In 1957, another child of the Saudi construction millionaire Mohammed Bin Laden was born. Usamah Bin Muhammad Bin Àwad Bin Landi was the seventeenth child of an extensive offspring who lived among the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Usamah could have been just another of the unknown eastern tycoons who spent their lives flaunting their own wealth. However, other paths were taken by that young man who came to be known as Osama Bin Laden.
During childhood, little Osama lived surrounded by servants and was hardly in the company of his mother. The brothers used to reject him and the father imposed a severe education aimed at the formation of offspring of determined men. At the age of ten, bin Laden lost his father and was forced to live with a mother he barely knew. In the early 1970s, he was sent to Lebanon to complete high school.
Outside the restrictions of relatives, Osama lived a phase surrounded by debauchery showered with whiskey, luxury cars, nightclubs and prostitutes. With the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon, he was forced to return to Saudi Arabia where he enrolled in the Engineering course at King Abdul University. According to some of his biographers, Bin Laden deeply regretted his adventures in Lebanon and, therefore, began to fervently study the values of the Muslim religion.
In the religious courses he attended, he had the opportunity to meet Abdullah Azzam, one of the mentors of the terrorist organization Al Quaeda. Around this time, Azzam suggested that his young student meet Muslim leaders who were resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Seeing the religious fervor of those who fought against communist action, Osama bin Laden became convinced that he should actively participate in the Muslim religious guerrilla.
Armed with the immense fortune left by his father, bin Laden began to devote large amounts of money to financing the Afghan guerrillas. Among other achievements, Bin Laden built some military training camps for the preparation of new Muslim guerrillas. These camps were named Al Qaeda, which in Arabic means “the base”. In 1989, with the end of the Afghan conflicts, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, but he did not stop his activities.
Two years later, with Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, bin Laden tried to approach the Saudi king so that he would be responsible for the country's military protection. His willful gesture, expressed in a letter, was quietly rejected by his country's authorities, who preferred to ally with the United States. Unreconciled, Osama decided to approach the various fundamentalist leaders spread across Saudi Arabia.
The support given by radical religious leaders was enough for a crowd of more than four thousand Muslims to participate in bin Laden's “holy war”. His terrorist group has spread to neighboring countries and the base of military-religious action has been consolidated in Sudan. After the end of the Gulf War, the first feud with the United States took shape, as the superpower – supported by the national government – set up military bases in Saudi Arabia.
On December 29, 1992, the Gold Minor Hotel was bombed for allegedly housing an American military group. The action was successful, but it was not enough to end the rage against Uncle Sam's imperialism. A year later, Ramzi Yousef – a terrorist linked to Osama Bin Laden – exploded a bomb in the World Trade Center, leaving six fatalities. Politically pressured, the Saudi government canceled bin Laden's citizenship.
Dissatisfied with that gesture of political subservience, Osama responded with a car bomb that went up in the air in the city of Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia. Soon after, Sudan was forced to drive the terrorist from its borders. Once again enraged by US power to intervene, bin Laden moved to Afghanistan and issued a declaration of war against the United States of America.
The move to Afghan territory fit bin Laden's interests like a glove. The country was politically controlled by the Taliban, a radical Islamic group that welcomed Osama's terrorist actions. The friendly reception of the Afghan government was rewarded with substantial financial support and the creation of paramilitary forces loyal to the regime. At this point, the intelligence services of the United States and other Arab nations began the hunt against Osama bin Laden.
Meanwhile, the well-articulated terrorist has planned two terrorist attacks against his number one enemy. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania suffered from bin Laden's bombings. In response, powerful US military forces bombed one of Osama's training camps. However, the retaliation attempt had no effect, as the terrorist center was practically deactivated.
After that, Osama bin Laden decided to proceed with an ambitious plan that sought to attack important targets inside the US territories. Spending nearly half a million dollars to recruit a group of fifteen terrorists, al-Qaida led the largest terrorist attack ever seen in the world. On September 11, 2001, two civil planes were hijacked and launched into the World Trade Center's twin towers, one of the symbols of US economic supremacy.
The biggest attack of all time was reported in real time by several communication networks around the world and Osama Bin Laden became the most wanted man on the planet. Since then, the great capitalist powers began to lead a war against an enemy that has no form, no place: terrorism.
On May 1, 2011, a US Navy specialized command captured Osama bin Laden in the town of Abbottabad, near Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. Barack Obama, current US president, announced that bin Laden was shot in the head. However, no detailed images of the operation or the body of bin Laden were released.
See more:
al-Qaeda - Terrorist organization that had Osama Bin Laden as its main leader.
By Rainer Sousa
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historia/osama-bin-laden.htm
