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Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. A pan-Islamist and Islamic extremist, bin Laden organized and funded numerous jihadist or anti-Western militants and terrorist attacks worldwide. Al-Qaeda's attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001 (9/11) directly killed 2,977 victims, causing the global war on terror.

Bin Laden was raised into Sunni Islam by his wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. He left the country to help the Afghan mujahideen fight the Soviet Union in the Soviet–Afghan War. In 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which recruited foreigners into the mujahideen, and in 1988, he founded al-Qaeda to enact violent jihad worldwide. After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. His public opposition to the Saudi royal family led to his 1991 expulsion from the country. He moved to Sudan, where he led al-Qaeda and its allies' efforts in the 1992–1996 Afghan Civil War, the Algerian Civil War, and the Bosnian War.

In 1996, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he moved back to Afghanistan, which was soon controlled by the Taliban. Al-Qaeda allied with them in the 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War. In 1998, al-Qaeda began an ongoing insurgency in Yemen. Bin Laden issued fatwas in 1996 and 1998 in which he declared holy war on Americans, both military and civilians. Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, and U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. He was then officially declared a terrorist by the U.S. and United Nations.

9/11 was mainly planned by bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and their operation was possibly funded by Saudi Arabia, despite bin Laden's expulsion. The attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, causing over 6,000 deaths from inhalation exposure. An international manhunt for bin Laden followed. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban, forcing him to move to Pakistan. While he hid, al-Qaeda fought the U.S. and its allies in the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, and continued to enact major terrorist attacks—in Indonesia in 2002, Turkey in 2003, the U.K. in 2005, Jordan in 2005, and possibly Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

In 2010, U.S. intelligence discovered bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A team of U.S. Navy SEALs raided it and killed him there in 2011. Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded him as al-Qaeda's emir. Polls show that Muslims at large have a negative view of bin Laden, while many Islamists consider him heroic. Elsewhere, he is overwhelmingly seen as a symbol of terrorism and mass murder.