AI Summary
5 min readIn 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia as a revered hero, celebrated for his role in the Soviet-Afghan war. Within a few years, he was a stateless fugitive, stripped of his citizenship, disowned by his billionaire family, and boarding a chartered jet into exile. From this penniless exile, he would rise to become the most famous man on Earth. This episode of Empire traces bin Laden's descent from the Saudi elite to a terrorist financier in Sudan, and his desperate flight back to the mountains of Afghanistan.
The Hero Returns
When bin Laden came home from Afghanistan, he was a genuine celebrity. He lectured publicly as a veteran of a righteous Islamic cause, and bootlegged cassettes of his sermons were the thing young people wanted to get hold of. His status was transformed by the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. The crisis led to the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American, British, and French troops to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden had no sympathy for Saddam, but he was incensed by the presence of what he called "apostate" Western forces in the kingdom, the site of Islam's holiest sites.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:00) **From Hero to Exile** - Osama bin Laden's trajectory from revered Saudi hero in 1989 to stateless fugitive boarding a plane for Afghanistan in 1996 is introduced as the episode's arc.
- 2 (03:34) **Bin Laden's Celebrity Homecoming** - After the Soviet war, bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia as a famous public figure, lecturing on his experiences and the Muslim world's future.
- 3 (04:54) **The Offer That Was Ridiculed** - bin Laden proposes to the Saudi Defense Ministry that he and his battle-hardened Afghan veterans should defend the kingdom from Saddam, rather than relying on "apostate" American troops.
- 4 (08:13) **The Bush-Saudi Connection** - The episode provides context on the relationship between President George H.W. Bush and the Saudi royal family, rooted in the oil business and personal diplomacy.
- 5 (09:28) **The "Awakening Sheikhs" and a Red Line** - bin Laden aligns himself with influential conservative preachers, the "Awakening Sheikhs," who argue that the kingdom should resist the American superpower just as it did the Soviets.
- 6 (11:42) **Leaving for Sudan** - Unable to control bin Laden, the Saudis restrict his passport and privileges, prompting him to leave for Port Sudan, Sudan, in 1992 on a family construction project.
- 7 (14:57) **The "Happiest" Years in Khartoum** - The Sudan years (1992-1996) are described as the most capacious and happy of bin Laden's life, where he lived as a gentleman farmer and a family man.
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Show Notes
How did the Gulf War drive a permanent wedge between Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family? Why did the bin Laden family finally decide to disown him? How did he manage a global terror network from a farm in Sudan?
In Episode 4 of this series, William and Anita are joined by Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll, author of The Bin Ladens: An Arab Family in the American Century, to follow Osama bin Laden’s descent from the Saudi establishment into international exile.
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