Algihadya, an Egyptian Jihadi blogger, has posted an essay by Zadi al-Taqwa titled “Al-Qaeda and the Battle for Oil.” I don’t know where Zadi usually hangs his electronic hat, but his essay is making the rounds on the forums. Zadi argues that AQ has focused on attacking U.S. oil interests since its inception in 1998 because it understands that oil is vital to the U.S. economy, which it wants to damage. This is one of the main reasons it went into Iraq, where it could thwart U.S. plains to obtain cheap oil and where it could damage the oil infrastructure of a major oil producer. There is no mention of religious justifications or Prophetic precedents for attacking oil; it’s purely economic in Zadi’s analysis.
According to Zadi, the price of oil is sky high today because of a variety of factors (quoting):
1) Reduction of the level of oil production in the United States of America
2) Reduction of the level of oil production in Iraq because of the war
3) Rising level of demand for oil in China and India, which are expanding economically
4) Reduction of the dollar’s buying power and rising levels of inflation
5) Many countries and their central banks are decoupling their currencies from the dollar and seeking refuge in currency baskets.
6) The strength of the Euro as a currency led to the decline of the value of the dollar; moreover, the value of renminbi, the currency of China, is rising.
AQ will continue to attack oil infrastrure and the price of oil will continue to rise. For example, on May 30 2008 AQ in Yemen launched an attack on a refinery in Aden, which AQ Central officially embraced. After this date, the price of oil went up to $122.80 per barrel of oil.
Document (Arabic): aq-and-the-battle-for-oil (القاعدة ومعركة النفط)