Osama bin Laden

• 1. Introduction

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  Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, left behind a letter that was released only after his death. It urged Americans to work with the Obama administration to prevent climate change and to "save humanity" from the greenhouse gas emissions "that threaten its destiny". The man who wrote it had spent decades organizing militants. He was also the seventeenth of about 52 children in a family of immense wealth. How did the son of a rich Saudi household come to found an international jihadist network? What did he say he wanted, and how did he justify violence against civilians? And how did the search for him end up changing airports, laws and wars on several continents?

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• 2. Name And Fortune

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  Usama, the first part of his name, means lion, and he was named for Usama ibn Zayd, a companion of Muhammad. The word bin, also spelled ibn, means son of. His full name, Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden, reads as Osama, son of Muhammad, son of Awad, son of Laden. Strictly speaking, bin Laden is a patronymic rather than a Western-style surname, so Arabic custom would simply call him Osama. Inside American intelligence he was generally Usama bin Laden, shortened to the acronym UBL. He also went by Sheikh, the Prince, the Emir, Hajj, the Director and Abu Abdallah. Abu Abdallah is a kunya, a name that identifies a parent by a child. Abu means father of, and Abdallah is his son.

  He was born on the 10th of March 1957 in Saudi Arabia. Researchers generally agree that the city was Riyadh, as he himself claimed, although FBI and Interpol documents once listed Jeddah. His father, Muhammad, was born in modern Yemen, and his mother was born in Syria. She was Muhammad's tenth wife, and Osama was the only child of that marriage.

  The Saudi Binladin Group, a construction company owned by his father, made the family immensely wealthy between the 1950s and the 1970s. Its clients included the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. The royals eventually gave the company the exclusive right to build religious buildings in the kingdom. In time it became their official construction contractor, and Muhammad's sons began attending the same schools as the royal sons.

  Six months after Osama was born, his parents moved with him to the Hejaz, the region that holds Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. He lived there until adulthood. His parents divorced in 1960. In the early 1960s his mother married Mohammed al-Attas, an employee of the family company, and the couple raised their four children alongside Osama in a new house. Muhammad bin Ladin died in 1967. Without adjusting for inflation, Osama's inheritance was estimated at about $300 million in 2000, and at $50 to 60 million in 2001.

  From 1968 to 1976 Osama attended the prestigious Al-Thager Model School in Jeddah. In 1971 he took an English-language course in Oxford, England. In the late 1970s he began studying economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Accounts of how that ended disagree. One source says he left in his third year without a degree, while others say he earned one in civil engineering in 1979 or in public administration in 1981. His main interest there was Islam, and he studied the Quran and jihad and did charity work. One of his teachers was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, whose influence would shape the next decade of his life.

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• 3. Beliefs And Grievances

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  Bin Laden was raised in Sunni Islam and followed the Athari school of theology, which reads the Quran literally rather than figuratively. He was also raised in Wahhabism, a branch of the Salafi movement that was the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia during his adult life. Salafis follow a strict form of Sharia, or Islamic law, based on that literal reading. They claim that all non-Salafis are kafir, meaning non-believers, who will not see heaven. Wahhabi beliefs, including the holiness of violence against non-Salafis, were taught directly to students in Saudi schools from around the 1970s. For religious reasons, bin Laden opposed gambling, homosexuality, intoxicants, masturbation, music, premarital sex and usury. He was reportedly an avid reader who often quoted Bernard Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle. At university he also read Islamist writers, among them Sayyid Qutb, several Muslim Brotherhood leaders and Azzam himself.

  Al-Qaeda ran ideology classes while he led it, and they named four principal enemies of Islam. These were Shia Islam, heretics of Islam, the United States and Israel. Bin Laden believed the Islamic world was in crisis because of those influences. In his view, only the complete restoration of Sharia could correct it. He rejected pan-Arabist, socialist, communist and democratic systems as possible cures. He once denounced democracy as a "religion of ignorance" because it issues man-made laws instead of laws made by God. Yet he also compared Spain's democratic system favorably with certain non-democracies in the Muslim world, praising both for letting the law hold rulers accountable. He was also heavily antisemitic. In his 2002 letter he claimed that Jews controlled American media, politics and economic institutions.

