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There’s an AK 47 on the dashboard And mercy’s left this town —Johnny Clegg, “Africa (What Made You So Strong)” [3] THE EAST AFRICA CELL It was 1992 when al Qaeda began assembling the East Africa cell that would carry out the plot against the American embassies. Osama sent his number three, Abu Ubaydah al Banshiri, chair of the military council, to Kenya to run it. Upon arriving in Nairobi, he adopted a new identity, married a local woman, and sought out business opportunities in order to be self-sufficient and have legitimate cover. A former Egyptian police officer, he was among Osama’s most trusted lieutenants : “Some said that if [his second in command, Ayman al-] Zawahiri had taken over bin Laden’s brain, Abu Ubaydah had his heart.”1 According to bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Jamal Khalifa, Osama was deeply impressed with Ubaydah’s devoutness, saying he “is memorizing all the Koran, and when you see him most of the time, he is fasting, and in the night, he is praying the night prayer, which is very difficult. He is really a very good religious Muslim.”2 Harun, a key member of the cell, said it was Abu Ubaydah’s idea to stake a claim in East Africa. He properly assessed the region’s remoteness as a source of vulnerability. In Somalia, he foresaw the potential for another Afghanistan: a place where a tottering government might give way to insurgent Islamists. He believed the time had come for al Qaeda to distinguish itself. During the Afghan jihad, it had merely been one of many groups, and was noted more for its financing than its fighting. In East Africa, Abu Ubaydah thought, he had found an environment where they could make a unique mark for themselves.3 Abu Jandal, bin Laden’s former bodyguard, explained, “He [bin Laden] would always say that we must hit America on a front it never expects.”4 “Where East Africa was a wake-up call for us,” said FBI agent Joe Billy, “was seeing an al Qaeda operation unfold completely removed from traditional areas where you’d anticipate attacks. That was the most startling thing: their ability to have operatives establish bona fides in-country and stay under the radar while planning their deeds.”5 The East Africa Cell 21 Meanwhile, bin Laden was developing alliances with Islamic extremist groups around the globe. Most were in the Middle East and North Africa, but he was also becoming well connected in Southeast Asia and across Africa, in Somalia, Eritrea, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya.6 Benjamin and Simon report, “Al-Qaeda’s operational focus in the early 1990s was on anti-American attacks in Africa.”7 Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst who headed the first operational unit tasked to investigate bin Laden, wrote, “Africa has remained a high-interest locale for bin Laden since the 1994 withdrawal of UN and U.S. forces from Somalia.”8 Abu Ubaydah was in charge of relations with Somali rebels. He sent his deputy —and eventual replacement as head of al Qaeda’s military council—Mohammed Atef, widely known as Abu Hafs, to Somalia to liaise with local warlords, reconnoiter potential targets, and coordinate training. Mohammed Odeh, a conspirator in the embassy bombings, was sent to train al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya fighters in southeast Somalia. Harun went to Mogadishu to work on a plot to attack a U.N. building with a truck bomb. Scheuer says that bin Laden sent 250 fighters to Somalia to help Aidid and other anti-American warlords.9 --Among the key players in al Qaeda’s East Africa cell was Wadih el Hage. He was one of the operatives sent from bin Laden’s base in Khartoum to Nairobi. Wadih was born on July 25, 1960, into a Christian family in Lebanon. When he was two, the family moved to Kuwait, where his father worked for an oil company. As a teen, he converted to Islam, but didn’t tell his parents, fearing their disapproval. In 1978, he arrived in the United States to study at the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette, and eventually became a naturalized American citizen. “In many ways, he’s very Americanized,” said Sam Schmidt, one of his defense attorneys. “He expressed himself in a very American fashion. He feels he’s entitled to his opinions. And he expected the best of America; there’s a little naiveté there. “He obviously...

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