World with the eye of Bin Laden (1957-2011)

 Bin laden in this blog we are trying to understand what Bin laden think about the world why he was attack on world trade center and the key question of this blog that is the way Bin laden is remembered, did he want to be like that? take a look on Bin laden life he was born in 1957 in Riyadh kingdom. 

Bin Laden was one of the children of Muhammad bin Laden, a self-made billionaire who, after immigrating to Saudi Arabia from Yemen as a laborer, rose to direct major construction projects for the Saudi royal family. By the time of Muhammad’s death in an airplane accident in 1967, his company had become one of the largest construction firms in the Middle East, and the bin Laden family had developed a close relationship with royal family. Bin laden studied business administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where it is likely that he also received instruction in religious studies from Muḥammad Quṭb, brother of the Islamic revivalist Sayyid Quṭb, and Abdullah Azzam, . His time at the university was key to his future role as leader of al-Qaeda, Shortly after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden, who viewed the invasion as an act of aggression against Islam, began traveling to meet Afghan resistance leaders and raise funds for the resistance. By 1984 his activities were centered mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he collaborated with Azzam to recruit and organize Arab volunteers to fight the Soviet occupation. Bin Laden’s financial resources, along with his reputation for piety and for bravery in combat, enhanced his stature as a militant leader. A computer database he created in 1988 listing the names of volunteers for the Afghan War led to the formation that year of a new militant network named al-Qaeda  although the group remained without clear objectives or an operational agenda for several years. In 1989, following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, where he was initially welcomed as a hero, but he soon came to be regarded by the government as a radical and a potential threat. In 1990 the government denied his requests for permission to use his network of fighters to defend Saudi Arabia against the threat of invasion posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Bin Laden was outraged when Saudi Arabia relied instead on U.S. troops for protection during the Persian Gulf War, leading to a growing rift between bin Laden and the country’s leaders, and in 1991 he left Saudi Arabia, settling in Sudan at the end of the year. In the early 1990s bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network began to formulate an agenda of violent struggle against the threat of U.S. dominance in the Muslim world. Bin Laden publicly praised other groups’ attacks on Americans, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. In 1994, as bin Laden expanded his group’s infrastructure in Sudan and trained his on army to participate in conflicts around the world, Saudi Arabia revoked his citizenship and froze his assets, forcing him to rely on outside sources for funding. In 1996, under heavy international pressure, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he returned to Afghanistan, where he received protection from its ruling Taliban militia. Later that year bin Laden issued the first of two orders declaring a war against the United States, which he accused, among other things, of looting the natural resources of the Afghanistan, occupying the Arabian Peninsula, supporting governments servile to U.S. interests in the Middle East. Bin Laden’s apparent goal was to draw the United States into a large-scale war. To thousand,

Al-Qaeda trained militants and funded terrorist attacks. In 1998 bin Laden ordered an operation larger than any of al-Qaeda’s previous operations simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which altogether killed 224 people. The United States retaliated by launching cruise missiles at sites believed to be bin Laden’s bases in Afghanistan were thousand of innocent Afghani Muslims was killed by US . Another al-Qaeda bombing in 2000 targeted the USS Cole, an American warship harbored in Yemen, and killed 17 sailors. The growth of the organization was attributed in part to bin Laden’s charisma. He was known to be a skilled orator, able to manipulate a variety of rhetorical strategies and to make his message easily accessible even to the uneducated. At the end of the 20th century, bin Laden was thought to have had thousands of militant followers worldwide, in places as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Bosnia, Chechnya, and the Philippines. In 2001, after 19 militants associated with al-Qaeda staged the September 11 attacks, the United States led a coalition that overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan. In December 2001 bin Laden went into hiding after evading capture by U.S. forces in the Tora Bora cave complex. In the following years, U.S. forces searched for him along the Afghanistan- Pakistan border, during which time bin Laden remained absent from the public eye. Then in October 2004 less than a week before that year’s U.S.  presidential election bin Laden emerged in a videotaped message in which he claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks. After that he periodically released audio messages, including in 2008, when he threatened retaliation for the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and in 2009, when he challenged the nerve of the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, to continue the fight against al-Qaeda. due to this step bin laden in a fix. Meanwhile, U.S. forces had continued to hunt for bin Laden, who was still thought possibly to be hiding either in Afghanistan or in the tribal regions of Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence eventually located him in Pakistan, living in a secure compound in Abbottabad, a medium-sized city near Islamabad. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed when a small U.S. force transported by helicopters raided the compound. His body, identified visually at the site of the raid, was taken out of Pakistan by U.S. forces for examination and DNA identification and soon after was given a (fake)sea burial. Hours after its confirmation, bin Laden’s death was announced by Obama in a televised address. Several days after Obama’s announcement, al-Qaeda released a statement publicly acknowledging bin Laden’s death and vowing revenge. Ten years after the killing of its founder Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda bears little resemblance to the terror network that struck the US on September 11, 2001, but remains a threat even under a starkly different leadership structure. After his killing in Pakistan by US special forces, Bin Laden was succeeded as Al-Qaeda's chief by the Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri, an ideologue who has cut a far less charismatic presence. Zawahiri has had to lie very low, most likely around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, amid speculation over whether he is still even alive, while the group has now mutated into something very different central is a shadow of its former self," Barak Mendelsohn, a terrorism expert at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, told AFP. "Zawahiri's biggest success was to keep Al-Qaeda alive. "Mendelsohn said that rather than being a coherent decision-making Centre, Al-Qaeda's leadership is now more akin to a "board of advisors" rallying and assisting jihadists across the world. Zawahiri, 69, has seen Al-Qaeda essentially franchise out its operations from the Maghreb to Somalia to Afghanistan, as well as in Syria and Iraq. “Under Zawahiri's stewardship, Al-Qaeda has become increasingly decentralized, with authority resting primarily in the hands of Al-Qaeda's affiliate leaders," according to a recent report from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) think-tank. It said Zawahiri had indeed played a major role in the reorganization of numerous jihadist groups under Al-Qaeda's umbrella. At the end of 2020, unconfirmed reports re-emerged that Zawahiri had died from a heart condition, the latest in years of rumors that he was in fact dead.

