Posted on 03/16/2004 8:02:47 PM PST by Eurotwit
PARIS, 17 March 2004 — It may take weeks before the identity of those responsible for the March 11 tragedy in Madrid is established. But one thing is already certain: Europe has not yet taken the full measure of the terrorist threat to its way of life, indeed its existence as a zone of peace and prosperity in an unstable world.
Moments after the attacks, the Spanish Cabinet, with the notable exception of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, was mobilized to pin the blame on ETA, the Basque terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of people in its 30-year campaign for a breakaway state in northwest Spain. Because the attacks came just two days before a general election, the assumption was that Aznar’s People’s Party would benefit from the voters’ anti-ETA reflex.
At the other end of the Spanish political spectrum, however, the opposition Socialist Workers’ Party had an interest in exculpating ETA. The reason? One of the Socialist Workers’ Party’s electoral allies in Catalonia had established a link with ETA and called for lifting the ban on Batasuna, the political façade of the terror group.
The Socialists were quick in turning the tables against Aznar by attributing the Madrid attacks to Al-Qaeda, the group supposedly led by Osama Bin Laden. The Socialists’ had opposed Aznar’s decision to join the United States in the war on terror and were keen to present the Madrid tragedy as an act of revenge for that “misguided policy.”
Within hours the Spanish political and media establishment was divided into two camps: one blaming ETA, the other pointing the finger at Islamists. The division quickly spread to the rest of Europe.
France’s Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, implying that Spain had been targeted because it had sent troops to Iraq, blamed Al-Qaeda. A similar view was expressed by German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and British Premier Tony Blair, however, echoed the official Spanish government view. The divide also became apparent in the media coverage of the tragedy.
Those who had supported Spain’s decision to join the war of liberation in Iraq tried to portray the attacks as part of ETA’s campaign of terror. Those who had opposed the intervention in Iraq, on the other hand, presented the attacks as an understandable, though not necessarily justifiable, retaliation by “Muslims with hurt feelings.” Leftist politicians with a history of flirting with ETA appeared on television to defend it against “scandalous allegations” as if Europe’s oldest terror group were a damsel whose virtue had been questioned.
So keen were some European politicians and talking-heads to link the Madrid attacks to Spain’s policy in Iraq that they took little time to examine the claims supposedly coming from Al-Qaeda.
They seized upon a fax message to a Palestinian daily published in London. This contained the claim that “the soldiers of Islam” had attacked Madrid to punish Spain for its role in liberating Iraq. Those who work in Arab newspapers published in London know that such faxes arrive at their offices at the rate of a dozen a day, and cannot be verified.
Almost at the same time the German weekly Focus received a letter supposedly written by Abuhafs Al-Masri, another claimant to the position of “Al-Qaeda military Commander.” (Don’t be surprised if more such letters are faxed to news organs in the coming days.)
Next came a video-tape from a chap calling himself “Military Commander of Al-Qaeda in Europe.”
The bearded gentleman’s name was first given as Abu-Dajjan Al-Afghani which means “Father of Chickens from Afghanistan.” Once it became clear that this might be a joke, the name was changed into Abu-Dukhkhan which means “Father of Smokes”, possibly a more suitable appellation for a terrorist.
Those who seized upon the tape to back their argument that Spain should not have supported the liberation of Iraq forgot one fact: Al-Qaeda has never claimed responsibility for any particular action, contenting itself to making general threats and boasting about the “heroism of martyrs” as if they had only affective links with it.
The partisan approach to the understanding of the Madrid tragedy could harm efforts to develop a coherent European strategy in the context of the global war on terror.
It is, therefore, important to focus on the threat rather than on partisan advantages in the context of an electoral struggle for power.
The assumption that ETA might have been involved is not so fanciful. But to insist that the investigation should exclude other possibilities was wrong even in the narrowest terms of detection work. To pretend that ETA should not be included in the investigation, however, was even more wrong.
The two sides of the European divide, still squabbling over the Iraq war, have ignored a third possibility: that ETA and Al-Qaeda might have worked together to bring about the Madrid tragedy.
This is not as fanciful as it might sound. Terrorism is a doctrine based on the maxim: The ends justify the means.
In the current debate those who try to exculpate ETA imply that it is, somehow less evil than Al-Qaeda.
That assumption is both wrong and dangerous. The difference between ETA and Al-Qaeda is one of means and methods not of nature and category. Until last week ETA had never managed to kill more than 30 people at any given time. But that was not for the want of trying.
Nor is ETA’s relationship with Middle Eastern radical groups new. ETA established contact with the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970. A number of ETA militants were trained in various PFLP camps both in Lebanon and Libya.
British and Spanish intelligence have also established ETA’s link with Libya at least until 1986. During that period Libya supplied the Basque terror group with money and arms.
An ETA delegation has visited Tehran since 1985 to participate in an annual gathering of “anti-Imperialist” movements that is held between Feb. 1 and 11. In 1986 the French police identified one Vahid Gorji, an attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, as the liaison officer with European terror groups, including ETA. (Gorji was subsequently allowed to fly home under escort as Iran and France severed diplomatic ties.)
In 1993 ETA, along with a dozen other Western terrorist organizations, had observers in the largest ever gathering of Islamist groups held in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. The conference elected a nine-member “steering committee” that included Bin Laden.
ETA’s literature, as disseminated over the past three decades, is replete with expressions of sympathy for various Islamist causes including “wiping Israel off the map” and “driving the American Imperialists out of the world.”
In exchange, Al-Qaeda literature has paid tribute to ETA’s “heroic struggle” for Basque independence. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda second-in-command, has spoken of his dream of “liberating Andalusia”, the part of Spain once ruled by Muslims, presumably letting ETA rule its own neck of the wood in the Basque country.
Some analysts claim that ETA, a leftist and nationalist group, cannot ally itself with Islamists who are on the extreme right and firmly reject nationalism. But such is the hatred of terrorist groups of democracy that alliances across the ideological divide cannot be excluded.
An objective alliance of radical groups, from the extreme-left to the Islamists, is already in place in many countries. This alliance has organized numerous marches opposing the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and conducts a vigorous campaign against any attempt at “imposing” democracy on any other Muslim country. The core of this alliance’s ideology consists of an acute form of anti-Americanism which assumes that the United States represents evil in a Manichaean view of the world.
The truth is that there is no good terrorism and that the current European wave of anti-Americanism cannot but encourage those who wish to impose their will on the world through terror. Whether or not they actually worked together to bring about the Madrid tragedy, ETA and Al-Qaeda are in effect political allies.
The marrying up of the local terrorist groups with Al Qaeda is a nightmare the europeans haven't thought of......yet.
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