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Bin Laden: Dead or alive?
AFP
DUBAI
Petroleumworld.com 09 24 06
Killed by typhoid or alive and plotting more bloodletting -- the fate of Osama bin Laden, the Western world's most wanted terror mastermind but a pied piper for a generation of radicalised Muslim youth, is again surrounded by a swirl of speculation.
The Al-Qaeda leader's supposed death, reported by a French regional newspaper, has been greeted with scepticism by politicians, counter-terrorism experts and the Saudis, the supposed source of the report.
Rumours of the demise of bin Laden have surfaced in the past but the six-foot-five inch (1.92 metre) Saudi-born millionaire has come back to haunt his enemies with sporadic threats, broadcast mainly through the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television from unknown locations.
French regional newspaper L'Est Republicain said the Saudi intelligence service had concluded that bin Laden had succumbed to typhoid fever while hiding in Pakistan in late August.
But the Saudi embassy in Washington issued a statement saying it had "no evidence to support" the claim and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had "no knowledge" of bin Laden's demise.
With his long grey-flecked beard and ever-present Kalashnikov, bin Laden became the reviled symbol of global terrorism after openly claiming responsibility for bringing down New York's World Trade Centre in 2001.
He began building Al-Qaeda (The Base), his network of radical Islamists, during the US-backed resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
But the group's wrath later blew back on the United States in an apocalyptic crescendo on September 11, 2001 -- transforming bin Laden into the world's most-wanted man with a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head.
He was born in the Saudi city of Jeddah in 1955, the 12th son of construction magnate Mohammed bin Aaud bin Laden, who was originally from Yemen. His Syrian mother was Mohammed's fourth wife.
After a childhood of privilege, he is believed to have inherited tens of millions of dollars after his father's death in 1968.
According to former associates, bin Laden revelled in the role of playboy from a family that amassed a huge fortune in the Saudi oil boom.
In the nightclubs of the Lebanese capital Beirut he was known as free-spending and fun-loving. When he completed his engineering degree in 1975, there were no signs
he had any interest in politics.
By his own account, all that changed in 1979.
Egypt's decision to make peace with Israel, the Islamic revolution in Iran and above all the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan fostered the young bin Laden's vision of Muslims worldwide coming together to fight Western treachery.
"One day in Afghanistan is like one thousand days of praying in an ordinary mosque," he later recalled.
Inspired by the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation, bin Laden spent the first few years of the war fundraising across the Islamic world.
In 1984 he moved to the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, a staging point for mainly Arab militants who -- funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia -- fought jihad (holy war) against the Soviets.
It was there that he began the groundwork for Al-Qaeda. Stories abounded of a humble but well-dressed nobleman visiting injured fighters and dispensing largesse.
Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal, with the structure of Al-Qaeda established and a network of loyal militants across the Arab world.
Shocked by the feudalism and corruption in his homeland, he began to openly criticize the ruling House of Saud and in 1991 he was expelled from the kingdom and went to Sudan with his four wives and 10 children.
There he consolidated Al-Qaeda, and around this time Western intelligence agencies began to link the organisation to attacks on US forces in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
He left Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996 with a core group of fighters.
There he teamed up with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, providing cash and fighters which helped the militia take control of most of Afghanistan.
The Al-Qaeda-Taliban union was sealed when Omar married one of bin Laden's daughters, and Afghanistan became a magnet for thousands of young Muslims who travelled to Al-Qaeda training camps inspired by bin Laden's calls for Jihad.
After the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people, bin Laden's reputation went global.
Despite being US enemy number one, he has remained elusive and out of reach, even after US forces launched their military campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001 and helped to topple the Taliban and scatter Al-Qaeda.
But frequent reports of bin Laden's demise, fuelled by reports of a kidney problem and that he needs a cane to walk, have so far proved exaggerated.
AFP 24 0907 GMT 09 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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