Osama Bin laden: Building Al-Qaeda Part 6

To this end, al-Qaeda trained militants and funded terrorist attacks. In 1998 bin Laden ordered an operation larger than any of al-Qaeda’s previous operations—simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which altogether killed 224 people. The United States retaliated by launching cruise missiles at sites believed to be bin Laden’s bases in Afghanistan. Another al-Qaeda bombing in 2000 targeted the USS Cole, an American warship harboured in Yemen, and killed 17 sailors.

The growth of the organization was attributed in part to bin Laden’s charisma. He was known to be a skilled orator, able to manipulate a variety of rhetorical strategies and to make his message easily accessible even to the uneducated. At the end of the 20th century, bin Laden was thought to have had thousands of militant followers worldwide, in places as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Bosnia, Chechnya, and the Philippines.