Osama bin Laden was born in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Muhammad Awad bin Ladin, a wealthy businessman. His
family originally came from Hadhramaut, Yemen and he was raised as a devout
Muslim. After his graduation from secondary school in 1973, bin Laden went to
Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. As a college student, he studied business and
project administration. He also earned a degree in civil engineering from King
Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah in 1979.After his father died, bin Laden
inherited what was once estimated to be a fortune of US$300 million.
His wealth and connections
permitted him to pursue his interest in supporting the mujahideen, Muslim
fighters fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan in 1979. By 1984 he had established an organization named Maktab
al-Khadamat (MAK) (Office of Order in English), which funneled money, arms and
Muslim fighters from around the world into the Afghan war.
The MAK was supported by the
governments of Pakistan, the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that the three
countries channelled their supplies through Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI).
Bin
Laden's Beginnings National Geographic
Formation of
al-Qaeda
By 1988, bin Laden had split from
the MAK and established a new rebel group, later dubbed al-Qaeda by the U.S.
government, which included many of the more militant MAK members he had met in
Afghanistan. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and bin Laden
was lauded as a mujahideen hero in Saudi Arabia. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in
1990, bin Laden offered to help defend Saudi Arabia (with 12,000 armed men) but
was rebuffed by the Saudi government. Bin Laden publicly denounced his
government's dependence on the U.S. military and demanded an end to the presence
of foreign military bases in the country. According to reports (by the BBC and
others), the 1990/91 deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia in connection
with the Gulf War profoundly shocked and revolted bin Laden because the Saudi
government asserts legitimacy based on their role as guardians of the sacred
Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. After the Gulf War, the establishment of
permanent bases for non-Muslim U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia continued to
undermine the Saudi rulers' legitimacy Bin Laden's increasingly strident
criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the government to expel him to Sudan in
1991.
Assisted by donations funneled
through business and charitable fronts such as Benevolence International
established by his brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden established
a new base for mujahideen operations in Sudan to disseminate Islamist philosophy
and recruit operatives in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States.
Bin Laden also invested in business ventures, such as al-Hajira, a construction
company that built roads throughout Sudan, and Wadi al-Aqiq, an agricultural
corporation that farmed hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum, gum arabic,
sesame and sunflowers in Sudan's central Gezira province. Bin Laden's operations
in Sudan were protected by the powerful Sudanese government figure Hassan al
Turabi. The funding from these ventures was used to run several training camps
on his farmland, where Islamists could receive instruction in firearms use and
the use of explosives from former Afghan mujahideen.
Around this time, bin Laden and
his associates began developing and executing a series of meticulously-planned
terrorist attacks. In 1995, the Saudi Arabian government stripped bin Laden of
his citizenship after he claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. and Saudi
military bases in Riyadh and Dahran.
Attacks on
United States targets
Bin Laden's first strike against
the United States was the December 29, 1992 bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in
Aden, Yemen that killed a Yemeni hotel employee, an Austrian national and
seriously injured his wife. About 100 U.S. soldiers, part of Operation Restore
Hope, had been staying at the hotel for two weeks but had left two days earlier
for Somalia. Bin Laden and the Indonesian militant known as Hambali allegedly
funded, then aborted the Operation Bojinka conspiracy when police discovered the
plot in Manila, Philippines on January 6, 1995
Osama bin Laden declared war
against the United States in a fatwah published in Al Quds Al Arabi, a
London-based newspaper, in August, 1996. The fatwa is entitled "Declaration
of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places."-
Bin Laden is officially wanted by
the United States in connection with the August 7, 1998 bombings of the United
States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 225
people and injured more than 4000. Since June 1999, bin Laden has been listed as
one of the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and FBI Most Wanted Terrorists. Al-Qaeda
was allegedly involved in several unsuccessful conspiracies, including the 2000
millennium attack plots to bomb Los Angeles airport, several tourist sites in
Jordan and the USS The Sullivans, and well as the subsequent Paris embassy
terrorist attack plot.
The al-Qaeda organization was allegedly responsible for
the successful USS Cole bombing in October, 2000.
In response to these attacks,
President Bill Clinton ordered a freeze on assets linked to bin Laden. Clinton
also signed an executive order authorizing bin Laden's arrest or assassination.
