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Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda

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Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda Special Section: September 11, Background and Consequences for the Middle East USAMA BIN LADIN AND AL-QA’IDA: ORIGINS AND DOCTRINES By Benjamin Orbach* The September 11, 2001, attack on the United States made Usama bin Ladin and his al-Qa’ida group the center of a major global crisis. This research essay examines the evolution of al-Qa’ida’s doctrine as well as bin Ladin’s origins and experience. It discusses the development of this group’s ideology and strategy, showing how it switched from an emphasis on promoting revolution in Saudi Arabia to a priority on attacking the United States. In his February 2001 testimony to the Senate who often ended up embroiled in shouting Intelligence Committee, CIA director George matches and fistfights with other young men Tenet called al-Qa’ida, “The most immediate over an attractive night-club dancer or and serious threat” to U.S. national security.(1) barmaid.”(4) Just seven months later, the horrific attacks of Bin Ladin embraced his present-day path September 11, 2001 demonstrated to the following the events of 1978 and 1979—the American public and to the world the threat Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of posed by al-Qa’ida and terrorist groups with a Afghanistan. These events, and especially the “global reach.” Yet many questions still Afghan issue, provided him with a purpose that remained regarding the background and he previously lacked in his life. Shortly after his ideology of the forces involved in these and graduation, bin Ladin relocated to Afghanistan previous attacks, as well as the basis of broader and supported the Afghani resistance to the support for the movement. Soviet invasion. He raised money, visited Bin Ladin’s personal history is integral to wounded soldiers, constructed roads and understanding his self-proclaimed mission and tunnels, and compensated the families of the creation of al-Qa’ida. He was born in 1957, martyrs. According to several accounts, bin the 17th of 52 children to one of the wealthiest Ladin fought in the successful battle of Ali construction contractors in Saudi Arabia. Khel, though his battlefield role has since been Today, the CIA estimates his family’s worth to mythologized into much larger dimensions. be $5 billion, of which bin Ladin can access For bin Ladin, the war in Afghanistan and roughly $300 million.(2) Neither of bin Ladin’s the triumph over a superpower there was a parents were Saudis—his father was from watershed moment in Islamic solidarity and a South Yemen and his mother was Syrian— personal turning point. He once said, “One day making him an outsider in a country obsessed in Afghanistan was like 1000 days of praying in with parentage.(3) an ordinary mosque.”(5) In Afghanistan, “The His childhood and status within Saudi myth of the superpower was withered in front society were further complicated by the death of the mujahideen cries of Allahu Akbar!”(6) of his father in 1968. Prior to completing his Gilles Kepel, an expert on contemporary Islam, studies in civil engineering at King Abdul Aziz characterized the mujahideen as “intoxicated by University in 1979, bin Ladin spent time in the Muslim victory in Afghanistan. They Beirut in the early 1970s living the lifestyle of a believed that it could be replicated elsewhere— playboy. He was reportedly a “heavy drinker that the whole world was ripe for jihad.”(7) Bin Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 4 (December 2001) 54 Benjamin Orbach Ladin has since gushed that the Afghanistan Islamic holy places—presented bin Ladin and experience was so important that “it would others with the opportunity to reenact the exact have been impossible for me to gain such a situation in which they felt their jihad had benefit from any other chance.…This jihad was succeeded in Afghanistan. great.”(8) Bin Ladin’s links to his pre-Afghanistan past While the 1989 Soviet withdrawal left bin and outside of his revolutionary commitment Ladin with a triumphant feeling that anything were further reduced when Saudi Arabia was possible, it is likely that bin Ladin and revoked his citizenship in 1994, and he was others experienced a feeling of emptiness, too, stripped of some financial assets. Bin Ladin at the struggle’s end. There was no longer an was displaced once again in 1996. In response immediate enemy through which he could to U.S. pressure, Sudan expelled him from his define both himself and his view of Islam. Yet new home, despite that government’s self- he longed to continue the struggle and had been image as an Islamist regime, the economic convinced in Afghanistan that the mujahideen projects he had financed, and his establishment could succeed again. It is roughly at this time, and financing of training camps and at the end of the war in Afghanistan, that al- guesthouses for Islamic militants. Qa’ida was formed. From bin