INTRODUCTION:

At roughly 10:30 a.m. on August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda terrorists detonated, almost simultaneously, large vehicular bombs outside the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Two-hundred twenty-four people were killed, including 12 Americans and 32 Foreign Service National employees. Approximately 4,000 people, mainly Kenyan and Tanzanian civilians, were injured.  This case study examines the policy and intelligence failures prior to the bombings, the immediate U.S. response (largely medical), and Operation Infinite Reach, the U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks, which targeted suspected al-Qaeda facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan. Most analysts agree that institutional failures occurred before and after the attacks, with shortfalls prior to the bombings being more numerous and consequential. 

STRATEGY:

At the time of the attacks, intelligence and policy officials had yet to fully appreciate the threat posed by loosely-organized transnational terrorist networks; namely, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. This was largely due to the inability of intelligence and policy officials to perceive this information as representing an increasingly capable and far-reaching threat. This absence of understanding meant that the U.S. was systemically unprepared to pre-empt, prepare for, or respond to terrorist attacks akin to the simultaneous bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Following the attacks, the USG quickly mobilized response resources. However, numerous elements of the response were ad hoc due to the lack of adequate contingency planning for a mass-casualty incident abroad. Furthermore, the occurrence of multiple and simultaneous crises had never been contemplated. The decision to retaliate for the embassy bombings by utilizing Tomahawk cruise missiles in concurrent strikes against the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and terrorist training camps in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998 was also ad hoc.

INTEGRATED ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER:

The failure of the policy community to recognize the emergence of a new strategic environment resulted in part from the failure of policy-making and intelligence officials to communicate, cooperate, and share vital information within and between departments and agencies. More specifically, this compartmentalization of information inhibited officials from thinking outside of entrenched national security worldviews. During the response efforts, coordination and cooperation was necessary across the USG, as responsibilities and assets were (and remain) widely dispersed.  Though the overall response was considered a relative success, disjointed liaising between agencies resulted in coordination and logistical difficulties. Lastly, an extremely small number of top government officials were involved in the initial planning stages of the retaliation and reservations regarding the selection of the al-Shifa plant as a target were largely ignored.

EVALUATION:

The pre-attack failures of the USG largely can be ascribed to excessive reliance on tactical intelligence when formulating threat assessments, institutional cultures which discouraged cooperation and free dialogue within and between agencies, a collective incapability to accept new strategic paradigms, and a lack of funding for sufficient embassy security. Disjointed liaising between agencies was responsible for the flawed planning and logistical deficiencies during the immediate response to the bombings. Lastly, it is likely that image politics encouraged a rush to military action after the attacks. The Clinton administration’s failure to include more officials in the initial planning stages of Operation Infinite Reach, as well as his decision not to heed the advice of the Pentagon and other dissenting voices within the administration, accounted for the shortcomings of the retaliatory missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan.

RESULTS:

The loss and injury of American, Kenyan, and Tanzanian lives were the most obvious and tragic costs of USG failures. As for the attempt at retaliation, many government officials deemed the Tomahawk missions “very expensive failures.” There was no evidence at the time of the attacks that al-Shifa was linked to Osama bin Laden, and post-strike data indicate that the plant was not involved in chemical weapons manufacturing. The strikes on the al-Shifa, furthermore, damaged American prestige.

CONCLUSION:

When analyzing the performance of the U.S. government prior to and immediately following the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, one finds that the inability of the intelligence and policy communities to recognize and properly assess the new strategic environment of the late 1990s—despite possessing the information to do so—was the root cause of the strategic failure to anticipate and adequately prepare for terrorist attacks on U.S. interests in East Africa. This inability was rooted in the lack of cooperation and information-sharing within and between government agencies. Though the U.S. response to the bombings was considered a relative success, planning and logistical failures caused by a lack of pre-event preparation and disjointed interagency liaison prevented a timely response to the attacks and the deployment of effective resources. Also, retaliation for the embassy bombings was not planned or vetted by many government officials. Hasty decisions in the face of insufficient evidence resulted in the ineffective and costly missile strikes of Operation Infinite Reach.