Comments on: Hostages vs Hardware

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 20:27:03 +0000

“Maybe they hate the workers but love the refineries? Who, exactly, are they trying to send a message to here? Do they think that killing foreigners will garner support whereas the destruction of a refinery would turn Saudi opinion against them?” If they blew up a refinery, the oil that would have been refined in that Saudi refinery would instead be exported to be refined overseas; and the Saudis would get less dough, as they wouldn’t be making value-added products from the crude. Considering that the Saudis have put considerable effort into moving up the petroleum value chain, this would be cutting off the nose to spite the face, especially if the terrorists believe they are close to taking over the Saudi state. Presumably the terrorists want all those foreign engineers to fuck off or something, and the refinery jobs to go to the 50% of Saudis PhDs that specialize in Islamic Studies.

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 06:05:16 +0000

I have just gone through the 167 comments at the Billmon blog Comments here There is an extremely well-read (connected?) commentator at BILLMON called OUTRAGED who has posted about many pages of excellent detailed information in many different posts about the current situation. If you want to understand where AlQaeda is coming from and US strategic policy and you have the time, read through all the OUTRAGED posts and follow all the links.

By: David Locke

David Locke — Mon, 31 May 2004 05:16:22 +0000

The origin of the Islamic cleric’s anti-Americanism is sourced at the way American oil money destroyed the sense of obligation toward the community of the wealthy ruling class. If those middle class, educated people had jobs and families, they wouldn’t be terrorists. We can’t fix this problem. How do we make their wealthy ruling class give a damn about their people and their community when they live in a global economy and the kids go to school in Switzerland? We need to find an answer to this question, because the Republican agenda will cause this to happen to us. Individualism is already designed in here in America. We are no longer allowed to physcially be a family. And, the right sees all things social as socialist. Our sense of community is dying. The old money has already taken it out on new money and nobody said a word. No, they cheered their tax cut, the tax cut enacted on the backs of IT workers. Congrats. How many more things do they have to change before we end up in a theocratic police state? Not many.

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 03:55:43 +0000

Nitpick: Egypt is not in Asia and some people would not classify Saudis as “Asians” even if Saudi Arabia is in Asia.

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 03:44:00 +0000

Bellatrys- As well as no income tax, petrol is cheap, healthcare is free and you don’t need to heat your house. By the way, did you know that Saudi Arabia, a country with little rain or fertile soil, is a net exporter of wheat!

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 03:27:16 +0000

What is the majority Saudi opinion on Saudi oil? They think it is a gift from Allah. The Americans who helped them find it are also a gift from Allah. Now they want the second gift from Allah to be part of a third gift of Allah which would be the gift of the Occupied Territories to the Palestinians.

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 03:22:03 +0000

Instead, though, these guys hole up with 50 oil workers in a residential compound and basically wait to get themselves killed. Why? Hostage situations haven’t been reliably successful for hostage-takers since the 1980s. If successful is defined not in terms of deals, but simply as aiming to terrify expats into leaving, then the tactic will work very well.

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 03:10:36 +0000

AND … there is the possibility that the Saudi Government’s reliance on foreign workers to carry out tasks has insulated the Saudi Government from the opinion of the majority of Saudis. A prince who has Americans reporting to him will not get so much anti-American bile day to day. By forcing the Saudi Government to rely on the local population, the local population are likely to get their voice heard more. Finally, it needs to be noted that economic reforms in Saudi Arabia are resulting in the mass repatriation of foreign workers, which is being done to improve the trade balance, and there has been a lot of discussion about elections in the Middle East. I believe limited forms of democracy have been tried in one or two Arab states. If the Saudis introduce democratic elections, Usama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda will become largely irrelevant, as the local population will simply vote for an activist anti-zionist party.