Ladin’s standpoint, these Bin Ladin returned from Afghanistan to rejections occurred in reaction to his attempts to Saudi Arabia as a hero. However, this status voice and apply the lessons that he had thought was short-lived as he vocally criticized the typified the proper practice of Islam, implying regime’s corruption and policies. When that the Saudi regime did not share this Saddam Husayn invaded Kuwait in 1990, commitment and that American behavior was a though, bin Ladin immediately offered to key factor in this failure to fulfill Islam. Bin protect Saudi Arabia from the Iraqi forces with Ladin returned to Afghanistan where he rebuilt his mujahideen. Bin Ladin saw the opportunity destroyed roads and was welcomed by the cash for a cause that could recapture the glory starved Taliban government. He cemented his achieved in Afghanistan—defending the holy relationship with the Taliban through building a mosques from invasion. personal relationship with Mullah Omar, the The royal rejection of his offer coupled with movement’s spiritual leader. the royal request for U.S. protection must have Political psychologist Dr. Jerrold Post been a stunning and embarrassing blow to his argues that people are drawn to political personal pride and vision of the world. After violence not purely from ideological all, it was bin Ladin’s view that the mujahideen considerations but also through personal and could defeat a great power and Muslims did not psychological factors, as an end in itself: need a superpower’s protection. This stance, of “Individuals become terrorists in order to join course, was based on a selective reading of the terrorist groups and commit acts of war in Afghanistan, where U.S. help was terrorism.”(9) This view also applies to bin critical to the mujahideen’s victory. Ladin and his colleagues. Fighting provides Shortly thereafter, bin Ladin’s criticism of them with an identity, a group that functions as the regime led to his expulsion from Saudi a community, a respected leadership position, Arabia and he fled to Sudan. His ties with his and a set of ideas providing a purpose to life. old life were further weakened when bin Mona Yacoubian, a former State Department Ladin’s family disavowed him. With the build- expert, called these young holy warriors, up of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, bin Ladin “Angry lost souls...[and] a mishmash of applied to the United States the Soviet-Afghan disgruntled people.”(10) analogy of an invading infidel to the Muslim For a poor, “disgruntled,” and culturally heartland. A new conflict—this one even more insulted young man, the appeal of killing in the inflammatory due to a perceived threat to the path of God, belonging to a great movement, Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 4 (December 2001) 55 Usama bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida: Origins and Doctrines overcoming incredible odds to triumphantly loathing and a determination to punish the change history, and ensuring a future in system, which lured them off the proper path. paradise, are all tempting reasons to become a Having drunk alcohol, gone to strip clubs, and militant. By the same token, the “newcomer” played video games, some of the suicide status to being a pious Muslim make bin Ladin bombers apparently felt that militant action and some other radical Islamists less influenced would redeem them. by normative Islam as practiced for centuries. In the four-page letter attributed to Atta, They feel free to pick and choose among texts, point seven alludes to such a mindset. Atta interpreting their religion as they please, in a (allegedly) wrote, “The time for play is over manner quite different from many generations and the serious time is upon us. How much of respected Islamic clerics. For example, it is a time have we wasted in our lives?” For basic tenet of Islam that only trained clerics can militants like Atta, their relatively greater issue fatwas (decrees), but bin Ladin has not contact with the West—or at least Western hesitated to do so. lifestyles—makes them more likely to identify Such “lost souls” are also susceptible to such lures as dangerous tempters. Since these recruitment in militant groups perhaps partly factors have undermined their own commitment due to past personal failures. Ahmad Ressam, to Islam, they can more easily see the West as the Algerian who attempted to cross the U.S.- trying to undermine Islam in general. Canadian border before New Year’s 2000, was In the 1980s, thousands of militants traveled unable to hold a job, spent a good deal of time to Afghanistan, the “school for jihad” to fight watching Clint Eastwood movies, and “the communist infidel.”(14) Many of them did attempted to join the Algerian military security not know where Afghanistan was but were and police before becoming a holy warrior.(11) galvanized by a chance to find an outlet for Nizar Trabelsi, who intended to blow himself their anger at the conditions they lived under up along with the U.S.
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