Militant activity of Osama bin Laden

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Osama bin Laden, a militant Islamist and reported founder al-Qaeda,^[1] in conjunction with several other Islamic militant leaders, issued two fatawa — in 1996 and then again in 1998—that Muslims should kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries.^[2][3] He has been indicted in United States federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and is on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Although bin Laden has not been indicted^[4] for the September 11, 2001 attacks, he has claimed responsibility for them^[5] in videos released to the public.^[6]

Contents 1 Jihad in Afghanistan 2 Alleged CIA involvement 3 Break with Azzam 4 Formation of Al-Qaeda 5 In Sudan 6 Refuge in Afghanistan 7 Early aid for attacks 8 Attacks on United States targets 9 September 11, 2001 attacks 10 References

[edit] Jihad in Afghanistan

Bin Laden's wealth and connections assisted his interest in supporting the mujahideen, Muslim guerrillas fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. His old teacher from the university in Jeddah, Abdullah Azzam, had relocated to Peshawar, a major border city in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. From there, Azzam was able to organize resistance directly on the Afghan frontier. Peshawar is only 15 km (9.3 miles) east of the Khyber Pass, through the Safed Koh mountains, connected to the southeastern edge of the Hindu Kush range. This route became the major avenue of inserting foreign fighters and material support into eastern Afghanistan for the resistance against the Soviets.

After leaving college in 1979 bin Laden joined Azzam^[7][8] to fight the Soviet Invasion^[9] and lived for a time in Peshawar.^[10] According to Rahimullah Yousufzai, "Azzam prevailed on him to come and use his money" for training recruits.^[11] In the early 1980s, bin Laden lived at several addresses in and around Arbab Road, a narrow street in the University Town neighborhood in western Peshawar, Yusufzai said. Nearby in Gulshan Iqbal Road is the Arab mosque that Abdullah Azzam used as the jihad center, according to a Reuters inquiry in the neighborhood.

By 1984, with Azzam, bin Laden established a Saudi Arabian funded organization named Maktab al-Khadamat (MAK, Office of Order in English), which funneled money, arms and Muslim fighters from around the Arabic world into the Afghan war. Through al-Khadamat, bin Laden's inherited family fortune^[12] paid for air tickets and accommodation, dealt with paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihad fighters. In running al-Khadamat, bin Laden set up a network of couriers traveling between Afghanistan and Peshawar, which continued to remain active after 2001, according to Rahimullah Yusufzai. It was during this time that Bin Laden met his future al-Qaeda collaborator, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, a member and later head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

[edit] Alleged CIA involvement

Main article: Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden

Whether Osama bin Laden and his group are "blowback" from CIA's Operation Cyclone to help the Afghan mujahideen is a matter of some debate.

Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, has written that bin Laden was, "a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies" and that the mujahideen that formed Al-Qaida were "originally ... recruited and trained with help from the CIA".^[13]

However, CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, calls the idea "that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden ... a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. ... Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. ... The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him."^[14]

Bergen and others maintain the U.S. aid was given out by the Pakistan government, that it went to Afghan not foreign mujahideen, and that there was no contact between the so-called "Afghan Arabs" (i.e., foreign mujahideen) and the CIA or other American officials, let alone, arming, training, coaching, indoctrination, or other aid.

[edit] Break with Azzam

For a while Osama worked at the Services Office working with Abdullah Azzam on Jihad Magazine, a magazine that gave information about the war with the soviets and interviewed mujahideen. As time passed, Ayman al-Zawahiri encouraged Osama to split away from Abdullah Azzam. Although Osama and the other Afghan Arabs were considered a minor "sideshow" in the war, Osama did establish a camp in Afghanistan, and with other volunteers fought the Soviets and Marxist Afghan troops. One of his most significant battles was the battle of Jaji, which was not a major fight, but it earned him a reputation as a fighter.

