Osama bin Laden: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies) by Thomas R. Mockaitis

Author:Thomas R. Mockaitis [Mockaitis, Thomas R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: 0313353743 9780313353741
Published: 2011-01-07T03:25:52.584000+00:00

72

O S A M A B I N L A D E N

Bin Laden approached the chief of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki,

offering to send al-Qaeda fi ghters into South Yemen to support the reb-

els. He would even help fund the operation. The prince later claimed

that he turned bin Laden down fl at. “ I advised him at the time that that

was not an acceptable idea,” Turki recalled. However, Richard Clarke, a

terrorism expert in the Clinton administration, maintains that Turki ac-

tually asked bin Laden “to organize a fundamentalist religion-based re-

sistance to the communist-style regime.” 4 Steve Riedel, a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, maintains that the Saudi government

wanted to overthrow the communists in Yemen but that “it did not want

a private army doing its bidding.” 5 Whatever transpired between the leader

of al-Qaeda and the head of Saudi intelligence became moot when the

Cold War ended. North and South Yemen reunited peacefully in May

1990. Bin Laden did not like the arrangement, which incorporated for-

mer communists into the new government, and continued to fund rebel

activity without permission from the Saudi government. His defi ance of

the monarchy brought a swift and harsh response. The Saudi minister of

the interior, Prince Nayif bin Abdul Aziz, a full brother of the king, called bin Laden into his offi ce, ordered him to cease his activities at once, and confi scated his passport. 6

THE GULF WAR

Bin Laden had little time to brood about this offi cial rebuke before

another more ominous crisis developed. On August 2, 1990, Saddam

Husain invaded the tiny country of Kuwait, at the head of the Persian

Gulf on Saudi Arabia’s northern border. Angry that Kuwait had refused

to cancel Iraqi debts accumulated during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam

accused the wealthy emirate of driving down oil prices through over-

production and of slant drilling into Iraqi oilfi elds. The 100,000-man

Iraqi invasion force, part of Saddam’s army of half a million, posed an

immediate threat to Saudi Arabia. The tiny Saudi army could not possi-

bly defend the kingdom against Iraqi forces within easy striking distance

of its oilfi elds and population centers.

Fresh from what he considered his victory over the Soviets, Osama bin Laden offered to defend his country and to expel the hated dictator from neighboring Kuwait. He approached the Saudi government,

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