveled to Pakistan and joined the militant Abdullah Azzam in funding the rebellion there.
And that would be the beginning of his descent into radicalism.
While this was Bin Laden’s first brush with war against a superpower,
it would not be the trigger that made him the most wanted man in the world. After all,
the Soviets didn’t view him any differently from any other Afghan soldier. As for the west,
and particularly the United States? They actually found him pretty useful! After all,
the Soviets were their geopolitical enemies, and anyone who could make their life more difficult
was welcome. While he wasn’t directly trained by the United States despite what some conspiracy
theories claimed, he had a significant relationship with Saudi intelligence,
and the Mujahideen as a whole were backed by the United States.
Then things went horribly wrong.
As the war went on and Bin Laden’s money helped the Afghans turn the tide, he turned his little
rebel startup into a larger operation. Soon, training camps were showing up all around
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Word started getting around about the resistance against the Soviets,
and Osama Bin Laden started becoming a name in Arab media. He was seen as an underdog,
ruthlessly defending Muslim land against a superpower that thought it could take what it
wanted. And as the war in Afghanistan wound down, he would turn his attention to other targets.
And that’s when things started to unravel.
Why did he become so radicalized? Part of it may have started in 1988, when Bin Laden was
apparently involved in the Gilgit massacre - a brutal targeting of Shia Muslims in Pakistan.
This was reportedly in response to an attack on Sunni villages, but it was the first time Bin
Laden turned his attention to violent reprisals against fellow Muslims instead of colonizing
armies. And it was the first indication that he could become a serious threat.
But things were about to go south in a hurry.
By 1988, Osama had split from the larger Afghan resistance movement and created his own group - Al
Qaeda. Unlike the larger, scrappier group, Bin Laden treated his new organization like
a well-oiled machine - only taking recruits if they matched up with his strict moral beliefs.
But it was still a minor player in world affairs, focused on defending Muslim lands
and training an army of radicals that would resist the colonization of superpowers. And
after years of being backed by the west, and he had no reason to want to go to war with them,
especially as they haven’t tried to take over any other muslim power at the time.
But that was about to change.
Ironically, the start of Bin Laden’s descent into madness wouldn’t be an
invasion - but an invitation. He returned to Saudi Arabia a conquering hero in 1989,
where he used his resources to influence Afghan and Pakistani politics from afar.
He also tried to get involved in the chaotic politics of Yemen,
but was restrained by Saudi leaders. Then the war came home - as Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein invaded the Persian Gulf nation of Kuwait to seize its oil, and the entire
world rallied to stop him. Part of that effort was the stationing of western troops in Saudi
Arabia as a convenient staging ground - and to protect the Saudis if Saddam came for them next.
But Bin Laden didn’t see it that way.
While the Saudis saw the US forces as a guarantee, Bin Laden saw it as an invasion. He met with the
Saudi king to warn him not to allow US troops, and was asked for his plan. His response? “We
will fight him with faith”, which shockingly was not deemed an acceptable answer. The US troops
came to Saudi Arabia, and Bin Laden lost his mind. He tried to rally the nation’s clerics
to denounce the royal family, but they refused. He proceeded to gather his radical followers,
and they decided that if the US troops wouldn’t lose on their own, he would make them.
And from here, things would escalate in a hurry.
The first signs of how far he was willing to go would come in November 1990, when the FBI raided
the associate of an Al Qaeda operative living in New Jersey. They were looking for evidence
of terror plots - and they found them in spades. The plans of Al Qaeda had apparently expanded
from local ones, and now they were targeting New York skyscrapers and prominent right-wing
Rabbis - including one who was murdered only three days before the raid! While they didn’t have
airtight evidence tying the plots to Bin Laden yet, it was clear who was pulling the strings.
And the Saudis would soon take action.
