THE BIN LADENS: THE STORY OF A FAMILY AND ITS FUTURE
By Steve Coll
Allen Lane
KEY POINTS:
The story of Mohamed bin Laden, his heirs and successors, is enthralling.
It does not explain 9/11, nor al Qaeda, but it explains a great deal about the tentacles that run from Riyadh to touch a wider world - tentacles of corruption, ambition, hedonism and dislocation. In a curious way, it is essentially an American story.
A century ago, a Yemeni peasant farmer borrowed an ox to plough his patch. But the ox died and its owner wanted restitution, so the farmer had to flee miles from his homeland.
He married, began to raise a family, then died, leaving two sons, Mohamed and Abdullah. Mohamed, the elder, found work on building sites.
He was skilled, organised, meticulous. In the 30s, he founded his own company, where one thing went with another. One thing was the house of Saud and its ruler, Abdul Aziz. The other was oil.
At the end of this tale, it's September 13, 2001. America is stunned and vengeful. The name bin Laden seems like a curse. Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, hires a Boeing 727 to thread its way across the States, picking up the bin Laden family - students, entrepreneurs, lawyers, wives, kids - to get them to Saudi before they come to harm. Osama may have declared war on the States, but his kith and kin love the place. They don't want to go. The US is their home.
In between the death of the ox and the death of belief in a peaceful, post-communist world, the royal family and the family that does its building move in parallel. Abdul Aziz is a holy man and unholy fornicator. By 1930, he claimed 235 or so wives, married and divorced four at a time.
Mohamed bin Laden was the same. He managed 22 wives and 53 children. In 1957 alone, the year Osama was born - by way of a fleeting marriage to a 15-year-old Syrian girl - he was the father of six other children, two daughters and four more sons.
When Mohamed dies in a plane crash, his son, Salem, has been educated well enough at a minor English boarding school to take charge. The empire grows, the routes to homes in Florida are open wide.
The bin Ladens are global before Salem dies young, in another plane crash. But here's brother Bakr, more prudent, more concerned about image, a talent to take the helm. For as long as the House of Saud survives, there is money and booze and a wife in every port, with the American ambassador dancing attendance and the Bush family laying out the welcome mat. This is how Saudi Arabia was built and these are the foundations it rests on. No wonder that today, under Bakr's stewardship, the bin Laden brand has a global reach, into jeans as well as bricks and mortar.
Osama was part of the family business, too. Salem left him US$9 million ($11.83 million) or so. He was family bagman and House of Saud middle man in Peshawar as the Afghan war against the Soviets grew. He was a good fundraiser, with charisma and contacts.
You can trace his zealotry back to the gym master from the Muslim Brotherhood who taught him in Jeddah. You can sense the alienation of the excluded. You can also discern the restlessness of mid-life crisis as he develops his creed and targets the Americans who underpin his family.
Osama bin Laden is the cuckoo who fell out of a nest of gold lined with mink. If you want to know what comes next, look back to Saudi Arabia and ask yourself - how long can this state endure? The enemies of our enemy can be intrinsic enemies, too.
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