Yossef Bodansky, director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional War when he published his biography
of Osama bin Laden, timed the publication to hit the bookstands shortly after the
attacks of 9/11. Since the whereabouts of bin Laden is still unknown at the time this abstract was written (July, 2005) and we know virtually nothing more about him, the book is, for the practical purposes of the reader, as up to date as it was when it was published. The only exceptions would be terrorist attacks subsequent to 9/11, such as those on the London subway system.
Osama bin Muhammed bin Laden was born probably in 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His father, Muhammed bin Laden, originated from Yemen, and made a huge fortune as a construction contractor in oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Osama was one of fifty-two children from several wives that his father had. Because his father placed a great deal of value on education and personal achievement, bin Laden was well educated and benefited enormously from the family fortune.
In his youth, he was a playboy, hardly a religious fanatic, and he frequented the nightspots in Beirut. However, a change in the direction of his life occurred when he began to study the Quran and other Islamic texts very seriously, and imbibed the anti-Western milieu that was being promulgated by individuals such as Muhammed Ali Qutb in King Abdul Aziz University in Jiddah. His professional life took a practical direction, however, and he graduated with a degree in civil engineering in 1979.
In the year of his graduation, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and bin Laden rushed to join the mujahideen, fighters from all over the Islamic world who combated the Russians. Because of his wealth, but also because of inherent leadership qualities, he became a significant leader of the Afghan mujahideen, and committed his own personal wealth plus contributions from other wealthy Muslims to the cause. The United States supported the campaigns against the Russians, but Bodansky and other researchers point out that there is no conclusive evidence that he accepted any direct American aid, financial or otherwise. He was wary of US support during the war in Afghanistan, and his hostility towards the United States hardened after the conflict had subsided and bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1989.
His hatred of the US was crystallized when American forces were stationed on the ‘sacred soil’ of Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War of 1991 with the full approval of the Saudi
government. This coincided with his breach with the Saudi royal family and his own family, both of which he regarded as being corrupt. He was confined to Jiddah by the Saudi government, and was eventually expelled after losing his citizenship. Since 1988, he had been organizing and financing al Qaeda (‘the base’) consisting largely of other Muslim fanatics whom he had met in Afghanistan. He molded al Qaeda into a secretive organization that has members worldwide.
The flight from his homeland took him to Sudan, where an Islamist government had recently taken power, and he organized training camps for terrorist fighters. When the Sudanese government expelled him in 1996, under US pressure, he fled back to Afghanistan where he remained under the protection of the Taliban regime. When the US and its allies overthrew the Taliban in 2001, bin Laden fled into hiding, where he has remained ever since.
The terrorist attacks that have been connected to bin Laden are a long litany of horror. He has been connected with attacks in both Saudi Arabia and Yemen even before he left for the Sudan, the embassy bombings in several East African countries in 1998, the first attacks on the World Trade Center in 1995, the 9/11 airline hijackings that destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon in 2001, the railway station bombings in Madrid in 2003, and the subway bombings in London in 2005. Bodansky discusses all of these attacks (up to 2001) andd the complicitty of bin Laden, in considerable depth.
There is a huge pool of resources that the reader can obtain about Osama bin Laden, much of it in print and much of it on the Internet. However, Yossef Bodansky’s book remains as the longest printed biography in the English language. In some respects, it is more than simply a biography, it is a study of the mentality and operation of Islamic terrorism in general.