  Two fatwas, which are non-binding rulings on Sharia, laid out his case against the United States. He issued one in 1996 and one in 1998, and both declared war on America. His other statements included a 1998 interview with the American journalist John Miller, a video released in December 2001, his 2002 Letter to the American People and a 2004 video. The indefinite stationing of Christian and Jewish American troops in Saudi Arabia during Operation Southern Watch, which ran from 1992 to 2003, struck him as a provocation to all Muslims. He read Muhammad as having banned the "permanent presence of infidels in Arabia", and that complaint drove his 1996 fatwa. He also condemned American policies that had killed and oppressed Muslims, especially women and children, and he singled out American funding and arming of Israel.

  In the 1998 fatwa he called it the duty of every Muslim to "liberate" two Islamic holy sites. They were Al-Aqsa in East Jerusalem and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. That fatwa also condemned the international sanctions on Iraq, which lasted from 1990 to 2003 and damaged its economy, creating a humanitarian crisis. Bin Laden often cited the resulting child deaths, which numbered at least 227,000 by 1999. His 2002 letter implied further motives. These included American support for Israel in Lebanon and during the Second Intifada, for Russia in the Second Chechen War, and for India in Kashmir. It also listed the American-led intervention in Somalia, pollution, and the American refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The letter ended by calling on Americans to convert to Islam.

  His strategy changed with events. Before 9/11, he believed that a message delivered through al-Qaeda attacks could deter the American military from targeting Muslims. Afterward, when the United States declared a global war on terror, he tried to lure its military into long wars of attrition by drawing in large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender. He predicted this would bring economic collapse by "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy". In 2004 he noted that this was essentially how his own fighters had helped push the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan.

  On civilians, his words were stark. His 1996 fatwa said the war would not differentiate between Americans in military uniform and civilians. In the 1998 interview he said: "American history does not distinguish between civilians and military, not even women and children." He held every American responsible because the country is a democracy and because citizens pay taxes that fund the military. After 9/11 he claimed that women and children were not the intended targets, and that "the main targets were the symbol of the United States: their economic and military power". In 2004 he explained why he chose towers. He said he was inspired by the destruction of towers in Beirut by American-backed Israeli troops during the 1982 Lebanon War, which made him decide to "destroy towers in America".

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• 4. Afghan War Years

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  In 1979, the Soviet Union occupied Muslim-majority Afghanistan in support of a socialist government installed by a military coup in 1978. Many Afghan Muslims opposed that government. Bin Laden left college and went to Pakistan with Azzam to help the Afghan mujahideen, the fighters resisting the occupation. He later recalled: "I felt outraged that an injustice had been committed against the people of Afghanistan." He likely went with the knowledge and support of the Saudi government, which also opposed the Soviet occupation.

  In 1984, bin Laden and Azzam founded Maktab al-Khidamat, known as MaK. It recruited fighters from across the Arab world for the Afghan mujahideen and sent them arms and money. It even paid for their travel. Bin Laden funded it from his inheritance. He also helped build cave complexes in the Afghan mountains to serve as fortifications. He shipped in construction machinery that the Saudi Binladin Group had used, and he set up militant camps in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

  From 1979 to 1992, the United States, Saudi Arabia and China supplied between 6 and 12 billion dollars in aid and weapons to Afghan fighters. The money and arms flowed through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI, and the American share came from the CIA's Operation Cyclone program. The ISI and the Pakistan Armed Forces did all the training. According to Mohammad Yousaf, who then headed ISI operations on Afghanistan, Pakistan strictly prevented Americans from funding, arming or training the fighters directly. So the popular belief that the United States backed bin Laden's men directly is mistaken. Bin Laden himself, however, was trained by Ali Mohamed, a commando of the U.S. Special Forces. He also became acquainted with Hamid Gul, a Pakistani general who headed the ISI. The journalist Steve Coll judged that bin Laden was probably not a salaried agent of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, but that the two clearly had "a substantial relationship".

