1992 Aden hotel bombings

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1992 Aden hotel bombings
Part of the al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen
Gold Mohur Hotel.jpg
The Gold Mohur Hotel
LocationAden Mövenpick Hotel and Gold Mohur Hotel, Yemen
Coordinates 12°48′23″N45°1′42″E / 12.80639°N 45.02833°E / 12.80639; 45.02833
12°46′9″N44°59′25″E / 12.76917°N 44.99028°E / 12.76917; 44.99028
Date29 December 1992;32 years ago (1992-12-29)
Target United States Marine Corps
Deaths2 civilians
Injured7 (including 2 perpetrators)
PerpetratorFlag of Jihad.svg Al-Qaeda
Motive American intervention in Somalia

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.

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. Bin Laden had personally proposed to the Saudi monarchy that his mujahideen fight Saddam Hussein's Iraq but was rejected. 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.

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. [1]

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 seperate hotels where US Marines were believed to be residing in. [1]

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. [2]

Execution

On 29 December 1992, Nahdi along with an assistant successfully planted a bomb in an upper floor of the Gold Mohur Hotel, a luxury hotel by the beachfront of Aden. [3] The two then drove to the Aden Mövenpick Hotel, where they attempted to plant a bomb in the parking lot. [4] 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. [3] [4]

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. [3]

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. [4] Additional authorities soon arrived at the parking lot within minutes of the blast to apprehend the militants and neutralize the remaining explosives. [3] 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. [4]

Investigation

Yemeni authorities believed Islamic Jihad in Yemen to be responsible for the bombing. [6] [7] Tariq al-Fadhli, the leader of Islamic Jihad, was arrested by Yemeni authorities along with various other group members in connection with the bombing. [8] Despite denying any involvement, he spent three years in prison on charges relating to the bombings as well as a plot to assassinate a leader of the Yemeni Socialist Party. [9]

Aftermath

In response to the bombings, current vice president and former South Yemen president Ali Salem al-Beidh ordered a crackdown on the jihadists,

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". [10]

Connection with al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda intended this first attack against the United States as part of a larger campaign. Earlier in 1992, al-Qaeda allegedly was training militants in Somalia to fight against U.S. forces. Links have been made between this training and the militants who participated in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which resulted in 18 deaths and 80 wounded U.S. troops. In March 1997, Bin Laden said, "With Allah’s grace, Muslims over there cooperated with some Arab mujahideen who were in Afghanistan... against the American occupation troops and killed large numbers of them," in an interview on CNN. [11]

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." [12] 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." [13]

According to American author Simon Reeve in The New Jackals , the bombings were in some part planned by Mohammed Atef, al-Qaeda's military chief at the time who was also involved in training anti-U.S. militants in Somalia. [14]

See more

References

  1. 1 2 Johnsen 2012, p. 30.
  2. ↑ Johnsen 2012, p. 31.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Johnsen 2012, p. 32.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Yemen Blast Kills Tourist". Tyler Morning Telegraph . Associated Press. 31 December 1992. p. 5. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
  5. ↑ Burns, John F. (26 November 2000). "Yemen Links to bin Laden Gnaw at F.B.I. in Cole Inquiry" . The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. Archived from the original on 29 May 2023. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
  6. ↑ "1992 Global Terrorism: Middle East Overview". Federation of American Scientists . 1993. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
  7. ↑ "طارق الفضلي.. سيرة ذاتية" [Tariq Al-Fadhli.. Biography]. Al Jazeera (in Arabic). 1 April 2010. Retrieved 19 January 2025. [In 1992, the authorities suspected al-Fadhli and his "jihadist" supporters of involvement in the bombing of the Aden Hotel, which was being used by US forces fighting in Somalia at the time.]
  8. ↑ "Islamist Militancy in a Pre- and Post-Saleh Yemen". Stratfor . 21 April 2011. Archived from the original on 8 September 2018. Retrieved 19 January 2025.
  9. ↑ Fadhil Ali, Rafid (20 November 2009). "The Jihadis and the Cause of South Yemen: A Profile of Tariq al-Fadhli". The Jamestown Foundation . Retrieved 19 January 2025.
  10. ↑ Barr, Stephen (2 January 1993). "U.S. STOPS USING YEMEN SUPPORT BASE". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 16 December 2024. Retrieved 18 January 2025.
  11. ↑ Hirschkorn, Phil (20 April 2001). "Scant evidence shown to link bin Laden to GI deaths in Somalia". CNN . New York. Archived from the original on 30 September 2001. Retrieved 21 January 2025.
  12. ↑ 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.
  13. ↑ Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 198.
  14. ↑ Schmidt, Susan (16 November 2001). "Bin Laden Aide Was Key Planner". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 19 January 2025. Retrieved 19 January 2025.

Bibliography

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