In August 1998, the U.S. military launched an assassination attempt using cruise
missiles. The attack failed to harm bin Laden but killed 19 other people.
September 11
Immediately after the September
11 attacks in the United States, Washongton named bin Laden as the prime
suspect. However, in an interview published in Ummat Karachi, on 28th September
2001 Osama stated:
"I have already said that I
am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I
try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do
I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an
appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children
and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a
battle.... The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these
attacks within itself.... intelligence agencies in the U.S., which require
billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every
year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the
former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in
danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama
and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush Administration
approved a budget of 40 billion dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will
be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their
importance. Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing
their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the
world are in contact with the U.S. secret agencies. These agencies do not want
to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will
be diminished. The people in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Department are
encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of
dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and,
in need, he was made a scapegoat."
In December 2001 U.S. forces in
Afghanistan captured a videotape during a raid on a house in Jalalabad, in which
he discusses the September 11 attacks with a group of followers. However, the
quality of the tape is poor, and Osama is seen writing with his right hand,
although according to the FBI he is left handed, among several anomalies.
Several other videotapes have
surfaced in the media. In subsequent statements and interviews he expressed
admiration for whoever was responsible. He took credit for "inspiring"
of September 11th in several public statements.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
One leading al-Qaeda member,
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, says (according to his interrogators) that the idea for
the attacks came from him and not from bin Laden. Khalid has been in United
States custody since September 2003. The extent to which bin Laden was involved
in funding or overseeing the operation is unknown.
Whereabouts After the September
11 attacks, the United States asked the Taliban government of Afghanistan to
"hand him over." The Taliban counter-offer to try bin Laden in an
Islamic court or extradite him to a third-party country was deemed unacceptable
by the U.S. government. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan resulted in the death
or arrest of many members of his organization, as well as many civilians
(estimates range from thousands to 49,000), but bin Laden was not found.
There had been suggestions that
bin Laden was killed or fatally injured during U.S. bombardments, most notably
near Tora Bora, or that he may have died of natural causes. The U.S. military
had reported that bin Laden suffered from a kidney disorder requiring him to
have access to advanced medical facilities, possibly kidney dialysis. Ayman al-Zawahiri,
also an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist, is a physician and may have provided medical
care to bin Laden.
A December 11, 2005 letter from
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi indicates that bin Laden and the
al-Qaeda leadership were based in the Waziristan region of Pakistan at the time.
In the letter, translated by the military's Combating Terrorism Center at West
Point, "Atiyah" instructs Zarqawi to "send messengers from your
end to Waziristan so that they meet with the brothers of the leadership...I am
now on a visit to them and I am writing you this letter as I am with
them..." Al-Rahman also indicates that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are
"weak" and "have many of their own problems." The letter has
been deemed authentic by military and counterterrorism officials, according to
the Washington Post
Aliases:
Usama Bin Muhammad Bin Ladin, Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, the Prince, the
Emir, Abu Abdallah, Mujahid Shaykh, Hajj, the Director
DESCRIPTION
Date of Birth:
1957
Hair:
Brown
Place of Birth:
Saudi Arabia
Eyes:
Brown
Height:
6' 4" to 6'
6"
Complexion:
Olive
Weight:
Approximately 160
pounds
Sex:
Male
Build:
Thin
Nationality:
Saudi Arabian
Occupation:
Unknown
Remarks:
Bin Laden is the leader
of a terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda, "The Base". He
is left-handed and walks with a cane.
Scars
and Marks:
None
CAUTION
USAMA BIN
LADEN IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE AUGUST 7, 1998, BOMBINGS OF THE UNITED
STATES EMBASSIES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, AND NAIROBI, KENYA. THESE ATTACKS
KILLED OVER 200 PEOPLE. IN ADDITION, BIN LADEN IS A SUSPECT IN OTHER TERRORIST
ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
The Rewards For
Justice Program, United States Department of State, is offering a reward of up
to $25 million for information leading directly to the apprehension or
conviction of Usama Bin Laden. An additional $2 million is being offered through
a program developed and funded by the Airline Pilots Association and the Air
Transport Association.
A DECLARATION OF
WAR
In February 1998, the 40-year-old
Saudi exile Usama Bin Ladin and a fugitive Egyptian physician, Ayman
al Zawahiri, arranged from their Afghan headquarters for an Arabic
newspaper in London to publish what they termed a fatwa issued in
the name of a "World Islamic Front." A fatwa is normally
an interpretation of Islamic law by a respected Islamic authority,
but neither Bin Ladin, Zawahiri, nor the three others who signed
this statement were scholars of Islamic law. Claiming that America
had declared war against God and his messenger, they called for the
murder of any American, anywhere on earth, as the "individual
duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is
possible to do it."
Three months later, when
interviewed in Afghanistan by ABC-TV, Bin Ladin enlarged on these
themes.
He claimed it was more important
for Muslims to kill Americans than to kill other infidels. "It
is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to
squander his efforts on other activities," he said. Asked
whether he approved of terrorism and of attacks on civilians, he
replied: "We believe that the worst thieves in the world today
and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you
except perhaps retaliation in kind. We do not have to differentiate
between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are
all targets."
Note: Islamic names often do
not follow the Western practice of the consistent use of surnames.
Given the variety of names we mention, we chose to refer to
individuals by the last word in the names by which they are known:
Nawaf al Hazmi as Hazmi, for instance, omitting the article
"al" that would be part of their name in their own
societies. We generally make an exception for the more familiar
English usage of "Bin" as part of a last name, as in Bin
Ladin. Further, there is no universally accepted way to
transliterate Arabic words and names into English. We have relied on
a mix of common sense, the sound of the name in Arabic, and common
usage in source materials, the press, or government documents. When
we quote from a source document, we use its transliteration, e.g
,"al Qida" instead of al Qaeda.
Though novel for its open
endorsement of indiscriminate killing, Bin Ladin's 1998 declaration
was only the latest in the long series of his public and private
calls since 1992 that singled out the United States for attack.
In August 1996, Bin Ladin had
issued his own self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive
American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia. The long, disjointed document
condemned the Saudi monarchy for allowing the presence of an army of
infidels in a land with the sites most sacred to Islam, and
celebrated recent suicide bombings of American military facilities
in the Kingdom. It praised the 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut that
killed
41 U.S. Marines, the 1992 bombing
in Aden, and especially the 1993 firefight in Somalia after which
the United States "left the area carrying disappointment,
humiliation, defeat and your dead with you."
Bin Ladin said in his ABC
interview that he and his followers had been preparing in Somalia
for another long struggle, like that against the Soviets in
Afghanistan, but "the United States rushed out of Somalia in
shame and disgrace." Citing the Soviet army's withdrawal from
Afghanistan as proof that a ragged army of dedicated Muslims could
overcome a superpower, he told the interviewer: "We are certain
that we shall-with the grace of Allah-prevail over the
Americans." He went on to warn that "If the present
injustice continues . . . , it will inevitably move the battle to
American soil."
Plans to attack the United States
were developed with unwavering single-mindedness throughout the
1990s. Bin Ladin saw himself as called "to follow in the
footsteps of the Messenger and to communicate his message to all
nations,"and to serve as the rallying point
and organizer of a new kind of war to destroy America and bring the
world to Islam.
BIN LADIN'S
APPEAL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD
It is the story of eccentric and
violent ideas sprouting in the fertile ground of political and
social turmoil. It is the story of an organization poised to seize
its historical moment. How did Bin Ladin-with his call for the
indiscriminate killing of Americans-win thousands of followers and
some degree of approval from millions more?
The history, culture, and body of
beliefs from which Bin Ladin has shaped and spread his message are
largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's
past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider
themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses
cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its
interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as
they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively
draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region's
political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against
the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed
against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of
Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people
as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he
protested U.S. support of Israel.
Islam
Islam (a word that literally means "surrender to the will of
God") arose in Arabia with what Muslims believe are a series of
revelations to the Prophet Mohammed from the one and only God, the
God of Abraham and of Jesus. These revelations, conveyed by the
angel Gabriel, are recorded in the Qur'an. Muslims believe that
these revelations, given to the greatest and last of a chain of
prophets stretching from Abraham through Jesus, complete God's
message to humanity. The Hadith, which recount Mohammed's sayings
and deeds as recorded by his contemporaries, are another fundamental
source. A third key element is the Sharia, the code of law derived
from the Qur'an and the Hadith.