By: q

Mon, 31 May 2004 02:54:25 +0000

The aim of the campaign is: 1. Provide independent representative government for Saudi Arabia 2. Provide independent representative government for other Islamic countries including Palestine. It is an old-fashioned anti-imperialist movement along the lines of the Americans in America, Irish in Ireland and Indians in India. The only slight difference is the migration of Jews to Palestine which complicates the scenario, similar to the occupation of Northern Ireland by Protestants. The majority of Saudis believe that a wealthy US Jewish population is distorting US foreign policy to preference the rights of Israel and Jews in the Middle East. Targeting the Americans risks destabilising the oil industry, so that at some point US consumers and corporations will put pressure on the US government to abandon its pro-zionist foreign policy. By killing Americans without attaching the installations means that if the US foreign policy changes the oil industry can be back on its feet quickly. Attacking the installations would damage the oil industry and potentially alienate local Saudis. It should also be noted that two other conspiracy theories are widely believed in Saudi Arabia: 1. That Israelis had a connection with the World Trade Centre attacks 2. That Israelis have connections with AlQaeda To be honest, if you read some of the Alqaeda statements a lot of them are quite clear, but some news agencies sometimes don’t print the statements. Presumably the worry is that if the 97% of Americans that aren’t Jewish realise they can have stability if they switch away from Israel, they might just decide to give up on Israel. I think the anti-zionist Jews realise this, but I don’t know how many of those there are (0.5%?). Fortunately for the Zionists, a lot of fundamentalist Christians believe that supporting the state of Israel is part of their mission from God. Many Christians view Jews a bit like Muslims view both Jews and Christians “slightly misguided and haven’t read the most important revalations in the last book from the last Messiah”. Except Christians think Jesus was the last big prophet and Muslims think Mohammed was the last big prophet. I believe that about 20% of Americans fall into the Pro-zionist fundamentalist Christian group. 20+3 = 23% enough to swing most elections on the Zionist issue. I am not sure how much the rest of America really cares about a land so far away. So the Alqaeda aim is to persuade the Americans to change their approach, and shooting and expelling Americans is a start.

By: O'Horgan

O'Horgan — Mon, 31 May 2004 02:28:21 +0000

“Lance Boyle”? Is that a nom de guerre for conspiracy-mongers? How long should we wait before lancing the boil?

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Mon, 31 May 2004 01:28:14 +0000

A small historical correction for Bellatrys. At the time of WW1, the Brits were allied with the Hashemite Sharif of the Hejaz, the western coastal strip of Arabia that includes Mecca. Ibn Saud attacked from the east and drove out the Hashemites, who, by way of compensation by the Brits for losing their home base and being swindled out of an Arab kingdom in Damascus, were placed on the thrones of Tansjordan and Iraq. FDR met with Ibn Saud during WW2 after oil had been discovered.

By: Giles

Giles — Sun, 30 May 2004 23:55:09 +0000

Its also worth noting that the majority of the dead, as usual, were not westerners – they were Asian workers. Dead One American One Briton One South African One Swede One Italian Two Sri Lankans Three Saudis Three Filipinos One Egyptian Eight Indians

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Sun, 30 May 2004 23:44:17 +0000

Heavy industrial facilities may look fragile, but they are actually quite tough. Consider the temperature, pressure, and corrosive material the fractionating tower is designed to withstand in normal operation. An RPG is probably not a significant load on such equipment. As the Allies found in their strategic bombing campaign of WWII. See the first Polesti raid and how much damage it actually did.

By: Warbaby

Warbaby — Sun, 30 May 2004 23:42:36 +0000

A couple of points: See the IntelCenter “al-Qaeda Targeting Guidance” press release here It’s a bad translation of a recent al Qaida publication and the analysis is almost non-existant. The translated article suggests targeting people comes first. Where it does talk about targeting oil, the focus is on transport and well head – both easily repaired and replaced compared to refineries. So it looks like there is some strategic thinking in al Qaida that says transitory damage only. Dunno why. Slightly off topic, but there is a very widespread misunderstanding about al Qaida. It’s not SPECTRE or THRUSH. There’s been a lot of hype that makes al Qaida the “nexus” of jihadi terrorism. It’s not. It’s just the most successful one of a large number of groups in a revitalization movement. Confusing the group with the movement is common and very misleading. Bob Baer repeatedly makes this mistake in “Sleeping with the Devil”: he can’t distinguish between an organization and a movement. So he says al Qaida isn’t nearly as important as the Muslim Brotherhood and then makes the same mistake all over again, having only substituted one name for another. Sheesh. Hence all the muddled talk about “al Qaida-linked” and so forth. Final point: Bin Laden’s target is and always has been a fundamentalist takeover in Saudi Arabia. The US is the “far” enemy and the Saudi regime is a “near” enemy. The purpose of 9/11 was to weaken the US so that a coup in Saudi Arabia would have a chance of success. And it looks like they are making some progress in that direction.

By: Giles

Giles — Sun, 30 May 2004 23:34:53 +0000

Its worth remembering that in 1970 Saudi Arabia population increased from 6 million to 25 million today. In the mean time GDP per capita has halved since 1980 i.e we have a lot more people with a lot worse jobs. I don’t think its hard to see why they try to kill foreign workers whether they work in oil menial occupations (like those killed in earlier bomb attacks) – they want their jobs.