Is Osama Bin Laden's Son Poised to Unify Terrorists Worldwide?

Believed to be 24 or 25 years old, Hamza is expected by experts to potentially become the next al-Qaeda leader. (Photo: YouTube screenshot)

Ali Soufan, Daily Beast: Bin Laden’s Son Is Poised to Unify Terrorists Worldwide

Hamza bin Laden isn’t just being prepared for a leadership role in his father’s organization. He’s now the figure best placed to reunify the global jihadi movement.

One day in early November 2001, on a hillside south of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden bade farewell to three of his young sons. In the shade of an olive tree, he handed each boy a misbaha—a set of prayer beads symbolizing the 99 names of God in classical Arabic—and instructed them to keep the faith. The scene was an emotional one. “It was as if we pulled out our livers and left them there,” one of the boys would later recall in a letter to his father. Having taken his leave, bin Laden disappeared into the mountains, bound for a familiar redoubt known as the Black Cave, or Tora Bora in the local Pashto dialect.

The three boys who received the prayer beads that day would face three very different destinies. One, Bakr (also known as Ladin), would distance himself from al-Qaeda, both geographically and ideologically. Another, Khalid, would die protecting his father at their compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. The third, Hamza, would vanish for years before reemerging in 2015 as the most likely candidate to reunite a fractured jihadi movement and lead al-Qaeda to a future still more violent than its past.

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WNU Editor: A child psychologist once explained to me that children of abusive parents usually follow one of two paths .... they become like their parents, or they become the exact opposite. Hamza bin Laden wants to be like his father. His brother .... Bakr Bin Laden .... has chosen a completely opposite path.