This is an account of the “war on terror” and my life. The book begins with the al-Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998, and ends in the fall of 2017. This is my personal perspective.
Most books about al-Qaeda and the war on terrorism highlight the perpetrators. This one starts with the story of survivors and how we found resilience as a Kenyan and American community. Most books about al-Qaeda and the war on terrorism are written by men; I am a woman. Most books about the war on terrorism focus on tactics; I focus on leadership.
I cannot separate the story of August 7––what happened and how––from my own because we were both products of foreign policies made in Washington with little thought of long-term impacts, much less of the people implementing them overseas. I grew up in a Foreign Service family among the ruins of World War II in Germany and France and the consequences of the Cold War in Pakistan and Iran. When I returned for college in the United States in the mid-1960s, policy discussions about race and war were taking place in the streets, and I had to figure out where I fit into this country of mine. In the 1970s policies and attitudes about women made me a feminist, and a court-imposed affirmative action program in the Department of State brought me into the Foreign Service in my own right in the early 1980s.
In 1998, when the bombs went off in Kenya and Tanzania, Congress was in recess. The White House, along with the entire country, was focused on the “Monica Lewinsky scandal” and efforts to impeach President Bill Clinton. Congress held no hearings about the bombings, the national security community held no after-action reviews, and the mandatory Accountability Review Board focused on narrow security issues. Then on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. homeland and the East Africa bombings became little more than a footnote.
Investigations into the 9/11 attacks revealed just how much parts of our law enforcement and intelligence communities had known about al-Qaeda since 1996, two years before we were blown up in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. I wanted to know how these bombings could have happened, given the scrutiny bin Laden and his cell in Nairobi were getting from special groups in the National Security Council, the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA.
I also wanted to tell the story of our community and what it was like to work in an embassy struggling toward normalcy after a life-changing attack. For all of the treasure and lives consumed by the war on terror, the targets and survivors receive little attention. As terrorist threats and our conflicts with “jihadists” continue through a fourth presidency, I highlight lessons that prevented our government from safeguarding its diplomatic facilities in contrast to our community’s resilience and leadership that enabled good people to prevail. We can be wounded, angry, happy, sorry, sad, scared, and hopeful and still carry on.
I tell the story in three parts. Part 1 is a personal chronicle of the bombing and its aftermath that includes a narrative of my own life. I move back in time to share what it was like beginning life as a “third culture” kid in the Foreign Service and moving through patriarchal cultures and the State Department hierarchy to become an ambassador. As a girl growing up in the 1950s, it was inconceivable that I could become a leader, much less one who excelled in disasters. My only role model was Joan of Arc, and I was well aware of what happened to her when she put on a pair of pants and led men. But I did become a leader, intentionally, and the bombing in Nairobi was a test of leadership the likes of which I never imagined. More important to the nation, it was the act of a war in which the United States had no idea it was engaged.
Part 2 reviews the formation of jihadist groups, including those supported by the United States when it worked to make Afghanistan “Russia’s Vietnam.” It lays out three competing forces—al-Qaeda, the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities, and my embassy—all careening down parallel tracks to the fateful day of August 7, 1998.
Part 3 offers the leadership lessons I acquired and an assessment of results after fighting the war on terrorism for almost twenty years, four presidencies, trillions of dollars, and millions of civilians dead, injured, and displaced.