On 29 December 1992, a series of bombings targeted two hotels which housed United States Marines en route to deploy in Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope in Aden, Yemen. Orchestrated by Islamic Jihad in Yemen senior leader Jamal al-Nahdi, the bombs were planted at a restaurant in the Gold Mohur Hotel and the parking lot of the Aden Mövenpick Hotel, though the bomb at the latter hotel exploded prematurely. No U.S. Marines were harmed in the attacks, which instead killed an Austrian tourist and a hotel employee at the Gold Mohur, and injured seven others altogether. The next day, the U.S. government announced the evacuation of all U.S. forces still stationed in Yemen for the Operation in Somalia.
The bombings are sometimes considered to be al-Qaeda's first attacks against the U.S. due to the connections that Islamic Jihad in Yemen, including its leader Tariq al-Fadhli, had to Osama bin Laden financially. Bin Laden would later take credit for the attacks in 1998.
Background
In the months after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, Osama bin Laden decided upon the socialists of South Yemen being the next target of his mujahideen allies as well as those directly part of his newly-formed militant group, al-Qaeda. While residing in Saudi Arabia, he devised a plan to start an Islamist guerrilla war with the assistance of Tariq al-Fadhli, a fellow Afghan Arab who showed a similar disdain for the socialists, who had removed his family from power as leaders of the Fadhli Sultanate and forced them into exile. With funding from Bin Laden, Fadhli set out to the mountains of his native Abyan Governorate, where he set up a training camp alongside other former fighters from Afghanistan in mid-1990. Many other Afghan Arabs had set up training camps funded by Bin Laden across Yemen in the months after its unification in May 1990. President Ali Abdullah Saleh, previously the leader of North Yemen before unification, condoned their arrival and sought to use them to undermine the stability of the south in order to solidify his grip on power.[1]
On 4 December 1992, President George H. W. Bush announced Operation Restore Hope, a United States-led military peacekeeping effort meant to provide stability and humanitarian aid to Somalia amid the civil war. Saleh agreed to have American military units utilize Aden and its port as a connecting point to reach Somalia. Bin Laden feared that this agreement would act as an effort by the US to further expand its presence in the Arabian Peninsula. He had grown furious after the Saudi government agreed to indefinitely host US military bases in their country in the aftermath of the Gulf War. From his new base of operations in Sudan, Bin Laden decided that he would have to act in order to prevent the US from establishing a permanent occupation in the region.[2]
According to Simon Reeve in The New Jackals, al-Qaeda commander Muhammad Atef travelled to Somalia in order to investigate and determine any methods by which the group could attack US and UN forces involved in the operation. Consulting Bin Laden and the groups shura council, they decided upon forces stationed in Yemen being their target.[3]
Bombings
Planning
In late December 1992, as Fadhli and his men were in the midst of waging their insurgency, Bin Laden contacted another local jihadist ally, Jamal al-Nahdi, to carry out an attack based on reports he received from al-Qaeda operatives detailing the US military presence in Aden. Nahdi, who also fought in Afghanistan, was one of the first people to pledge allegiance to al-Qaeda upon its formation. Bin Laden subscribed to the policy of "centralization of decision and decentralization of execution", allowing Nahdi to plan out the specifics of the attacks.[4] Numerous sources, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, state that Fadhli was also involved in the attacks to some extent, ranging from him being the mastermind to simply a co-conspirator with Nahdi.[5]
On 23 December 1992, during a meeting at his apartment in Aden, Nahdi laid out his plan to a handful of militants, many of whom attended a training camp in northern Yemen funded by Bin Laden. His men were split into two groups; one would plant a bomb near a runway at the Aden International Airport, where a US Navy C-5 Galaxy aircraft was set to take off, while another, supervised by Nahdi himself, would perpetrate a simultaneous bombing of two separate hotels where US Marines were believed to be residing in.[4]
The plan had begun to go awry by 28 December, the day before it was set to take place. Local socialist authorities had arrested the two militants who were set to handle the explosives at the airport. Nahdi managed to convince his cell to still go through with the attacks, and tasked another man, Salih al-Khanabashi, with detonating the explosives at the airport, which had already been buried near the site.[6]
Execution
On 29 December 1992, Nahdi along with an assistant planted a bomb in an upper floor of the Gold Mohur Hotel, a luxury hotel by the beachfront of Aden.[7] The two then drove to the Aden Mövenpick Hotel, where they attempted to plant a bomb in the parking lot.[8] As Nahdi was handling the explosives, the detonator was accidentally triggered, producing a blast which nearly severed his hand.[5] As his assistant attempted to stop the bleeding, the bomb at the Gold Mohur had detonated. The blast took place by a packed restaurant inside the hotel, shattering windows and heavily damaging support beams and a hallway.[7][8]
