Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his killing in 2011. A Salafi jihadist, bin Laden worked to establish a pan-Islamist caliphate by using al-Qaeda to organize and fund jihadist militants and terrorists worldwide. Al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 directly killed 2,977 victims, and resulted in the global war on terror. Bin Laden also led al-Qaeda and its allies' efforts in the 1992–1996 Afghan Civil War, the Algerian Civil War (1992–2002), and the Bosnian War (1992–1995), and was also responsible for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 in New York City.

Bin Laden was raised into Sunni Islam by his wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. He left the country during the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) to help the Afghan mujahideen fight the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which recruited foreigners into the Afghan mujahideen while funding and arming them. In 1988, bin Laden founded al-Qaeda. After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, he commanded a mujahideen force in the 1989–1992 Afghan Civil War. Upon returning to Saudi Arabia, he publicly promoted anti-Western causes and opposed the Saudi royal family, leading to his expulsion from the country by its government in 1991. He went back to Afghanistan, then moved to Sudan later that year.

In 1996, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he again moved to Afghanistan, which came under Taliban control later that year. Al-Qaeda allied with the Taliban, and they collaborated in the 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War. In 1996 and 1998, bin Laden declared holy war on Americans, both military and civilians. Al-Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, causing the U.S. and United Nations to officially declare him a terrorist. That year, al-Qaeda also began an ongoing insurgency in Yemen.

The attacks on 9/11 were mainly planned by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 19 al-Qaeda members hijacked four American passenger planes so they could be crashed into U.S. landmarks. One hit the Pentagon in Virginia, one crashed in Pennsylvania before ever reaching the hijackers' unknown target in Washington, D.C., and the others hit the World Trade Center, causing it to collapse—resulting in over 6,000 deaths from inhalation exposure so far. 25,000 were injured overall. The attacks led to the passage of stringent anti-terrorism legislation worldwide, while an international manhunt for bin Laden began. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban, forcing him to move to Pakistan.

While bin Laden hid, al-Qaeda fought the U.S. and its allies in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) and the Iraq War (2003–2011), while continuing to enact major terrorist attacks around the world. In 2010, U.S. intelligence discovered bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A team of U.S. Navy SEALs raided the compound and killed him inside it in 2011. His deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded him as al-Qaeda's emir. Polls show that Muslims at large have a negative view of bin Laden, while many Islamists consider him heroic. Elsewhere, he is overwhelmingly seen as a symbol of terrorism and mass murder.

Name and terms

Bin Laden's name is most commonly romanized from Arabic as Osama bin Laden, but can also be spelled with the names Usama and bin Ladin. Generally, during his life, U.S. intelligence internally referred to him as Usama bin Laden, and used the acronym 'UBL'. He was named after Usama ibn Zayd, one of the companions of Muhammad; Usama means 'lion'. Bin, also spelled ibn, means 'son of'; bin Laden's full name, as spelled here, is Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden—Osama, son of Muhammad, son of Awad, son of Laden. Muhammad, his father, is spelled here as Muhammad bin Ladin. In the West, he is nonetheless nicknamed bin Laden, which often begins sentences about him ("Bin Laden was..."), although, being at the start of a sentence, ibn would be more accurate to Arabic ("Ibn Laden was..."). A mujahid, plural mujahideen, is a participant in jihad—struggle in the name of Islam (peaceful or violent). Hajj is the traditional pilgrimage of Muslims to the holy city of Mecca. Abu Abdallah is a , a parent's name based on their child's; Abu means 'father of', and Abdallah is his son. Osama's father Muhammad was born in modern Yemen, and his mother, at the time named Alia Ghanem—later, Hamida al-Attas—was born in Syria. and the only one of Muhammad's marriage to al-Attas. From the 1950s to 70s, the family became immensely wealthy from the Saudi Binladin Group, a construction company owned by Osama's father. Its clients included the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. The two had four children, and raised them alongside Osama in a new house. In USD, without adjusting for inflation, Osama's inheritance from him was estimated in 2000 to have been about $300 million, and in 2001, at about $50 to 60 million. Currently, the bin Laden family still owns the Saudi Binladin Group, and still has ties to the House of Saud. and then an English-language course in Oxford, England, in 1971. In the late 1970s, he started studying economics and business administration at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. One source claims that bin Laden left university during his third year without attaining a degree. Others say that he either earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, or in public administration in 1981. In university, bin Laden's main interest was Islam. He studied the Quran and jihad, and did charity work.

