Osama bin Laden Background

Born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1957 into an Yemeni family, Osama bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His commitment to the spread of a fundamentalist variant of Islam is traced back to the late 1970s when he established links with the cadre of the Muslim Brotherhood while pursuing a civil engineering degree at King Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. On graduating, he formed the Islamic Salvation Foundation in Saudi Arabia, through which he is reported to have initially funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, where he later emerged as a key player in the fight against the erstwhile Soviet Union. While in Afghanistan, he founded the Maktab al-Khidimat (MAK), which recruited terrorists from around the world and also imported material to aid the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Army. Bin Laden fought alongside the Afghan guerrillas during the US-backed Jehad, or ‘holy war’, against the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. During the Afghan conflict, bin Laden is also reported to have established many terrorist-training camps.