Posted on 12/01/2002 11:38:20 AM PST by Asmodeus
MOMBASA, KENYA – Riziki Yaa's uncle Charo got her into the dance troupe. The pay was meager and sometimes the tourists would giggle. But Thursday morning she was in the lobby of the Paradise Hotel, welcoming guests while her uncle played his bumbumbu drum.
Noy and Dvir Anter had seen traditional African dancing before - but only on TV. This was the first time the 12- and 14-year-old brothers had ever been outside of Israel.
Just as Charo began to sing and Dvir started to clap, a green Mitsubishi Pajero rammed through the lobby and exploded.
If the attackers were Al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist group, this would be the second such bombing in Kenya in four years, painfully underscoring for Kenyans their close relationship with Israel and the United States.
The three suicide bombers, one of them apparently jumping out of the vehicle and into the crowd, died instantly - taking with them the Anter children, five traditional dancers, another Israeli and five Kenyans. More than 40 others were injured in the blasts.
Minutes before the hotel attack, two shoulder-fired missiles - Russian-made Strelas - were fired from a grassy canyon near the airport, narrowly missing a chartered Israeli Boeing 757 on its way back to Tel Aviv.
The Israeli Mossad, the CIA, and the Kenyan intelligence agencies are working together to determine who is behind this bombing. A previously unknown organization in Beirut, the "Army of Palestine," claimed responsibility for the attacks. No one has yet ruled out that this might be a militant Palestinian group or the Hizbullah acting against Israel. The hotel is owned by an Israeli, caters almost exclusively to Israeli tour groups, and several eyewitnesses say the three men in the Pajero "looked Arab."
But, say sources from all three investigative groups, it is more likely that the attack in Kenya was part of the larger operations of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. While there is no hard evidence yet, the attack had certain hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation - the synchronized aspect of the attack, hitting a "soft target," and the relative sophistication of the missile launchings. And Al Qaeda supporters applauded the attack. "There were those who wondered lately why Al Qaeda was ignoring the core Palestinian-Israeli conflict and focusing on the US," says Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, a London-based leader of the radical Islamic movement Al Muhajiroun. "This was his first opportunity to respond," he says, adding that an attack against Israelis was "fitting," as the last 10 days of Ramadan "are days of the greatest jihad of all."
Yesterday, Kenyan police reported finding pieces of two gas cylinders (one with four numbers on it) that they suspect were fastened to the vehicle's underside to create a bigger explosion. Kenyan officials arrested 12 foreigners over the weekend - an American woman and her Spanish husband (who were later released with apologies), six Pakistanis, and four Somalis.
"Over the last year we have been on the lookout for an Al Qaeda attack in the Horn of Africa," says a US official, citing the porous borders in the region, the easy availability of arms, and the relatively large and increasingly radical Muslim population here - 10 percent of Kenyans are Muslim. Bin Laden is reported to have supporters and operatives in Kenya, neighboring Somalia, and Sudan, where he spent four years a decade ago.
Kenya, a country affluent enough to have Western investments, tourists, and international media outlets - but corrupt and poor enough to allow almost anyone free entrance and movement - is "an almost obvious" target, says the official.
"I don't care who is to blame," says John Hanel, a former clerk at the now smoldering Paradise Hotel. "Why do we have to pay?" This is the question many Kenyans are asking - and not for the first time. In 1998, Al Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 231 people and injured over 5,000. Twelve of those killed were Americans - the rest were locals. In 1980, a bomb wrecked the ballroom of the Jewish-owned Norfolk hotel in Nairobi, killing 15 and wounding more than 80, again, mostly locals. That attack, like the Mombasa one, was claimed by a previously unknown pro-Palestinian Arab group.
Kenya has long had good relations with both the US and Israel: In June 1976, Kenya provided crucial assistance to the Israeli army as it raided the Entebbe airport in neighboring Uganda to free the passengers of an Air France plane hijacked by Palestinians. The Norfolk hotel blast is believed to have been in retaliation for that assistance. The American military has also operated out of Kenya, most notably during the 1991 Gulf war. For the past year, German and British surveillance planes have been using Mombasa as a base as they search for Al Qaeda fugitives in the seas off Somalia.
Some officials in Washington quickly pointed a finger at a small, radical group in neighboring Somalia - Al Ittihad Al Islamiya - which has been tied to Al Qaeda in the past, and was placed on the US terror-watch list. But Somalia experts say such a conclusion is premature.
"The facts don't add up," says Theodoros Dagne, a specialist on African affairs at the Congressional Research Service in Washington. "The last time Al Ittihad carried out terror attacks was in 1996-97 in Ethiopia. They have never targeted Western powers, the US or its allies." He adds that "Somalis don't blow themselves up. This is a Middle East trademark. They shoot, they kill. But never a suicide bombing." Furthermore, he adds, if the Somalis had such missiles in their possession - they would have used them over the years. "I don't think its them," he concludes.
Another piece of evidence that points to Al Qaeda: a warning sent to ex-pats here.
Beverley Herd, an Australian national living some seven miles away from the Paradise Hotel, got a notice from her High Commission two weeks ago, telling her to beware of anything suspicious in Mombasa or Nairobi and to avoid "hotels, clubs, bars, schools, places of worship, outdoor recreation events, and tourist areas."
British, Canadian, and German citizens here all received similar warnings. Ms. Herd's letter sits, crumpled, on her desk. "Where are we supposed to go exactly?" she asks.
Yesterday a troupe of traditional African dancers gamely gyrated at the Bamburi Beach hotel up the coast from the burned-out Paradise. A small group of British tourists gathered around. And a little boy put his hands together to clap.
You know what? Bibi is absolutely right! This is just the initial stage of a wider terrorist spiel since if you extrapolate any terrorist streak they all begin with an attack against Israeli targets! Soon after they spill over to other targets that mindless jehadis believe are pertinent, and usually that means the US becomes the next stop.
I believe that gentle persuasion and appeasement will not work against the jehadis ....it never worked against the Nazis during the time period leading up to WW2, and it will not be effective against jehadis today! The only viable means of negating the threat posed by terrorists is to hit them hard, and to hit them from all sides.
This in essence means that not only should the mules (by mules i mean the loonies who strap bombs on themselves and blow up people) be killed ....but also the masterminds and the financiers should also be nabbed. Personally i would actually prefer if we concentrated on the masterminds, and especially the financiers, since without those two the best the mules can do is throw rocks and herd goats! Mules are quintessentially stupid indoctrinated Islamic idiots who cannot even tie their shoe laces …however if you add a planner and a financier they get metamorphosed into robotic automatons that carry out the death wishes of their masters! The middle east is full of goatherds willing to die for Allah, the whole Islamic world is in essence a vast vat for suicidal homicidal maniacs! There is no way to stop all of them. However the number of masterminds, and especially financiers, is very limited. They are the Achilles heel of terrorism since without the financiers and planners the maximum the mules can do is sporadic shootings and other relatively small acts! However add a barely competent planner, and Saudi money, to the mix and suddenly a mule becomes the pilot of a hijacked plane, the trigger-guy of a SA-7 streyla, or the carrier of a nuke device hidden in the bowels of a ship headed for New York harbor!
Which is why it is imperative to strike against the higher echelons of terror ….and I do not mean people like UBL because Al Queda can function perfectly even if UBL was dead and gone! What Al Queda cannot do without is funding …it needs a constant flow of cash to carry out its more ambitious plans! This does not mean that it cannot carry terror without adequate funding …it still can since buying a Kalashnikov and spraying people with bullets is not expensive. However they cannot be able to perform truly grand ‘projects’ like 9-11, or like acquiring a WMD and bringing it to the US. Which is why it is crucial to staunch, or at least curtail to the best of our ability, the flow of money to the Jehadis (hint hint stop treating the Saudis like naughty children when they aid terrorists).
This is obviously a major issue to me since I was quite worried about my family. Although they stay in Nairobi my dad had gone for a meeting in Mombasa, and basically all of his fellow managers are Israeli hence I was kind of worried (although luckily I made some calls and discovered they had left the area days ago). And then my mom works opposite the Israeli embassy in Nairobi, and we have always known that is a target area even though security is tight ….but again all was ok!
However many families are now in mourning, both in Kenya and Israel, because some stupid jehadi loony thought killing innocents would satisfy the blood lust of the demonic Islamic deity! And I guess it is time the whole of the world (that yearns to be free of the malignant malaise of Islamic terrorism) to ensure that something tangible is done to destroy this curse wherever it is! And the reason I say the whole world is because Islamic jehadism does not care who you are or where you are from! The prime targets are obviously Israel, closely followed by America! However virtually everyone else who is not an indoctrinated muslim is a viable target! For example in 1998 during the embassy bombings 9 Americans died in Nairobi, but over 200 Kenyans died as well and around 5000 were injured! I can actually remember that day in 1998 quite vividly because my sis and I were heading off to engage in a shopping spree when reports started streaming in of a bomb attack, and i remember my sis and i chortling with laughter because at first we though the whole affair was some practical joke (after all this was Kenya and we thus naively assumed terrorism was an impossibility). However as we founf out an attack had actually happened i can remember that the initial reaction was a medley of shock and disbelief since it did not make sense why anyone would attack Nairobi! We knew that we had a lot of foreign interests and a large foreign population from places like europe and israel, but still why would anyone attack us even if it was a proxy target they were after? That was my first introduction i think to the asinine murderous logic of islam and its murderous adherents!
It shows that these Islamic crazies do not give a darn who their target is as long as they have a target and a message! All for allah!
Hence the financiers who enable goatherds to become competent terrorists need to be struck and struck hard! Even if these financiers turn out be high-echelon high-octane Saudi princes! If nothing is done against the financiers this is what is going to happen: the war against terrorism will be a sham because the whole Islamic world (even muslims in the US) is filled with willing people who would become mules for allah for various reasons. There is no way to get rid of all the mules unless genocidal measures are taken, and obviously that would not happen! However it is possible to tackle the financiers, and I do not just mean the conduits (eg the ‘charities’ in the US that were closed down after 9-11). I do not just mean the conduits since it is easy to establish other intermediaries! What needs to be stopped up is the source of the cash …and the major source of funding is located in the locales surrounding Riyadh, Saudi Arabia! And anyone who still thinks the Saudis are America’s friend is seriously deluded …unless they are confusion America’s fRiend with America’s Fiend!
It would be crazy for any American (especially the politicians who always seem so pressed to defend the Saudis) to believe the Saudis are friends! They are nothing more than the source of the life blood of terrorism!
Just remember that the Islamic crazies always seem to save their most diabolical and most ambitious attacks for the US …
I fear that Kenya may be a target again in the future for Jehadi swine! After all Kenya has many western linkages (ranging from western investments, mostly european, to even some schools, like the one i attended, that have a very large western population). We have a large British population, and a sizeable Israeli settlement. And then there are also a lot of Indians (i just hope Pakistani terrorists do nto chose Kenya as their next target). And then add to this the fact that several of Kenya's neighbors (eg the Sudan and Somalia) are war-torn cesspools that have a porous border with Kenya that stretches for miles!
That is just an extremely attractive combination, and it has been used THRICE by jehadis (the Norfolk attack in 1980, the 1998 embassy attacks, and the attacks on Thursday).
Actually there have been several more attacks (for example during the 80s there were several attempts to hijack Israeli planes from Kenya, and several bombing attempts) but luckily they failed due to a huge cooperative movement between the Mossad and Kenyan CID (that was during the heydays of the ColdWar, and Nairobi was reputedly the largest concentration of Mossad agents outside Israel since they used it as a hub). Hence Kenya being a target of terrorism basically started around 2 decades ago, generally after the assistance we gave the Israelis during the entebbe raid.
I just hope that future attacks are nipped in the bud because it seems the jehadis are becoming more ambitious as time progresses. I also wish the Kenyan government would stop accepting all the refugees who cross the borders illegally from neighboring nations to come and look for a better life. I am sure the terrorists who have been performing these attacks crossed the borders with the refugees! It is nice to be benevolent, however when your benevolence starts costing lives i think it is time to re-evaluate it!
And by the way you might be interested to know that Kenyan muslims (who comprise 10% of the total population) are just like muslims anywhere in the world ....instead of providing assistance by reporting suspected terrorists what they instead do is try to obfuscate the truth, and get into denial loops! And then they start saying Islam is a religion of peace and all that mumbo-jumbo. Instead of giving excuses they should cooperate with the authorities and name those who have linkages with terror ...but no! All the islamic clerics do is just become apologetics and spout forth endless diatribes on how Islam is 'peaceful' and so forth!
The remaining 90% of the population is starting to get really tired .........
Has there been any charities or other places where one can donate to the Kenyan victims of terrorism? They definitely need our help.
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