# Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) was the Saudi-born founder of al-Qaeda and the mastermind behind the [[September 11 Attacks]] — the man whose terrorist network triggered two decades of American war. ## From Mujahideen to al-Qaeda The son of a wealthy Saudi construction family, bin Laden joined the US- and Saudi-backed mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s — a cause Washington funded through the [[CIA]] in one of the Cold War's great unintended consequences. From that network he built al-Qaeda, turning its jihadist energy against the United States over its military presence in Saudi Arabia and its support for Israel. He directed the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings and the 2000 USS Cole attack before orchestrating 9/11 from sanctuary in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. ## The Hunt and the Killing The failure to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001 helped turn the [[Afghanistan War]] into an open-ended occupation. He spent a decade in hiding, eventually in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where US Navy SEALs killed him on May 2, 2011, in a raid ordered by President [[Barack Obama]]. For the vault, bin Laden is the catalyst of the [[War on Terror]] and the [[Forever Wars]]: a single non-state actor whose attack restructured American foreign policy, civil liberties, and politics for a generation — and whose pursuit the [[Iraq War]] was cynically folded into despite no operational link. *See also: [[September 11 Attacks]], [[Afghanistan War]], [[War on Terror]], [[Forever Wars]]*