Bin Laden wasn't a poor kid who made good — he was the son of a Saudi royal-family builder
Osama bin Laden was Mohammed bin Laden's 17th son, drew a dividend in the hundreds of thousands of dollars as a child, and attended Jeddah's only elite day school — his radicalism was not a product of poverty but of privilege and Brotherhood recruitment.
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The elder bin Laden started out carrying sacks on the docks
Mohammed bin Laden came from Hadramawt in Yemen; as a boy in his early teens he walked to Jeddah with his uncle, first worked as a dock porter, then learned bricklaying, then became a contractor. He lost an eye in a construction accident. His rise was bound up with Saudi Arabia itself: first the pilgrimage economy, then, after oil arrived in the 1930s, the royal family's building boom, which made him ‘the royal bricklayer’. Steve Coll stresses that he was an outsider — no amount of money could make marrying his children into the royal family conceivable, just as a blue-blood family in the American Northeast would not marry its daughter to the Sicilian contractor who built its swimming pool.
— Steve CollThe fourth wife was a rotating post
Mohammed bin Laden kept four wives at once; the first three were long-term fixtures, while the fourth slot was rapid marriage and rapid divorce, which Steve Coll says can only be described as his own libido. Osama's mother Aliyah was a 15-year-old girl from the Syrian coast, introduced to the elder bin Laden through a Syrian business deal, and about a year after Osama's birth she was passed on to a mid-level manager in the company. Osama was therefore ‘the child of a divorced wife’, but he was also a ‘golden child’ — he held shares in this highly profitable company and drew a dividend in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the 1960s and 70s.
— Steve CollBin Laden boys grew up watching demolitions
The elder bin Laden's biggest project at the time was the modernisation of Mecca and Medina, which meant tearing down much of the old city. What the sons saw as teenagers was the daily routine of placing explosives in old buildings, stepping back, boom. Steve Coll says this cannot be causally connected to what Osama later became, but it is the true picture of their upbringing. At the same time the elder bin Laden was strict with his sons, repeatedly preaching simple living, hard work and study, and periodically summoning all his sons to company headquarters; daughters were not part of that gathering.
— Steve CollIn 1967 his father crashed, and the eldest son Salem took over
Mohammed bin Laden's plane hit a mountainside; an American pilot judged it a landing error. The king wept, because the royal family was itself a debtor to the bin Laden organisation, and losing him meant every construction project would be thrown into disorder. The eldest son Salem was sent to London for his education, the only son sent to the West, and he loved the Beatles, played the harmonica, flew his own plane and threw parties around the world; he was described as a playboy and practical joker. He took over in his early twenties; European engineers kept the projects going, but every decision landed on him, including where Osama went to school and who could marry.
— Steve CollWhat changed him was a PE teacher's after-school group
Osama attended the elite day school in Jeddah founded by Irish and British educators, relatively secular. But there he came under the influence of a Syrian PE teacher, a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood who ran an after-school club and study group for children of elite families — the Brotherhood believed in gaining influence by recruiting and educating elites. Osama gradually became the family's ‘Puritan among Puritans’: no music, opposed to photographs, no modern plastic toothbrush, only a twig, and married for the first time at 17.
— Steve CollAmong 54 siblings, he was the right-wing minority
Steve Coll likens Mohammed's 54 children to a parliament, divided between modern and traditional. The vast majority were globalists: property in Europe and America, dancing in clubs, selling perfume in Geneva, running a Hard Rock Cafe in Beirut. The middle tried to balance Saudi conservatism with occasional trips abroad. Osama belonged to the family's right wing, with only a few siblings equally devout, and among them he became the leader and advocate, frequently scolding his siblings for what they said and did, and isolating himself in the process.
— Steve CollIn a Saudi context, going to Pakistan was entirely normal
Steve Coll stresses that Osama volunteering in Saudi Arabia and on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was in no way abnormal in a Saudi context — like a family of six children where one is more devout than his siblings, goes abroad through the church to build houses for disaster victims, and the family is proud of him, perhaps a little worried, but does not object. Salem supported him too, giving him money and access. Only later, when he turned against his own family and the kingdom, did he cross that line. Throughout the 80s, in our eyes, he was a supported, entirely conventional radical.
— Steve CollAt the Mecca siege, the royals wanted the bin Laden family's blueprints
In 1979 hundreds of armed men seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, their weapons smuggled in beforehand inside coffins, and the siege lasted two weeks. The militants hid in the basement, and the people who held the basement blueprints were the bin Laden family, then building the mosque, who were asked to help the special forces storming it. Osama, 22, watched it all on television. Steve Coll argues that what he learned was not the specific methods of this self-proclaimed Mahdi's group, but that a small group acting boldly in a public symbolic space can stir an entire society and attract the world's attention.
— Steve CollHis real edge was understanding media, not public speaking
The Osama of the 80s was consistently described as shy and soft-spoken, not a natural leader and not an orator. Steve Coll argues the key is that he grew up in a globalised business family with access to electronics and cutting-edge communications technology; he was trained as a marketer himself, and his sons worked in marketing in Jeddah too. He was first a consumer of media, and later his own communicator. When he turned against his family and the kingdom and began exporting his own vision, he was extremely effective, because he mastered the tools of the day earlier than his contemporaries.
— Steve CollIn their own words · checked verbatim
He was a very wealthy outsider who had no hope of ever marrying his children into the royal family or even the periphery of the royal family.
Steve Coll6:17
the fourth position among his four wives was one that he rotated serially to pursue what I think can only be described as his own sexual appetites
Steve Coll10:24
he was, in a sense, weirdly, as a child, the breadwinner, because he was getting a dividend of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 1960s and 70s, which is serious money.
Steve Coll13:37
he is known within his own family as the Puritan among Puritans.
Steve Coll28:24
throughout the 80s, he's he's an utterly conventional and supported radical in our eyes.
Steve Coll31:33
He certainly can see how a small group of people thinking ambitiously and creatively about public symbolic spaces can disrupt an entire society and attract the attention of the world.
Steve Coll34:47
He was trained to be a marketer. His own sons went into the marketing business in Jeddah. He was aware of communication and how to think about getting messages across. That was the thing that he was ahead of his time on.
Steve Coll40:07
Figures
| Number of Mohammed bin Laden's children | 54 | 6:17 |
| Osama's rank among the sons | 17th son | 6:17 |
| Year Osama was born | 1957 | 9:24 |
| Age of Osama's mother Aliyah when introduced to the elder bin Laden | 15 | 10:24 |
| Osama's annual dividend in childhood | hundreds of thousands of dollars | 13:37 |
| Year Mohammed bin Laden died | 1967 | 17:51 |
| Osama's age when his father died | 10 | 17:51 |
| Age of Osama's first marriage | 17 | 28:24 |
| Length of the 1979 Grand Mosque siege | two weeks | 33:43 |
| Osama's age when he went to Pakistan to help | 22 | 37:59 |
Glossary
- Hadramawt
- A region of eastern Yemen that historically produced large numbers of sailors and overseas merchants.
- Wahhabi
- The state religion of Saudi Arabia, advocating a return to the lifestyle of the Prophet's 7th-century era, extremely puritanical.
- Muslim Brotherhood
- An Islamic political organisation originating in Egypt that emphasised changing political structures by recruiting and educating elites.
- globalists
- Steve Coll's term for the majority of bin Laden children who lived in Europe and America and were secularised.
How to listen
Listeners interested in modern Middle Eastern history, the origins of terrorism, and how a family business binds itself to royal power; anyone who wants to understand the judgment that ‘radicals do not grow out of poverty’.
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