Operation Infinite Reach was the codename for U.S. cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda bases in Khost, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 20, 1998. The attacks were ordered by President Bill Clinton in retaliation for al-Qaeda’s August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The failure of the attacks to kill bin Laden also enhanced his public image in the Muslim world. Further strikes were planned but not executed.
About Operation Infinite Reach in brief
Operation Infinite Reach was the codename for U.S. cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda bases in Khost, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 20, 1998. The attacks were ordered by President Bill Clinton in retaliation for al-Qaeda’s August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The failure of the attacks to kill bin Laden also enhanced his public image in the Muslim world. Further strikes were planned but not executed; as a 2002 congressional inquiry noted, Operation Infinite Reach is the only instance in which the CIA or U. S. military carried out an operation directly against bin Laden before September 11. The CIA’s bin Laden unit considered using local Afghans to kidnap bin Laden, then exfilate him from Afghanistan in a modified Lockheed C130 Hercules Hercules. The planned raid was cancelled in May 1998 after internecine disputes between the FBI and the National Security Council. These documents were used as the foundation for the indictment of bin Laden in June 1998, although the charges were later dropped. The U.N. Security Council’s Nairobi computer suggested a link between bin Laden and the deaths of U.K. troops in Somalia; the CIA did not approve of this link, despite the CIA’s hesitation to approve it. The United States and most of the American public supported the strikes, but the targeted countries, Islamic militant groups, and other nations in the Middle East strongly opposed them. After the attacks, the evidence and rationale were criticized as faulty, and academics Max Taylor and Mohamed Elbushra cite \”a broad acceptance that this plant was not involved in the production of any chemical weapons.
\” The missile strikes damaged the installations and inflicted an uncertain number of casualties; however, bin Laden was not present at the time. The ruling Taliban allegedly reneged on a promise to Saudi intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal to hand over bin Laden to the Saudis. The Saudis sent the Taliban 400 pickup trucks and funding, enabling the Taliban to retake Mazar-i-Sharif, the Taliban sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia in July for further discussions, by August. Around the same time, the CIA was planning its own actions against the Taliban, including the assassination of Mullah Omar, the former leader of the Afghan National Party, and a raid on the Taliban’s headquarters in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. The raid was never carried out, and instead the Taliban expelled bin Laden from Afghanistan and expelled him from the country, allowing the country to regain control of the city of Mazar i- Sharif. The attack was met with a mixed international response: U. s. allies supported the strike, but other nations, including Saudi Arabia, strongly opposed it. In spring 1998, Saudi elites became concerned about the threat posed by al- Qaeda and bin Laden; militants attempted to infiltrate surface-to-air missiles inside the kingdom, an al-Nusra defector alleged that Saudis were bankrolling bin Laden.
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This page is based on the article Operation Infinite Reach published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 12, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
