Al-Qaeda and the
East African threat By Erich
Marquardt
East Africa is no stranger to Islamic
militancy. The region has been the victim of a series of
al-Qaeda-related attacks against predominately US
interests. Because of 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 US interests in the region.
Islamist activity targeted at US 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 US
interests.
The first major attack took place in
August 1998. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for bombing
the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The
attacks killed hundreds of people and coincided with the
anniversary of the first deployment of US troops to
Saudi Arabia in 1990. The US 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 Mombassa, 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.
In addition to
these direct attacks, al-Qaeda is believed to have
supported various Muslim militant organizations in East
Africa, most notably the Somali Islamist organization
al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI). AIAI's central objective is
to create an Islamic government based on Islamic law in
what is now Ethiopia and Somalia. The group follows the
more radical Saudi-based Wahhabi form of Islam, also
followed by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
Washington believes that bin Laden sent al-Qaeda
fighters, who had formerly fought in Afghanistan against
the Soviet occupation there, to Somalia in 1991-92 to
help the AIAI organize itself militarily, in addition to
giving advice on how to set up social services for the
Somali people. US officials also contend that bin Laden
spent about US$3 million to send fighters from the
Afghan resistance to Somalia to help set up an Islamic
republic there. The goal of al-Qaeda in supporting AIAI
is to turn the organization into a popular force in
Somalia, in the hopes of the AIAI seizing power from the
Somali regime.
While the AIAI managed to conduct
a series of attacks in Ethiopia and Somalia, its power
has been dramatically reduced ever since 1996, when it
provoked the Ethiopian military to launch a series of
cross-border raids into Somalia that successfully
damaged the operational capability of the AIAI.
There is also the concern that al-Qaeda is
exploiting the general lawlessness of East Africa to
establish military training facilities there, where
militants are taught guerrilla-warfare techniques and
then sent to select countries throughout the world to
plan and execute attacks on US interests. This concern
is especially prevalent now considering that the US
invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has eliminated
the primary country where these facilities were formerly
located, forcing al-Qaeda to move its training
operations elsewhere.
Washington's
counter-terrorism efforts The administration of
President George W Bush has recognized the potential
threat that East Africa poses to US interests. To
counter this threat, an agreement was reached with the
East African state of Djibouti approving the
establishment of a US military base at Camp Lemonier, a
former French military barracks. Since May 2003, from
this base, about 1,500 US troops have been engaged in
humanitarian and counter-terrorism efforts, such as
using the base as a launching point for unmanned
Predator drone aircraft that are often utilized to
monitor and attack al-Qaeda-related militants in the
region.
Furthermore, the Djibouti base is just
across the Strait of Bab el Mande from Yemen, an Arab
Muslim state that was the staging area for a suicide
boat attack on the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole in
October 2000, blowing a large hole in the side of the
ship and killing 17 American sailors. Indeed, in
November 2002, the US military killed a group of
suspected al-Qaeda militants in Yemen by firing a
Hellfire missile from an unmanned Predator drone
aircraft about 160 kilometers east of Sanaa. In the
words of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "There
is no question but that there are al-Qaeda in Yemen."
Also to combat the al-Qaeda threat, the Bush
administration has lent military support to the
government of Ethiopia, which has been successfully
combating the Islamist organization AIAI for years. As
stated by Major Tsegaye Debela of the Ethiopian air
force, and an adviser to the US mission in East Africa,
terrorism "is not new for our country. Most of the
people are appreciative of what the coalition forces,
mostly US, are doing in Ethiopia."
The US
military does not plan on walking away from East Africa
any time soon. Marine Colonel Craig S Huddleston, the
chief of staff for the Djibouti-based Combined Joint
Task Force-Horn of Africa, recently told the US military
publication Stars and Stripes, "I think we're going to
be here long enough for the nations of the region to
work together with all our other partners in the war on
terrorism to eliminate the threat here. That's why I
think it will take a while."
Generally speaking,
al-Qaeda is a minor threat to US interests in East
Africa. The populations in East African countries remain
largely tied to their ethnic and tribal associations,
rather than strictly to their religious ones. Because of
this, they are much more likely to engage in national
resistance struggles, rather than transnational ones.
Nevertheless, al-Qaeda's attractive ideology of the need
for a "defensive jihad" against US forces has the
potential of converting many East African Muslims to
al-Qaeda's creed.
However, even if al-Qaeda were
able to recruit a sizable pool of militants in East
Africa, there are not many US interests for them to
attack. To the US, Africa has remained a relatively
forgotten continent. Attacks on US and Western interests
there would pose a minor threat to US security.
Nonetheless, the fear of bin Laden that is
prevalent in the US and the West makes any rational
power and interest calculation subject to error. In
today's globalized economy, an attack against US and
Western interests anywhere in the world has the
potential to cause massive investor and consumer fear,
creating weakness in the global economy. Furthermore, an
attack on US or Western tourist facilities in East
Africa could have ramifications for the tourist industry
in Asia, or even Europe. By creating the impression that
al-Qaeda could strike a tourist facility anywhere, bin
Laden has the potential to impact the lives of Americans
and Westerners wherever they are.
Additionally,
the ability of al-Qaeda to set up military training
facilities in East Africa could pose a serious risk to
US interests, since the veterans of such programs would
be able to use their training to plan and execute
attacks on US interests across the globe.
Conclusion Creating fear is perhaps
the biggest threat that al-Qaeda poses to US interests
in East Africa. East Africa's large Muslim population,
in addition to its many weak governments, gives al-Qaeda
the opportunity to recruit and train Muslim militants
for attacks against US interests. While attacks on these
interests within East Africa pose little real security
or direct economic risk to the United States, they have
the potential of causing widespread fear and
uncertainty, a horrible mix in investment-dependent
economies.
The Bush administration's attempts to
isolate East Africa from infiltration by al-Qaeda
militants is an important step to prevent these
societies from becoming religiously radicalized and
finding meaning in bin Laden's rhetoric of conducting a
"defensive jihad" against the US. However, the
instability and lawlessness in countries of the region,
such as in Somalia and Sudan, will make it difficult for
the US to prevent al-Qaeda from effectively infiltrating
East Africa. Nevertheless, because East African Muslims
are not religiously polarized in the same way as are
Arab Muslims, it will prove difficult for al-Qaeda to
establish an effective East African force capable of
launching successful attacks against US interests in the
region.
Published with permission of thePower and
Interest News Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into various
conflicts, regions and points of interest around the
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