Aid, Civil Society and the State in Kenya since 9/11
Jeremy Lind and Jude Howell
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The horrific bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam thrust east Africa to the centre of world concern over the threat of terrorism and presaged the events of September 11th and the declaration of the Global 'War on Terror'. Images of crumbled office blocks and the twisted wreckage of buses and vehicles on the streets of central Nairobi gave rise to public consciousness of Osama Bin Laden and a new brand of international terrorism. Following the attacks, U.S. President Clinton ordered the targeted air strike of a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, the capital city of neighbouring Sudan, which remains on the US list of state sponsors of terror and for a time in the 1990s was official host to Bin Laden. Kenya has since been the theatre for further attacks targeting Israeli tourists and commercial interests. The conflagration of violence and renewed clan warfare that has gripped neighbouring Somalia since the invasion of US-backed Ethiopian forces in late 2006 against the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) that briefly governed southern Somalia has drawn Kenya deeper into the persecution of the 'War on Terror'.