Osama Bin Laden – the world’s most wanted fugitive – has been killed by US forces. As with all news stories of this scale, there has been a huge and varied reaction.
But first, as a quick recap…
Osama Bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, which is probably the most powerful and widespread terrorist network we have ever been up against. He was born and grew up in Saudi Arabia with a silver spoon in his mouth – the 25th (or thereabouts) son of a billionaire construction tycoon. He was a smart kid, no doubt about it, and it was at University that he really started to forge an interest in radical Islamist politics.
From there, he started setting up Islamic schools in Pakistan.
The Taliban – which is the very strict and scary militia group that operates today in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan – mostly arose from the these very schools, and have thus always been strongly linked to Bin Laden.
Things really started going south when; furious that Saudi Arabia had started chumming up with the West in the early 90’s, Bin Laden was expelled from his native country for being too inflammatory and mental.
Being reasonably clever, very angry and stinking rich – Bin Laden could now go about founding a terrorist group unlike any other. His aim? The Islamification of the whole world. His strategy? Terror, literally. Bin Laden orchestrated a number of major attacks throughout the 90’s; leading up to the (alleged) bombing of the Twin Towers in New York, ten years ago in 2001. Since then he has been evading capture by the US. Until now.
Bin Laden was found living in a luxury compound in Pakistan – a stone’s throw away from Pakistan’s key military base. According to most, this is blatant proof that Pakistan was concealing and protecting him in some form. Which, if true, could spell all out war with America. Pakistan has long insisted that they have checked *absolutely everywhere*, and that there was no way Bin Laden was hiding within their borders. They have also been accepting about $1billion a year from America to help try and ‘track him down.’
US Special Forces have been motoring this property for months, and as soon as they were sure Bin Laden was living there; Obama ordered his death. He was shot in the head, and allegedly has already been buried at sea.
So what can we conclude? The move has certainly given Obama an enormous popularity boost. Most of America see this as much needed and long overdue justice.
Skeptics and conspiracy theorists think the whole thing is rubbish and than Bin Laden is either still alive, or has already been dead for years.
Whatever the case, this obviously does not spell the end for al-Qaeda. If anything, it is likely to rile them up more. Obama has warned America and its allies to be extremely vigilant, as revenge attacks should be expected any time now.
Honestly, nothing else particularly significant happened in the news today…
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