If the oil and gas industry expected comforting news from the election of Barack Obama as US president, it may need a rethink–especially when it comes to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
In fact, al-Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman Zawahiri ridiculed Obama last week and warned him against sending more troops to Afghanistan. Worse, using racist language, Zawahiri even insulted Obama and other African American leaders.
“It is true about you and people like you…what Malcolm X said about the house negroes,” Zawahiri said, naming former Sec. of State Colin Powell and the current secretary, Condoleezza Rice.
Zawahiri’s remarks followed an interview given by Obama in which he vowed no retreat from his campaign promise to begin pulling troops out of Iraq and switch the military focus to Afghanistan.
But what certainly raised Zawahiri’s dander was Obama’s statement of plans to renew the US commitment to tracking down the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden targeted
“I think it is a top priority for us to stamp out al-Qaeda once and for all, and I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al-Qaeda,” Obama said on national television.
“He is not just a symbol, he’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against US targets,” said Obama.
As soon as Obama takes office in January, he has said he will start work on a plan to draw down US troops in Iraq and increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan.
Capturing or killing the al-Qaeda leader will no doubt be a significant step forward in the worldwide war on terrorism, and it may well represent an equally significant step forward for the oil and gas industry–long a key al-Qaeda target.
The ‘arc of instability’
But, as a leading intelligence analyst has warned, the future will not be fully secured even with bin Laden’s capture or death. Indeed, according to Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence, the appeal of al-Qaeda-like terrorism is waning in the greater Middle East.
That may sound like the good news, but according to Fingar it does not mean that the greater Middle East–which extends from North Africa to Central Asia–is going to see peace any time soon.
To the contrary, the greater Middle East will still be “at the center of an arc of instability,” said Fingar, who spearheaded an effort by a council of US intelligence analysts to divine what the world will look like in 2025.
“The Middle East, really from the Mahgreb across into Central Asia, is one in which almost every problem that will challenge political leadership anywhere around the globe is to be found there, and many at a higher rate of severity or intensity,” Fingar said.
That vision of the future may be unsettling for the oil and gas industry–Obama or no Obama.