Islam is divided into two main
branches, Sunni and Shia. Soon after the Prophet's death, the
question of choosing a new leader, or caliph, for the Muslim
community, or Ummah, arose. Initially, his successors could be drawn
from the Prophet's contemporaries, but with time, this was no longer
possible. Those who became the Shia held that any leader of the
Ummah must be a direct descendant of the Prophet; those who became
the Sunni argued that lineal descent was not required if the
candidate met other standards of faith and knowledge. After bloody
struggles, the Sunni became (and remain) the majority sect. (The
Shia are dominant in Iran.) The Caliphate-the institutionalized
leadership of the Ummah-thus was a Sunni institution that continued
until 1924, first under Arab and eventually under Ottoman Turkish
control.
Many Muslims look back at the
century after the revelations to the Prophet Mohammed as a golden
age. Its memory is strongest among the Arabs. What happened then-the
spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula throughout the Middle
East, North Africa, and even into Europe within less than a
century-seemed, and seems, miraculous. Nostalgia for
Islam's past glory remains a powerful force.
Islam is both a faith and a code
of conduct for all aspects of life. For many Muslims, a good
government would be one guided by the moral principles of their
faith. This does not necessarily translate into a desire for
clerical rule and the abolition of a secular state. It does mean
that some Muslims tend to be uncomfortable with distinctions between
religion and state, though Muslim rulers throughout history have
readily separated the two.
To extremists, however, such
divisions, as well as the existence of parliaments and legislation,
only prove these rulers to be false Muslims usurping God's authority
over all aspects of life. Periodically, the Islamic world has seen
surges of what, for want of a better term, is often labeled
"fundamentalism."
Denouncing waywardness among the
faithful, some clerics have appealed for a return to observance of
the literal teachings of the Qur'an and Hadith. One scholar from the
fourteenth century from whom Bin Ladin selectively quotes, Ibn
Taimiyyah, condemned both corrupt rulers and the clerics who failed
to criticize them. He urged Muslims to read the Qur'an and the
Hadith for themselves, not to depend solely on learned interpreters
like himself but to hold one another to account for the quality of
their observance.
The extreme Islamist version of
history blames the decline from Islam's golden age on the rulers and
people who turned away from the true path of their religion, thereby
leaving Islam vulnerable to encroaching foreign powers eager to
steal their land, wealth, and even their souls.
Bin Ladin's Worldview
Despite his claims to universal leadership, Bin Ladin offers an
extreme view of Islamic history designed to appeal mainly to Arabs
and Sunnis. He draws on fundamentalists who blame the eventual
destruction of the Caliphate on leaders who abandoned the pure path
of religious devotion.
He repeatedly calls on his
followers to embrace martyrdom since "the walls of oppression
and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of
bullets."
For those yearning for a lost
sense of order in an older, more tranquil world, he offers his
"Caliphate" as an imagined alternative to today's
uncertainty. For others, he offers simplistic conspiracies to
explain their world.
Bin Ladin also relies heavily on
the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood
executed in 1966 on charges of
attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic
scholarship with a very superficial acquaintance with Western
history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the
United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous
loathing of Western society and history. He dismissed Western
achievements as entirely material, arguing that Western society
possesses "nothing that will satisfy its own conscience and
justify its existence."
Three basic themes emerge from
Qutb's writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with
barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya,
the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the
revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans
can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that
more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its
material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could
therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what
Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan.All Muslims-as he
defined them-therefore must take up arms in this fight.Any Muslim
who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of
destruction.
Bin Ladin shares Qutb's stark
view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even
unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith.
Many Americans have wondered, "Why do 'they' hate us?"
Some also ask, "What can we do to stop these attacks?"
Bin Ladin and al Qaeda have given
answers to both these questions. To the first, they say that America
had attacked Islam; America is responsible for all conflicts
involving Muslims. Thus Americans are blamed when Israelis fight
with Palestinians, when Russians fight with Chechens, when Indians
fight with Kashmiri Muslims, and when the Philippine government
fights ethnic Muslims in its southern islands. America is also held
responsible for the governments of Muslim countries, derided by al
Qaeda as "your agents." Bin Ladin has stated flatly,
"Our fight against these governments is not separate from our
fight against you."