  Between 1986 and 1987, bin Laden built a base in eastern Afghanistan for several dozen of his own soldiers. In 1987 he commanded them to victory against the Soviets at the Battle of Jaji. The battle mattered little to the wider war effort. The Arab press nevertheless lionized it, and many Arabs began to idolize him.

  By 1988, bin Laden had split from MaK. He wanted the Arab fighters to form a military force independent of the other mujahideen, while Azzam wanted the groups integrated. The Soviets began withdrawing in May 1988, and al-Qaeda formed sometime that year. It may have been founded at a meeting on the 11th of August between bin Laden, Azzam and leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group known as the EIJ. The parties are known to have agreed there to combine bin Laden's money with the EIJ's experience, so the jihadist cause could move beyond Afghanistan. Notes from a meeting involving bin Laden on the 20th of August describe "an organized Islamic faction". To keep its existence secret, al-Qaeda did not state its name in its early public announcements.

  The two founders also disagreed about what to do with MaK's fighting force after the withdrawal. Both wanted to use it to defend oppressed Muslims around the world. Bin Laden publicly urged the soldiers to wage jihad through terrorism. Azzam issued a fatwa condemning that approach, saying Islamic law forbids killing women and children.

  The Soviets finished withdrawing in February 1989. In March, bin Laden commanded 800 Arab fighters against the Afghan government at the Battle of Jalalabad. His plan was to immobilize the government's 7th Sarandoy Regiment, but his side suffered massive casualties and lost. In November 1989, Azzam was killed in a land mine attack in Pakistan, and it is unknown whether bin Laden played a part. Bin Laden then took full control of MaK and absorbed it into al-Qaeda. From then on, he was radicalized further by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the EIJ.

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• 5. Exile And Sudan

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  Back in Saudi Arabia after the Soviet withdrawal, bin Laden was widely praised as a hero of jihad. Many Saudis credited his fighters with defeating a superpower. He kept working for the Saudi Binladin Group even as he joined opposition movements against the House of Saud. In 1990 he funded a failed coup attempt led by the communist general Shahnawaz Tanai against the Afghan government. He also lobbied Pakistan's Parliament for a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, which failed. In Yemen, he organized assassinations of Yemeni Socialist Party leaders to disrupt the unification of North and South Yemen. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz forced him to stop after the North Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, complained to King Fahd.

  Iraq's invasion of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein in 1990 began the Gulf War, and Iraqi forces soon deployed to the Saudi border. The royals feared that Saddam, a public supporter of pan-Arabism, might incite dissent against them. Fahd accepted an American offer of military help. A week later, bin Laden met Fahd and Defense Minister Sultan bin Abdulaziz and told them not to depend on non-Muslim assistance. He offered to defend the kingdom with a mujahideen force of his own. The offer was refused, and the Saudis accepted 500,000 American troops. Bin Laden denounced the decision publicly. He tried to persuade the Saudi ulama, the religious scholars, to issue a fatwa against it, but senior clerics refused out of fear of government repression. His continued criticism led the royals to put him under house arrest, and in 1991 he was exiled. After the war, American troops stayed on to control Iraqi airspace.

  Bin Laden and his followers went first to Afghanistan, then to Sudan, in a deal brokered by Ali Mohamed. In Khartoum he bought a house on Al-Mashtal Street in the affluent Al-Riyad neighborhood, plus a retreat at Soba on the Blue Nile. He personally chose his bodyguards, who carried Strela-2 and Stinger missiles, AK-47s, PK machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. He invested heavily in infrastructure and agriculture. Former mujahideen used the same bulldozers he had employed in Afghanistan to build roads, and locals considered him generous to the poor. Al-Zawahiri followed him there, and the EIJ and al-Qaeda collaborated. In 1994 King Fahd stripped him of his Saudi citizenship. His family disowned him, and Fahd persuaded them to cut off his yearly stipend of $7 million.

  From Sudan, al-Qaeda helped jihadists in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan with money and sometimes with fighters. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, to Algeria with $40,000 to urge Islamists to go to war rather than negotiate. They heeded the advice. The Algerian Civil War that followed lasted until 2002 and killed between 44,000 and 200,000 people. It ended with the Islamists surrendering to the government. In early 1992, bin Laden also urged the Afghan commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to join coalition negotiations instead of trying to seize Kabul. Hekmatyar failed in the attempt, and another Afghan civil war began.

  After a failed assassination attempt on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 1995, international pressure grew on Sudan. In 1996 Sudan expelled bin Laden, and on the 18th of May he flew to Jalalabad aboard a chartered flight. The Taliban, who had won the 1992-96 war, allowed al-Qaeda to operate and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in late 1996. Bin Laden worked closely with the Taliban's Supreme Leader, Mullah Omar. To cement the alliance he sent several hundred fighters to help the Taliban kill 5,000 to 6,000 Hazaras in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The expulsion had weakened al-Qaeda, because he left millions of dollars behind in Sudan. Some African intelligence sources argued that most of the 300 Afghan Arabs who went with him later became terrorists. In mid-1997 the Northern Alliance, then fighting the Taliban, threatened to overrun Jalalabad, and he abandoned his home of Najim Jihad to move south to Tarnak Farms.

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• 6. Escalating Attacks

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  In November 1990, the FBI raided the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, an associate of Ali Mohamed. Agents found evidence of terrorist plots, including plans to blow up skyscrapers in New York City. It was the earliest discovery of al-Qaeda plans outside Muslim countries. The first successful bombings came on the 29th of December 1992 at the Mövenpick Hotel and the Gold Mohur Hotel in Aden, Yemen. American troops had been staying at the hotels on their way to Somalia for Operation Restore Hope. Two civilians died at the Gold Mohur.

  In the early 1990s, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed became a top lieutenant of bin Laden. He devised an airliner plot codenamed Bojinka. Al-Qaeda and another group, Jemaah Islamiyah, planned to destroy eleven planes flying from Southeast Asia toward the United States, using bombs over the Pacific Ocean. Pope John Paul II was also to be assassinated. In 1993 Mohammed's nephew Ramzi Yousef and a group of al-Qaeda members bombed the underground portion of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people died and more than a thousand were injured. In 1994 Yousef rehearsed the airliner plot with one bomb in a Manila theatre and another aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 434, which killed a passenger. The plot collapsed in 1995, weeks before its planned date, when Yousef's Manila apartment burned down and police found evidence against him. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States.

  In January 1996, the CIA opened a unit of its Counterterrorism Center called the Bin Laden Issue Station, code-named Alec Station. It was headed by the veteran Michael Scheuer. Operatives photographed activity at bin Laden's compound in Sudan, and the unit also used a safe house and signals intelligence to track his moves. In November 1996, bin Laden organized a plot to bomb the motorcade of President Bill Clinton in Manila, where Clinton was attending the annual APEC meetings. American agents intercepted a message between al-Qaeda operatives and alerted the Secret Service. The bomb was found planted under a bridge, and Clinton was unharmed.

  At the announcement of his February 1998 fatwa, which journalists attended, bin Laden said that North Americans were "very easy targets". He added: "you will see the results of this in a very short time." That year al-Qaeda formally allied with the EIJ, and al-Zawahiri became his deputy. The two organizations merged in June 2001. A grand jury indicted bin Laden in June 1998 on charges of conspiracy to attack American defense utilities. Then, on the 7th of August 1998, simultaneous truck bombs at the American embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killed hundreds of people. The attacks brought bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to the attention of the American public for the first time.

  Clinton had authorized the CIA's Special Activities Division to capture bin Laden and bring him to the United States for trial. Deadly force was allowed if capture proved impossible. On the 20th of August 1998, Operation Infinite Reach fired cruise missiles at al-Qaeda training camps in Khost, Afghanistan, and at Khartoum. They missed him by a few hours. In November 1998 he was indicted in New York over the embassy bombings. The Taliban refused to extradite him, saying the evidence was insufficient and that non-Muslim courts lacked standing to try Muslims. The FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in June 1999, and in October 1999 the United Nations designated al-Qaeda a terrorist organization. That obliged countries to freeze the assets of its members and impose travel bans. In late 1999, the CIA and Pakistani military intelligence prepared about sixty Pakistani commandos to capture or kill him, but the plan was aborted after the Pakistani coup d'état in October.

  Al-Qaeda also planned attacks around New Year's Day 2000. Jordanian intelligence foiled a plot by a cell in Amman on the 30th of November, after intercepting a phone call from one of bin Laden's lieutenants. On the 14th of December, border authorities caught Ahmed Ressam with bomb-making materials in his car. He was headed toward Los Angeles International Airport. On the 24th of December, members of the al-Qaeda-linked Harkat-ul-Mujahideen hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814, killed one passenger and demanded the release of three Muslim militants from an Indian prison. Then, on the 3rd of January 2000, al-Qaeda tried to attack the American ship USS The Sullivans in Aden. The perpetrators loaded their boat with too many explosives, and it sank. They salvaged the boat and explosives, and on the 12th of October 2000 they used them to bomb the docked USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors.

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• 7. September 11

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  In 1996, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed brought bin Laden a larger version of the Bojinka idea. In the United States, al-Qaeda would hijack ten airliners and crash nine of them into landmarks. On the tenth, Mohammed and the other hijackers would kill every adult male passenger, then land at an American airport. There Mohammed would give a speech about American foreign policy, and the women and children would go free. Bin Laden rejected the plan as too complex. Years later he approved a scaled-back version, and al-Zawahiri persuaded him to go ahead, building the systematic organisation that made the attacks possible.

  In 1999, bin Laden, Ali Mohamed and Mohammed Atef designed the general plan. Their list of potential targets included the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and the White House. If any hijacker could not reach a target, the plane was to be crashed anyway. Bin Laden and other leaders chose the hijackers in 2000. About 21 men were selected, including Mohamed Atta. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was denied a visa, and a likely selection, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested in August 2001, which left 19 hijackers. Bin al-Shibh acted as liaison instead. In July 2001 he met Atta in Spain, where they confirmed the targets and he passed on bin Laden's wish for the attacks to happen as soon as possible.

  Warnings had piled up, but American agencies rarely cooperated, so nobody assembled them into a clear picture. In July 2001 FBI agent Kenneth Williams wrote the Phoenix Memo, warning that bin Laden was sending followers to Arizona for flight training. The agency's leadership did not see it until after the attacks. On the 6th of August, President George W. Bush received an intelligence report titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S."

  On the 11th of September 2001-19 al-Qaeda members hijacked four airliners departing the American East Coast. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, both leaving Boston for Los Angeles, hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77, leaving Dulles, Virginia for Los Angeles, hit the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93, leaving Newark, New Jersey for San Francisco, never reached Washington, D.C. It crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to retake the cockpit. The Twin Towers collapsed. At least 2,977 victims died directly from the four hijackings, and an estimated 25,000 people were injured.

  The ruins were nicknamed Ground Zero. City officials initially told rescue workers there that the air was safe to breathe. Many people later developed health problems from the dust, and more than 6,000 have died of 9/11-related diseases as of 2026. The FBI calls its investigation, PENTTBOM, its largest criminal investigation ever. Congress passed the Patriot Act, expanding federal powers to search and surveil suspects. Three agencies were founded to prevent similar attacks: the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Transportation Security Administration. The TSA took over airport security from private companies contracted by airlines.

