Why Kabul twin blasts remind of1983 Marine barrack bombings in Beirut

Marines continue to search for victims after a terrorist attack against the headquarters of the US troops of the multinational force that killed 241 American soldiers on October 23, 1983 in Beirut. AFP

On Thursday, 13 United States service members were killed, along with 72 Afghans, when two explosions rocked Kabul airport.

The deadly blasts came as the United States and other Western countries raced to complete a massive evacuation of their citizens and Afghan allies following the Taliban takeover of the country.

Shortly following the attacks, US president Joe Biden promised to avenge the deaths of the troops, declaring to the extremists responsible: “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”

The scenes outside the Kabul airport also served up a history lesson as many compared the carnage and destruction to the deadly 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut. The Federal Bureau of Investigation later characterised that attack as the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II.

1983 Beirut blasts: Looking back

Thirty-eight years ago, on 23 October, a suicide bomber drove a a 19-ton yellow Mercedes-Benz stake-bed truck packed with an explosive force comparable to 12,000 pounds of TNT into the US Marine barracks in Beirut.

The US Marines were in Beirut as part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems, and a mounting body count.

The horrific attack killed 241 service members, including 220 Marines. It was the deadliest attack on US Marines since the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. That same day, another truck of explosives killed 58 French soldiers in the city.

The force of the explosion collapsed the four-storey building into rubble.

In response to the attack, President Ronald Reagan had said, “There are no words to properly express our outrage and I think the outrage of all Americans at the despicable act.”

The US withdrew its troops from Lebanon in February 1984, just four months after the attack.

‘Smiling Death’

Perhaps most interesting was the identity of the suicide driver, later nicknamed ‘Smiling Death’ by Marines because a sentry recalled being chilled by the expression on the bomber’s face as he raced his Mercedes truck toward the building full of sleeping Marines.

Although the bomber was “blown to dust”, as a Marine survivor told reporters that day, US intelligence determined his identity and assembled a profile of his life. The most deadly terrorist attack on Americans was carried out, according to Reagan Administration sources, by a “young nobody” who had no criminal record.

Recounting the moment, Lance Corporal Eddie DiFranco, who was manning the sentry post on the driver’s side of the truck, was quoted as saying, “He looked right at me… smiled, that’s it. Soon as I saw the truck over here, I knew what was going to happen.”

Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, assistant chaplain for the US Sixth Fleet, was in a nearby building when the explosion occurred and later recounted the horrific scene: “Bodies and pieces of bodies were everywhere. Screams of those injured or trapped were barely audible at first, as our minds struggled to grapple with the reality before us.”

At the time of the bombing, an obscure group called the “Islamic Jihad” claimed responsibility for the attack. Investigators later concluded that Hezbollah — the Iranian-and Syrian-sponsored proxy army — had organised the attacks

‘Watershed in international terrorism’

According to Matthew Levitt, author of Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, the 1983 blast was “really a watershed in international terrorism. This was something new.”

General James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps in 2013 at a memorial, said, “The world we live in and what we knew of the future security environment was forever changed.”

“It was a new way to attack the West,” Amos said. “It was a cowardly attack on freedom.”

The attack also saw what experts deem the birth of a modern suicide bomber.

As Timur Goksel, a security analyst and former long-serving United Nations peacekeeper in south Lebanon, says, “It was a turning point in asymmetrical warfare, especially in the Middle East. All those people who couldn’t fight powerful armies such as the United States suddenly found an easy way of balancing strength on the ground. That was the beginning and we have been seeing it ever since.”

Colonel Geraghty, who faced criticism for inadequate security at the Marine compound, suggested later the Beirut bombings marked the true start of the global war on terror. He drew a line from Lebanon through the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Who would have thought,” he said, “years later here we are [fighting] essentially the same crowd?” he was quoted as saying to the Marine Corps Times.

Lessons learnt

The bombings dramatically altered how US officials perceived and responded to terrorist threats.
The Department of State convened a diplomatic security review panel, led by retired US Navy Admiral Bobby Inman, which recommended the creation of mandatory minimum physical security standards for diplomatic facilities, budgeting for new construction and supplemental funding to upgrade existing office buildings, and elevating the State Department Office of Security to a bureau.

It also implemented a number of countermeasures to harden US facilities overseas, including anti-ram perimeter walls, passive and active vehicle barriers, parking standoff for screened vehicles, and window treatments such as laminated glass, shatter-resistant film and locking mechanisms.

With inputs from agencies