The enigmatic Osama
bin Laden

October 10, 2001

The portrait of Osama bin Laden in the West following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon is that of a homicidal madman – the loose-cannon, black-sheep offspring of a wealthy Saudi construction family.

Yet the picture painted in “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” by Yossef Bodansky is somewhat different – that of a charismatic guerrilla leader who rose to the role of national hero in his native Saudi Arabia following his heroic campaign in Afghanistan battling the Soviet Union.

Now in his mid-40s, bin Laden is a university graduate with computer skills and experience as a major contractor and engineer. Though his personal fortune has been estimated in the hundreds of millions, he lives in a cave in Afghanistan with his four wives and about 15 children. They have no running water and only a rudimentary heating system in an environment known for extremes of temperature, according to the book.

“Had he followed the path chosen for him by his father, bin Laden could have been a respected building contractor in Saudi Arabia and a billionaire in his own right,” writes Bodansky. “Instead, he freely elected to abandon the life of affluence and commit himself to waging a jihad under extremely harsh conditions.”

Bin Laden was born in Riyadh sometime around 1957. His father, Muhammad bin Laden, was at the time a small-time builder and contractor who had moved to Saudi Arabia from Yemen. Osama is one of more than 50 children in his family, educated in Medina and Jiddah.

The oil boom of the 1970s had a major impact on the bin Laden family. The newly created wealth and opportunities brought the father in direct contact with the Saudi royal family – eventually permitting his construction company to refurbish and rebuild the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, a lucrative and prize project for any company.

Later, the bin Ladens were responsible for construction of major roads, buildings, other mosques, airports and the entire infrastructure of other Arab countries in the Persian Gulf.

Osama bin Laden studied management and economics in Saudi Arabia’s best schools. His father promised, according to Bodansky’s book, to put him in charge of his own company some day. In his youth, bin Laden frequented flashy nightclubs, casinos and bars in Beirut and was known as a drinker and a womanizer who frequently ended up in bar brawls.

But something happened to Muhammad bin Laden during the construction projects in Mecca and Medina. He had a spiritual experience that would change his life. That experience, in turn, affected Osama bin Laden, who became increasingly interested in Islam.

When, in 1975 during the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, Beirut was largely destroyed as the “Paris of the Middle East,” some Islamicists claimed it represented a judgment of Allah for the city’s sins.

“Osama bin Laden was strongly influenced by these arguments,” writes Bodansky.

In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Arab world was shocked. Though few Arab nations dared to come to the assistance of the Mujahideen guerrilla fighters, hundreds and later thousands of Islamic warriors from the Arab world volunteered to help them. Osama bin Laden was one of the first.

“I was enraged and went there at once,” he told an Arabic journalist. “The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the Mujahideen put out an international plea for help.”

He was inspired, he said, by the plight of Muslims “in a medieval society besieged by a 20th-century superpower. … In our religion, there is a special place in the hereafter for those who participate in jihad. One day in Afghanistan was like 1,000 days of praying in an ordinary mosque.”

Bin Laden eventually set up the camps that trained thousands of “Arab Afghans” in the cause of Islamic solidarity.

The stories of bin Laden’s engagements in the Afghan campaign are legendary. He is said to have courageously held off attacks by overwhelming numbers of better-armed Soviet troops with a handful of guerrillas. He won the respect of the Afghans and the Arab Afghan volunteers.

As a reward for his growing reputation and bravery in the campaign, the Saudi royal family offered him a lucrative contract for expanding the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina – a project that would net him a profit of $90 million. In an audience with King Fahd, bin Laden respectfully refused the offer and argued passionately for a greater Saudi commitment to the jihad in Afghanistan.

The king concurred. The contract went to his father instead, and Osama continued his efforts in Afghanistan.

“By the mid-1980s, bin Laden saw that his real calling lay on the jihad battlefield, where he gained a reputation as a courageous and resourceful commander,” Bodansky writes. “In 1986, he participated in the battle of Jalalabad in the ranks of the Arab Mujahideen unit. That year he was also a part of a small Arab force that held in Jali against repeated assaults by a much larger DRA force supported by Soviet firepower. In 1987, bin Laden fought in an attack on the Soviet-DRA dispositions in Shaban in the Paktia Province. A mixed Mujahideen force of Arabs and Afghans with bin Laden in a command position penetrated the enemy’s dispositions. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting erupted, and the Mujahideen suffered heavy casualties before they had to withdraw. Bin Laden still carries a Kalishnikov (Soviet-made assault rifle) he claims to have captured from a dead Russian general in Shaban.”

Friends say he became more fearless after those engagements, expecting to “die in glory.”

“He was a hero to us because he was always on the front line, always moving ahead of everyone else,” says a Palestinian volunteer in Afghanistan. “He not only gave his money, but he also gave himself. He came down from his palace to live with the Afghan peasants and the Arab fighters. He cooked with them, ate with them, dug trenches with them. That was bin Laden’s way.”

All the while, bin Laden maintained close contact and relations with the Saudi royal family.

Later, bin Laden settled in Khartoum, Sudan, intent on entering the world of financing import-export deals.

But in 1991, when officials of the Bank of England shut down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, triggering a worldwide financial scandal, bin Laden saw the principal instrument for safely funding Islamic expansionism crumble. Bin Laden was asked by Sudanese leaders to help re-establish a new system of funding the international jihad – which included terrorist activity around the world.

“The entire financial system organized by bin Laden seems to be functioning quite effectively and efficiently,” says Bodansky in his book, originally published in 1999 and re-published following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. “The most important proof is that virtually no terrorist money has been seized throughout the West. Numerous and highly elaborate Islamist networks sustain themselves in the heart of the West – in expensive cities like Geneva, London and Chicago – without visible means of income.”

Bin Laden went on to bring together, with his Sudanese hosts, Islamic terror organizations from around the world in conferences – even resolving disputes between national sponsors of terrorism such as Iraq and Iran, displaying remarkable diplomatic ability.

He also went on to organize international resistance to the U.S. military presence in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, resulting in the ambush deaths of 18 Rangers, whose bodies were dragged through the streets for propaganda purposes. The world was led to believe the attacks were the work of a local militia leader named Mohammed Farah Aidid. In fact, they were organized by bin Laden.

The first hint of a break between bin Laden and the Saudi royal family came during the Persian Gulf War. He pleaded with the leaders of the nation not to bring U.S. troops to defend it against a possible attack from Saddam Hussein’s forces. Bin Laden offered to lead the military campaign against Iraq and defend the homeland. But he was rebuffed.

Eventually, years later, this fracture resulted in a bigger breach. Now bin Laden sees his native land as a colony of the United States – a colony that will fall into the hands of Muslim extremists if only America can be terrorized into disengaging from the Middle East.