The origins of the Al-Qaeda war against the United States goes back to the international operation to push Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991. While the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq was widely considered to be wrong, Osama Bin-Laden objected to the presence of Western troops in the Gulf region. Over time the conflict escallated. The attacks on US Embassies in East Africa is one step of this escallation.

In the U.S. Embassy bombings which occurred on August 7, 1998, hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. The attacks, linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to American attention for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted list.