The heir Bin
Laden with Afghan supporters in the '80s
Nov. 24, 1989
Bin Laden Steps Up to No. 1
By Ghulam Hasnain
The
explosion was so powerful it was heard several miles away, and its
reverberations would eventually travel around the globe. The car was
nearing its destination, the al-Falah Mosque in the Pakistani frontier
city of Peshawar, when it hit the land mine. All four passengers in the
vehicle—a father with his two young sons and another
youth—were killed. Chief among the dead that Friday was Sheik
Abdullah Azzam, 48. It was the second attempt on his life. Earlier in
1989 a bomb was planted beneath the pulpit of a mosque where he was
supposed to preach and pray, but the bomb did not explode. Azzam, a
Palestinian, was the most prominent advocate of a jihad to save the
Muslim lands from infidel encroachment. Thanks in part to his writings
and diatribes, Islamic fighters from around the world traveled to
Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union.
Azzam's killers have never
been identified. But the man who gained the most from his demise was his
deputy, Osama bin Laden, who took over the role of first among the
jihadis. The Saudi aristocrat had been the chief financier of Azzam's
organization and a devoted follower since the early 1980s, when he came
under Azzam's influence while studying at Jeddah University.
Disagreement between master and protege over the shape of a post-Soviet
Afghanistan led to a parting of ways in early 1989, and soon bin Laden
went off to found al-Qaeda. With Azzam dead, bin Laden assumed
ideological seniority in the movement. He would expand the struggle from
Muslim territory deep into the heart of the West itself.
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