Paulding County School District
OPERATION DESERT STORM
Operation Desert Storm, popularly known as the first Gulf War, was the successful U.S.-Allied response to Iraq's attempt to overwhelm neighboring Kuwait. Kuwait's liberation in 1991 brought to the battlefield a new era of military technology. Nearly all battles were aerial and ground combat within Iraq, Kuwait, and outlying areas of Saudi Arabia. Iraq inflicted little damage on the American coalition; however, they fired missiles on Israeli citizens.
History
At the request of the Kuwaitis, Kuwait had become a British Protectorate in 1889. British forces protected the area until 1961. Kuwait was a part of Iraq until 1923, when borders were drawn. On June 19, 1961, British protection ended and Kuwait joined the Arab League. Iraq objected strongly and claimed that Kuwait was part of their territory. Kuwait formed its own constitution on January 1963. Accordingly, the emir held the executive power, organized with a group of ministers. By January 23, a national assembly was elected. By October, 1963, Iraq gave up its claim on Kuwait. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein wanted to regain that lost land for Iraq, and so he invaded.
Leading up to war
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been making threats against Kuwait for some time, but his actual invasion caught most of the world by surprise. The magnitude of the invasion also was a surprise. Those who had expected an attack, such as the commander of U.S. Central Command, Norman Schwarzkopf, expected a limited attack to seize Kuwaiti oil fields. Instead, within a number of hours, Iraqi forces had seized downtown Kuwait City and were headed south toward the Saudi Arabia border.
Word of the Iraqi attack reached Washington, D.C., as Iraqi forces assembled at the Saudi border. The Pentagon had plans in place to aid the Saudis, and U.S. forces went on standby for the Saudis' request. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Schwarzkopf met with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to brief him on the plans, which he approved. Within minutes of the meeting, orders were issued, and thus began the largest buildup of American forces since the Vietnam War. Within a short period, members of the 82nd Airborne Division, as well as 300 combat aircraft, were headed for Saudi Arabia.
A deadline set for Saddam Hussein
By the end of September 1990, there were nearly 200,000 American personnel in Saudi Arabia — enough to repel any Iraqi attack.
The initial plan to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait called for a direct offensive aimed at Kuwait City; but Schwarzkopf and other American commanders thought that the risk was too great against heavily armed, well-entrenched defenders. Instead, they called for additional troops to prepare for the largest military cleanup ever seen.
President Bush (with Saudi approval) ordered an additional 140,000 soldiers, including the Third Armored Division with its Abrams M1A tanks. During that period, reinforcements from numerous other nations arrived, including British, French, Egyptian and even Syrian forces. On November 29, the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15.
Superior U.S. Air Power
On the morning of January 16, 1991, Allied forces began the first phase of Desert Storm, also known as Desert Shield. American forces first destroyed Iraqi border radar stations, then other key elements of the Iraqi anti-aircraft network; lastly, they began to bomb key targets in downtown Iraq, including the presidential palace, communication centers, and power stations. The Allied forces lost only two aircraft during the attacks. The assault continued day and night.
Those initial air attacks constituted the first time the American military witnessed how their new arsenal performed in combat conditions. With such ground systems as the M1A1 Abrams missile and the MIM-104 Patriot missile, the Iraq military had little opportunity to defend themselves. Also, such other groundbreaking technology as the Global Positioning System (GPS), helped to pinpoint hits by the Tomahawk missile and other weapons.
The damage done by U.S. air attacks was devastating to Saddam's vaunted Republican Guard. The following U.S. aircraft left "a big hurt" on the enemy during the war: AH-64 Apache helicopters, B-52 Stratofortress bombers, E-3 AWACS surveillance aircraft, F-117A Stealth fighters, E-8C JSTARS radar command posts, and the RPVs (drones).
Overall, the coalition air campaign (consisting mostly of U.S. pilots) accumulated a total of 109,876 sorties over the 43-day air war — averaging 2,555 sorties per day. Of those, more than 27,000 sorties struck enemy Scuds, airfields, air defenses, electrical power, biological and chemical weapons caches, headquarters, intelligence assets, communications, the Iraqi army, and oil refineries.
