“After the U.S. embassy attacks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983, the ‘Inman Advisory Panel on Overseas Security’, led to the establishment of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in 1985.”
We are living in the most crucial time in modern history since the Cold War. At least then we could see our enemy, which is no longer the case. Today’s enemy has no name, no face, no uniform, and not even a standing army. It’s a theological movement that has been around for over a thousand years. Its mission is to control the world under Sharia, the brutal Islamic law, which would take us back to the 12th Century when Islam ruled North Africa and the Middle East. So how is the United States’ foreign policy dealing with these issues? First of all, we beefed up our military budget, so that over 20 cents of every taxpayer dollar spent goes for military operations and technology, while only 1.25 cents goes to fund the international affairs budget, which includes diplomacy, foreign aid programs, and to conduct diplomatic and consular affairs in more than 180 countries.
Embassy operations are the front line of defense for the security and well-being of our country, serving as eyes and ears so that we know what is going on outside our borders. Congress was shortsighted in curtailing funds for effective embassy operations, beginning in the 1990’s. We should have embassies in all 193 countries that have voting rights at the UN. Some of these countries are in strategic locations, while others are in more dangerous or conflicted areas. We need to operate our overseas missions in a business-like fashion, with the necessary support agencies located at the embassy. We need to bring in more professionally trained people from the private sector to integrate with the Foreign Service officers, trained at the Foreign Service Institute. All embassies must also operate in a more secure environment, which should have been part of a master plan, once expansion started after World War II.
After the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, we focused our attention to the Eastern Bloc countries and very rapidly built more than a dozen new embassies, although the real threat to U.S. security lies in Africa. We also continued to build up our military might for future ground-style campaigns, but did not see the brewing danger of terrorism that would erupt into a new, different kind of warfare. We could have learned a lesson from the terrorist style of fighting in the early 1980s, when there were thirty-six suicide attacks against Americans and others inside Lebanon; including Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, killing sixty-three people. At the request of Lebanon the U.S established a peacekeeping force to control the conflict between Muslims and Christians. The Muslim military, however, viewed our soldiers as their enemies and attacked them regularly. In October 1983, truck bombs struck two barrack buildings housing U.S. and French troops. In the attacks 241 Americans and fifty-eight French soldiers were killed. The Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the bombings. In December 1983, a truck filled with explosives rammed into a three-story administrative wing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait City, killing five people. This attack was undertaken by a radical Shiite Islamic group with ties to Iran.
As a result of these disastrous terrorist attacks, the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Overseas Security was formed in 1985. The resulting Inman (Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, Chairman) Report recommended the need for a number of security measures including, setbacks, and upgrades to embassy facilities, and new construction of at-risk missions. The study also called for the formation of the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) to oversee security at the overseas operations. A Regional Security Officer (RSO) was to be assigned, as the principal security advisor at the embassies and consulates. As the senior officer, this person would oversee all the overseas missions’ security staff, including local hire guards, surveillance detection teams, and interfacing with government authorities. In addition Marine Security Guard detachments would be assigned to protect the embassies and its contents.
There were many signs of al-Qaeda’s presence in the Horn of Africa and East Africa. The State Department should have made extensive embassy assessments to determine which facilities were adequately protected, had appropriate setbacks, perimeter separation and the ability to withstand the shock of a high-level earthquake. A minimum fifty foot separation from adjacent buildings, with security fencing and barricades, would have sufficed to secure an embassy from bomb attacks, while new secure compounds were built. In areas where this was not possible, the embassy should have been relocated temporarily for safety. No embassy should have been located in multi-tenant buildings. The United States had enough warning and knowledge from the prior embassy attacks to upgrade and protect, or replace every embassy.
Congress in the mid 1990’s had mandated budget cuts for our embassy operations, precluding needed security upgrades; foreign affairs programs were drastically reduced. Subsequent terrorist attacks, and threat of attacks, against our embassies however, gave rise to an increased budget for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DSS), and almost eight hundred new positions were established. During Congressional hearings in 1995, Secretary Warren Christopher was asked whether our foreign assistance made any real difference in developing countries, and what would happen if we just stopped giving it, the Secretary responded, “Both we and they would suffer. Our foreign assistance programs are intended to promote the kind of economic growth and political stability that are critical to U.S. national security and economic well-being. Failing to provide aid to developing countries would therefore jeopardize our national security.” The Secretary pointed out that “it costs a hundred times as much to deal with humanitarian crises as it does to prevent them.” For example, it has cost the U.S. more than $2 billion to deal with Somalia, and $1 billion to address Rwanda’s problems. Secretary Christopher also talked about “the principle of universality,” wherein the United States must maintain an official diplomatic presence in every country where it is welcome. However, operating leaner in carrying out our foreign affairs was the goal of Congress, and the State Department succumbed to these budget cuts. During the most trying times in recent history, since 2001, more than one thousand new State Department positions were absorbed by assignments to Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, there was a shortage of more than one thousand positions at embassies around the world.
