anniversary of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania: five lessons learned

This week will mark the 10th anniversary of the Aug. 7, 1998 twin car bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. Because these attacks were so massively overshadowed by 9/11, they tend to be forgotten. That's regrettable — not just because it does a disservice to the memory of the more than 200 people killed, but because valuable lessons can be learned from the event and its aftermath.
Lesson #1: Terrorists attack soft targets. Osama Bin Laden reportedly gave various high-flown justifications for the 1998 bombings — including that they were payback for the American involvement in nearby Somalia and (more bizarrely) that the two embassies had been used to plot the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The more likely reason is simply that the the embassies had lax security perimeters compared with other high-status U.S. facilities. In both cases, the bombers were allowed to get their vehicles adjacent to the buildings before explosion — something that would be unthinkable in today's post-9/11 security environment, thanks to the billions that have been spent by the United States and other Western powers to harden their structures.
Lesson #2: Even in very poor and chaotic areas of the world, Western powers can defend their assets from terrorist attacks. The 1998 attacks were a massive success for al-Qaeda. But in the 10 years since they occurred, sub-Saharan Africa hasn't seen a single terrorist attack on anywhere the same scale. In fact, the closest al-Qaeda came to scoring a similar success in the region came when it (unsuccessfully) tried to shoot down an Israeli charter jet in Kenya in 2002. Other than that, all the other major terroist attacks in Africa have been intra-Arab affairs, either in Egypt or Algeria.
Lesson #3: Terrorist victories don't necessarily rally support from the locals. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to over 200-million Muslims. And it was feared, especially after 9/11, that this population would become radicalized wholesale in favour of al-Qaeda. These fears were especially acute following the impostion of Sharia law in the Muslim provinces of Nigeria eight years ago. Osama was said to have become a popular name for children, and his likeness reportedly was ubiquitous on T-shirts. Yet not much seems to have come of that. Al-qaeda cells do operate in Africa, but they are small players compared to the ethnic and regional militias that pillage for oil and minerals in places like Congo and the Niger Delta. Seven years after 9/11, militant Sunni Islam remains largely a creature of Arabs, and the central Asian tribes they've co-opted with money and propaganda. Outside of Somalia at least, Black Muslim Africa has yet to be awoken.
Lesson #4: Treating terrorism as a crime, as opposed to a species of warfare, may not be the mistake that hawks claimed it was in the years following 9/11. Following the 1998 attacks, the FBI moved aggressively to investigate the bombings and lay down criminal indictments. Three years later, high-profile convictions were secured in a Manhattan U.S.District Court against Mohamed al-'Owhali, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, Mohamed Odeh and Wadih el Hage (bin Laden's secretary). Wikipedia has a useful table showing the fates of all 21 people indicted. A majority are either dead or in custody (though, admittedly, some were either killed in action in central Asia, or are being held at Gitmo, both of which reflect a post-9/11 military posture).
Lesson #5: If you are going to respond to terrorism through military means, pick your shots carefully. Following the 1998 attacks, Bill Clinton launched "Operation Infinite Reach," a ridiculous shoot-from-the-hip response that essentially amounted to cruise missile strikes against a few hastily selected targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In the former country, this meant hitting largely empty terrorist training camps. In the latter, the most notable casualty of the strikes was a pharmaceutical plant that made garden-variety medications for the local population. The story was summarized on the activist left as "America gets bloodied, responds by bombing aspirin factory." Not exactly Clinton's finest moment.
Jonathan Kay jkay@nationalpost.com