Scuds fired at Israel and the attack on Al Khafji
At 3 a.m on January 17, the Iraqis fired seven Scud missiles at Israel. Israelis were awaiting the Scuds with gas masks on, thanks to Saddam's previous threats to burn half of Israel with chemical weapons. As it turned out, the Scuds bore only conventional warheads, but their terror value was high. To avoid a wider war, U.S. officials pleaded with Israeli officials to not respond to the Scud attacks. The Israelis agreed because the Americans promised to target all Scud missile sites and knock them out.
On January 29, following two weeks of punishing coalition air assaults, the Iraqis mounted their one and only attack subsequent to the invasion at the Battle of Khafji. The Iraqi Fifth Mechanized Division attacked south, capturing the Saudi town of Al Khafji eight miles south of the Kuwaiti border. The Iraqis overran the first Saudi force that attempted a counterattack and, despite massive American air attacks, they held on to the town through the day and night. The next day was a different story, however, when Saudis recaptured the town, forcing the remaining Iraqis to flee to the Kuwaiti border.
Operation Desert Sabre
After a 38-day air campaign, Operation Desert Sabre, a massive ground attack, was launched by Americans and the coalition into both Iraq and Kuwait.
Day One ground attack. On February 24th at 4 a.m., Allied troops led by U.S. Marines crossed the border into Iraq. During the days before the attack, Iraqi troops had been subjected to merciless air attacks; every imaginable target was destroyed with accuracy.
The Allied offensive targeted three major offensive venues: the first aimed at Kuwait City, the second to the west aimed at the Iraqi flank, and the final one far to the west, beyond the major Iraqi lines that would totally outflank Iraqi lines. In the first day of the war the marines advanced halfway to Kuwait City and the western advances proceeded without difficulty — while capturing thousands of Iraqi deserters. The first day of ground fighting resulted in minimal American casualties.
Day Two ground attack. As Day Two approached, an Iraqi Scud missile destroyed the U.S. barracks in Dhahran, killing 28 U.S. soldiers. With morale nevertheless high, American troops advanced on all fronts. The marines approached Kuwait City, while the western flank began to cut off the Iraqi Army's retreat route. Coalition casualties for Day Two were, once again, light.
Day Three ground attack Day Three dawned on the largest tank battle in history. The American armored forces engaged the tank forces of the Iraqi Republican guard. Like shooting fish in a barrel, the American tanks destroyed the Iraqi heavy armor without losing a single tank.
On February 26th, Iraqi troops began to retreat from Kuwait while setting fire to an estimated 700 Kuwaiti oil wells. A long convoy of Iraqi troops, as well as Iraqi and Palestinian civilians, formed along the main Iraq-Kuwait highway. That convoy was bombed so relentlessly by the Allies that it came to be known as the "Highway of Death." One hundred hours after the ground campaign began, President Bush declared a cease-fire — declaring the liberation of Kuwait on February 27, 1991.
Postwar Epilogue
On April 5th, 1991, President Bush announced that U.S. relief supply airdrops would be made to Kurdish refugees in Turkey and northern Iraq. After Iraq issued its acceptance of a cease-fire, Task Force Provide Comfort was formed and deployed to assist the Kurds.
The U.S. transport delivered some 72,000 pounds of supplies in the first six Operation Provide Comfort missions. By April 20, the construction of the first Provide Comfort tent city began near Zakhu, Iraq. By war's end, U.S. forces released 71,204 Iraqi prisoners to Saudi control.
U.S. casualties
Army: 98 battle; 105 nonbattle
Navy: six battle; eight nonbattle
Marines: 24 battle; 26 nonbattle
Air Force: 20 battle; six nonbattle.
Resulting in 148 U.S. battle deaths, and 145 nonbattle deaths, including 15 women. Wounded in action: 467.
Iraqi casualties
Of Iraq's 545,000 troops in the Kuwait theater of operations, an estimated 100,000 were killed, and 300,000 were wounded.
I led my country in confrontation by an aggression launched by 33 countries led by U.S., which waged war against Iraq, the Iraqis' confrontation of which is called by Arabs and Iraqis as the Battle of Battles (Um Al-Ma’arik), where Iraq stood fast against the invasion, maintaining its sovereignty and political system.
- Saddam Hussein's journal.
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INVASION OF IRAQ
The American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 toppled the brutal authoritarian government of Saddam Hussein, but unleashed a massive sectarian civil war that, as of late 2007, has no end in sight.
