“On December 9, 1992, American troops waded ashore in Somalia, one of Sudan’s neighbors. The U.S. intervention (dubbed Operation Restore Hope) was part of a United Nations mission to prevent humanitarian aid from falling into the hands of rival warlords and to get it instead to starving Somalis. …But according to Sudanese who were with bin Laden, he condemned the American operation as a pretext for the U.S. to spread its influence in the Horn of Africa. Bin Laden dispatched Muhammad Atef, the second-in-command of al Qaeda’s military unit, to Somalia to meet with local militants.”
– Gerald Posner, Why America Slept, Pages 54-55