It was 1991 when the Saudis finally had enough of Bin Laden publicly insulting
their government over the US deal, and moved to expel him from the country. He was stripped
of his citizenship and sent abroad, first settling in Afghanistan with his followers
and eventually moving to Sudan. He favored desert countries with a weak central government,
so he could quietly build an arsenal and network of training camps without the authorities getting
involved. The United States was now aware of his activities and viewed him as a potential threat,
but he was still a minor factor in the dying days of the cold war.
But that was about to change.
Around the world, explosions started happening. First, a bomb went off at
a hotel in Yemen where US troops were staying. While the bomb went didn’t kill any soldiers,
a second bomb at another hotel killed two civilians. No one knew who was behind the
attack yet, because Bin Laden was still staying below the radar. When the World Trade Center’s
underground garage was bombed in New York the following year, killing six people, bin Laden
was never formally charged - but the mastermind was revealed to have trained under Bin Laden.
From there, he would only escalate.
He would successfully pull off his first attack against American troops in 1995,
on a facility in Saudi Arabia. Five Americans and two Indians were killed,
and it was the first time a government publicly blames Al Qaeda for a terror attack. Bin Laden
was still well underground, but the heat was on. He was in Sudan at the time, and the US
deployed CIA agents to apprehend him. However, the Sudanese refused to cooperate, and there
was no formal warrant out for Bin Laden at the time. So he was left to continue his activities.
That was a deadly mistake.
It would be June 1996 when most people heard Osama Bin Laden’s name for the first time,
as a massive truck bomb hit the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia. This was a base for
US Air Force members, and 19 were killed in the blase. At first, a branch of the Lebanese militant
group Hezbollah was blamed for the attack - but that would soon turn out to be false,
as Osama Bin Laden decided to make a public declaration of war on the United States.
Known as his first fatwa, it blamed the United States for its continued presence on Saudi soil,
and spread elaborate conspiracy theories about the US and Israel’s plans for the middle east.
It was now clear to American authorities that he was going to be a major threat.
It wouldn’t be long before he struck again.
Targeting American soldiers was one thing, and Bin Laden was mostly seen as just another battlefield
enemy to be conquered. But the core of his radical view was that war wasn’t just necessary against
American forces - all Americans and their allies, no matter where they were, were
legitimate targets for his forces. And he decided to prove that with a series of attacks in 1998,
against the most important and protected sites in the diplomatic world - embassies.
Attacking an embassy is considered one of the highest crimes in international law,
and Bin Laden wanted the world to know how big of a threat he was.
So he didn’t just attack one - he attacked two.
Simultaneously on August 7th, 1998, a pair of bombings took place in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya - hitting the US embassies in both locations. These attacks
killed more than two hundred people, most of them civilians, and took place only weeks
after the first major Al Qaeda congress where they plotted their next moves. If
the world hadn’t taken Osama Bin Laden’s threat seriously before, they would now.
And when the United States government takes a threat
seriously, they have a clear way of showing it.
Osama Bin Laden had just earned himself a place on the FBI’s ten most wanted list,
with a hefty cash reward offered for his apprehension. This list is usually known
for hosting drug kingpins, murderers on the run, and other domestic rogues,
but it has been known to host terrorists and international criminals - and few posed a bigger
threat than bin Laden. But despite the cash prize, Bin Laden was still on the run abroad,
and few bounty hunters were willing to hunt for him in the challenging territory of Sudan.
So it fell to the government to find another way.
In the aftermath of the embassy bombing, Bill Clinton ordered missile strikes on terrorist
training camps in Sudan, but they didn’t succeed in targeting Bin Laden and were largely condemned
by governments in the region. Bin Laden remained on the loose, and continued collecting an army of
militants to target Americans and their allies around the world. As the turn of the millennium
came, he would pull off another shocking attack, bombing the USS Cole destroyer and killing 17
sailors. It was his first successful strike against a major US military ship, and Bin Laden
was now firmly in place as the #1 threat to US security - and the most wanted man in the world.
And he was just getting started…
Want to learn more? Watch “How the CIA Funded a Terrorist Organization” for more on Osama’s
early days, or “How SEAL Team Took Down Osama Bin Laden (Minute by Minute)” for how it all ended.