At the heart of the struggle is the ascent by the majority Shiite Arabs to ruling status. Fervently opposed to the Shiite-led government are armed factions of Sunni Arabs who chafe at the overturning of the old order. British colonialists installed Sunni Arabs as proxy rulers in the early 20th century, and Sunni families and tribes managed to hold onto power after Iraq was granted independence and even as the country's Shiite population steadily increased. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni strongman from the north who crushed anyone opposed to him, but reserved some of his most vicious punishments for the Shiite Arabs and Kurds, two groups in Iraq that have long sought a significant measure of power or independence.
In 2002 and 2003, President George Bush cited the possibility of Saddam Hussein acquiring weapons of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons -- and thus posing a direct threat to the United States -- as the main rationale for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. He and other senior American officials also said Mr. Hussein had direct ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden. After the Americans ousted Mr. Hussein, they searched for evidence in Iraq to bolster both claims but have so far found nothing.
Some of the first steps the American occupation authority took in 2003 are blamed by critics for igniting the Sunni-led insurgency: disbanding the Iraqi Army and purging members of the former ruling Baath Party from government and public life. Yet, the conflict between the Sunni Arabs and the Shiites is at its heart a deeply existential one: rarely since the Sunni-Shiite sectarian split in the 7th century have Shiite Arabs ever held any significant power, and many Sunni Arabs today regard the rise of the Iraqi Shiites as an upheaval of the proper Islamic order. Eighty to 90 percent of the world's Muslims are estimated to be Sunnis; demography and history have always favored the Sunnis.
To put the majority Shiites in power, the Americans held a series of elections in 2005. Iraqis largely voted along ethnic and sectarian lines, further reinforcing the rifts in Iraqi society that had widened under Mr. Hussein. Moreover, to the disappointment of the Bush administration, the parties that the Iraqis voted for were overwhelmingly conservative and religious. A Shiite coalition cobbled together by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, won the most votes in both sets of parliamentary elections in 2005 and consequently took control of the government. This further inflamed the Sunni Arab insurgency as well as bringing new worries to the American government.
The Iraq war has had a broad destabilizing effect across much of the Middle East. Many observers of the region say the biggest winner so far of the war is Iran, which is ruled by Shiite Persians and has close ties to Iraq's Shiite leaders. Emboldened by Shiite ascendancy and by the diversion of American power and resources into Iraq, Iran has pressed its agenda across the region, which in turn has alarmed Sunni Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Another disturbing regional effect with far-reaching consequences is the exodus of Iraqi refugees to neighboring countries. About 2 million have fled to Syria and Jordan alone.
That is a direct effect of the sectarian cleansing that has taken place in mixed cities across Iraq, with Sunni and Shiite militias taking over neighborhoods and driving out residents of the opposite sect. Arab and Kurdish tensions also run high. In the northern city of Mosul, Kurdish and Christian enclaves have been under attack by Sunni Arab militants, while in the oil city of Kirkuk, which has significant populations of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, bombings and shootings have long been a regular part of daily life.
Starting in summer of 2007, violence in parts of central and western Iraq, including Baghdad, dropped sharply for a number of reasons. Most significantly, some Sunni Arab groups that had been fighting the Americans and Shiite-led government decided to turn their guns on rival Sunni Arab groups, many of which are members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a home-grown fundamentalist militia with foreign fighters in its ranks. The American military is giving money and arms to their new Sunni Arab allies, collectively called the Awakening, though Shiite leaders remain suspicious of the Sunnis' intentions.
Also in 2007, acting on the request of General David H. Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq, President Bush decided to increase troop levels in the country to 168,000. Commonly called "the surge," the increase in troops helped General Petraeus push forward with a strategy to set up small operating bases in some of the most violent neighborhoods in Baghdad, contributing to the drop in violence in those areas. But the pace of deployment and operations has severely strained the American military, especially the United States Army, and President Bush began lowering troop levels in late 2007.
The White House and American commanders say the purpose of the troop increase was to try to dampen the violence to a degree that would allow political reconciliation among the warring Iraqi factions. — Edward Wong, Feb. 15, 2008
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Invasion of Afghanistan
In October 2001, the United States of America and Great Britain invaded the country of Afghanistan. The invasion was in response to the terrorist attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. The rulers of Afghanistan, known as the Taliban, had provided support to the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, which had claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks. Opponents to the Taliban within Afghanistan actively assisted the American and British soldiers. Other nations also contributed troops to freeing Afghanistan from Taliban control. The initial invasion was named Operation Enduring Freedom.
