In 2008, then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had told a foreign news agency that Pakistan was not specifically looking for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as there was no proof of his being there.
“We are not particularly looking for him, but we are operating against terrorists and the Al Qaeda and Taliban. And in the process, obviously, combined, may be we are looking for him also,” Mr Musharraf had said in a television interview.

Asked what Pakistan was doing to find the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Mr Musharraf said it was fighting extremism and terrorism. “We are fighting first of all Al Qaeda. Let’s take Al Qaeda. We have arrested or eliminated about 700 Al Qaeda leaders ... which other country has done this?” “Well, which other country has Bin Laden?” his interviewer replied, inciting a sharp retort from the Pakistani leader.
Almost 10 years after 9/11, following a series of denials, deceit, double-dealing etc. by Pakistan about his whereabouts, the CIA-Seals team proved that Osama bin Laden was not only in Pakistan, but in a very well-shielded mansion barely 2 km away from the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad cantonment.
Thomas Mockaitis’ book on Osama bin Laden is a concise account which unfolds how a wealthy, pious Saudi became the hero of the terrorist world and the mastermind of the world’s deadliest kind of terrorist mass destruction attack on 9/11.
His revolt against the westernisation of the Arab world, sacrificing a luxurious life made, his followers consider him as a veritable king of the terrorist world.
The book starts with a brief description of the formation of Saudi Arabia and the discovery in 1930 of the most valuable resource lying beneath the deserts.
This discovery woke the Western world, causing a sea change in its view of Saudi Arabia, which was a backward country in every respect.
European engineers and workers with knowledge of extracting petroleum and refining it to its consumable state started pouring in.
Rather than improving the infrastructure to ameliorate the lot of common people, the country’s founder, Abdul Aziz, and his successors spent most of the resources in building palaces and living the high life.
The entry of Western culture caused a conflict of interests between those wanting to preserve the conservative way of life and the need to modernise, thus giving rise to a conservative Islamic movement known as Islamism.
Osama’s father Mohammed bin Laden, who made a huge fortune out of his construction business, married 22 times and fathered 54 children, all of whom were assured luxurious lives. Having lost his father at the age of 10, Bin Laden’s exposure to extremely conservative ideas by his Syrian physical education teacher in school led to him being moulded differently compared to his siblings. Unlike his father, he did not believe in serial marriages, confining himself to four wives as the Prophet allowed, he did have a passion for racing horses.
The 1979 Afghan-Soviet war provided Osama with the ideal opportunity to bring his beliefs into practice. The Afghan-Soviet war gave rise to mujahideen, who considered themselves holy warriors. The CIA supported them with funds and arms and used Pakistan as the third party to train them to fight the US’ proxy war with the Soviets.
Afghan insurgents also got covert support from all over the Muslim world, especially Saudi Arabia. A Palestinian Islamist, Abdullah Azzam, finding Bin Laden’s views similar to his own, further influenced him to use the Bin Laden family wealth to fund and started a service bureau to recruit, transport, shelter and fund Arab volunteers for the war in Afghanistan.
Named Maktab al Khidmat (MAK), it was suitably located in Peshawar, Pakistan. After the war, the Taliban took over Afghanistan and a split in MAK led to Bin Laden and its extremist faction forming the Al Qaeda, which was run by five committees.
The military committee ran the training camps and procured weapons and the others were media, Islamic study committee, travel, and finance committees.
The Al Qaeda developed certain membership standards which required open-ended commitment to the organisation and also reference from an existing member, well known and trusted by the Al Qaeda leaders.
The Al Qaeda flourished as an international corporation with headquarters and branch offices. Funded by Bin Laden himself in its early days, later wealthy Saudis and the other supporters throughout the Muslim world funded it. Currently narcotics trafficking is one of the greatest sources of income for both Al Qaeda and Taliban.
In search of jihad in the early 90s, Laden once more turned his attention to the anti-Communist struggle in south Yemen. But in spite of sending Al Qaeda fighters to support the rebels against the Communist government, north and south Yemen united peacefully.
As he did not like the arrangement he continued to fund the rebel activity, going against the Saudi government and the monarchy, which resulted in his passport getting confiscated, ceasing all his activities.
Within a few months when the Gulf war started, Laden’s offer of military help to the Saudi government was refused and instead it called upon the US to help throw Saddam out of Iraq. Losing all his faith in the Saudi government, Laden decided on voluntary exile.
By early 1994, no other country except Afghanistan was ready to accept Osama, who was expelled by Saudi Arabia. Taliban leader Mullah Omar, by then in absolute power, welcomed Laden. Both of them shared a common view of jihad and hatred for the West. Emboldened with the success of Al Qaeda, he worked hard to achieve one of his major goals, the September 11, 2001 attacks, unprecedented in the history of terrorism. Nineteen hijackers boarded four aircraft. Two of them flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre and the third into the Pentagon. The fourth was forced to crash by the courageous passengers before it reached its target destination.
While a few players in Bin Laden’s plan were captured by the US, he remained elusive for 10 years and at least once escaping by a hair’s breadth, some painstaking intelligence work bore fruit. Bin Laden finally came into the crosshairs of US surveillance and was kept under close watch for some time till US President Barack Obama gave his approval for launching Operation Geronimo. Finally, on May 2, 2011, in a meticulously planned operation, the US special forces team was flown to the target in pre-dawn darkness.
The operation and its success became far more significant, with the target being in the military station of Abbottabad, about 100 km north of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
The fact that Bin Laden, with some of his family members and trusted couriers had been staying in this mansion for at least six of the 10 years of his elusiveness also threw the lid off the sheer duplicity of Mr Musharraf, the Pakistan Army and its infamous military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.
The last important part of the process of killing Bin Laden was committing his last remains to the seabed, so that he could not be deified. Crowds gathered at Ground Zero in New York City to celebrate the end of the world’s worst terrorist.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi