THE EXPLAINER: How the 1998 US Embassy bombing changed Kenya

August 7, 1998 marked a turning point, not just for Kenya but the world. The group that claimed responsibility for the attack was Al-Qaeda.

Now, we will get to that fateful day 25 years ago. But some history and context here is important. Just who was Al Qaeda at that point, how did they come to be?

Al-Qaeda started off as group of fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1989. The base needed a new assignment so they expanded their mission to include anti-Western values and specifically anti-American and began to particularly take issue with the American presence in Saudi Arabia.

Osama bin Laden, a well-to-do man in Saudi Arabia moved to Afghanistan to lead the fight against the Soviets, was rejected at home because of his stance and so he moved to exile in Sudan, where he worked closely with Hassan el Turabi, the fundamentalist Islamic teacher. And it is the discomfort of President Omar al Bashir that led to his ouster from Sudan, forcing him to go back to Kandahar, and started living in caves from where he operated.

Back to August 7, 1998, Al-Qaeda used the attacks on Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as an opening statement to what it saw as the beginning of a war with the West and Western values.

In that age of innocence, it was so easy for the terrorists to live among the people, and in fact some of them lived in Nairobi for a while. Some are said to have lived in Parklands for whatever length of time they needed to prepare for the attack. Studied the Embassy, bought the truck, loaded it with explosives and drove there with the comfort of people who knew their target very well. There was that one last heroic attack by the guards at the gate to the basement of the US Embassy. The intention of the attack was to park their truck in the basement of the building housing the Embassy and blow it up. There was that split second of awareness by the guards that saw them decline to open the barrier. The attackers anyway detonated their load at the entrance.

That attack marked the end of innocence for Kenya and a wake-up call for the international community.

What followed were subsequent terror attacks in Kenya. There have been many, here are some of the major ones that stood out from that time:

In 2002, the twin attacks in Kikambala at an Israeli-owned hotel; 15 people killed, 12 of who were Kenyans, 3 Israeli tourists. An additional 80 people were injured.

On September 21, 2013, the Westgate mall in Nairobi was attacked, in a siege hostage crisis that took 4 days. 67 people were killed. Two men were sentenced to 18 years in jail in 2020.

In 2014, in Mpeketoni, Lamu County in attacks that took place over two days in the month of June, at least 60 people were killed and thousands displaced.

The same year in November, an Al-Shabaab group hijacked a bus and killed 28 passengers on board. They were travelling to Nairobi for the Christmas holidays.

April 2015 was perhaps yet another shocking incident that took place in Garissa when 4 gunmen stormed Garissa University college and began firing indiscriminately. Over 148 people were killed and 79 injured.

Four years later in 2019, an attack on a luxury hotel in Nairobi, dusitD2 complex in January, killing at least 21 people. All the 5 militants who attacked the hotel were killed.