Glaring headlines in Australia tell of terror rampage in Saudi Arabia

SYDNEY, Australia – We woke up yesterday to the newspaper being quietly shoved beneath our door in the Sheraton on the Park. The blaring headline immediately caught my eye: "Al-Qaeda Kills 17 in Saudi Rampage."

Eagerly and with forboding, I scanned the front page. Surely I told myself, one or two or more of the victims must have been Filipino. True enough, three Filipinos were listed as having been murdered by the Islamic hostage-takers. The newspaper was The Australian, Monday edition. I rushed up to the 21st floor Club Lounge to collect the other dailies.

The Sydney Morning Herald emblazoned in its banner: "Oil Price Quakes as Hostages Killed."

The banner of The Courier-Mail, May 31, ran: "Slaughter Rocks Key Oil Nation."

Even the tabloid The Daily Telegraph, which specializes in more lurid sex and sleaze stories, ran – although inside on page 4 –"25 Hours of Evil." The subhead said: "17 Foreigners Die in Al-Qaeda Attack."

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It’s clear that, by seizing buildings and the compound where foreign executives and workers are billeted, the Muslim group, identifying itself as "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" or the Al-Quds brigade, intended to signal its all-out attack plan on Saudi Arabia’s production, much of it is in the oil-rich eastern provinces, in which Khobar – the scene of the murderous rampage – is a key city, next to Dharan, the headquarters of the giant Saudi Aramco oil corporation which is a major partner of our own oil company, PETRON.

Thousands of Filipinos, from engineers, to doctors, nurses, and other oil-service personnel work not only for Saudi Aramco, but for Halliburton and other firms located there in connection with the Saudi oil and petroleum industry.

It was inevitable that we lost three Filipinos in that 25-hour siege, wherein the other victims included an American, a Briton, an Indian, and other nationalities, including a ten-year old Egyptian boy. When helicopter-borne Saudi commandos stormed the building to rescue the rest of the 60 foreign workers being held hostage, they lost seven of their own members. The commandos landed in two waves atop the main hostaged building and fought their way in killing the terrorists, capturing their leader and seven other Muslim fanatics.

Later, on Arabic websites, messages allegedly from the terrorists’ leadership bragged that attacks would continue targeting US companies, and Saudi oil installations, and furthermore bragged that a large number of "crusaders" had been killed.

Let’s face it. We Filipinos, whether at home or abroad, will be earmarked for death, whatever we do, by fundamentalist and fanatical Muslims and their terrorist jihadis, because, by definition, we are classified as "crusaders" owing to our Christian, particularly Catholic, faith.

In their twisted minds, the al-Qaeda and JI, and other fundamentalists view Christians ("crusaders") as the mortal enemies of their faith, literally in the same category as Jews or Israelis. Since we have more than 870,000 Filipinos living and working in the now-embattled Saudi Arabia as OFWs, not to mention another 300,000 working in the Middle East, from Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates and Dubai, and even Iraq, how can we spirit 1.3 million OFWs out of "harm’s way"?

We’ll simply have to bite the bullet, and brace ourselves for more trouble to come. It has come to this.

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According to wire-agency correspondent Samia Nakhoul as published in The Courier-Mail, the terrorists "cut the throats of nine hostage... before Saudi commandos freed dozens of other captives held in a luxury residential compound" (the Oasis Housing compound).

At least 26 people have been killed, the correspondent said, since an al-Qaeda linked group launched its attack on the key oil city of Khobar. "The gunmen in military uniforms opened fire on Western oil offices killing 17 people – nine Saudis and eight foreigners. They then fled to the Oasis compound, forcing their way in with machineguns and taking almost 50 people hostage."

"They rigged a building in the compound with explosives and barricaded themselves in on the sixth floor... Witnesses said the body of a Briton – a victim of the attack on the oil offices – was dragged through the streets."

The American and another Briton were said to have been killed during the rescue operation, along with several others. A hostage named Nijar Hijazina, though, said that nine of the dead had their throats slit by the terrorists after they tried to get away during the night.

The nine were described as "seven Asians, a Swede and an Italian. One New Zealander, a resident of the Oasis, was reported missing, while British oil executive Michael Hamilton was confirmed dead."

It’s interesting that the terrorists let Muslims in the compound go – as one report noted, "..about 16 hostages described as Arabic in appearance were released."

