Why assassinate politicians or shoot a GI when mobs - deprived of their daily bread - can do more in aggregates and derivatives? In layman's terms, we are talking about riots, sit-downs, union strikes, looted stores and political mayhem. Economic targets offer the best returns with less risks. Stock markets will be depressed, inflation will set in, bankruptcies will proliferate, and people will starve.
The concatenation of financially-induced social upheavals has been witnessed before - across continents - during the currency crisis of the late 90s. Unless checked, wars are the inevitable culmination. There are no IMF prescriptions for dwindling oil reserves, busted pipelines and electricity blackouts.
Call this the political economy of terrorism, but apart from Iraq and Palestine, terrorists will increasingly focus on the conveyor belts of finance and trade. There is no shortage of targets for disgruntled elements worldwide. There are Maoist guerillas in Nepal, ethnic insurgents in Burma, Al Qaeda-inspired militants in Islamic nations and assorted purveyors of violence in every nook and corner where there are power plants, ports, retail stores, trading depots, factories, banks and transborder pipelines. Mundane industrial structures - particularly those connected to oil - have attained value-added targeting than shoppers at a marketplace. A suicide bomber might as well "walk the last walk" into a minor, provincial bank than into a crowded souk. Planting midnight bombs at ATMs in a major city entails little or no bloodshed, though, it may douse seasonal fire sales the next morning, not to mention the lack of change for lunch. Ever noticed the anticipatory or frustrated month-end file of workers at ATM kiosks short on notes?
A little inconvenience can go a long way in disrupting normal routine, and no nation can provide complete protection for these mundane cogs of human activity.
Terrorists switching to the political economy side of their trade can expect other windfalls. Destroying the perceived icons of (Western) imperialism elicit less disgust - and perhaps sympathy - than the televised butchering of individuals. Suicide bombings that shred innocent limbs at a discotheque and net relayed beheadings of infidels reek of bestiality. Why kill a Daniel Pearl when you can play Che Guevara?
But is this happening?
There were strong hints emerging since February.
The Niger Delta attacks offlined production amounting to 550,000 barrels per day, rendering the affected Royal Dutch Shell installations immobile till today. What was untouched was probably left for April 25. Almost simultaneously, violent protests in the Ecuadorian province of Napo forced state oil firm Petroecuador to halt supplies through its Trans-Ecuadorean pipeline.
Both incidents raised US crude oil futures by $1 overnight. It has since risen by more than $10 dollars - a safe median figure used by commentators without an MSNBC or Bloomberg ticker on their offline notebooks.
In Iraq, while bombs routinely kill civilians, little has been noted of pipeline sabotages, stretching from Kirkuk to Bayji to the Turkish border. Restoring normal output may take up to a year. And that's a big hypothetical "if" with Iraq in a state of disintegration. Think of the hundreds of thousands of miles of exposed pipelines around the world, and the cumulative number of years needed to repair them? If Iraq's oil and its pipelines can energize the current sectarian war, couldn't that be replicated in places simmering with ethnic and social tensions? Expect authoritarian governments to manufacture terrorism for the perpetuation of power. If you regard the USA PATRIOT Act as draconian, you haven't seen the world yet!
Any bomb anywhere can be pinned on "terrorists" and sifting the real from the manufactured would be next to impossible with censorship laws established to prevent the transmission of coded communications. Sounds familiar?
It would pose no barrier to the Real McCoys, however. Terrorists - separated by ethnic, ideological and religious motivations but united by calculated anarchy - have learnt their economic primers on the go. It is the most potent weapon in this age of Peak Oil.
Neither the brotherhoods of anarchy nor coded messages are needed to set action time. The daily business headlines will do.
In Sync
While oil traders were still risk managing the outage from Ecuador and the Niger Delta, militants in Saudi Arabia attempted to blow up the world's largest oil processing complex in Abqaiq on Feb 24. If they had succeeded, there would have been a double digit increase in the price of crude in 48 hours. It could have also precipitated social anarchy in a land seething with repressed anger against the Al Saud monarchy. Under such a scenario, repair works at Abqaiq would be next to impossible, oil would shoot to above $100 per barrel, and a vortex of violence would spiral to engulf much of the world. Remember, society is only three meals away from anarchy.
As tensions rise by the day over Iran's nuclear enrichment program- and it's not only Iran - pipelines and economic targets are easier pickings vis a vis heavily-guarded political, military and constabulary bastions. Call this risk management on both sides. Governments will prioritize security for the levers of governance and power; terrorists will probe and prioritize valuable, less-guarded targets to trap security apparatuses in a game of musical chairs. This will leave a gap for political targets sooner or later. It's an old trick with new destructive possibilities in a world peaked of oil.