Years later, in 1989, Azzam was blown up in a massive car bombing outside the mosque. Bin Laden is thought by some to be a suspect in that assassination, because of a rift in the direction of the jihad at that time.^[15] Others doubt this claim; Ahmad Zaidan, for instance, author of the Arabic-language book Bin Laden Unmasked, told Peter L. Bergen in an interview, "I rule out totally that bin Laden would indulge himself in such things, after all, Osama bin Laden, he's not type of person to kill Abdullah Azzam. Otherwise, if he be exposed, he would be finished, totally." Bergen also cites Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who speculates that there were more likely candidates than bin Laden: "It could be Hekmatyar, it could be KHAD, it could be the Mossad, the Egyptians [around Ayman al Zawahiri] … I met with Hekmatyar, an arrogant, self-centered person. I think Hekmatyar had a secret organization to eliminate his enemies."^[16]

[edit] Formation of Al-Qaeda

By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat because of strategic differences. While Azzam and his MAK organization acted as support for the Afghan fighters and provided relief to refugees and injured, bin Laden wanted a more military role in which the Arab fighters would not only be trained and equipped by the organization but also led on the battlefield by Arabic commanders. One of the main leading points to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was the insistence of Azzam that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming their separate fighting force.^[17]

In 1990 Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia a hero of jihad, celebrated in the Saudi press as a pious, courageous warrior who, along with his Arab legion, "had brought down the mighty superpower" of the Soviet Union.^[18] However, at about the same time Iraq invaded neighbor Kuwait and bin Laden was alarmed at the prospect that foreign non-Muslim troops would enter the kingdom to fight Iraq. He met Saudi Prince Sultan, the Minister of Defense, and offered to help defend Saudi Arabia:

[Bin Laden:] I am ready to prepare 100,000 fighters with good combat capability within three months. You don't need Americans. You don't need any other non-Muslim troops. We will be enough.

[Prince Sultan:] There are no caves in Kuwait. What will you do when he lobs missiles at you with chemical and biological weapons?

[Bin Laden:] We will fight him with faith.^[19]

Bin Laden was rebuffed and publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military, demanding an end to the presence of foreign military bases in the country. Other Saudi Muslims were also greatly upset that non-Muslim troops would be on the same peninsula as the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Anti-government Islamist militants in Saudi Arabia were even more inflamed when the foreign bases remained after the Gulf War was over.

Bin Laden's increasingly strident criticisms of the Saudi monarchy led the government to attempt to silence him. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, "with help from a dissident member of the royal family, he managed to get out of the country under the pretext of attending an Islamic gathering in Pakistan in April 1991^[20]." Another report has bin Laden retrieving his passport from the Saudi government to go to Peshawar in March 1992 to mediate the Afghan Civil War. In any case Hassan al-Turabi, leader of the National Islamic Front, had invited bin Laden to "transplant his whole organization to Sudan" in 1989. Bin Laden's agents had begun purchasing property in Sudan in 1990. Bin Laden moved to Sudan in 1992.

[edit] In Sudan

Assisted by donations funneled through business and charitable fronts such as Benevolence International, established by his brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, and especially by his stipend from the Bin Laden family business empire, bin Laden established a new base for mujahideen operations in Khartoum, Sudan to disseminate Islamist philosophy and recruit operatives in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States.^{[citation needed]} 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 NIF government figure Hassan al Turabi, but were not profitable.^[21] While in Sudan, bin Laden married one of Turabi's nieces.^[22]

Bin Laden continued his verbal assault on Saudi King Fahd, for example by financing an Advice and Reformation Committee in London that "sent faxes by the hundreds to prominent Saudis" denouncing the king and corruption in the kingdom. On 5 March 1994, the King retaliated by personally revoking his citizenship and sending an embassary to Sudan to demand bin Laden's passport so that he no longer travel. His family was persuaded to cut off his monthly stipend equivalent of about $7 million a year.^[23]

By now Bin Laden was strongly associated with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) who made up the core of al-Qaeda by this time. In 1995 EIJ attempted to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak with the help of al-Gama'a al-Islamiya and the Sudanese intelligence service. The attempt failed and disastrous backlash ensued. The EIJ was abruptly expelled from Sudan and bin Laden pressured to go also.

[edit] Refuge in Afghanistan

Sudanese officials, whose government was under international sanctions, offered to expel Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s provided that the Saudis pardon him. The Saudis refused because they had already revoked his citizenship and would not accept him in their country.^[24] Consequently, in May 1996, under increasing pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States, Sudan asked bin Laden to leave. Bin Laden was forced to make a distress sale of his assets in Sudan that left with almost nothing.^[25]

He returned to Afghanistan on a chartered plane and flew to Kabul before settling in the Nazim Jihad compound in Jalalabad after being invited by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, leader of the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan, a member of the Afghan Northern Alliance. After spending a few months in the border region hosted by local leaders, bin Laden forged a close relationship with some of the leaders of Afghanistan's new Taliban government, notably Mullah Mohammed Omar.^[26] Bin Laden supported the Taliban regime with financial and paramilitary assistance and, in 1997, he moved to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold.^[27]

In Afghanistan, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were able to raise some money from "donors from the days of the Soviet jihad," and from the Pakistan ISI which paid them to train militants for the fight against India in Kashmir. This was done at the old al-Qaeda camps in Khost which the ISI had persuaded the Taliban to return to al-Qaeda control. ^[28]

[edit] Early aid for attacks

Several years before bin Laden was well known outside of Saudi and Islamist circles, he assisted and/or funded what he believed to be physical jihad against impiety involving attacks on civilians.

While still in Saudi Arabia in 1989, he angered the Saudi royal family by preaching for and financing assassinations of socialist leaders in the neighboring country of Yemen, his father's homeland, where the country was in the process of re-uniting under a coalition government.^[29]

In 1992 or 93 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists there and warn them against compromise with the impious government. Making jihad merely "for politics, not for God" would be a sin, they were told, total war was the only solution. Total war did follow involving many massacres of civilians and a declaration of takfir of Algerians by one of the Islamist factions (the GIA).^[30] An estimated 150,000-200,000 Algerians were killed by the end of the war, but the government prevailed over the Islamists. Abdullah Anas, an Algerian Islamist witness to the Al-Qaeda advice later lamented, `This simple argument destroyed us.`^[31]

Another unsuccessful effort by bin Laden was the Luxor massacre of November 17 1997, which Swiss federal police are reported to have found was funded by Bin Laden.^[32][33][34] The attack by six al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya militants dressed as policemen slaughtered 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at Luxor Temple. Its goal was to derail the nonviolence initiative between the Egyptian government and Egyptian-based al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the major Egyptian militant Islamist group, but the attack horified the Egyptian public and turned it completely against Islamist terror.

A later attack that did succeed, at least temporarily, was that on the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. While in Afghanistan bin Laden helped cement his alliance with his hosts the ruling Taliban by sending several hundred of his Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban overrun Mazar-e-Sharif.^[35] The city fell, but human rights groups and journalists report it as a particularly gruesome conquest:

once inside the defenseless city, the Taliban continued raping and killing for two days, indiscriminately shooting anything that moved. then slitting throats and shooting dead men in the testicles. The bodies of the dead were left to wild dogs for six days before survivors were allowed to bury them. ... Hundred of others were loaded into shipping containers and baked alive in the desert sun. The UN estimated that total number of victims in the slaughter to be between five and six thousand people. .... Four hundred women were taken to be concubines.^[36][37][38]

[edit] Attacks on United States targets

It is believed that the first terrorist attack involving bin Laden was the 29 December 1992, bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden, Yemen. The attack was intended to kill American troops on the way to Somalia, but the soldiers were staying in a different hotel.^[39] The bombs killed a Yemeni hotel employee and an Austrian national and also seriously injured the Austrian's wife.^[40]

It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justificiation for the killing of innocent people, such as the two bystanders at the hotel. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (aka, Abu Hajer al Iraqi), the most Islamically knowledgable of Al-Qaeda's members, the killing of someone merely standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander, like the Yemini hotel worker, will find their proper reward in death, going to Paradise if they were good Muslims and to hell if they were bad or non-believers.^[41] The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.

In 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, (a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad), co-signed a fatwa (religious edict) in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, declaring:

“

[t]he ruling to kill the Americans and their allies civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'.[42][43]

”

In response to the 1998 United States embassy bombings following the fatwa, President Bill Clinton ordered a freeze on assets that could be linked to bin Laden. Clinton also signed an executive order, authorizing bin Laden's arrest or assassination. In August 1998, the U.S. launched an attack using cruise missiles. The attack failed to harm bin Laden but killed 19 people.^[44]

On 4 November 1998, Osama bin Laden was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, and the United States Department of State offered a US$5 million reward for information leading to bin Laden's apprehension or conviction.^[45]

