The Next Front?
Rebels stormed a Chinese-run oil field at dawn in eastern Ethiopia on Tuesday, killing 74 workers and destroying the facility, the guerrilla group and government officials said.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front, an ethnic Somali group that has fought alongside insurgents in Somalia, also kidnapped seven Chinese workers.
The rebel group warned all international oil companies not to operate in the region. It did not give any details of casualties, but said they had “wiped out” three Ethiopian military units.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency identified the Chinese workers and Ethiopian guards as employees of the Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, a division of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., a huge state-run oil company better known as Sinopec.
Xu Shuang, the general manager of Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, based in Addis Ababa, said nine of its Chinese oil workers were killed, seven Chinese workers were kidnapped and 65 Ethiopians were killed in the fighting.
China has increased its presence in Africa in recent years in a hunt for oil and other natural resources to feed its rapidly growing economy. Its forays into areas considered politically unstable, however, has exposed Chinese workers to attacks.
——— The Ogaden NLF is an Islamic guerilla group that wants to create another muslim state in the area. We and the Chinese are in direct competition over second and third-world oil. Bush focussed in on one area, Iraq, and has tried to take it by force. The Chinese have spread out, wooing various nations in South America and Africa with money instead of threats and guns. Now they are also under attack by the muslims and the question is, will they fight back and send in their own troops, will they arm Ethiopia and send “advisors”, how will they respond? Open battle between the Chinese and the ONLF in Ethiopia will naturally escalate to conflicts with other muslim groups because that’s simply what the Islamics do. They will use any excuse to attack. This being so, I can see a possibility of the Chinese becoming embroiled in a major war in Africa.
I feel for the families of these innocent murdered victims and the Ethiopian authorities are enraged over this. “The army is pursuing them. We will track them down dead or alive. We will make sure these people will be hunted and be brought to justice.” I bet they do, too.
The Chinese won’t allow some ragtag muslims to prevent them from getting that oil. This bears keeping an eye on.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
good we can use all the help in the world to end Islam
April 24th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
then we kill all the chicoms!
April 24th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
The idea is to get rid of Islam, the religion, not kill everyone who practices it, nor to start pogroms on Hispanics or any other ethnic group. The best way to do this is to become energy independent as quickly as we’re able.
We need a new technology that releases large amounts of energy at low cost. If such an energy source were made available worldwide, the pumping of oil would quickly cease along with the flow of money which funds Islamic terrorism. Muslim countries would go back to being the ghettos of poverty and squalor they were before the days of oil, and Islam would be abandoned in favor of Western ways.
The oil companies have a huge interest in squelching any such new energy form and it wouldn’t be a surprise if there already was such a technology that has been suppressed and buried.
This is the stuff conspiracy theories are made of.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:07 am
I heard about a new report on the oil in Iraq. HUGE amounts, more than any other country in the middle east, I think. Also heard that the document to share oil revenues with all groups in Iraq is dead on arrival.