A Fuller Picture of Osama bin Laden’s Life (Published 2021) (2024)

THE RISE AND FALL OF OSAMA BIN LADEN

By Peter Bergen

Of the raft of books that are marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and its aftermath, few are likely to be as meticulously documented, as fluidly written or as replete with riveting detail as Peter Bergen’s “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.” It is a page-turner that weaves back and forth between the man and the terrorist, providing poignant glimpses of key figures and carefully chronicling all the missed opportunities, ignored warnings and strategic blunders of the United States.

Bergen, who has been covering jihadis for three decades and has written extensively on bin Laden himself, draws effortlessly on all his previous work. And thanks to the bravery of the SEAL team that delayed their departure from Abbottabad to retrieve computers and documents from bin Laden’s lair after assassinating him, we now have a vast trove of information not previously available. Along with other primary sources, Bergen had access to the 470,000 files taken during the raid, and he uses this material lightly, writing with the lucidity of an experienced journalist.

The broad outlines of bin Laden’s early life are well known: One of 55 children of the many wives of his father, he was a rich young millionaire who went to Afghanistan to bankroll the struggle against the Soviets. Yet Bergen tells us that he saw his father only a few times in his life, that as a young teenager he was sent, like other children of the global elite, to summer school in Oxford. There he befriended two Spanish girls, went rowing on the Thames and visited Stratford-on-Avon. Nonetheless, he found the British “morally degenerate.” By the age of 16 he was fiercely religious. At 17 he married a 15-year-old cousin. Bergen provides a family tree with the names of his five wives and 24 children. At the time of his death in 2011, his wives ranged in age from 28 to 62 and his children from 3 to 35.

When it came to his family, bin Laden was a man of contradictions. On the one hand, he required his daughters from the age of 3 to be separated from males and insisted that females leave the room when men appeared, even on satellite television. Yet two of his older wives were highly educated, with doctorates in Koranic grammar and child psychology. They helped write his public statements and curate his public image; they engaged in discussions with him on strategy.

Bin Laden permitted his second wife to divorce him in 1993, after 10 years of marriage, and his first wife to leave him in 2001. His fifth wife was an ill-educated 16-year-old Yemeni when he married her in 2000. Before bringing her home, he told his other wives that she was 30 and highly educated but, ever the plotter, he wanted a Yemeni wife, Bergen explains, to improve the chances that Yemen would give him sanctuary in case he had to flee Afghanistan. It appears to have been a happy marriage and the two were in bed together the night of the raid, with two other wives in the bedroom downstairs. Apparently bin Laden was fond of natural aphrodisiacs to help keep his three wives happy while they were all in hiding together. He also used Just for Men hair dye.

In Abbottabad he followed the life of a devoted paterfamilias, taking a keen interest in the education of his offspring and presiding over family meetings. Three wives and their 12 children and grandchildren lived with him there. Yet he exposed them to mortal danger by keeping them in his hide-out.