Religious and political views Bin Laden was raised into Sunni Islam, and he subscribed to the Athari school of Islamic theology, which interprets the Quran literally, rather than figuratively. For religious reasons, he was against gambling, homosexuality, intoxicants, masturbation, music, premarital sex, and usury.

He was reportedly an avid reader, and often quoted Bernard Montgomery and Charles de Gaulle. He once wrote a letter to the American public (released posthumously) urging them to work with then-United States president Barack Obama's administration to prevent further climate change, and "save humanity" from the greenhouse gas emissions "that threaten its destiny".

The Islamic world and systems of government

Western sources consider bin Laden an Islamic extremist. The German intelligence agency BfV writes: "Islamist extremism [believes that] Islam is not only a personal or private affair, but that it should also rule social life and the political order or regulate at least part of it. This is in clear contradiction to the principles of the sovereignty of the people, the separation of state and religion, freedom of expression and general equal rights".thumb leftThe latter secularist ideas were adopted by much of the Islamic world over the 20th century. Thus, strict adherence to Islamic morality-based social rules, like those of Sharia (Islamic law), declined among Muslims. Islamic fundamentalists decried these liberalizing trends. In university, bin Laden read the works of multiple Islamists, including Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, his then-teacher; Sayyid Qutb; and several Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Salafis follow a strict form of Sharia based on a literal interpretation of the Quran. Wahhabism was the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia during bin Laden's adult life. Wahhabi beliefs, including the holiness of violence against non-Salafis, were directly taught to bin Laden and other students in Saudi schools from around the 1970s to 2010s.

Bin Laden promoted Islamism through his militant organization al-Qaeda, which has committed numerous terrorist attacks worldwide. Its attacks against the U.S. on 11 September 2001 led the "threat of militant Islamic terrorism [to take] center stage" in Middle Eastern politics. While bin Laden led al-Qaeda, it organized ideology classes that listed four principal enemies of Islam: Shia Islam, heretics of Islam, the U.S., and Israel. Bin Laden believed the Islamic world was in crisis due to being influenced by these enemies, and that only the complete restoration of Sharia within that world would correct it. He rejected other types of government as possible solutions to this perceived crisis, such as pan-Arabist, socialist, communist, and democratic systems.

He once denounced democracy as a "religion of ignorance" that violates Islam by issuing man-made laws, instead of those made by God; journalist Max Rodenbeck wrote that bin Laden avoided "theological justifications for democracy, [which are] based on the notion that the will of the people must necessarily reflect the will of an all-knowing God." Bin Laden also once favorably compared Spain's democratic system to certain non-democracies in the Muslim world, praising both as allowing for their rulers to be held accountable by the law. his 1998 interview with American journalist John Miller; his 2002 Letter to the American People; and his 2004 video, His 1996 fatwa was issued for mainly this reason. especially those that had killed women and children; he particularly condemned America's funding and arming of Israel, which has historically killed and oppressed Muslims in Palestine. He believed violent jihad was needed to right these actions. In his 2001 video, he said: In his 2002 letter, he described the 1948 formation of the State of Israel as "a crime which must be erased".

In his 1998 fatwa, bin Laden claimed the duty of every Muslim was to "liberate" two Islamic holy sites "from their [America's and Israel's] grip": Al-Aqsa in East Jerusalem, and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca; West Jerusalem has been controlled by Israel since 1948, while East Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan from 1948 until 1967, when an ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank began during the Six-Day War.

The fatwa also condemned the concurrent international sanctions against Iraq, which the U.S. participated in. Lasting from 1990 to 2003, the sanctions largely damaged Iraq's economy, creating a humanitarian crisis. Bin Laden often referenced the resulting child deaths, Additionally, he called upon Americans to convert to Islam. Similar to what bin Laden intended, the U.S.' war in Afghanistan lasted for 20 years.

Attacking civilians on 9/11 In his 1996 fatwa, bin Laden mentioned that his war against the U.S. would "not differentiate between [Americans] dressed in military uniforms, and civilians; they are all targets of this fatwa". "American history does not distinguish between civilians and military, not even women and children. They are the ones who used [a nuclear bomb] against Nagasaki. Can these bombs distinguish between infants and military? America does not have a religion that will prevent it from destroying all people."

Bin Laden believed that all Americans, even civilians, are responsible for the U.S.' actions, as the country is a democracy, and because Americans pay taxes that fund their military.

