If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again: even terrorists know this.
JAAR, YEMEN — You have to give terrorists credit sometimes, as awful as it is for me to say that. What I am trying to say is that despite failures and setbacks some groups will carry out attacks on the same target multiple times before they get it right.
Yemen, oddly, is the site of such a ‘repeat performance’. You all remember the attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden in October 2000, right? In that incident a small craft drifted up to the side of the destroyer and detonated, killing 17 and wounding 39 American sailors. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed the assault.
What you may NOT know is that ten months earlier a similar plot targeted another American destroyer USS The Sullivans in the same port but the plan failed when it turned out the terrorists had put too much explosive in the boat, causing it to sink. They obviously got their calculators out, re-configured how much to load, and successfully blew a hole in the USS Cole later that year.
On this day in 2011 a series of huge explosions at an ammunition plant in southern Yemen killed at least 150 people and wounded 45.
We could also cite the 1992 World Trade Centre bombing vs. 9/11. The first effort was relatively small in the scale of damage: the latter was of course unprecedented and catastrophic. Again, lessons were learned and a more effective plan was put into effect, albeit nine years further down the road this time.
2001 attack on weapons factory in Yemen
On this day in 2011 a series of huge explosions at an ammunition plant in southern Yemen killed at least 150 people and wounded 45. Again, AQAP is believed to have been behind the attack and had raided the plant earlier. Most of the victims were average citizens who began to loot the facility after the AQAP action and authorities were unable to determine what caused the explosion. It could very well have been accidental, possibly caused by a lighted cigarette on gunpowder or a gun used to open a room full of dynamite.
In any event, a terrorist raid led to an explosion which killed civilians. That is the bottom line in this case: no AQAP raid, no looting, no explosion. Did AQAP know what would ensue? Maybe not but I am sure they are happy with the outcome.
Terrorists are a tenacious bunch. We have to be equally tenacious in countering them.
