Bin Laden, Osama

(Born 10 March 1957, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). Raised in a powerful family with close ties to Saudi elites, Osama bin Laden became a coordinating influence, spokesman and figurehead for the loose and devolved insurgent Islamist network known as al-Qaeda, and was a key architect of the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden made his name as a military leader, trainer, engineer and fighter in the anti-Soviet jihad waged by Afghan Muslims, and by the brigades of international Islamic fighters that he trained and led, in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Placed under house arrest by the Saudi regime when US troops were stationed in the kingdom during the Gulf War, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1991, travelling first to Afghanistan, then Sudan (1992–96), which was identified by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism. Following several assassination attempts by Saudi agents in Sudan, bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, where he remained on 9/11, prompting the US war in Afghanistan which began on 7 October 2001. He is understood to have escaped US troops in the Tora Bora mountains in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001. Bin Laden is credited with a central role in the switch to an ‘America-first’ targeting strategy among radical Islamists during the mid-late 1990s and in the creation of a transnational Islamist insurgency motivated by the Koranic theme of ‘defensive’ jihad.