On 9/11, al-Qaeda targeted the World Trade Center, a business complex in New York City, and the Pentagon in Virginia, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. Afterwards, bin Laden claimed that the women and children who died in the attacks were not al-Qaeda's intended targets, saying Muhammad condemned the killing of women and children; instead, "the main targets were the symbol of the United States: their economic and military power". In 2004, bin Laden said he was inspired to target the World Trade Center's Twin Towers (1 and 2 WTC) as revenge for the destruction of towers in Beirut by U.S.-backed Israeli troops in the Siege of Beirut, during the 1982 Lebanon War:

Bosnian War

The Bosnian War (1992–1995) was an ethnic conflict in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosniaks, many of whom are Muslims, fought the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat forces of two unrecognised breakaway states within the Republic's borders—respectively, Republika Srpska and the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia. In 1992, the two states' militaries, the Army of Republika Srpska and the Croatian Defence Council, began ethnic cleansing operations against the Bosniaks. In response, Bosnian Muslim militants allied with the Republic in jihad against the Serbs and Croats, and foreign Muslims in the 'Bosnian mujahideen' joined them. The mujahideen allegedly participated in war crimes, including killing and torturing Serbian and Croat civilians, and using them as human shields. In 1995, the Bosnian War ended with the Republic's dissolution, and the formation of the country simply named Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another item found was the 'Golden Chain' document, which claims to be a list of bin Laden's own financiers.

In late 1995, the U.S. learned that Sudan was discussing a possible expulsion of bin Laden. The U.S. Ambassador to Sudan, Timothy Carney, encouraged Sudan to go through with this, though Sudan had trouble deciding where bin Laden should be expelled to; the Saudis did not want him, and no country had an outstanding indictment against bin Laden. Saudi official Fatih Erwa later claimed Sudan offered to hand bin Laden over to the U.S.; the American government's 9/11 Commission Report (2004) found "no credible evidence" of this.

Bin Laden Issue Station In January 1996, the CIA launched a new unit of its Counterterrorism Center (CTC) called the Bin Laden Issue Station, code-named "Alec Station", to track and to carry out operations against his activities. The station was headed by CTC veteran Michael Scheuer.

Return to Afghanistan Sudan expelled bin Laden in 1996, allowing him to fly to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, aboard a chartered flight on 18 May. Al-Qaeda was allowed to operate in Afghanistan by the Taliban, who won the 1992–96 war, and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in late 1996. Until the Emirate's dissolution in 2001, bin Laden worked closely with the Supreme Leader of Afghanistan, Mullah Omar. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance, who were fighting the Taliban in the 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War, were positioned to overrun Jalalabad, causing bin Laden to abandon his home of Najim Jihad near the city, and move south to Tarnak Farms. thumb Regions from where Islamic extremists came to train at al-Qaeda's Afghan jihadist campsThe expulsion from Sudan significantly weakened al-Qaeda, as bin Laden left millions of dollars USD in Sudan. Some African intelligence sources have argued that he was left without a way to gain political power other than by becoming a full-time radical, and that most of the 300 Afghan Arabs who moved with him subsequently became terrorists. Bin Laden also effectively took over Ariana Afghan Airlines, which ferried Islamic militants, arms, cash, and opium through the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, and provided false identifications to al-Qaeda members. Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout helped run the airline, maintain planes, and load cargo. thumb leftSome researchers, as well as the Swiss Federal Police, allege that bin Laden funded the Luxor massacre, the killing of 62 civilians on 17 November 1997 at the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut in Egypt.

In March 1998, Libya issued the first official Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden. He and three others were charged with killing Silvan Becker, a counterterrorism expert with the BfV, and his wife Vera in Libya in 1994. Bin Laden was still wanted by Libya at the time of his death.

Also in 1998, al-Qaeda declared a formal alliance with the EIJ, In February 1998, he issued another fatwa, calling upon Muslims to attack the U.S. and its allies.

In November 1996, U.S. president Bill Clinton traveled to the Philippines for the annual APEC meetings. Bin Laden organized a plot to assassinate Clinton by bombing the presidential motorcade as it traveled through Manila. Before the motorcade left, however, U.S. intelligence agents intercepted a message between al-Qaeda agents about the plan, and alerted the U.S. Secret Service. Clinton was unharmed, and the bomb was found planted under a bridge. thumb Aftermath of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, KenyaBin Laden was indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. in June 1998, on a charges of conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the U.S. and prosecutors further charged that bin Laden was the head of al-Qaeda, and a major financier of Islamic fighters worldwide. This brought bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to the attention of the U.S. public for the first time. Al-Qaeda later claimed responsibility for the attacks. Reception to this initiative among U.S. and U.K. intelligence officials was mixed before 9/11.

title = The Guardian, 3 January 1999"Caveman terrorist spooks the West" Clinton ordered Operation Infinite Reach, a series of cruise missile strikes against al-Qaeda's training camps in Khost, Afghanistan; and Khartoum on 20 August 1998.