These charges found a ready
audience among millions of Arabs and Muslims angry at the United
States because of issues ranging from Iraq to Palestine to America's
support for their countries' repressive rulers.
Bin Ladin's grievance with the
United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies
but it quickly became far deeper. To the second question, what
America could do, al Qaeda's answer was that America should abandon
the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and
godlessness of its society and culture: "It is saddening to
tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the
history of mankind." If the United States did not comply, it
would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda's
leaders said "desires death more than you desire life."
History and Political
Context
Few fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world gained lasting
political power. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
fundamentalists helped articulate anticolonial grievances but played
little role in the overwhelmingly secular struggles for independence
after World War I. Western-educated lawyers, soldiers, and officials
led most independence movements, and clerical influence and
traditional culture were seen as obstacles to national progress.
After gaining independence from
Western powers following World War II, the Arab Middle East followed
an arc from initial pride and optimism to today's mix of
indifference, cynicism, and despair. In several countries, a
dynastic state already existed or was quickly established under a
paramount tribal family. Monarchies in countries such as Saudi
Arabia, Morocco, and Jordan still survive today. Those in Egypt,
Libya, Iraq, and Yemen were eventually overthrown by secular
nationalist revolutionaries.
The secular regimes promised a
glowing future, often tied to sweeping ideologies (such as those
promoted by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab Socialism
or the Ba'ath Party of Syria and Iraq) that called for a single,
secular Arab state. However, what emerged were almost invariably
autocratic regimes that were usually unwilling to tolerate any
opposition-even in countries, such as Egypt, that had a
parliamentary tradition. Over time, their policies-repression,
rewards, emigration, and the displacement of popular anger onto
scapegoats (generally foreign)-were shaped by the desire to cling to
power.
The bankruptcy of secular,
autocratic nationalism was evident across the Muslim world by the
late 1970s.At the same time, these regimes had closed off nearly all
paths for peaceful opposition, forcing their critics to choose
silence, exile, or violent opposition. Iran's 1979 revolution swept
a Shia theocracy into power. Its success encouraged Sunni
fundamentalists elsewhere.
In the 1980s, awash in sudden oil
wealth, Saudi Arabia competed with Shia Iran to promote its Sunni
fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism. The Saudi
government, always conscious of its duties as the custodian of
Islam's holiest places, joined with wealthy Arabs from the Kingdom
and other states bordering the Persian Gulf in donating money to
build mosques and religious schools that could preach and teach
their interpretation of Islamic doctrine.
In this competition for
legitimacy, secular regimes had no alternative to offer. Instead, in
a number of cases their rulers sought to buy off local Islamist
movements by ceding control of many social and educational issues.
Emboldened rather than satisfied, the Islamists continued to push
for power-a trend especially clear in Egypt. Confronted with a
violent Islamist movement that killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981,
the Egyptian government combined harsh repression of Islamic
militants with harassment of moderate Islamic scholars and authors,
driving many into exile. In Pakistan, a military regime sought to
justify its seizure of power by a pious public stance and an embrace
of unprecedented Islamist influence on education and society.
These experiments in political
Islam faltered during the 1990s: the Iranian revolution lost
momentum, prestige, and public support, and Pakistan's rulers found
that most of its population had little enthusiasm for fundamentalist
Islam. Islamist revival movements gained followers across the Muslim
world, but failed to secure political power except in Iran and
Sudan. In Algeria, where in 1991 Islamists seemed almost certain to
win power through the ballot box, the military preempted their
victory, triggering a brutal civil war that continues today.
Opponents of today's rulers have few, if any, ways to participate in
the existing political system. They are thus a ready audience for
calls to Muslims to purify their society, reject unwelcome
modernization, and adhere strictly to the Sharia.