No Marines were present at the Gold Mohur nor the Mövenpick, as they had booked at another hotel at the other side of the city. Additionally, upon their arrival at the airport, Khanabashi and his partner found that the buried explosives had already been found and excavated, forcing them to abort the plan. Thus, no US forces were harmed by the bombings, rendering it a failure.[7]
At the Gold Mohur, an Austrian tourist and Yemeni janitor were killed, along with four other Austrians being injured, two seriously. The Mövenpick parking lot blast wounded Nahdi, his assistant, and a security officer who was approaching them as they were rigging the explosives.[8] Additional authorities soon arrived at the parking lot within minutes of the blast to apprehend the militants and neutralize the remaining explosives.[7] Authorities searching the car of the two perpetrators found 23 bombs, two anti-tank mines, two sticks of dynamite, two machine guns and a pistol.[8]
Aftermath
The bombing did not attract much local or international media attention at the time. Writing for The Guardian, journalist Kevin Rushby recalled that the Mövenpick had still been operating regularly just weeks after the attack, with patrons paying it no mind.[9] There were no major reactions in the US either, as no American soldiers among the casualties.[10] However, the bombings led to anxiety among Yemenis who had previously condoned and endorsed the arrival of the Afghan Arabs, with "worried fathers and irate tribal shaykhs" soon coming to retrieve their sons from the militant camps until they had become nearly deserted.[11]
Utilizing an opportunity to end the violence against the socialists, then-vice president and former South Yemen leader Ali Salem al-Beidh ordered a military crackdown on the jihadists. The socialist-affiliated 3rd Armoured Division besieged Fadhli's camp in Abyan, but he managed to evade them after agreeing to travel to and surrender in Sanaa as part of a deal brokered by mediators sent by Saleh, who was thus able to retain an asset to use against the South. The bailout infuriated Beidh, although Saleh assured to him and the international community that an investigation into the bombing would be conducted.[7] Nonetheless, Fadhli's arrest was the only disciplinary action conducted by the Saleh government relating to the bombing, and he was released months later to continue his attacks on the socialists, eventually siding with Saleh in the civil war of 1994.[12]
Facing a siege, Khanabashi took refuge at and defended a camp in the mountains of southern Shabwah Governorate until he and his fellow jihadists managed to flee to the northern camp in Saada Governorate. Facing depleting numbers and morale, they were eventually taken under the control of Abu Ali al-Harithi, an al-Qaeda commander who took part in the establishment of training camps across Yemen. Nahdi along with other militants connected to the bombing were incarcerated at the al-Mansoura prison until he and five others escaped on 17 July 1993 with internal assistance. Harithi then transported them as well as Khanabashi to Bin Laden's base-of-operations in Khartoum.[13]
The U.S. government announced the withdrawal of their remaining troops stationed in Yemen for Operation Restore Hope on 30 December, in part due to the bombings. A spokesperson for the Pentagon downplayed the role that the bombings took in the decision to withdraw from Yemen, stating that by the time of the withdrawal Yemen was only transporting a single aircraft of soldiers per day. He said that "there was no longer a compelling need to use facilities there" and that "the primary reason was that the need for facilities had declined from the beginning of the operation".[14]
Legacy
The withdrawal of US troops from Yemen shortly after the bombings were perceived by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda as a major victory.[15]
The killing of non-Americans in the attacks provoked moral and theological uncertainty among some members of al-Qaeda. This eventually led to Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (Abu Hajer) providing a religious justification to the group regarding the killing of innocents. He referred to Ibn Taymiyya's endorsement of killing Mongols and anyone associating with them or simply in their vicinity, even Muslims, to affirm that the same concept could be applied to those caught in the crossfire of al-Qaeda's attacks.[16]
In 1998, Bin Laden would take credit for the bombings, claiming, "The United States wanted to set up a military base for US soldiers in Yemen, so that it could send fresh troops to Somalia... The Arab mujaheddin related to the Afghan jihad carried out two bomb explosions in Yemen to warn the United States, causing damage to some Americans staying in those hotels. The United States received our warning and gave up the idea of setting up its military bases in Yemen. This was the first al-Qaeda victory scored against the Crusaders."[18] This was not entirely true, since no Americans were injured or killed, nor did the United States recognize this action as a warning. At the time, "The troops went on to Somalia as scheduled, but the triumphant leaders of al-Qaeda said that they had frightened the Americans away and scored an easy victory."[19]
↑Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, Revised Edition (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2006), p. 147.
↑Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 198.
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