SPAIN: Two Faces of Terrorism – One Thrives, the Other Agonizes

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Apr 7 2004 (IPS) - When the new government takes office in Spain next week, it will be faced with a debilitated local terrorist group, ETA, and with the rising presence of an international Islamic terrorist network with radically different methods and objectives.

Members of al-Qaeda ("The Base", a loose front of radical Islamic groups active in many countries) sent a fax written in Arabic to the Madrid newspaper ABC, warning that it would turn Spain "into an inferno" if the government does not withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The fax also demanded an end to Spain’s support for "the enemies of the Islamic Uma (nation)," in reference to the United States and its allies.

The police consider the message credible, signed by Abu Dujana al-Afghani, who said he is of the Ansar Group of al-Qaeda in Europe.

The fax was sent Saturday at the same time that a shoot-out began in the outskirts of Madrid and ended with the deaths of a police officer and six of the men accused of the Mar. 11 train-bomb massacre in the Spanish capital. The alleged terrorists blew themselves up as police pressed in to arrest them.

Al-Qaeda was created in the late 1980s by Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden to unite Muslims and Arabs from various countries in fighting – with U.S. support – the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that began in 1979.

In February 1998, Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zauahiri issued a communiqué under the name World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, calling on Muslims worldwide to kill U.S. civilians and military members and their allies wherever they were found. It was a declaration of war against a former ally.

Al-Qaeda is blamed for several acts of terrorism, including the suicide attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 in New York and Washington that claimed more than 3,000 lives, and the train bombs last month that killed nearly 200 people in Madrid.

Juan Avilés, an expert and professor at Spain’s Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, says that nearly all terrorist cells that have been dismantled in Spain in the past few years were linked to al-Qaeda or to the Algeria-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which also seeks to attack Western interests.

The international nature of al-Qaeda and GSPC is their main difference from ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, "Basque Homeland and Freedom", in the Basque language), which is made up of Spaniards and some French, even among their support groups abroad.

Another notable difference is their attitude towards their own lives. When ETA members are caught red-handed or find themselves surrounded by government forces, they generally do not put up resistance and usually surrender.

In contrast, the members of the Islamic extremist fronts like al-Qaeda often put their own lives on the line. As occurred on Saturday in Madrid: the terrorist suspects blew themselves up in an apparent bid to also kill the police who were closing in on them.

ETA is a local group demanding Basque independence, and maintains a leftist discourse with no religious references.

Meanwhile, the Islamic extremists’ call for a holy war against the West makes numerous references to the Islamic faith and to the Koran. They are active in many countries and their objectives are much broader than ETA’s.

Al-Qaeda’s declared aim is to establish a grand pan-Islamic caliphate covering several countries with majority Muslim populations, by overthrowing governments outside of that faith, according to the U.S. State Department’s report, Patterns of Global Terrorism.

ETA has suffered some serious blows in the past few years, notably cutting down on the group’s actions. According to police sources, the infiltration of ETA by Spanish intelligence led to important arrests and the dismantling of much of the ETA infrastructure.

The most recent operation took place Friday in France, entrusted to Spanish and French police, and resulted in the discovery of a bomb-making workshop and a store of explosives and weapons.

The police arrested ETA logistical chief Iñaki Esparza Luri, the coordinator of the group, Félix Alberto López de la Calle (alias Mobutu), and his second in command, Mercedes Chivite.

At least in Spain, al-Qaeda and ETA share one point in common: they are resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of political, social and religious organisations.

Muslim groups based in Spain condemn the terrorist acts committed here in the name of Islam.

Kamal Rahmouni, vice-president of an association of Moroccan immigrant workers in Spain, ATIME, told IPS he does not think it is appropriate to talk about "Islamic terrorists," just as one should not say "Basque terrorism" or "Catholic terrorism".

"Islam forbids killing," he stressed.

Another Muslim, Mohamed Afifi, spokesman for the Islamic Centre of Madrid, also said in an IPS interview that terrorist acts should not be perpetrated in the name of his faith, and complained that these are often referred to as "Islamic attacks."

"Can it be that there no one in the United States commits attacks on the Christian Sabbath?" he asked. "Of course there are, but nobody talks about, or should talk about, Christian terrorism."

Organisations representing the Islamic community in Spain, which numbers between 800,000 and one million people, propose strategies to disseminate what they consider the true essence of the Koran.

Mansur Escudero, president of Feeri, one of the two biggest Spanish Muslim federations, suggested enacting the treaty signed in 1996 with the socialist government of the time, for providing classes in local schools about the Muslim religion.

It would be an opportunity to impart knowledge about what Islam really is, placing emphasis on values like tolerance and democracy, said Escudero.

In contrast, those who perpetrated the train-bomb attack in Madrid "reach the perversion of believing that they have received a mandate from God, not only in general, but personally, to defend Islam," said Joseph Buades, a Jesuit Catholic expert in religions.

Spain is the scenario of this debate today, in part because of the unconditional support of outgoing Prime Minister José María Aznar, of the conservative Popular Party, for the "war on terrorism" led by his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush, and for its related chapters: the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

At least that is the motive cited most by the terrorists to justify the train-bomb attack in Spain and the threats of many others, if Madrid does not withdraw its troops from Iraq.

The incoming prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), said Sunday that the fight against terrorism will be a top priority of his government.

Shortly after his swearing in, on Apr. 16, Rodríguez Zapatero reportedly will convene a meeting of the Anti-Terrorist Pact, inviting all parties with parliamentary representation.

Diplomat Miguel Angel Moratinos, who is slated to be his foreign minister, will travel to Washington to meet with U.S. authorities about the proposal to withdraw the approximately 1,300 Spanish soldiers from Iraq, if the foreign occupying forces do not pass control to the United Nations.

Washington has sent signals that it is willing to negotiate a new U.N. resolution on Iraq, but is steadfast in its refusal to put U.S. troops under U.N. command.

But Madrid will not accept "cosmetic changes" in the U.N. resolution on Iraq, Moratinos told the British daily Financial Times on Tuesday.

"We must give back to the Iraqis the sense that they are being liberated, that we are there to help them to build a democracy," Moratinos said.

"The problem now is that the Iraqis see foreign troops as an occupation army," he added in reference to the increasing popular resistance, which in the past week has translated into uprisings, battles and dozens of deaths, including the notoriously grizzly killing of four U.S. citizens in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

It is essential "to change the parameters of the international presence in Iraq," he told the Financial Times. That would only be possibly by giving the U.N. "absolute responsibility" over operations in Iraq.

As such, Moratinos’ negotiation efforts and Madrid’s position on Iraq pose major challenges, while Spain faces terrorist threats and citizen mobilisations demanding troop withdrawal from Iraq.

A Monday night demonstration in Leganés, in the outskirts of Madrid, where the six terrorist suspects blew themselves up on Saturday, brought out the entire neighbourhood with chants of "Peace, here and over there!", "No to war!" and "No to terrorism!"