Since the start of the invasion, American forces in Afghanistan have faced continued opposition. Taliban followers continue to attack American forces, including soldiers from Ohio, and their allies. Nevertheless, thanks to the United States and their allies, Afghanistan has created a more democratic government. The invasion forces between October 2001 and August 2005 suffered 289 killed soldiers, including 231 Americans. Most of the American soldiers died in accidents. American soldiers remain in Afghanistan in 2005, prompting several peaceful protests in the United States.
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On this day in 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States "war on terrorism" and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Dubbed "Operation Enduring Freedom" in U.S. military parlance, the invasion of Afghanistan was intended to target terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization, which was based in the country, as well as the extreme fundamentalist Taliban government that had ruled most of the country since 1996 and supported and protected al-Qaida. The Taliban, which had imposed its extremist version of Islam on the entire country, also perpetrated countless human rights abuses against its people, especially women, girls and ethnic Hazaras. During their rule, large numbers of Afghans lived in utter poverty, and as many as 4 million Afghans are thought to have suffered from starvation.
In the weeks prior to the invasion, both the United States and the U.N. Security Council had demanded that the Taliban turn over Osama bin Laden for prosecution. After deeming the Taliban's counteroffers unsatisfactory—among them to try bin Laden in an Islamic court—the invasion began with an aerial bombardment of Taliban and al-Qaida installations in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Konduz and Mazar-e-Sharif. Other coalition planes flew in airdrops of humanitarian supplies for Afghan civilians. The Taliban called the actions "an attack on Islam." In a taped statement released to the Arabic al-Jazeera television network, Osama bin Laden called for a war against the entire non-Muslim world.
After the air campaign softened Taliban defenses, the coalition began a ground invasion, with Northern Alliance forces providing most of the troops and the U.S. and other nations giving air and ground support. On November 12, a little over a month after the military action began, Taliban officials and their forces retreated from the capital of Kabul. By early December, Kandahar, the last Taliban stronghold, had fallen and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar went into hiding rather than surrender. Al-Qaida fighters continued to hide out in Afghanistan's mountainous Tora Bora region, where they were engaged by anti-Taliban Afghan forces, backed by U.S. Special Forces troops. Al-Qaida soon initiated a truce, which is now believed to have been a ploy to allow Osama bin Laden and other key al-Qaida members time to escape into neighboring Pakistan. By mid-December, the bunker and cave complex used by al-Qaida at Tora Bora had been captured, but there was no sign of bin Laden.
After Tora Bora, a grand council of Afghan tribal leaders and former exiles was convened under the leadership of Hamid Karzai, who first served as interim leader before becoming the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan on December 7, 2004. Even as Afghanistan began to take the first steps toward democracy, however, with more than 10,000 U.S. troops in country, al-Qaida and Taliban forces began to regroup in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They continue to engage U.S. and Afghan troops in guerilla-style warfare and have also been responsible for the deaths of elected government officials and aid workers and the kidnapping of foreigners. Hundreds of American and coalition soldiers and thousands of Afghans have been killed and wounded in the fighting.
Afghans continue to make up the largest refugee population in the world, though nearly 3 million have returned to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, further straining the country's war-ravaged economy.
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Who Was Saddam Hussein?
Saddam Hussein was the ruthless dictator of Iraq from 1979 until 2003.
Dates: April 28, 1937 -- December 30, 2006
Childhood of Saddam Hussein
Saddam, which means "he who confronts," was born in a village called al-Auja, outside of Tikrit in northern Iraq. Either just before or just after his birth, his father disappeared from his life. Some accounts say that his father was killed; others say he abandoned his family.
Saddam's mother soon remarried a man who was illiterate, immoral, and brutal. Saddam hated living with his stepfather and as soon as his uncle Khairullah Tulfah (his mother's brother) was released from prison in 1947, Saddam insisted that he go and live with his uncle.
Saddam didn't start primary school until he moved in with his uncle at age 10. At age 18, Saddam graduated from primary school and applied to military school. Joining the military had been Saddam's dream and when he wasn't able to pass the entrance exam he was devastated. (Though Saddam was never in the military, he frequently wore military-style outfits later in life.)
