Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder and first general emir of the al-Qaeda militant organization. A pan-Islamist and Islamic extremist, bin Laden organized and funded numerous jihadist or anti-Western militants and terrorist attacks worldwide. Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks (9/11) against the United States directly killed 2,977 victims.

He aided the Afghan mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), and the Bosnian mujahideen in the Bosnian War (1992–1995). He played a role in starting both the Algerian Civil War (1992–2002), in which he aided the GSPC, and the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021), in which he aided the Taliban. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, later named the Islamic State of Iraq, was a leader of the Iraqi insurgency in the Iraq War (2003–2011). Al-Qaeda in Yemen, later named al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has waged an insurgency in Yemen since 1998.

Bin Laden was raised into Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia. His family is wealthy, having financial ties to the country's royal House of Saud. He left to help mujahideen repel the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, and in 1984, co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat to recruit foreigners into the rebellion. In 1988, bin Laden founded al-Qaeda to enact violent jihad worldwide. The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and he returned to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden's public beliefs led to his expulsion from Saudi Arabia in 1991. He moved with al-Qaeda to Sudan. In 1996, Sudan also expelled him, and he moved al-Qaeda to Afghanistan, which soon came under Taliban control.

After the Gulf War (1990–1991), Saudi Arabia allowed American troops to station within Saudi borders for years. This led to bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war on the majority-Christian U.S.; he viewed Muhammad as having banned infidels of Islam from permanently staying in Arabia. Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

9/11 was mainly planned by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and they may have been aided by Saudi Arabia. The attacks caused the World Trade Center to collapse, leading to more than 6,000 deaths related to inhalation exposure. Afterwards, as bin Laden lived in Afghanistan, an international manhunt for him began. The U.S. invaded the country and deposed its Taliban government, forcing him to move to Pakistan. Al-Qaeda continued committing major terrorist attacks, such as in Indonesia in 2002, Turkey in 2003, England in 2005, Jordan in 2005, and Iraq in 2006. As part of their rationale for the Iraq War, the U.S. falsely claimed that the Iraqi government was involved in 9/11.

In 2011, U.S. troops killed bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded him as al-Qaeda's emir. Many Islamists consider bin Laden heroic, while elsewhere, he is seen as a symbol of terrorism and mass murder.