The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory () in Kafouri, Khartoum North, Sudan, was constructed between 1992 and 1996 with components imported from Germany, India, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and the United States. It was opened on 12 July 1997 and bombed by the United States on 20 August 1998. The industrial complex was composed of four buildings. It was the largest pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum and employed over 300 workers, producing medicine both for human and veterinary use.

The factory was destroyed in 1998 by a missile attack launched by the United States, killing one employee and wounding eleven. The U.S. government claimed that the factory was used for the processing of VX nerve agent and that the owners of the plant had ties to the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

These justifications for the bombing were disputed by the owners of the plant, the Sudanese government, and other governments. American officials later acknowledged "that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Officials would later state that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas - as initially suspected by the Americans - or that it had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s." The attack took place during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and less than a year after the release of the film Wag the Dog, prompting some commentators to describe the attack as a distraction for the public from the scandal.

Destruction

On 20 August 1998, the factory was destroyed in cruise missile strikes launched by the United States military allegedly in retaliation for the truck bomb attacks on its embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on 7 August. The administration of President Bill Clinton justified the attacks, dubbed Operation Infinite Reach, on the grounds that the al-Shifa plant was involved with processing the deadly nerve agent VX, and had ties with the Islamist al-Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden, which was believed to be behind the embassy bombings and Operation Bojinka, an alleged large-scale terrorist plot. U.S. action on 20 August also hit al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where bin Laden had moved following his May 1996 expulsion from Sudan. The German ambassador in Sudan from 1996 to 2000, Werner Daum, informed the German Foreign Ministry on the day of the bombing that the plant could not be called a factory for chemical weapons. Rather, the factory “mainly produced human medicines, such as antibiotics, antimalarial medication, anti-diarrheal medicines, infusion fluids and some veterinary medicines.”

Evidence

The key piece of physical evidence linking the Al-Shifa facility to production of chemical weapons was the discovery of EMPTA in a soil sample taken from the plant during a CIA clandestine operation. EMPTA, or O-Ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid, is classified as a Schedule 2B compound under the Chemical Weapons Convention, meaning that while it is a chemical weapons precursor (it can be used to manufacture VX nerve agent),Benjamin, Daniel & Steven Simon. "The Age of Sacred Terror", 2002. it also has legitimate small-scale applications outside of chemical warfare and so is permitted to be manufactured in small quantities. Although potential uses and patented processes using EMPTA existed, such as the manufacture of plastic, no known industrial uses of EMPTA were ever documented, nor were any products that contained EMPTA. It is, however, not banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, as originally claimed by the U.S. government. Moreover, the presence of EMPTA near the boundary of Al-Shifa does not prove that it was produced in the factory; EMPTA could have been "stored in or transported near Al-Shifa, instead of being produced by it", according to a report by Michael Barletta.

Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering claimed to have sufficient evidence against Sudan, including contacts between officials at Al-Shifa plant and Iraqi chemical weapons experts, with the Iraq chemical weapons program the only one identified with using EMPTA for VX production. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a Sudanese opposition in Cairo led by Mubarak Al-Mahdi, also insisted that the plant was producing ingredients for chemical weapons. According to Clinton Administration officials, the plant, moreover, was heavily guarded, and showed no signs of ordinary commercial activities. However, a British engineer, Thomas Carnaffin, who worked as a technical manager during the plant's construction between 1992 and 1996, stated that the plant was neither heavily guarded nor secret, and that he never observed evidence of the production of an ingredient needed for nerve gas. The group that monitors compliance with the treaty banning chemical weapons announced that EMPTA did have legitimate commercial purposes in the manufacture of fungicides and antibiotics, and the owner of the factory stated emphatically in interviews that the plant was not used for anything other than pharmaceuticals, and that there was no evidence to the contrary. Former Clinton administration counter terrorism advisor Richard Clarke and former national security advisor Sandy Berger also noted the facility's alleged ties with the former Iraqi government. Clarke also cited Iraq's $199,000 contract with al-Shifa for veterinary medicine under the UN's Oil-for-Food Programme. David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector also said that Iraq may have assisted in the construction of the Al-Shifa plant, noting also that Sudan would be unlikely to have the technical knowledge to produce VX.Staff (21 August 1998) VX the most toxic of nerve agents CNN, Retrieved 17 August 2012

Officials later acknowledged, however, "that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980s."

