The Plots and Designs of Al Qaeda's Engineer

That changed with the explosive growth of the petroleum business. By the late 1950s, Fahaheel boomed with a jaunty, cosmopolitan rhythm all its own. Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Jordanians -- even the British and Americans -- were drawn here by the oil. Almost none of them were able to become Kuwaiti citizens, no matter how long they stayed, creating an enduring anxiety among many of the overseas workers. Even now, a majority of Kuwait's 2 million people are noncitizens.

Mohammed attended high school at a three-story, 1960s-style brick all-boys school that housed as many as 1,200 students. Fahaheel teachers and alumni said they recall him as a studious youth who concentrated on science. School was, and is, a serious thing in Kuwait: Schoolboys wear white shirts and gray slacks and the headmaster walks around with a bamboo cane, to be used on obstreperous students.

Mohammed's oldest brother, Zahed Shaikh, attended Kuwait University in the 1980s and was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood -- a militant pan-Arab organization that functioned as an underground opposition throughout the region. A man who knew the family said a group called the Islamic Assn. of Palestinian Students was also formed on campus then; one of its leaders went on to become head of the political bureau of the militant Islamic group Hamas. This was the initial politicization of Mohammed, the friend said.

Much of the Middle East, following the devastating Arab loss to Israel in the 1967 war and the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser -- failed champion of the drive for a secular and united Arab world -- embarked on a gradual but inexorable turn toward religion, leading up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Analysts say it seemed that the secular path had been exposed as lacking, and religion was an alternative source of identity and regional esteem.

"It was like a huge vacuum, and nobody was able to fill this vacuum better than the rising Islamists," said Shafeeq Ghabra, a political scientist in Kuwait.

The Kuwaiti government acknowledges that Mohammed was born in Kuwait, but that is about as far as the authorities will go in admitting any relationship with him.

"Just because he lived in Kuwait, or may have been born here, doesn't mean that this man is a Kuwaiti," Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Khalid al Jarallah said recently. "He is definitely not a Kuwaiti."

The Pakistani government also seeks to disown Mohammed, even though his first known passport was issued by Pakistan.