Social and Economic
Malaise
In the 1970s and early 1980s, an unprecedented flood of wealth led
the then largely unmodernized oil states to attempt to shortcut
decades of development. They funded huge infrastructure projects,
vastly expanded education, and created subsidized social welfare
programs. These programs established a widespread feeling of
entitlement without a corresponding sense of social obligations. By
the late 1980s, diminishing oil revenues, the economic drain from
many unprofitable development projects, and population growth made
these entitlement programs unsustainable. The resulting cutbacks
created enormous resentment among recipients who had come to see
government largesse as their right. This resentment was further
stoked by public understanding of how much oil income had gone
straight into the pockets of the rulers, their friends, and their
helpers.
Unlike the oil states (or
Afghanistan, where real economic development has barely begun), the
other Arab nations and Pakistan once had seemed headed toward
balanced modernization. The established commercial, financial, and
industrial sectors in these states, supported by an entrepreneurial
spirit and widespread understanding of free enterprise, augured
well. But unprofitable heavy industry, state monopolies, and opaque
bureaucracies slowly stifled growth. More importantly, these
state-centered regimes placed their highest priority on preserving
the elite's grip on national wealth. Unwilling to foster dynamic
economies that could create jobs attractive to educated young men,
the countries became economically stagnant and reliant on the safety
valve of worker emigration either to the Arab oil states or to the
West. Furthermore, the repression and isolation of women in many
Muslim countries have not only seriously limited individual
opportunity but also crippled overall economic productivity.
By the 1990s, high birthrates and
declining rates of infant mortality had produced a common problem
throughout the Muslim world: a large, steadily increasing population
of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or
steady employment-a sure prescription for social turbulence. Many of
these young men, such as the enormous number trained only in
religious schools, lacked the skills needed by their societies. Far
more acquired valuable skills but lived in stagnant economies that
could not generate satisfying jobs.
Millions, pursuing secular as well
as religious studies, were products of educational systems that
generally devoted little if any attention to the rest of the world's
thought, history, and culture. The secular education reflected a
strong cultural preference for technical fields over the humanities
and social sciences. Many of these young men, even if able to study
abroad, lacked the perspective and skills needed to understand a
different culture.
Frustrated in their search for a
decent living, unable to benefit from an education often obtained at
the cost of great family sacrifice, and blocked from starting
families of their own, some of these young men were easy targets for
radicalization.
Bin Ladin's Historical
Opportunity
Most Muslims prefer a peaceful and inclusive vision of their faith,
not the violent sectarianism of Bin Ladin. Among Arabs, Bin Ladin's
followers are commonly nicknamed takfiri, or "those who define
other Muslims as unbelievers," because of their readiness to
demonize and murder those with whom they disagree. Beyond the
theology lies the simple human fact that most Muslims, like most
other human beings, are repelled by mass murder and barbarism
whatever their justification.
"All Americans must recognize
that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam,"
President Bush observed. "Islam is a faith that brings comfort
to a billion people around the world. It's a faith that has made
brothers and sisters of every race. It's a faith based upon love,
not hate."
Yet as political, social, and
economic problems created flammable societies, Bin Ladin used
Islam's most extreme, fundamentalist traditions as his match. All
these elements-including religion-combined in an explosive compound.
Other extremists had, and have,
followings of their own. But in appealing to societies full of
discontent, Bin Ladin remained credible as other leaders and symbols
faded. He could stand as a symbol of resistance-above all,
resistance to the West and to America. He could present himself and
his allies as victorious warriors in the one great successful
experience for Islamic militancy in the 1980s: the Afghan jihad
against the Soviet occupation.
By 1998, Bin Ladin had a
distinctive appeal, as he focused on attacking America. He argued
that other extremists, who aimed at local rulers or Israel, did not
go far enough. They had not taken on what he called "the head
of the snake."
Finally, Bin Ladin had another
advantage: a substantial, worldwide organization. By the time he
issued his February 1998 declaration of war, Bin Ladin had nurtured
that organization for nearly ten years. He could attract, train, and
use recruits for ever more ambitious attacks, rallying new adherents
with each demonstration that his was the movement of the future.
"And as I looked
at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we
should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy
towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted
and so that they be deterred from killing our women and
children."
Data
compiled from The British Antarctic Study, NASA, Environment Canada,
UNEP, EPA and
other sources as stated and credited Researched by Charles
Welch-Updated dailyThis
Website is a project of the The Ozone Hole Inc. a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit
Organization