To The Sydney Morning Herald, the same reporter Nakhoil dispatched a more specific story which the editors headlined: Cool Gunmen Hunted Down Christians.

In the article datelined Khobar, Saudi Arabia, the following dialogue was alleged to have taken place:

"Are you Muslim or Christian? We don’t want to kill Muslims. Show us where the Americans and Westerners live," Islamic militants told an Arab . . . The four gunmen, aged 18 to 26 and wearing military vests, grabbed Abu Hashem, an Iraqi with a United States passport, in front of his home in the Oasis compound in Khobar, but they let him go when he told them he was a Muslim." They went on: "Do not be afraid. We won’t kill Muslims – even if you are an American," he quoted them as saying."

The attacks were obviously mounted to scare foreign executives and workers, and get them to leave Saudi Arabia – a country which is heavily dependent on six million – foreign workers (including Filipinos) to keep its economy and its petroleum industry going. Right now, Saudi oil is crucial to the world’s oil supply, since oil prices per barrel have shot up, above $40 per, owing to turmoil in the oil fields, and sudden demands for oil from the US, and – would you believe? – the People’s Republic of China (where manufacturing and other projects are experiencing a boom), have roiled the oil markets. The Saudis, in an effort to ease the crisis – with or without OPEC – have been pumping nine million barrels of oil per day, and, until the interruption, has been moving slowly towards its full capacity of producing 10 million barrels of oil daily.

Now, we can expect oil prices to shoot up once more owing to jitters provoked by the murderous Khobar rampage.

Al-Qaeda has vowed to rid the Arabian peninsula of "infidels" – meaning Christians, like us.

Abdulsalam Hakawti, a 31-year old Lebanese financial director, was at home with his wife and two-year old son, when gunmen burst into his house. "Asalam Alaykum," Hawati greeted the gunman he encountered. The gunman replied that "our jihad is not against Muslims, but against Americans and Westerners." Another Muslim, Abu Hashem, the director of a Saudi firm who had been working in Khobar for the past six months, was accosted by four of the gunmen. They were "polite and calm". he recalled. "They gave me a lecture on Islam and said they were defending their country and ridding it of infidels."

How can we have "peace" in Mindanao if this is the growing mentality among Muslims, as preached reputedly in more fundamentalist madrassahs (religious classes)? Many of the madrassahs and the construction of many Mosques have, over the years, been underwritten by Saudi Arabia, whose rulers espouse the puritanical Wahabbi creed. Did such religious classes export "fundamentalism?" And hatred of infidels and crusaders?

After all, Osama bin Laden is a Saudi (his father immigrated from Yemen), from the wealthy Bin Laden clan, close to the royal family. Were the Saudi royals funding puritanical Islam and even some radical movements around the planet, hoping that they were buying immunity from the terrorists they . . . uh, "underwrote"? Now the terrorists are biting the hand that fed them.

We’ll feel the pain at our own corner gas pump.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . Last Sunday, before news came of the terrible rampage in Saudi, Sydney was at its best. The sky was blue, the temperature (so chilly last Saturday) down to an almost temperate 20 degrees Celsius. The beautiful bay was speckled with silver, from sun-starts dappling its azure blue. My cousin, the well-known Sydney lawyer, Imelda Argel, whose firm, Imelda Argel & Associates, handles the cases of thousands of Filipino immigrants, and as a Solicitor in the State of New South Wales and the High Court of Australia, also does commercial law cases (she has an Australian, a Chinese, and a Yugoslav lawyer (solicitors working as her assistants), hosted a lunch for us in the soaring Sydney Tower revolving restaurant, from which you can enjoy a sky-view of the entire metropolis as the restaurant "revolves". Our Ambassador, the Hon. Cristina G. Ortega, who arrived to take over the post four months ago, drove down from Canberra (the capital) to join us for lunch. Christy is an old friend, who hails from La Union (the family Ortega, of course, includes Congressman Victor Ortega, etc.) Also with us was Consul General Laureano Santiago. . . I see that the "canvass" has finally begun in Congress. I hope there are no further delays. FPJ’s full-page advertisement in The STAR tells us that the battle lines are drawn – and that the KNP doesn’t "give up" so easily. But let’s not delay, whatever the outcome. Already, we’re beginning to look like the sickest man in Asia – again.