It was in 1996 that Ambassador Prudence Bushnell sent cables to the State Department regarding the lack of proper security at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. An official at the department felt the ambassador was overreacting on these security concerns. A security team was sent to inspect the embassy and reported that it met ‘their’ standards for a medium-threat facility. General Anthony Zinni visited the embassy in early 1998 and reported there were significant risks and that the embassy would be an easy target for terrorists. The State Department felt no security upgrades were necessary. The U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam was no better protected from potential terrorist attacks. The world knows what happened on August 7, 1998, with the bombings of both embassies and the tragic loss of 224 lives. Why didn’t the State Department take these warnings more seriously? Why was Congress so shortsighted that it did not protect our overseas operations by providing adequate funding? Why were U.S. intelligence sources so naive in their belief that sub-Saharan Africa did not have a well-organized al-Qaeda network? I believe the attacks could have been avoided by reinforcing proper security standards; with a more consistent engagement of the countries in the Horn of Africa and East Africa as far back as the early 1990s.
Kenya and Tanzania didn’t want the legacy of terrorists who infiltrated their countries, carried out their ill-intentioned deeds, and exercised control over segments of their populations. In addition to the disastrous loss of lives, the embassy bombings cost the United States several billion dollars, while properly conceived new embassy compounds at the time of the warnings in 1996, would have cost a fraction. New embassy construction was stepped up in 2001 under the Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) Bureau. Reportedly eighty-two, out of the almost two hundred facilities needed, have been completed to date. Looking at several of these complexes, it is not difficult to determine where function and cost considerations were less important, than the notion of an architectural statement.
We have wasted money on building extravagantly designed embassy campuses in a number of places, while we have skimped on others. The OBO should have had three or four basic building designs that were shelf-ready, depending upon the size, the location, and the risks involved. Architectural indulgence should not be the overriding criterion, but rather a focus on a more practical, secure, yet visitor-friendly environment.
The radical Islamists today continue in their fanatical quest to control vast regions of North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Arabian Peninsula. Osama bin Laden had consistently stated that he considers all non-Muslims infidels and invaders of Muslim soil. He had called for a global jihad against all Western powers, with the United States being foremost on the list. This mission continues today under the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. For this reason alone, the U.S. needs to more actively engage the Muslim countries in the region. We need to reach out to the imams who preach hatred. We need to support the more moderate imams and Muslim leaders who preach peace. Hopefully, our message of friendship will resonate with the young people—the next generation.
Fighting and killing Islamists doesn’t always provide for a long-lasting, peaceful outcome. I truly believe that having embassy operations in every country to engage the leaders is better than having CIA operatives doing clandestine diplomacy or military troops on the ground. Congress needs to focus on the outgrowth of new radical Islamist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, such as the danger that the U.S. faces in North Africa and brewing across the Sahel region. The increased presence of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda terrorists in the region since the early 1990s is alarming. These rogue groups are gaining influence in populous, poverty-stricken Muslim countries. The closure of some of our embassies in the 1990s increased our exposure to global terrorism, with al-Qaeda training young recruits in the Horn of Africa and East Africa, which has now spread to West Africa and the Sahel. We are approaching a second generation of trained fighters, who have grown up knowing only conflict.
The U.S. Consulate attacks in Benghazi on September 12, 2012, by Ansar al-Sharia, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other militia groups, in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, has turned out to be a major DSS security failure. The Arab Spring revolution that inspired regime change emboldened a new breed of young radical Islamist militias, wanting a long suppressed freedom, to espouse their narrow beliefs of Islam, and institute Sharia, the brutal Islamic law. The sign of these groups training actively in northern Mali and other Sahel countries has been known to U.S. intelligence and military sources going back to 2003. As late as six months ago we could have stopped their activities, when Mali asked for our help to subdue the terrorists. Even Drones then could have surgically taken out the leadership, which has now spread like a cancer. “Benghazi was proof of our failure to protect our diplomats.”
According to the Washington Post article of October 11, 2012 by Anne Gearan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb, who directs Diplomatic Security operations, stated she was opposed to keeping a security team in Tripoli that had assisted Stevens and other diplomats at the embassy, until ordered to leave in August 2012. Lamb further stated, that it "would not have made any difference in Benghazi.” Obviously she should have been at that post to observe the lack of security conditions in place. In addition Lamb told the top security officer [RSO] at the embassy, who knew the conditions on the ground, “not to bother asking for additional help when the military team was sent home.” These remarks are reminiscent of the pleas made by Ambassador Bushnell, just weeks before the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, and the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam were bombed by al-Qaeda terrorists in August 1998.
Related Articles:
The Inman Report: Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Overseas Security
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/inman/part02.htm
The Washington Post
State Dept. admits rejecting appeals for more security in Libya
By Anne Gearan, October 11, 2012
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_21745425/state-dept-admits-rejecting-appeals-more-security-libya
TESTIMONY BEFORE HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE
WASHINGTON, DC
October 9, 2012
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2012-10-09-Lamb-Testimony-FINAL1.pdf