Already, within weeks, he had been invested with a fearsome reputation. Consider this yarn being recycled in the American media: according to one story, bin Laden always keeps a Kalashnikov rifle close at hand. Legend has it that he wrested the AK-47 from a Red Army infantryman in a hand-to-hand combat. His hydra-headed operation, the Americans swear, runs from Morocco and Egypt to Malaysia and Philippines.

Yet, more credible stories have it that the only hand-to-hand combat bin Laden may have seen are arm-wrestling contests in his cave hideouts in Afghanistan. Some accounts say he is a shy, reclusive, religious figure, whose authority does not stretch beyond the boundary walls of his enclave. According to at least one British writer who met bin Laden some months back, the glorified terrorist was in the depths of loneliness and despair because no one would listen to him. He was also fairly clueless about the events and affairs across the world, being rather isolated in his remote hideouts in Afghanistan.

Not if you believe the Americans. According to them, bin Laden operates out of a hi-tech cave equipped with a television, video and a handsome library of books. He has a network of laptop computers that transmit heavily encrypted messages by satellite.

Terrorist satraps come to him from far and wide to pay obeisance and take orders. More often, he masterminds a worldwide network of terrorists and terrorism aimed primarily at American targets, often passing instructions through a satellite phone.

It was the same satellite phone that was nearly his undoing last fortnight. According to accounts of the Afghan bombing trickling out only now, American intelligence agencies zeroed in on bin Laden's position within 10 metres accuracy by tracking the communications signal from his phone. The electronic surveillance was backed by human intelligence which suggested bin Laden was going to preside over a conclave of terrorists who would have dinner at his camp and then repair for a coffee in open air.

The congregation of terrorists does not seem to have happened, but either though chance, or intuition, or forewarning, bin Laden ditched the phone some half hour before the Americans started raining cruise missiles on the site. Other accounts have it that he was delayed getting to the meeting. Whatever the case, a legend of the dimensions of the notorious Carlos was born within hours last fortnight.

And to think it was the Americans who started the whole shebang. It is now widely acknowledged that Osama bin Laden, like many other petty warlords in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was patronised the American CIA, who kept him supplied with guns and ammo to wage war against the Soviet army. Not particularly known to be good fighter, bin Laden was happier hewing roads in the rough Afghan countryside with money from his family fortune, than shooting guns at the collapsing Soviet army.

But through it all, he made it clear that the United States was more of an anathema to him than the Russians. That dislike fermented into hatred when he returned home to Saudi Arabia to rejoin his family business after the Soviet army had withdrawn from Afghanistan. The father bin Laden owned a construction company that thrived on government contracts from the Family of Saud. But having tasted the nectar of revolution in Afghanistan, the young bin Laden was full of rebellious spirit. He demanded that American soldiers, thousands of whom had stayed back in Saudi Arabia after the Iraqi defeat, return home and not defile the Islamic sacred land that had the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. When rebuffed, he rebelled against the Sauds. One of some 50 siblings, he was promptly disowned by the family and expelled from the country.

Shortly thereafter, in around 1992, he repaired to Sudan, where, with the $ 250 million kitty he had inherited, he started his own construction company. The extent of his friendship with the Sudanese regime is unclear, as also his involvement in international terrorism. But by 1994, his name was being bandied about in the corridors devoted to studying terrorism in the United States. Soon after, even the Sudanese expelled him following pressure from the Clinton administration. He returned to his original hunting ground Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, in the landlocked country, the fundamentalist Taliban, backed and financed by Pakistan, was just beginning to take control. By some accounts, bin Laden hit it off with Taliban leader Mulla Omar, who is 39 years old to bin Laden's 43. Afghanistan again became bin Laden's nesting ground.

According to intelligence officials, bin Laden soon began operating on a global scale with an estimated 3,000 devoted followers active in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, to Chechnya and Kashmir, to Malaysia and Philippines. The source of his manpower was his experience with the Makhtab al-Khidamat, or services offices, which he started during the 10-year guerrilla war to recruit foot soldiers from 50 countries. Emboldened by the way he and his holy warriors had brought one superpower to its knees, bin Laden took aim at the other.

US officials say among other targets and attacks, bin Laden may have been responsible for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, American servicemen felled from a helicopter and killed in Somalia, the car bomb attack outside a US training camp in Riyadh and, now, the attack on the US embassies in Africa. Surprisingly, for a man credited with so many murderous assaults, the State Department's annual terrorism report barely makes a mention of him.The suspicion in many quarters is bin Laden has got into trouble -- or into the limelight, as he may prefer to believe -- by putting his mouth where his money and firepower apparently is. He has never directly claimed responsibility for the attacks on US interests, but he has not been shy of saying he wished he was responsible.

The bravado reached dangerous proportions when he issued a fatwa in May this year calling for attacks on Americans, whether military or civilian. ``We believe the biggest thieves and terrorists in the world are the Americans. The only way to fend of these assaults is to use similar methods,'' he told ABC's Nightline. If indeed he is responsible for the embassy bombings in Africa, he was true to his word. His erstwhile masters, the Americans, were not far behind either when they in turn used similar methods. The battle has been joined. So aptly that a former CIA gumshoe has publicly enjoined the Clinton administration to kill bin Laden first, before he kills more Americans.