However, a Clinton State Department official stated that a money manager for bin Laden claimed that bin Laden had invested in Al-Shifa. The Al-Shifa factory general manager, Osman Sylayman, lived in the same Sudan house where bin Laden had previously lived.Susman, Tina (27 August 1998) Bin Laden Link: El-Shifa Factory Chief Lives in House He Used to Occupy Newsday, Retrieved 17 August 2012

The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research wrote a report in 1999 questioning the attack on the factory, suggesting that the connection to bin Laden was not accurate. James Risen reported in the New York Times: "Now, the analysts renewed their doubts and told Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley that the C.I.A.'s evidence on which the attack was based was inadequate. Ms. Oakley asked them to double-check; perhaps there was some intelligence they had not yet seen. The answer came back quickly: There was no additional evidence. Ms. Oakley called a meeting of key aides and a consensus emerged: Contrary to what the Administration was saying, the case tying Al Shifa to Mr. bin Laden or to chemical weapons was weak." The Chairman of El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries, who is critical of the Sudanese government, told reporters: "I had inventories of every chemical and records of every employee's history. There were no such [nerve gas] chemicals being made here."

In 2004, nonetheless, Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen testified to the 9/11 Commission by characterizing Al-Shifa as a "WMD-related facility", which played a "chemical weapons role" such as to pose a risk that it, with the help of the alleged Iraqi chemical weapons program connections, might help Al Qaeda get chemical weapons technology.

The Sudanese government wants the plant preserved in its destroyed condition as a reminder of the American attack and have called on the United Nations to investigate the incident, which the U.S. opposed. Sudan has asked the U.S. for an apology for the attack but the U.S. has refused on the grounds it has not ruled out the possibility the plant had some connection to chemical weapons development.

Directly after the strike the Sudanese government demanded that the United Nations Security Council conduct an investigation of the site to determine if it had been used to produce chemical weapons or precursors. Such an investigation was opposed by the U.S., which has also blocked an independent laboratory analysis of the sample allegedly containing EMPTA. Michael Barletta concludes that there is no evidence the Al-Shifa factory was ever involved in production of chemical weapons, and it is known that many of the initial U.S. allegations were wrong.

Consequences The Observer noted that "[T]he loss of this factory is a tragedy for the rural communities who need these medicines" quoting Tom Carnaffin, technical manager with "intimate knowledge" of the destroyed plant.Vulliamy, Ed, et al., The Observer, 23 August 1998., as quoted in Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq, "United States Terrorism in the Sudan" , Media Monitors Network. Accessed 19 August 2011. A month later, Guardian correspondent Patrick Wintour elaborated that the plant "provided 50 per cent of Sudan’s medicines, and its destruction has left the country with no supplies of chloroquine, the standard treatment for malaria". He also noted that the British government (who publicly supported the U.S. decision to bomb the factory) refused requests "to resupply chloroquine in emergency relief until such time as the Sudanese can rebuild their pharmaceutical production".Wintour, Patrick, The Observer, 20 December 1998, as quoted in Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq, "United States Terrorism in the Sudan" , Media Monitors Network. Accessed 19 August 2011. The factory was a principal source of Sudan's anti-malaria and veterinary drugs according to the CBW (Chemical & Biological Weapons) Conventions Bulletin.The CBW Conventions Bulletin December 1998

Germany's ambassador to Sudan at the time of the airstrike, Werner Daum, wrote an article in 2001, in which he called "several tens of thousands of deaths" of Sudanese civilians caused by a medicine shortage a "reasonable guess".

Human Rights Watch reported that the bombing had the unintended effect of stopping relief efforts aimed at supplying food to areas of Sudan gripped by famine caused by that country's ongoing civil war. Many of these agencies had been wholly or partially staffed by Americans who subsequently evacuated the country out of fear of retaliation. A letter by that agency to President Clinton stated "many relief efforts have been postponed indefinitely, including a crucial one run by the U.S.-based International Rescue Committee where more than fifty southerners are dying daily".Letter to Clinton Urges Sudan Factory Inspection Human Rights Watch, 15 September 1998. . Mark Huband in the Financial Times wrote that the attack "shattered ... the expected benefits of a political shift at the heart of Sudan's Islamicist government" towards a "pragmatic engagement with the outside world"."shattered ... the expected benefits of a political shift at the heart of Sudan's Islamicist government" Mark Huband, Financial Times, 8 September 1998, cited The Left at War by Michael Berube, New York University Press 2009. .

Journalist Jason Burke, in the book Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, claims that Operation Infinite Reach "merely confirmed to [bin Laden and his close associates], and others with similar views worldwide, that their conception of the world as a cosmic struggle between good and evil was the right one".

Criticism