The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2023 25 We did not want the world to forget what happened, so we left our own mark. —Ambassador Pru Bushnell FSJ: What do you think today’s generation of the Foreign Service should remember about the 1998 events and the people we lost and the survivors? Ambassador Prudence Bushnell: There was a time when U.S. embassies were located on busy urban street corners, across from rail and bus stations, amid bustling commuters, hustling vendors, and awaiting visa applicants. At mid-morning on Friday, Aug. 7, 1998, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida operatives detonated a thousand pounds of explosives in the rear parking lot of one such embassy, this one in Nairobi, Kenya. Minutes later another truck bomb exploded outside the gate of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In Nairobi, 218 people were instantly killed: One hundred and seventy-two were neighbors or passersby. In the embassy, the dead included 46 colleagues: 34 Kenyans and 12 Americans. The blast injured more than 4,000 people: 400 were severely disabled; 164 endured acute bone and muscle injuries; 38 adults and children were blinded; 15 were totally deafened; 75 suffered severely impaired vision; 49 were left with hearing disabilities. Hundreds of businesses were destroyed or damaged, many of themmom-and-pop stores with little or no insurance. All this because they were near an American embassy that foreign terrorists wanted to destroy. U.S. embassies are now housed in fortresses. Most are unbe- coming and inconvenient. But they safeguard the neighbors, as well as the people inside. Ambassador John Lange: The loss was enormous: More than 200 innocent people lost their lives, and thousands were injured, in simultaneous terrorist attacks aimed at two U.S. embassies. U.S. Embassy Nairobi, in a vulnerable downtown location with high-rise buildings, suffered the most. At U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam, in a suburban location with low-rise buildings, 11 people died and more than 85 were injured. The deaths included American, Kenyan, and Tanzanian Foreign Service personnel doing what the Foreign Service does every day: promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing a broad range of U.S. interests in countries all over the world. Twenty-five years later, the trauma of that experience still haunts the survivors and the families of those who died or were injured. Some still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. There are those who may be able to achieve psychological closure by putting such a tragic experience behind them, but for many of us the intense events of Aug. 7, 1998, are seared into our memories and cannot be forgotten or minimized. FSJ: How have your thoughts about the 1998 bombings changed over time? Amb. Bushnell: The August 7th Memorial Park, which we founded on the site of the former embassy, becomes increas- ingly meaningful. A green oasis on a busy street corner, it recog- nizes by name those who died and underscores the importance of peace and community. It is also, for me, the visible and cul- minating act of achievement of a traumatized and courageous Kenyan and American community that pulled itself out of the rubble, re-created its organizations, and helped one another to heal in the aftermath of a vicious terrorist attack. We did not want the world to forget what happened, so we left our own mark. Every U.S. president who has come to Kenya has laid a wreath in front of the arched wall etched with the names of those who perished. Pole Sana (field of dreams). As to thoughts about the bombing, the more I researched how it could have happened given the scrutiny that bin Laden and al-Qaida were under at the time, the more disturbed I became that I had been told by State Department colleagues to stop “nagging” about concerns of our embassy’s vulnerability PATRICIAWAGNER This memorial in Arlington National Cemetery honors the victims of the East Africa embassy bombings.