February 2006 attack

The operation was launched with intelligence gleaned from the interrogations of suspects arrested in the unsuccessful February 2006 attack on the world's largest oil processing facility in Abqaiq, in eastern Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities rounded up forty militant suspects a month later. However, he said it's no secret the United States and Saudi Arabia work closely on terrorism.

December 2004 audio message

The Abqaio Attack was the first direct attack by Al-Qaeda on a Saudi oil installation, although Osama bin Laden, in a December 2004 audio message, had called for attacks against oil, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, repeated the call in autumn 2005. In a website message claiming responsibility for the Abqaiq attack, “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” said it was part of al-Qaeda’s “war against the Christians and Jews to stop their pillage of Muslim riches and part of the campaign to chase them out of the Arabian peninsula.”

With over 260 billion barrels of proven reserves - a quarter of the world's total - Saudi Arabia's oil industry has already been a target of Islamic extremists. In 2003, Al-Qaeda on the above said direction was carrying out suicide bomb attacks on foreigners and government installations, including the oil industry.

May 2004, attack

In May 2004, attackers stormed the offices of a Houston-based oil company in the western Saudi oil hub of Yanbu and killed 22 people, 19 of them foreigners.

Planning suiide attacks

The Saudi Arab ministry issued a statement saying the detainees were planning to carry out suicide attacks against "public figures, oil facilities, refineries ... and military zones" — some of which were outside the kingdom

They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks.

Some had begun training on the use of weapons, and some were sent to other countries to study aviation in preparation to use them to carry out terrorist operations inside the kingdom.

Seizure of 20 million Saudi riyals ($5.3 million)

The militants also planned to storm Saudi prisons to free the inmates, the statement said. More than 20 million Saudi riyals ($5.3 million) was seized in the operation, one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in the kingdoms

The Saudi statement said some of the military targets were outside the kingdom.

Large weapons cache buried in the desert

Large weapons cache discovered buried in the desert. The arms included bricks of plastic explosives, ammunition cartridges, handguns, computers and rifles wrapped in plastic sheeting.

The intelligence source said some of the confiscated weapons had been hidden in the desert for years.

Those arrested are Saudis and citizens of other Arab and African countries. Including Yemenis and some Nigerians.

Deviant ideology

It is said the suspects, mostly Saudis, had been "influenced by the deviant ideology", a reference frequently used by Saudi officials to refer to al-Qaeda.

Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the assistant interior minister and effective counter terrorism chief, has told diplomats that only 20 percent of the problem can be tackled with police work; the other 80 percent must be combated by countering the deviancy of al-Qaeda’s interpretation of Islam.

Rajya Sabha MP Balbir Punj wrote in an article: “Summit of Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) at Mecca, where leaders of 57 Muslim countries converged, resolved to fight against ‘deviant ideas'. By ‘Deviant ideas' they did not mean Leftist, secular or Western ideas, as it might Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal first raised the issue of ‘deviant ideology’on the eve of the Mecca Summit. However, Saudi Arabia's own credentials expose its doublespeak. The ruling dynasty of the Kingdom, the House of Saud, is guided by Wahabi ulema.”

In 1961, it founded the Islamic University of Medina as an alternative to Egypt's Al Azhar University. Pakistani radical Islamist Maulana Abu al-Ala Mawdudi was one of the trustees of the university.

In 1967, King Abdul Aziz University was established; it too, catered to foreign students injecting in them the Wahabi ideology. The twin universities became hothouses for the growth of Islamist ideology.

Saudis were fortifying the intellectual infrastructure of terrorism rather than curbing it. They were, by no stretch of the imagination, promoting moderation or toleration.

Moreover, Prophet’s Sunna, which means Muslims should try to replicate what the Prophet did or said, binds Muslims. Thus Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani (1879-1957), who served as President of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind for 17 years and opposed Jinnah's two-nation theory, spoke of 'composite nationalism' amongst Hindu and Muslims against British rule on the lines of Prophet Mohammed and his followers from the Quraish and Ansar tribes forming an alliance with the Jews of Medina.

Madani, in that entire speech of 1938 (now published as booklet, Composite Nationalism and Islam by Manohar Publishers), proves his mind is fully in Arabia although he was born and died in Uttar Pradesh. However, he stopped short of saying whether with the fight with the British, the "enemy of Islam" was dead. His ambiguity leaves little to the imagination: That there would be no departure from the original Quranic texts that condemn idoltars as fit to be killed.

Interrogation of the three alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba militants arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi police near Dilli Haat on April 26 evening has revealed that they were planning to target functions being organised to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the First War of Independence. Muslims and Hindus fought against British rule combined in 1857. It is unfortunate that present UPA government and left strengthen the hands of terrorists including LeT by their policiy of appeasement and ‘divide and rule’ of Britishers. Caste and religion based quota is the example of that. 

Strangely, OIC never finds any ‘deviant ideology’ at work in Jammu & Kashmir. Like always, it passed a resolution calling for implementation of the plebiscite formula recommended by the UN in 1949. But it had nothing to say about the jihadis of Kashmir - whether they are being ‘deviant' or not.

Whether by driving out Kashmiri Hindus, Muslims have indulged in ‘deviant ideology’. Similarly, OIC has nothing to say about persecution of minorities in Bangladesh, a member country, since Muslims claims that minorities were well protected under the Caliphate.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his message to the world community after the London blasts on July 21, deplored that more students in Islamic world gravitate towards theological rather than scientific studies, and this explains that the Muslim world is in a shambles. As long as religious curricula dominate, purging few verses will not be engaged.

Reduce dependence on foreign oil and natural gas

Americans consume 25 percent of the world's produced oil, but our nation holds less than 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. America is super power of the world. Saudi Arab is its closed ally. It purchased Pakistan through Mush as it did always. Still America worried and wants to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and gas.

Is India super power as America? Why should we not precede quickly to reduce foreign dependency for oil and gas?

UPA government’s energy policies are failing. The administration is still without a strategy for reducing India?s dangerous and costly dependence on fossil fuels, undermining national, economic, and environmental security.

India needs a new energy strategy that will reduce dependence on foreign oil and natural gas, confront the threat posed by climate change, and protect vital energy infrastructure

Even UPA boldly tries to consider the Iranian Gas Pipe line through the Pakistan. Though Baloach freedom fighters damaged even the Pakistani Pipe Lined there.

Biodiesel could be an important renewable substitute for fossil fuels. And, in certain parts of the world, governments and some corporations consider the jatropha plant, common in hot climates, one of the most promising sources of bio-diesel. The plant can grow in wastelands, and it yields more than four times as much fuel per hectare as soybean, and more than ten times that of corn. But the commercial-scale cultivation of jatropha, which has not previously been grown as a crop, raises several significant challenges.

This year, the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), an Indian research group, launched a 10-year, $9.4 million project to research issues involved in taking jatropha from seed to filling station. One challenge is growing the plant in poor soil India's Big Plans for Biodiesel

U.S. pursues ethanol technology as key to reducing oil dependence

But the more than six billion gallons of ethanol that will be produced this year have already helped push corn to its highest price in years, raising the cost of everything from tortillas to chicken feed. Poor people in Mexico have protested against the higher prices, and now China and India are starting to suffer from food inflation.

So why has no one figured out a way to make ethanol from materials like the sugar cane wastes engineers are working with in Jennings?

By Premendra Agrawal

agrawalpremendra@hotmail.com