Bin laden with Ayman al Zahrani

He later appeared in a video denouncing the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.The uncertainty over the composition of Al-Qaeda's leadership was intensified last August following the killing in Tehran, reportedly by Israeli agents, of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, the group's number two under al-Zawahiri and known by his nom-de-guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Masri.If Zawahiri is still alive, it means Al-Qaeda is led by a man most likely in ailing health who, despite being one of the architects of the September 11, 2001, attacks, lacks the macabre magnetism of his predecessor.The US has issued a $25 million bounty for Zawahiri and put him on its most-wanted terrorists list, but analysts say officials do not seem overly concerned about him, and are not making overt efforts to hunt him down. Washington's lack of interest may be down to the weakening importance of Al-Qaeda as a decision-making hub, coinciding with the rise of the rival Islamic State group.IS, which at its peak controlled a self-proclaimed "caliphate" comprising swathes of Iraq and Syria, notably stole the thunder of Al-Qaeda in media as its radical voice dominated social networks. Rather than joining forces, the two groups have fought on numerous battlefields in the Middle East and Africa, and Al-Qaeda is still confronted with a challenge to remain relevant.- New generation? -Whatever Zawahiri's fate, his era is coming to a close and experts point to one clear candidate as his possible future successor, his fellow Egyptian Saif al-Adel. Adel is a former lieutenant-colonel in the Egyptian special forces who joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group in the 1980s. He was arrested but was later freed, and travelled to Afghanistan to join Al-Qaeda under Zawahiri. "Adel played a crucial role in building Al-Qaeda's operational capabilities and quickly ascended the hierarchy," said the CEP, adding that he also had a central role in training the plane hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks Al-Qaeda has vowed to “wage war on all fronts” against the US unless it retreats from the entire Muslim world. Speaking just days ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the assassination of the group’s former leader Osama bin Laden, two of its operatives told CNN that it is planning a comeback in Afghanistan as the US withdraws. “The Americans are now defeated,” said Al-Qaeda. The terrorist group, now led by Ayman Zawahiri, has largely been eclipsed by Daesh in recent years in terms of attacks carried out and media exposure. The presence of US forces in the Middle East has long been seized upon by terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda, Daesh and Hezbollah as a rallying cry for their causes. Earlier in April, US President Joe Biden announced that he would withdraw troops from Afghanistan, effectively ending America’s longest-ever war. “Bin Laden is dead and Al-Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan. And it’s time to end the forever war,” he said. As part of the withdrawal, the Taliban and the US have agreed in talks that the group will cut ties with Al-Qaeda. While its direct physical presence has declined since the death of Bin Laden on May 2, 2011, Zawahiri has overseen a diversification of its role in global jihadism. “Under Zawahiri’s stewardship, Al-Qaeda has become increasingly decentralized, with authority resting primarily in the hands of Al-Qaeda’s affiliate leaders,” according to a recent report from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) think tank. The US has placed a $25 million bounty for Zawahiri, who features on its most-wanted-terrorist list. these types of condition make Bin laden.