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Tanker blast: Experts cry
'Osama!'
TEL AVIV - Whatever it
was that ripped a gaping hole in the French-owned giant
oil supertanker Limburg, sending a thick, black plume
rising over the Arabian sky and spilling an estimated
8,000 tonnes of crude into the Arabian Sea, the shock
waves have yet to subside.
Global crude prices,
which shot up by 1.3 percent within a day of Sunday's
blast, are still cresting the US$30-a-barrel mark, and
Gulf shipping executives are now speaking openly of a
threat to the crude tanker market and their fear of
industry-wide rises in insurance rates.
French
and Yemeni authorities immediately threw cold water on
the possibility of a terrorist attack on the ship, which
was sailing about 16 miles off the Yemeni port of Mina
al-Dabah. The Bahrain-based spokesman for the US Fifth
Fleet - which maintains aircraft carriers, destroyers
and other ships in the Gulf and Arabian Sea - said that
the fire had prompted no changes in security measures on
the Gulf (although last month the US Navy warned Gulf
shipping of possible al-Qaeda attacks on oil tankers).
Other military authorities, however, have no
doubt the blast was a copycat attack along the lines of
the October 2000 ramming of the destroyer USS Cole by
al-Qaeda suicide attackers in Aden Port. Indeed, the
Limburg explosion came a mere six days before the second
anniversary of that attack, which cost the lives of 17
sailors.
Indeed, the Limburg attack - if so it
was - seemed deliberately timed and carried out in a way
that recalls the disabling of the USS Cole. The Cole was
one of the US Navy's proudest hi-tech vessels, while the
Limburg is one of the most sophisticated high-security
supertankers on the high seas. Successful strikes at the
finest products of Western military might and technology
go down in the world of Muslim extremism as an Islamic
triumph over the infidels. If the blast was the
handiwork of al-Qaeda, it would mark the organization's
first strike against oil interests, which hitherto
enjoyed immunity as "Allah's gift to the Arabian and
Muslim peoples".
Interestingly, an audiotape
purporting to be the voice of bin Laden himself was
leaked to the Arabic satellite TV station al Jazeera and
released mere hours after the tanker explosion hit the
news. "I call on you," the voice on the tape says, "to
understand the lessons of the New York and Washington
raids ... those who follow the movement of the criminal
gang at the White House, the agents of the Jews, who are
preparing to attack and partition the Islamic world ...
the youth of Islam ... will target key sectors of your
economy until you stop your injustice and aggression ...
whether America escalates or de-escalates this conflict,
we will reply in kind".
Some experts see other
clues pointing to al-Qaeda: A spokesman for Nantes-based
Euronav, the ship's owner, said that the Limburg was
only two years old and in good condition. To drive a
hole six to eight meters deep through its double hull
would have required great force, only possible with the
help of a large quantity of explosives. Hubert Ardillon,
skipper of the supertanker, and another officer, claim
that they saw a small vessel approaching fast and
impacting shortly before the ship burst into flames.
Salvors from the Dutch firm Svitzer Wijsmuller reported
that the ship's engine room was intact and undamaged,
ruling out the possibility that a fire originated there.
Moreover, various official accounts are shot
through with discrepancies. According to the Yemeni
authorities, the 299,000 deadweight ton tanker carried
nearly 400,000 barrels of crude loaded at the Iranian
oil port of Kharj and was preparing to complete its load
at Mina al-Dabah, 353 miles east of Aden. According to
Euronav, the Limburg loaded 400,000 barrels of Arab
Heavy crude at Saudi Arabia and was on its way to load
another 1.5 million barrels in Yemen when attacked.
Mina al-Dabah, near Mukallah on Yemen's Arabian
Sea coast, is far from being the quiet out-of-the-way
corner it has been depicted. It is an important oil port
located amid bustling oil traffic, with commercial
shipping and US warships plying routes between the Gulf
and their big naval bases on the Yemeni island of
Sokotra in the throat of the Strait of Hormuz.
Suicide bombers would have no trouble keeping
close watch on passing shipping from coastal vantage
points; for the Limburg attack, they would no doubt have
maintained a rear base in the Hadhramaut region of Yemen
and operated out of coastal villages. (This would also
fit al-Qaeda's style: In 1985, the terrorists who struck
US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi maintained a
rear base on the Comoro Islands of the African coast and
operated out of forward bases closer to target.)
Hadhramaut would be hospitable terrain for al-Qaeda. It
is the ancestral homeland of the bin Laden clan which
migrated to Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the last
century. Many of the local tribesmen, reputed to be
skilled mountain fighters, give him their full support.
Ever since the second week of September,
American special forces are reported to have been
fighting terrorists amid the stark cliffs and narrow
ravines of this precipitous region of Yemen. Little is
known about the state of combat, but it is believed that
American troops are facing the same sort of difficult
terrain as they do in Afghanistan, where locals play an
easy game of hide and seek. Al-Qaeda's decision to go
for an oil tanker may have been a stroke in this secret
battle. Yemen is also home to a strong Iraqi military
intelligence presence, although both Yemeni and US
officials try to keep this dark.
The terrorists'
latest success, if indeed it is their handiwork, must
have set some red alarms flashing for US planners of the
Iraq war, who must guard against the possibility of
disruption to Gulf and Middle East oilfields, terminals
and seaways or an onslaught of seaborne terror. As a
preventive measure, the US navy is blockading the mouth
of the Shatt al-Arab, Iraq's only outlet to the Persian
Gulf. The fact that Sunday, al-Qaeda forces in Yemen
struck at a seaborne target which Iraqi commandos are
unable to reach may be no coincidence, given the
operational collaboration fast developing between
Baghdad and the Islamic terror network.
The
investigation of the Limburg affair and its fateful
ramifications is only just beginning. But the relaxed
official response to a terror attack on a main oil
traffic highway bodes ill for the prospect of stability
in global oil markets in the event of a US-led war
against Iraq.
© Debkafile, 2002.
Distributed by Globalvision
News Network
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