Terrorists can also conflate ideological mileage with financial aggrandizement. This was demonstrated during the days leading up to the Sept 11 attacks. Unusually heavy transactions were noted on airline stocks in the hours and days leading up to the fateful incident. The yet-to-be-proven suspects were Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. This gives a new twist to the maligned practice of "insider trading," and it ingeniously raises capital for further terrorist ventures. Non-ideological players like organized criminal gangs and state actors would have taken note. Each day, violence permeates our airwaves, are regurgitated on news clips, and are headlined on our dailies. The real dangers of terrorism can be manipulated and faked by the religious devotees of Mammon.
Blames can fly in all directions.
Terrorists, after all, are the dernier cri bogeyman of our times. They can - advertently or not - create political and financial capital for powerful entities. The terrorism shill also provides a Trojan Horse for state actors to destabilize a hostile nation. In this high-octane world of dwindling mineral resources, "terrorism" might be the spark - and later a sideshow - for outright inter-state conflict. Wars are dictated by the primacy of economics while ideologies serve to rouse the masses.
The most tindery powder keg right now is Iran. It's not just hedge fund managers and investment gurus who are bracing for the worst, or the best, depending on one's philosophy. There is money here for Armani-clad entrepreneurs and coups de grace for ski-masked individuals.
If Iran burns, or if neighboring Iraq descends further into anarchy, expect scattered strikes against oil installations, ports and power plants the world over. There will be more trouble in Nigeria and Ecuador. Hotspots will get hotter with conflicts spreading far and wide. With so much happening, renewed conflict in little-known Chad - among the five poorest nations in the world but one with a billion in crude reserves - may not blip on our media radar.
The Ides of March have passed and it has left us with bad omens for the coming months. The game of energy geopolitics is taking new turns and uncertainties, including the option of a tactical nuke attack on Iran's Natanz, Isfahan, and Bushehr complexes. If Iran gets hit, the anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may deliberately divert oil supplies to nations like China, depriving the US of 15 per cent of its oil imports.
Highly unlikely but there are other variants to this game.
Al Qaeda may bomb targets within Iran, and blame it on the United States, or it could sink a few tankers in the Straits of Hormuz and blame it on the Persians. Neither the United States nor Iran need to fight in a best-case scenario - if an extraneous culprit can be identified and a standoff reached in time. A Straits of Hormuz blocked by sunken tankers either way will immediately reduce global oil supplies by 20-25 per cent per day. Perhaps more, depending on which estimates you have been reading.
The United States, after all, has the largest strategic petroleum stockpile in the world, and its powers would be aggrandized through this energy buffer. Is that good news? Well, should US soldiers die in a Middle East artificially contrived and subverted by Britain? Cut a deal with Tehran! After all, Iran might have been a US partner today if not for Winston Churchill. The CIA only stepped in later, in 1953. The tussle started over the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which no longer exists by that name, but the bone of contention has gone on to include tactical nukes.
Like changed names, the United Kingdom's role in global subversion has been well-masked by Uncle Sam's schoolboy misadventures.
Trust the Brits to ramp up their global terror machine again and expect Uncle Sam to receive the annual rogue superpower award. Expect a scramble for oil worldwide, providing targets of opportunities to militants, criminals, and state-sponsored terrorists. When this happens, the current national and international structures would be blown out of shape.
Within this nightmare world, ordinary folks would gladly welcome some order, or a New World Order. That plan was readied long back - lock, stock and barrel. Long before the United States of America came into being!
Welcome to the year when the artifice of civilization begins its slide into a natural state of barbarity.
Mathew Maavak is a Malaysian journalist and a recent visiting fellow at Jakarta's Centre for Strategic and International Studies. He was trained in psychological warfare, propaganda, crisis management, media crisis and security-related issues at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Contact him at mathew@maavak.net
Kuala Lumpur, April 21, 2006
Originally drafted in early April.
Copyright @ Mathew Maavak 2006