Saddam then moved to Baghdad and started high school, but he found school boring and enjoyed politics more.
Saddam Hussein Enters Politics
Saddam's uncle, an ardent Arab nationalist, introduced him to the world of politics. Iraq, which had been a British colony from the end of World War I until 1932, was bubbling with internal power struggles. One of the groups vying for power was the Baath Party, to which Saddam's uncle was a member.
In 1957, at age 20, Saddam joined the Baath Party. He started out as a low-ranking member of the Party responsible for leading his schoolmates in rioting. However, in 1959, he was chosen to be a member of an assassination squad. On October 7, 1959, Saddam and others attempted, but failed, to assassinate the prime minister. Wanted by the Iraqi government, Saddam was forced to flee. He lived in exile in Syria for three months and then moved to Egypt where he lived for three years.
In 1963, the Baath Party successfully overthrew the government and took power which allowed Saddam to return to Iraq from exile. While home, he married his cousin, Sajida Tulfah. However, the Baath Party was overthrown after only nine months in power and Saddam was arrested in 1964 after another coup attempt. He spent 18 months in prison, where he was tortured, before he escaped in July 1966.
During the next two years Saddam became an important leader within the Baath Party. In July 1968, when the Baath Party again gained power, Saddam was made vice-president.
Over the next decade, Saddam became increasingly powerful. On July 16, 1979, the president of Iraq resigned and Saddam officially took the position.
The Dictator of Iraq
Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with a brutal hand. He used fear and terror to stay in power.
From 1980 to 1988, Saddam led Iraq in a war against Iran which ended in a stalemate. Also during the 1980s, Saddam used chemical weapons against Kurds within Iraq, including gassing the Kurdish town of Halabja which killed 5,000 in March 1988.
In 1990, Saddam ordered Iraqi troops to take the country of Kuwait. In response, the United States defended Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.
On March 19, 2003, the United States attacked Iraq. During the fighting, Saddam fled Baghdad. On December 13, 2003, U.S. forces found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in al-Dwar, near Tikrit.
Trial and Execution of Saddam Hussein
After a trial, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for his crimes. On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging.
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Who Was Osama bin Laden?
Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1957. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden joined the Afghan resistance. After the Soviet withdrawal, bin Laden formed the al-Qaeda network which carried out global strikes against Western interests, culminating in the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Early Life
Born Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden on March 10, 1957, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to construction billionaire Mohammed Awad bin Laden and Mohammed's 10th wife, Syrian-born Alia Ghanem. Osama was the seventh of 50 children born to Muhammad bin Laden, but the only child from his father's marriage to Alia Ghanem.
Osama's father started his professional life in the 1930s in relative poverty, working as a porter in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. During his time as a young laborer, Mohammed impressed the royal family with his work on their palaces, which he built at a much lower cost than any of his competitors could, and with a much greater attention to detail. By the 1960s, he had managed to land several large government contracts to build extensions on the Mecca, Medina and Al-Aqsa mosques. He became a highly influential figure in Jeddah; when the city fell on hard financial times, Mohammed used his wealth to pay all civil servants' wages for the entire kingdom for a six-month period. As a result, Mohammed bin Laden became well respected in his community.
As a father, he was very strict, insisting that all his children live under one roof and observe a rigid religious and moral code. He dealt with his children, especially his sons, as if they were adults, and demanded they become confident and self-sufficient at an early age.
Osama, however, barely came to know his father before his parents divorced. After his family split, Osama's mother took him to live with her new husband, Muhammad al-Attas. The couple had four children together, and Osama spent most of his childhood living with his step-siblings, and attending Al Thagher Model School—at the time the most prestigious high school in Jedda. His biological father would go on to marry two more times, until his death in a charter plane crash in September 1967.
At the age of 14, Osama was recognized as an outstanding, if somewhat shy, student at Al Thagher. As a result, he received a personal invitation to join a small Islamic study group with the promise of earning extra credit. Osama, along with the sons of several prominent Jedda families, were told the group would memorize the entire Koran, a prestigious accomplishment, by the time they graduated from the institution. But the group soon lost its original focus, and during this time Osama received the beginnings of an education in some of the principles of violent jihad.