  That night, Bush wrote in his diary: "we think it's Osama bin Laden." American and German intelligence had intercepted communications pointing to him. In November 2001, American troops in Afghanistan found a videotape of bin Laden discussing what was likely the attacks, which the United States released on the 13th of December. On it he said of the towers' collapse, "That is all we had hoped for." On the 26th of December, Al Jazeera broadcast a video message in which he again seemed to imply responsibility. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and bin al-Shibh took responsibility in 2002. Bin Laden did not unambiguously confirm that he organized the attacks until a 2004 video, first broadcast by Al Jazeera four days before the American presidential election. Analysts say the timing may have helped Bush defeat John Kerry, since the video reinforced fear of terrorism and made Bush look like the stronger protector.

  The 9/11 Commission Report said the origin of al-Qaeda's funds remained unknown. It saw no evidence that any foreign government supplied funding. Some American investigators nevertheless allege that Saudi Arabia paid for the attacks, and Saudi Arabia denies it. A congressional inquiry released its report in 2002 with 28 pages classified at the request of the Bush administration. Those pages were declassified in 2016. They say that some hijackers in the United States received help from individuals "who may be connected to the Saudi government".

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• 8. The Long Manhunt

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  Shortly after the attacks, the Taliban refused to extradite bin Laden and offered to try him before an Islamic court. The United States rejected the offer. The CIA's Special Activities Division was given the lead in tracking him down and then killing or capturing him. The FBI created a Most Wanted Terrorists list, initially 22 names long, and put him at the top. It offered $5 million for each person on the list except him, whose reward was $25 million. The Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association added $2 million more.

  On the 7th of October 2001, a coalition led by the United States invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and capture al-Qaeda members, especially bin Laden. This began the War in Afghanistan. A week later, on the 14th of October, the Taliban offered to turn him over to a third country for trial in return for an end to the invasion. Bush rejected the offer: "there's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."

  On the 10th of November, the CIA spotted bin Laden near Jalalabad in a convoy of two hundred pickup trucks. It was heading toward al-Qaeda's training camp at Tora Bora, in the Safed Koh mountains twenty miles from the Pakistani border. Early in the battle there, CIA intelligence indicated that he was trapped in the caves. On the 1st of December, CIA officer Gary Berntsen asked General Tommy Franks to send Army Rangers to block the passes into Pakistan. Franks refused, agreeing with the Bush administration that Pakistan would catch bin Laden if he tried to cross. He is conventionally believed to have escaped on the 15th of December. The Taliban had been deposed, but its members regrouped as an insurgency.

  For the rest of his life, bin Laden stayed in hiding. Al-Qaeda released videos of him regularly in later years to show that he survived. Meanwhile al-Zawahiri, the group's spokesperson, formed franchises in Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Uzbekistan. By 2009, The Guardian wrote, American intelligence saw al-Zawahiri as "al-Qaeda's strategic commander, relegating bin Laden to ideological figurehead." Attacks continued. On the 12th of October 2002, Jemaah Islamiyah bombs in Bali killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian. In November 2003, bombings in Istanbul killed 27 people, including the British Consul-General Roger Short. On the 7th of July 2005, bombings on a London bus and three Underground trains killed 52 people and injured over 700. In Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2004, and bin Laden publicly recognized him as head of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

  In 2010, bin Laden wrote a letter criticizing followers such as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. They had used the doctrine of al-tatarrus to justify routine massacres of Muslim civilians, which had turned away many Muslims who once supported Islamist jihadism. He drew up a code of conduct to restrain his allies and told followers worldwide to persuade hesitant Islamic political parties rather than fight them. He urged his allies in Yemen to negotiate an end to their conflict with other Muslims. He urged the Somali group al-Shabaab to pursue economic development and reduce the poverty caused by constant warfare.

  Also in 2010, American intelligence discovered his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A team of U.S. Navy SEALs raided it and killed him inside on the 2nd of May 2011. His deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded him as emir. Polls show that Muslims at large view bin Laden negatively, though many Islamists consider him heroic. Elsewhere he is overwhelmingly seen as a symbol of terrorism and mass murder. The war that began in October 2001 outlasted him by a decade, ending only in 2021 when the Taliban retook Afghanistan.

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