In November 1998, bin Laden was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in the Southern District Court of New York on charges relating to the embassy bombings. The evidence against him included courtroom testimony by former al-Qaeda members, and records from a satellite phone purchased for bin Laden by al-Qaeda agent Ziyad Khaleel in the U.S. The Taliban responded to the indictments by saying they would not extradite bin Laden to the U.S., saying there was insufficient evidence presented by the court, and that non-Muslim courts lacked standing to try Muslims.

In December 1998, the CIA reported to Clinton that al-Qaeda was preparing attacks to occur in the U.S., the preparations involving the training of personnel to hijack aircraft. In June 1999, the FBI placed bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In an attempt to force the Taliban to extradite bin Laden, Clinton tried to convince the United Nations (UN) to impose sanctions against Afghanistan. He was partially successful, as in October 1999, the UN designated al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization, officially obligating countries to freeze the assets of, and impose travel bans on, al-Qaeda members and their associates. Afterwards, the Taliban still did not extradite him.

In late 1999, the CIA and Pakistani military intelligence prepared a team of approximately sixty Pakistani commandos to infiltrate Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden, but the plan was aborted upon the Pakistani coup d'état in October. In 1998, a branch of al-Qaeda named 'al-Qaeda in Yemen' (AQY) began an insurgency against the Yemeni government in an attempt to control the region. The insurgency continues to this day,

Millennium attack plots and USS Cole bombing In 1999, al-Qaeda planned terrorist attacks to occur in multiple countries on and around New Year's Day 2000 (the date popularly considered the start of the new millennium). All the plans except one failed:

Four attacks in Jordan were planned by a terrorist cell that al-Qaeda established in Amman. Their plans were foiled on 30 November, when Jordanian intelligence intercepted a phone call from one of bin Laden's lieutenants, located in Pakistan, to a member of the cell in Amman. Indian Airlines Flight 814, departing Kathmandu for Delhi on 24 December, was hijacked. The perpetrators, members of the al-Qaeda-linked group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, first stopped in India, Pakistan, and the UAE, then stayed inside the plane on the ground in Kathmandu. They created a hostage crisis as they kept passengers on board, killing one, while demanding that India release three Muslim militants from prison. On the 31st, India brought both the hijackers and prisoners to the Taliban at the India–Pakistan border. Al-Qaeda attempted to bomb USS The Sullivans, a U.S. Navy ship docked in Aden, Yemen, on 3 January 2000. The perpetrators had planned to move a boat filled with explosives towards The Sullivans and then detonate them, but they added too many explosives, and the boat sunk before it could reach her. The terrorists then salvaged the boat and the explosives for use in a similar attempt at a later time. The side of USS Cole (DDG-67) after she was bombed in 2000The boat and explosives were used again in Aden on 12 October 2000, when al-Qaeda killed 17 U.S. Navy sailors by bombing another docked ship, USS Cole (DDG-67).

Kosovo War The Kosovo War (1998–1999) started over a possible separation of the region of Kosovo—home to many ethnic Albanians—from the Republic of Serbia and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later named Serbia and Montenegro). In 1998, the head of Albania's State Intelligence Service, Fatos Klosi, said that bin Laden had founded a terror network disguised as a humanitarian organization in Albania in 1994, and that the network were currently taking part in the Kosovo War. Claude Kader, who was a member, later testified to the network's existence while on trial. It was organized by some Islamic leaders in Western Europe allied to bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. By 1998, four members of EIJ were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt.

In 2002, then-former Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević claimed at his UN trial that he had received an FBI report claiming al-Qaeda had aided the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic-Albanian paramilitary that fought for Kosovar independence during the Kosovo War, while killing civilians. Milošević alleged that bin Laden had used Albania as a launchpad for violence in the Balkans, and that while Milošević led Yugoslavia (1997 to 2000), his government informed U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke that the KLA was being aided by al-Qaeda, yet the U.S. continued to work with the KLA afterwards. Thus, the U.S. may have been knowingly working with bin Laden, despite targeting him after the embassy bombings—and helping create the humanitarian crisis that the U.S. said necessitated the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

11 September 2001 attacks

On 11 September 2001, 19 al-Qaeda members hijacked four airliners departing the U.S. East Coast in an attempt to crash them into various national landmarks. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, both departing Boston en route to Los Angeles, were crashed into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, 1 and 2 World Trade Center (WTC), respectively. American Airlines Flight 77, departing Dulles, Virginia for Los Angeles, was crashed into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93, departing Newark, New Jersey for San Francisco, did not reach the hijackers' intended destination of Washington, D.C., as the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the other passengers tried to take back the cockpit from the hijackers. The Twin Towers eventually collapsed, destroying the World Trade Center. All of the hijackers and at least 2,977 victims died directly from the four hijackings. An estimated 25,000 people were injured.

Aftermath

The destroyed site of the World Trade Center was nicknamed "Ground Zero". Numerous people who were at the site during or after the attacks later received health issues resulting from inhalation exposure, caused by breathing dust from the collapse. More than 6,000 people have died from 9/11-related diseases as of 2026. The New York City government initially told rescue workers at Ground Zero that the air was safe to breathe. Other U.S. federal investigations included the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities and the 9/11 Commission. After the attacks, numerous countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation. Many U.S. federal agencies were founded to deter attacks like 9/11, including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Airport security was put under the TSA's operation, replacing the private security companies which were contracted by airlines. Extra security measures became mandated at airport security checkpoints. The U.S. also increased its collaboration with other countries on counter-terrorism, causing a decrease in Islamic terrorist cells in the country.

Planning

In 1996, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed presented bin Laden a modified version of the Bojinka plot idea; in the U.S., al-Qaeda would hijack ten airliners, crashing nine into landmarks. Onboard the tenth, Mohammed and other hijackers would kill every adult male passenger, then land the plane at a U.S. airport. There, Mohammed would give a speech about U.S. foreign policy, and the women and children would be released unharmed. but years later, approved him to work on a scaled back version.

In 1999, bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Mohammed Atef designed the general plan for 9/11. Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders chose the hijackers in 2000. Around 21 men, including Mohamed Atta, were selected; one, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was soon denied a U.S. visa, and a likely selection, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested in August 2001, so there were ultimately 19. Bin al-Shibh instead acted as a liaison between the hijackers and al-Qaeda's leadership during the preparations.

In the months before 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies received numerous warnings about an incoming attack on the country by al-Qaeda. At the time, many of the agencies did not significantly cooperate with each other on investigations, so the government did not piece these warnings together to make a cohesive picture of the upcoming attack. In July 2001, FBI agent Kenneth Williams wrote the 'Phoenix Memo', a warning circulated within the FBI that bin Laden was sending his followers to Arizona for flight training. It was not seen by the agency's leadership until after the attacks. On 6 August, Bush received an intelligence report titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." [sic].

Responsibility

On the day of the attacks, U.S. and German intelligence intercepted communications that pointed to bin Laden's responsibility for them. That night, U.S. president George W. Bush wrote in his diary that "we think it's Osama bin Laden." U.S. and U.K. intelligence later stated that evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to 9/11 is clear and irrefutable.

In November 2001, U.S. troops in Afghanistan found a videotape in which bin Laden discusses with Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi what is likely 9/11.

In a 2004 video, bin Laden unambiguously confirmed that he had organized 9/11. He also threatened new attacks against the U.S., and accused George W. Bush of negligence in not preventing the hijackings. One released in 2006 shows bin Laden with bin al-Shibh and two 9/11 hijackers, Hamza al-Ghamdi and Wail al-Shehri, as they made preparations for the attacks. In a 2007 video, bin Laden denied that the Taliban had any foreknowledge of 9/11.

Alleged Saudi role

The 9/11 Commission Report stated that the "origin of [al-Qaeda's] funds remains unknown", and that they "have seen no evidence that any foreign government or foreign government official supplied any funding" for 9/11. Saudi Arabia has denied this.

Multiple U.S. federal agencies investigated possible financial ties between Saudi Arabia and bin Laden prior to 9/11. After 9/11, BBC News quoted a source within U.S. intelligence who claimed that after Bush was inaugurated as president that January, his administration forced the agencies to stop looking into any connections.

In 2002, the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities publicly released its final report on 9/11. 28 pages of it were classified at the request of the Bush administration. They were declassified in 2016, and include details of alleged Saudi involvement in the attacks; they mention that, "while in the United States, some of [the] hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government".

Militant and political career, 2001–2011

Manhunt for bin Laden and the War in Afghanistan

The U.S. launched a global 'war on terror' in response to 9/11, which included a manhunt for bin Laden. Shortly after the attacks, the Taliban refused to extradite him to the U.S.; they offered to try him before an Islamic court, which the U.S. rejected. The CIA's Special Activities Division was given the lead in tracking down, and then killing or capturing him. The Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association offered an additional $2 million reward.