The teacher who educated the children, influenced in part by a sect of Islam called The Brotherhood, began instructing his pupils in the importance of instituting apure, Islamic law around the Arab world. Using parables with often-violent endings, their teacher explained that the most loyal observers of Islam would institute the holy word—even if it meant supporting death and destruction. By the second year of their studies, Osama and his friends had openly adopted the attitude and styles of teen Islamic activists. They preached the importance of instituting a pure Islamic law at Al Thagher; grew untrimmed beards; and wore shorter pants and wrinkled shirts in imitation of the Prophet's dress.
Osama was pushed to grow up rather quickly during his time at Al Thagher. At the age of 18 he married his first cousin, 14-year-old Najwa Ghanem, who had been promised to him. Osama graduated from Al Thager in 1976, the same year his first child, a son named Abdullah, was born. He then headed to King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where some say he received a degree in public administration in 1981. Others claim he received a degree in civil engineering, in an effort to join the family business.
From Hero to Exile
But Osama would have little chance to use his degree. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Osama joined the Afghan resistance, believing it was his duty as a Muslim to fight the occupation. He relocated to Peshawar, Afghanistan, and using aid from the United States under the CIA program Operation Cyclone, he began training a mujahideen, a group of Islamic jihadists. After the Soviets withdrew from the country in 1989, Osama returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero, and the United States referred to him and his soldiers as "Freedom Fighters."
Yet Osama was quickly disappointed with what he believed was a corrupt Saudi government, and his frustration with the U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War led to a growing rift between Osama and his country's leaders. Bin Laden spoke publicly against the Saudi government's reliance on American troops, believing their presence profaned sacred soil. After several attempts to silence Osama, the Saudis banished the former hero. He lived in exile in Sudan beginning in 1992.
Formation of al Qaeda
By 1993, Osama had formed a secret network known as al Qaeda (Arabic for "the Base"), comprised of militant Muslims he had met while serving in Afghanistan. Soldiers were recruited for their ability to listen, their good manners, obedience, and their pledge to follow their superiors. Their goal was to take up the jihadist cause around the world, righting perceived wrongs under the accordance of pure, Islamic law. Under Osama's leadership, the group funded and began organizing global attacks worldwide. By 1994, after continued advocacy of extremist jihad, the Saudi government forced Osama to relinquish his Saudi citizenship, and confiscated his passport. His family also disowned him, cutting off his $7 million yearly stipend.
Undeterred, Osama began executing his violent plans, with the goal of drawing the United States into war. His hope was that Muslims, unified by the battle, would create a single, true Islamic state. In 1996, to forward his goal, al Qaeda detonated truck bombs against U.S. occupied forces in Saudi Arabia. The next year, they claimed responsibility for killing tourists in Egypt, and in 1998 they bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania, killing nearly 300 people in the process.
Osama's actions abroad did not go unnoticed by the Sudanese government, and he was exiled from their country in 1996. Not able to return to Saudi Arabia, Osama took refuge in Afghanistan, where he received protection from the country's ruling Taliban militia. While under the protection of the Taliban, Osama issued a series of fatwas, religious statements, which declared a holy war against the United States. Among the accusations reared at the offending country were the pillaging of natural resources in the Muslim world, and assisting the enemies of Islam.
September 11th and Final Days
By 2001, Osama had attempted, and often successfully executed attacks on several countries using the help of Al Qaeda trained terrorists and his seemingly bottomless financial resources. On September 11, 2001, Osama would deliver his most devastating blow to the United States. A small group of Osama's Al Qaeda jihadists hijacked four commercial passenger aircraft in the United States, two of which collided into the World Trade Center towers. Another aircraft crashed into The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane was successfully retaken, and crashed in Pennsylvania. The intended target of the final aircraft was believed to be the United States Capitol. In all, the attack killed nearly 3,000 civilians.
Following the September 11 attacks on the United States, the government under President George W. Bush formed a coalition that sucecssfully overthrew the Taliban. Osama went into hiding and, for more than 10 years, he was hunted along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In 2004, shortly before President Bush's reelection, Osama bin Laden released a videotaped message claiming responsibility for the September 11 attacks.
Then, on May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a terrorist compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In an 8-month plan enacted by the president, and led by CIA director Leon Panetta and American special forces, Osama was shot several times. His body was taken as evidence of his death, and DNA tests revealed that the body was, in fact, his. "For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda's leader and symbol and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and our allies," President Obama said in a late-night address to the nation on the eve of Osama's death. "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda." He added that "his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity."
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