In an interview with journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai published in Time magazine, 11 January 1999, Osama bin Laden is quoted as saying:

“

"The International Islamic Front for Jihad against the U.S. and Israel has issued a crystal-clear fatwa calling on the Islamic nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Muhammad has responded to this appeal. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in order to liberate Al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka'aba Islamic shrines in the Middle East is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal."[46]

”

In May 2007, President George Bush released intelligence of bin Laden seeking to start an Iraq unit in 2005.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] September 11, 2001 attacks

Main articles: Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and Videos of Osama bin Laden

The FBI stated that evidence linking Al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the attacks of September 11 is clear and irrefutable.^[47] The Government of the United Kingdom reached the same conclusion regarding Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the September 11, 2001, attacks.^[48] However, a "White Paper" by the U.S. government, documenting the case against bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization concerning the September 11 attacks, publicly promised by Secretary of State Colin Powell, was never published. In 2006, Rex Tomb of the FBI's public affairs unit said, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11".^[49] So far, the U.S. Justice Department has not sought formal criminal charges against bin Laden (or anyone but Zacarias Moussaoui) for the 9/11 attacks. This has provided what some call "fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings."^[50] Two separate indictments were made against bin Laden by two separate grand juries in 1998 for two separate terrorist acts, though no indictments have been filed against him for the events of 9/11.

Bin Laden initially denied involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks while praising them effusely, explaining their motivation, and dismissing American accusations of his involvement as an example of its hatred for Islam. On 16 September 2001, bin Laden read a statement later broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel saying:

I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation.^[51]

God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest buildings, praise and blessing to Him.^[52]

Bin Laden claimed the Taliban were being attacked by American forces

because of their religion, not just because of the presence of Osama bin Laden … It is a known fact that America is against the establishment of any Islamic state.^[53]

In November 2001, U.S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. In it Osama bin Laden discusses the attack with an old mujahideen friend Khaled al-Harbi in a way indicating foreknowledge of the attack. "We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy;" and "We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event [the 9/11 attack] would take place that day."^[54] The tape was broadcast on various news networks on 13 December 2001. Some have disputed this translation however. On 20 December 2001, German TV channel "Das Erste" broadcast its analysis of the White House's translation of the videotape. On the show Monitor, two independent translators and an expert on oriental studies found the White House's translation to be not only inaccurate, but also "manipulative". Arabist Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini, one of the translators, stated: "I have carefully examined the Pentagon's translation. This translation is very problematic. At the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of Bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic."^[55]

Another bin Laden video was released on 27 December 2001, with much the same message as his first. America had accused him of organizing the attacks because of "Crusader hatred for the Islamic World.

Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to … the continuous injustice inflicted upon our sons in Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, southern Sudan, and … Kashmir.^[56]

Shortly before the U.S. presidential election in 2004, another taped statement was released and aired on Al Jazeera in which bin Laden abandoned his denials without retracting past statements. In it he told viewers he had personally directed the 19 hijackers,^[6][57] and gave what he claimed was his motivation:

I will explain to you the reasons behind these events, and I will tell you the truth about the moments when this decision was taken, so that you can reflect on it. God knows that the plan of striking the towers had not occurred to us, but the idea came to me when things went just too far with the American-Israeli alliance's oppression and atrocities against our people in Palestine and Lebanon.^[58][59]

According to the tapes, bin Laden claimed he was inspired to destroy the World Trade Center after watching the destruction of towers in Lebanon by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.^[60]

In two other tapes aired by Al Jazeera in 2006, Osama bin Laden announces,

I am the one in charge of the 19 brothers … I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers … with the raids [5 minute audiotape broadcast May 23, 2006],^[61]

and is seen with Ramzi Binalshibh, as well as two of the 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they make preparations for the attacks (videotape broadcast September 7, 2006).^[62]

Despite this, bin Laden is reported to have complained as recently as November 2007 of the lack "of evidence admissible in court" tying him and his organization to the 9/11 attack.^[63]

[edit] References

v • d • e Osama bin Laden Childhood, education and personal life of Osama bin Laden  – Bin Laden family  – Omar Osama bin Laden Militant activity of Osama bin Laden  – Beliefs and ideology of Osama bin Laden  – Location of Osama bin Laden  – Criticism of Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden in popular culture  – Bin Laden Issue Station