Grade Level: SrH-Adult
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: No |
Running Time: 50 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No |
Copyright Date: 2008
Available in French: No
|
1998. A truck loaded with explosives pulled up outside the US Embassy in the heart of Nairobi. A man jumped out and threw a stun grenade at the guards. A suicide bomber then detonated the explosives. The embassy and adjacent buildings were reduced to smouldering rubble, packed buses parked at the crossroads were ignited. 224 people died. Thousands were injured. There had been warnings. In late autumn 1997, there was intelligence from a ‘walk in' at the Nairobi Embassy that it was to be bombed. The US Ambassador had already notified Washington of its vulnerability. In the spring, Osama bin Laden had issued a fatwa against Americans, military and civilians, threatening them with death wherever they were. As the Americans and the West tried to work out what to do about bin Laden, a team of international terrorists quietly plotted the embassy attack in the mountains of Afghanistan and the suburbs of Nairobi. In the aftermath, President Clinton launched Operation Infinite Reach, attacking bin Laden's Afghan base. But bin Laden had gone. His reach seemed further than that of the world's only superpower. The embassy bombs ushered in a new chapter of the Age of Terror. The ideology of jihad (holy war) against the West united al-Qaeda's affiliated groups of Islamist extremists in a campaign of global terror. Today, they regard all civilians as legitimate targets. No one is presumed innocent – we all participate in the perceived guilt of our political leaders. This is the final, terrible logic of the Age Of Terror. |