Starting on 7 October 2001, a U.S.-led international coalition invaded Afghanistan, to depose the Taliban and capture al-Qaeda members, especially bin Laden. On 14 October, the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to a third-party country for trial, in return for the U.S. ending the invasion. This was rejected by Bush, who said that the U.S.' position was non-negotiable: "there's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty." The CIA, meanwhile, was closely tracking bin Laden's movements in hopes to catch him. On 10 November, they spotted him near Jalalabad traveling in a convoy of two hundred pickup trucks. They then headed towards al-Qaeda's training camp within their defensive complex at Tora Bora, in the Safed Koh mountain range. It was twenty miles from Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. Early in the battle, CIA intelligence had indicated that bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were trapped in the caves of the complex, and on 1 December, CIA officer Gary Berntsen requested General Tommy Franks to send U.S. Army Rangers to block off the mountain passes into Pakistan and cut off bin Laden's escape. Franks denied the request, as he agreed with the Bush administration that Pakistan would capture bin Laden if he tried to cross the border.

With the battle's end, the Taliban had been deposed. Afterwards, its members reformed into the Taliban insurgency, which fought the U.S., its allies, and the new Afghan government until the Taliban retook the country in 2021. Later accounts based on interviews with Afghan participants in his escape instead place him in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan during the months following the battle.

Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri descended from Tora Bora to Jalalabad, where they stayed at the home of Afghan commander Awal Gul. They then continued to Asadabad, where they were handed over to men under the command of Kashmir Khan, before settling in a village in the Shaigal District under the protection of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar joined them there in February 2002 and narrowly escaped a U.S. drone strike in May after using a satellite telephone.

In early 2004, bin Laden's bodyguards began purchasing land in Abbottabad for the construction of a new compound. Bin Laden moved into the completed compound in August 2005 with two of his wives, six of his children, and the two bodyguards and their families.

Al-Qaeda operations after 9/11

After 9/11, Interpol issued a warrant for Ayman al-Zawahiri's arrest, over his involvement in the attacks. While in hiding, he became the spokesperson for al-Qaeda, issuing its fatwas and appearing in its video statements to the public. Throughout the 2000s, he formed al-Qaeda franchises in Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Uzbekistan. The Guardian writes that by 2009, U.S. intelligence thought of al-Zawahiri as "al-Qaeda’s strategic commander, relegating bin Laden to ideological figurehead." At these locations, the U.S. deployed torture methods, officially named 'enhanced interrogation techniques', against prisoners, sometimes in an attempt to get info about al-Qaeda. Research has found that torture does not work as an interrogation technique, and often leads to the victims giving false info. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh hid in Pakistan after 9/11. Both were tortured at CIA black sites.

On 12 October 2002, on the Indonesian island of Bali, Jemaah Islamiyah detonated three bombs, two on Kuta Beach at locations historically popular with Australian tourists, and one at an Australian consulate. The attacks killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian. Hundreds of others were wounded.

In London on 7 July 2005, a London Bus and three trains in the London Underground were hit by terrorist bombings, which killed 52 people and injured over 700. On 21 July, four more bombs were detonated in the city, but caused no deaths or injuries. The terrorist cells behind both attacks were linked to al-Qaeda.

In 2009, al-Zawahiri merged al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Qaeda of Saudi Arabia into 'al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula' (AQAP). The Guardian writes that AQAP "proved to be the most loyal and effective of [the al-Qaeda] franchises" that al-Zawahiri established in the 2000s. Notably, American officials tortured Bagram's prisoners during interrogations in the 2000s, and might have still done so by 2012. According to the U.S., Sidiqi told them that bin Laden had recently ordered al-Qaeda to conduct terrorist attacks across Europe. Bin Laden's plot was ultimately foiled by European authorities.

Iraq War Led by the U.S., an international coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein's government, starting the Iraq War (2003–2011). In the lead-up to the invasion, the Bush administration tied Saddam to al-Qaeda and 9/11, despite having no evidence internally that Iraq was involved in the attacks. Saddam's government was toppled in April. Opponents of the invasion then formed the Iraqi insurgency, which fought the coalition and the coalition-installed replacement government. In 2004, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the Sunni Iraqi insurgent group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ), declared the group's allegiance to al-Qaeda, in exchange for bin Laden publicly recognizing him as the head of a new version of JTJ, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Al-Zarqawi intended to use the destabilization caused by the insurgency's war against the coalition to further the sectarian violence between Iraqi Sunnis and Shias, by attacking Shias and their holy sites. He strived for a sectarian civil war that would reestablish the national Sunni dominance over Shias that had been dissolved upon Hussein's ousting. In 2006, AQI claimed responsibility for the 22 February bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq—one of the holiest Shia sites—which destroyed its upper exterior. The sectarian violence increased as al-Zarqawi intended.

The vacancy in AQI's leadership after al-Zarqawi's death led the organization to become the Islamic State of Iraq; its allegiance to al-Qaeda continued. The Islamic State of Iraq decided to capture large swaths of territory in Iraq while fighting the coalition, diminishing support for al-Qaeda among Sunnis who opposed the coalition—even extremist militants. The violence between Sunnis and Shias only decreased after 2007, as the Islamic State of Iraq was weakened by greater retaliation from Muslims, and as the U.S. dramatically increased their troop numbers in Iraq in an attempt to stabilize the country.

Continued manhunt

U.S. government activities, 2006–2009 In July 2006, The New York Times revealed, based on anonymous CIA sources, that the Bin Laden Issue Station had been shut down in late 2005. In September 2006, the U.S. military revealed that al-Qaeda member Atiyah Abd al-Rahman had sent a letter to al-Zarqawi in December 2005—which was found in one of al-Zarqawi's Iraqi safe houses after his death—that indicated bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda's leadership were concurrently in the Waziristan region of Pakistan; al-Rahman instructed al-Zarqawi to send messengers to Waziristan so that they could meet with the other leaders. The letter indicated that the al-Qaeda organization had been weakened after experiencing various problems. U.S. and Afghan forces again raided the Tora Bora caves in August 2007, after receiving intelligence of a planned meeting between al-Qaeda members for before Ramadan. After killing dozens of al-Qaeda and Taliban members, they did not find either bin Laden or al-Zawahiri. thumb

During Barack Obama's campaign for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, he pledged: "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority." As president, Obama rejected the Bush administration's strategy to focus on bin Laden's relation to other militant groups like Hamas or Hezbollah as part of the manhunt. Obama instead narrowed the U.S.' focus onto al-Qaeda and its direct affiliates.

ABC News later wrote that "by the summer of 2009, the trail for bin Laden had gone cold. The CIA simply had no tangible evidence of any place he'd been since [the Battle of Tora Bora]." In December, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the U.S. had had no reliable information on the whereabouts of bin Laden in years. (This was in response to a Taliban detainee in Pakistan recently telling authorities that bin Laden was in Afghanistan earlier in 2009.) The detainee said that in January or February, he met a trusted associate who claimed he had seen bin Laden in Afghanistan about 15 to 20 days earlier. Gates said he could not confirm this story. In 2002, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov suggested that bin Laden was hiding in Pankisi, Georgia, amid the Pankisi Gorge crisis.

In February 2009, a UCLA research team concluded, based on geographical analysis of satellite imagery, that three compounds in Parachinar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were bin Laden's likely hideouts. In December, Pakistani prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani rejected claims that bin Laden was in the country. Pakistan said that its intelligence resources were limited, and were thus focused on their war against the Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents, rather than finding bin Laden. In February 2010, Afghan president Hamid Karzai arrived in Saudi Arabia for diplomatic talks regarding the Taliban. During the visit, an anonymous official of the Saudi Foreign Affairs Ministry declared that the House of Saud had no intention of getting involved in peacemaking efforts in Afghanistan unless the Taliban severed ties with extremists and expelled bin Laden, allegedly under their protection. In June, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah reported that bin Laden was hiding in the town of Sabzevar, Iran.

U.S. discovery of bin Laden's compound

In August 2010, as U.S. intelligence was surveilling a man they knew to be a courier of bin Laden, Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he entered a compound in the city of Abbottabad. He continued to frequently the visit the compound under surveillance, and the U.S. eventually theorized that bin Laden was living inside it. It was less than from the Pakistan Military Academy, and less than from Islamabad.

U.S. intelligence later determined that it was probably built for bin Laden, and may have been his home for at least five years. Satellite imagery of the area in 2004 shows no building on the plot.

In July 2011, it was publicized that after the U.S. discovered the compound, to confirm bin Laden's occupancy, the CIA organized a campaign of free, secretly fake hepatitis B vaccinations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They hoped one of bin Laden's relatives living with him would receive one, so that the CIA could then extract their DNA from their blood in the needle, and compare it to bin Laden's sister's DNA, which U.S. officials had obtained after she died in Boston in 2010. The operation ultimately failed, and its disclosure helped influence vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan, causing a rise in polio cases there. bin Laden was shot and killed at his compound in Abbottabad, shortly after 1:00 a.m. PKT, in a raid by a U.S. military special operations unit. The raid, Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by Obama that April, and carried out in a CIA operation by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs from SEAL Team Six, part of the Joint Special Operations Command. They were supported by CIA operatives on the ground. The raid was launched from Afghanistan.

It was widely reported by the press that bin Laden was fatally wounded by SEAL Robert J. O'Neill; however, this has also been widely discredited by witnesses, who claim that bin Laden was possibly already dead by the time O'Neill arrived, having been injured by an anonymous SEAL nicknamed 'Red'. SEAL Matt Bissonnette claims that bin Laden died after Bissonnette and another SEAL shot him in the chest multiple times.

The SEALs took bin Laden's body with them out of Abbottabad. When detailing the raid to reporters, U.S. officials said that afterwards, his body was flown to Afghanistan for identification, then to the USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea, from which it was buried at sea in accordance with Islamic customs. Subsequent reporting has called this account into question.

Aftermath Upon the news of bin Laden's death, there were large celebrations outside the White House, and in New York City. The Washington Post described the Arab world's reaction as "muted". In Latin America, political leaders' views on his killing varied. Its supporters included Peru's then-leftist president Alan García, who labeled it "the first miracle performed by [the late Pope] John Paul II" after being beatified the week prior; others denounced the U.S. for violating Pakistani sovereignty to perform the raid. In India, the revelation of possible ties between bin Laden and Pakistan's government caused "jubilation", as many residents felt it demonstrated a moral superiority of India over Pakistan, its historical adversary.

The U.S. claimed on 18 May that they would not pay anyone bin Laden's bounty reward of $25 million USD. Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded bin Laden as emir of al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda's affiliates through Asia and Africa swore allegiance to him. He served until he was killed in 2022. In 2016, released documents revealed that bin Laden had once asked family members to use for "jihad" the $29 million USD they were allegedly supposed to inherit from him upon his death. He said the money was in Sudan, but not if it was in cash or assets. It is not known if any family members ultimately received the money.

Controversy over alleged Pakistani support

After bin Laden's death, Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., promised a "full inquiry" into how the ISI could have failed to find bin Laden in a fortified compound so close to Islamabad: "Obviously bin Laden did have a support system. [Was] that support system within the government [of] Pakistan, or within the society of Pakistan?"

For years, the U.S. and Pakistan dually maintained that no Pakistani officials had known of bin Laden's location, nor Operation Neptune Spear prior to Neptune Spear. Journalists gave conflicting views on these claims. Carlotta Gall reported in 2014 that Ahmad Shuja Pasha, while serving as head of the ISI from 2008 to 2012, knew of bin Laden's location —and in 2015, Seymour Hersh cited U.S. sources in reporting that: Nelly Lahoud, who analyzed the documents seized during the operation to kill bin Laden, wrote that "even a casual reading of the Bin Laden Papers makes it abundantly clear that Usama and his associates went to great lengths to hide from the Pakistani authorities", and it would be difficult to imagine that bin Laden himself did not know he was being held hostage.

In 2019, the U.S. and Pakistan's prior claims were contradicted by Imran Khan, Pakistani prime minister from 2018 to 2022, when he commented that the ISI had led the CIA to bin Laden: "[...] it was ISI that gave the information which led to the location of Osama bin Laden. If you ask CIA, it was ISI which gave the initial location through the phone connection." He did not explain this further.

Personal life

Adult bin Laden was described as thin, tall, and weighing about . He usually walked with a cane, Al-Bahri said that bin Laden once played association football and volleyball, and that when the two knew each other, bin Laden was obsessed with black horses, and the English football club Arsenal. They had eleven children, and separated days before 9/11. In 1983, he married Khadijah Sharif. They had three children, then divorced in 1993. Osama married Siham Sabir in 1987, and they had four children. His fifth marriage was to an unnamed woman in 1996; it was annulled within days of the ceremony. In 2000, he married Amal al-Sadah, and they had five children. +Bin Laden's wives and children (and after his death.)

In the West, bin Laden is overwhelmingly regarded as a terrorist and mass murderer. His New York Times obituary wrote that Americans generally viewed him as the main symbol of global terrorism, and equivalent to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. Upon bin Laden's death, the Pew Research Center found that he had become "discredited" to his Arab supporters over the preceding years, according to polling. In 2020, Imran Khan denounced bin Laden's killing, labeling it "an embarrassing moment" in Pakistan's history. He praised bin Laden as a "martyr". A rogue bull Asian elephant responsible for at least 27 deaths and the destruction of property in the Indian state of Assam was named after bin Laden.