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| Africa: Horn |
| Al-Qaeda and East Africa |
| 2004-12-01 |
| East Africa is no stranger to Islamic militancy. The region has been the victim of a series of al-Qaeda related attacks against predominately U.S. interests. Due to the large population of Muslims in many of the region's states, it has the potential to become fertile breeding ground to al-Qaeda's religious rhetoric. Through the argument of conducting a "defensive jihad" against the United States, al-Qaeda has been able to recruit East Africans in missions aimed at endangering U.S. interests in the region. Islamist activity targeted at U.S. interests is a relatively new phenomenon in East Africa. While the region's recent history has been plagued with inter-religious violence, the objectives of such violence have been for state or regional control, and not an attempt to weaken the power and influence of foreign powers. Al-Qaeda, however, has had some success in recruiting East African Muslims to conduct guerrilla operations with transnational objectives. These operations have primarily been to attack U.S. interests. The first major attack took place in August 1998. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for bombing the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed hundreds of people and coincided with the anniversary of the first deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia in 1990. The U.S. troop commitment to Saudi Arabia has been one of the central motives behind al-Qaeda's attacks against the United States. Four years later, in November 2002, an al-Qaeda conducted hotel bombing in Mombasa, Kenya killed more than a dozen people at the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel. Minutes before the hotel bombing came an unsuccessful attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner with a shoulder-held, surface-to-air missile. These attacks were meant to coincide with the 55th anniversary of the partition of Palestine. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |