Embassies in sub-Saharan Africa added to closures amid security fears, bombing anniversary
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FILE - In this file photo of Monday, March 3, 2003, the new U.S. Embassy on the outskirts of Nairobi. The largest U.S. diplomatic mission in sub-Saharan Africa replaces the earlier mission that was destroyed by a terrorist bomb on Aug 7, 1998, killing 219 people. Wednesday will mark 15 years since that explosion. During a week of heightened security concerns at U.S. embassies the East African countries of Rwanda, Burundi, Mauritius and Madagascar were added to the U.S. embassy closures list on Sunday. (AP Photo/Khalil Senosi, File) |
NAIROBI, Kenya - The U.S. State Department closed its embassies in
four sub-Saharan African nations as part of a heightened security alert,
days before the 15th anniversary of al-Qaida's bombings of American
diplomatic missions in Kenya and Tanzania.
Those two embassies targeted in the Aug. 7, 1998, attacks were
rebuilt as more heavily fortified structures away from populated areas
where they would be less vulnerable to attack. Those embassies remain
open, but the diplomatic missions in Rwanda and Burundi, small countries
which border Tanzania to the west, and the island nations of Madagascar
and Mauritius were ordered closed.
The State Department has shut down U.S. facilities in countries
including Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait until
Aug. 10. U.S. diplomatic posts in 19 cities, including the four in
sub-Saharan Africa, will be closed through the end of the week.
U.S. officials gave no hint as to why the four U.S. embassies in
sub-Saharan Africa were closed. None of the four is known for high-level
terror threats. A State Department spokeswoman for Africa didn't
respond to an email query.
But al-Qaida operatives remain in East Africa, and one Africa expert
noted that Burundi and Rwanda each have an older U.S. Embassy building
that is less secure than newer embassies, such as those built far off
the road in Tanzania and Kenya.
The expert, J. Peter Pham, the director of the Africa Center at the
Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council, also noted that Mohammed Jamal
Khalifa — a brother-in-law to Osama bin Laden — was killed in Madagascar
in 2007. Khalifa was known as an al-Qaida financier and was reportedly
killed by U.S. special operations forces.
"So there was an al-Qaida presence in Madagascar as recently as six years ago," Pham said.
As for Mauritius, it is an offshore location for "all sorts of
financing activities" in a loosely regulated atmosphere, Pham said,
which could be used for nefarious activities. In addition, the island
nation has a territorial dispute with the U.K. over its ownership of the
island nation of Diego Garcia, which the U.S. military uses as a
military base, including for operations in Afghanistan and formerly in
Iraq, he said.
On Wednesday, the 15th anniversary of the 1998 attacks, American
personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi will stand beside Kenyan
colleagues who were wounded in the devastating simultaneous truck
bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The attacks killed 224 people in
total, mostly Kenyans, but also a dozen Americans. About a dozen of
those killed died in Tanzania.
At the end of President Barack Obama's trip to Africa in June and
July, he and former President George W. Bush laid a wreath together at a
memorial in Dar es Salaam for the victims of the bombing in Tanzania.
Even before the current embassy closings, the U.S. State Department
had already warned that Burundi could be hit by a terrorist attack
because it has deployed troops to Somalia to fight al-Shabab, an armed
Islamist extremist group allied with al-Qaida. The April warning said
attacks in Burundi could also target U.S. interests.
In July 2010, militants from al-Shabab detonated near-simultaneous
blasts in Uganda's capital as crowds watched the World Cup soccer final
on TV screens, killing more than 70 people. Al-Shabab said the attack
was in retaliation for Uganda's sending of troops to Somalia to fight
the militant group.
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