Twelve years of Osama bin Laden’s killing: How the son of a rich businessman became the world’s most dreaded terrorist

The common enemy

A young, lanky and quiet bin Laden arrived in Pakistan soon after the red army invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979 — in a bid to help push out the “infidels”. Owing to his father’s deep pockets, he began aiding the war efforts by giving “donations to representatives of the Jamiat-e-Islami, the Islamic Party, which was helping support the jihad against the Soviets,” wrote American journalist Peter Bergen in his book ‘The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden’.

Bin Laden, subsequently, became close to Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Jordanian Palestinian scholar, whom he had first met at a university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and started to revere as his teacher and mentor. Azzam was also the head of a “Services Office”, established in 1984 in Peshawar, to recruit and help coordinate the work of the new Arab volunteers who had begun coming to Pakistan to participate in the ‘holy war’. The centre was bankrolled by bin Laden, Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League, and private donations from Saudi princes and mosques, as per a report published in The Centre of Public Integrity, an American nonprofit investigative journalism organisation.

The report added that bin Laden also provided logistical support to Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan. He brought in his father’s company engineers and heavy construction equipment to build roads and depots in the country. Not only this, bin Laden, in 1986, “helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) was funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical centre for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border.”

According to some analysts, this wasn’t the only connection between bin Laden and the American intelligence agency, which was also providing money along with weapons to the Mujahideen. A 2004 report published by the BBC alleged that the CIA not only funded bin Laden but also gave him security training.

These claims were later backed by Robin Cook, Britain’s Foreign Secretary from 1997 until 2001, who in a column for The Guardian wrote, “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”

However, not everyone agreed with the allegations. Bergen in his book wrote the CIA didn’t have any direct dealings with bin Laden or Mujahideen fighters. “Instead, all US aid to Afghanistan was funnelled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI,” he added.

The fallout

Bin Laden’s role in pushing out the Soviets from Afghanistan made him a prominent leader in the country. But with increasing internal bickering of the Mujaheddin, he soon returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family business.

The next time bin Laden came to the limelight was after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. According to The Centre of Public Integrity’s report, he lobbied Saudi’s Royal Family to set up a force, using the Afghan war veterans, to fight Iraq. “Instead, King Fahd invited the Americans. This came as an enormous shock to Bin Laden. As the 540,000 US troops began to arrive, Bin Laden openly criticised the Royal Family, lobbying the Saudi ulema [religious scholars] to issue fatwas, religious rulings, against non-Muslims (including the Americans) being based in the country. . . ,“ the report added.

Disgruntled with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, bin Laden in 1992 relocated to Sudan with his followers to help the Islamic revolution underway there which was being led by the charismatic Sudanese leader Hassan Turabi. Meanwhile, he continued to criticise both the Royal Family and the US. During this time, bin Laden also sent some of his supporters to Somalia to train local warlords, who were fighting American troops, part of an UN-authorised humanitarian plan in the country. In October 1993, 18 US servicemen were killed in “an ambush perpetrated by militants who reportedly trained with al-Qaeda.,” CNN reported.

The incident intensified backlash against bin Laden — already under the scanner of the US authorities as they suspected him of planning a bomb explosion at the World Trade Center in New York, killing six and wounding hundreds, earlier in 1993. As a result, Saudi Arabia revoked his citizenship in 1994 and Sudan asked him to leave the country two years later.

Bin Laden once again came to Afghanistan in 1996, where the Taliban harboured him. In his first interview with Western media, he told journalist Bergen that the US is “unjust, criminal and tyrannical.,” CNN reported. He added, “The US today, as a result of the arrogant atmosphere, has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist. It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us.” In the interview, he also took responsibility for killing US servicemen in Somalia.

By then, bin Laden had become a subject of interest for intelligence agencies of several countries. But what made him a household name in the “Muslim world and the West” was the bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 220 people in August 1998, The Centre of Public Integrity report said. Thus began a cat-and-mouse game between the US and bin Laden, which concluded only in 2011 after numerous deadly attacks across the world, including the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks, and the American invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.