(October
12, 2000)
The
USS Cole
On October 12, 2000, the
USS Cole, an American Naval Destroyer, entered the harbor
of Aden, Yemen to refuel. After the mooring of the ship
to a buoy, the refueling operation began. Approximately
45 minutes into the refueling, a small ship, described as
either a Zodiac-type rubber craft or a fiberglass boat,
placed itself alongside the Cole and blew up. The
resulting explosion tore an 40 by 40 foot hole in the
side of the destroyer, causing casualties among the
ship's crew. The casualties total 17 dead and an
additional 39 wounded. The injured were first evacuated
to Yemeni medical facilities onshore for treatment and
later evacuation to the U.S. base at Ramstein, Germany
and a French military hospital in nearby
Djibouti.
In the words of Admiral
Vern Clark, the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, "...this
was clearly a terrorist act.'' As the United States later
learned, the attack was carried out by terrorists
associated with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda
network.
Vincent Cannistraro, the
CIA's former head of counter-terrorist operations,
(mentioned on Oct. 19 in the Guardian
Unlimited, a
British newspaper), that early evidence seemed to point
to Osama bin Laden and a possible link between his
organization, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein's government
in Iraq.
On January 19, 2001, the
U.S. Navy released its final
report on the
Cole attack.
Yemen
History
see
also: Wars
and Conflicts of Yemen
(1914-Present)
Yemen is a nation
apparently trying to repair its relations with the
Western world. From 1967 to 1990, Aden was the capital
city of the People´s Democratic Republic of Yemen
(also known as South Yemen), a Marxist ally of the Soviet
Union. To the north and west of South Yemen was the Yemen
Arab Republic (also known as North Yemen), a nation that
sometimes courted favor with the West. These two rival
Yemeni governments fought several wars (1972, 1979 and
1982) against each other, invariably drawing in both the
United States and the Soviet Union as competing patrons.
In May of 1990, the two Arab nations united peacefully
into one Yemen. Regional and political differences
between Northerners and Southerners erupted into civil
war in 1994, with Aden attempting to reassert its
independence. Forces from the north laid siege to Aden
and the war ended with the defeat of the southern
rebels.
Also in 1990, the
Gulf
War began with
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and in 1991 became a major
war with the intervention of an international coalition,
led by the United States and including several Arab
nations. Yemen chose to align itself with Iraq and thus
quickly became a pariah state in the eyes of the United
States and her allies. Also, in recent years, the
outbreak of tribal
violence and a
border
conflict with Saudi Arabia
(a major ally of the U.S. in the middle east), and a
spate of kidnappings of foreigners made Yemen a fairly
unsafe place for Westerners. In an attempt to repair
relations, Yemen and the United States arranged for a
series of refueling stops for the ships of the U.S. Navy,
which frequents the area as part of the ongoing
enforcement of the economic sanctions against
Iraq.
