Osama Bin Laden Biography Essay

Osama Bin Laden was the leader of the Terrorist group Al-Qaeda, the organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a Saudi Arabian, a member of the wealthy bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite. He was also born in the family Mohammed Bin Awad Bin Laden. He studied at university in the country until 1979, when he joined mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He helped to fund the mujahideen by funneling arms, money and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs. He first formed Al- Qaeda in 1988. Four years later,
Bin Laden's other known wives were Khadijah Sharif (married 1983, divorced 1990s); Khairiah Sabar (married 1985); Siham Sabar (married 1987); and Amal al-Sadah (married 2000). Some sources also list a sixth wife; name unknown, whose marriage to bin Laden was annulled soon after the ceremony, Bin Laden fathered between 20 and 26 children with his wives. Bin Laden also had a body guard named, Nasser al-Bahri, who was bin Laden's personal bodyguard from 1997–2001, details bin Laden's personal life in his memoir. He describes him as a frugal man and strict father, who enjoyed taking his large family on shooting trips and picnics in the desert. The FBI described bin Laden as an adult as tall and thin, between 1.93 m (6 ft. 4 in) and 1.98 m (6 ft. 6 in) in height and weighing about 73 kilograms (160 lb.). although the author Lawrence Wright, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, writes that a number of bin Laden's close friends confirmed that reports of his height were greatly exaggerated, and that bin Laden was actually "just over 6 feet (1.8 m) tall". Bin Laden had an olive complexion and was left-handed, usually walking with a cane. He wore a plain white turban and he had stopped wearing the traditional Saudi male headdress. Bin Laden was described as soft-spoken and mild-mannered in demeanor. By 1988, bin Laden had split from Maktab al-Khidamat. While Azzam acted as support for Afghan fighters, bin Laden wanted a more military role. One of the main points leading to the split and the creation of al-Qaeda was Azzam's insistence that Arab fighters be integrated among the Afghan fighting groups instead of forming a separate fighting force. Notes of a meeting of bin Laden and others on August 20, 1988 indicate that al-Qaeda was a formal group by that time: "Basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal is to lift the word of God, to make his religion victorious."