The Soviet Regime
In 1979, Bin Laden opposed the Soviets entering Afghanistan and would soon heed the call to arms by the Afghan freedom fighters. Bin Laden would use his own independent wealth and resources to get Arab fighters from Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait and Turkey to join the Afghans in their battle against the Soviets. While Bin Laden praised the U.S. intervention early on, being happy that the Afghans were getting aid from all over the world to battle the Soviets, his relationship with the U.S. soon grew sour, stating "Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help. When my mujahedin were victorious and the Russians were driven out, differences started..." After two years in the war, Bin Laden headed to Sudan to continue his work as a construction engineer and an agriculturalist, building bridges alongside some of the people he had fought alongside during the war.
Read more about this topic: Beliefs And Ideology Of Osama Bin Laden
Famous quotes containing the words soviet and/or regime:
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“I always draw a parallel between oppression by the regime and oppression by men. To me it is just the same. I always challenge men on why they react to oppression by the regime, but then they do exactly the same things to women that they criticize the regime for.”
—Sethembile N., South African black anti-apartheid activist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 19, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)