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  • Spain’s Dual Security Dilemma:Strategic Challenges of Basque and Islamist Terror during the Aznar and Zapatero Eras
  • Anthony N. Celso (bio)

While global terror has emerged as today's dominant issue, countries have grappled with terrorist attacks for generations.1 Violent movements and the terrorist attacks they inspire have bedeviled policy makers in Algeria, Colombia, England, India, Israel, Russia, Spain, and Sri Lanka for many decades. The case of Spain is especially complex, because it comprises simultaneous terror threats from two networks (Basque and Islamist) that radically diverge in their origins, goals, and methods. In this essay I compare the security problems created by the Basque terrorist group ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) with those posed by Islamist al Qaeda affiliates in Spain.

Though diminished by ETA's 22 March 2006 announcement of a "permanent cease-fire," Basque and Islamist terror groups continue to compromise Spanish security. ETA has directed attacks against the Spanish state for more than forty years and is responsible for more than eight hundred deaths; Islamists loyal to al Qaeda executed the single worst terror attack in modern Europe on 11 March 2004 when ten cell-phone-triggered bombs exploded on four commuter trains, killing 192 people and wounding 1,500 others. Basque and Islamist terrorism continues to haunt the Spanish political scene, and the terrorism issue has accelerated partisan divisions.

The Socialist Party's electoral victory on 14 March 2004 was widely interpreted [End Page 121] as a reaction to the 3-11 attacks and as a public rebuke to the conservative administration that erroneously blamed ETA for the attack and allegedly covered up evidence linking the attack to Islamist militants.2 Once police authorities were able to establish conclusive links between the commuter-train attacks and Islamist militants seeking to punish Spain for its participation in the Iraq war, the Socialists were able to effectively exploit the issue to their advantage and, defying all predictions, won the election. The electoral and political legacy of 3-11 continues to dominate the Spanish political landscape, and the Madrid attack has fractured partisan unity on counter-terrorism policy. No single issue divides Spanish society like terrorism and what to do about it.

This essay is organized in three sections: (1) a comparison of Basque and Islamist terror and where ETA and al Qaeda fit in the larger field of terrorism studies, (2) an examination of antiterror policies with a concentration on the differences between the governing Socialists and their conservative opposition, and (3) a preliminary assessment of the Socialists' counter-terrorism policies and their likely impact on mitigating Basque and Islamist security threats.

A Theoretical Framework for Identifying and Assessing Security Threats from Terror Groups

Terrorist groups have been analyzed through many historical, psychological, and political lenses.3 In a comprehensive review of the issue, Walter Laqueur identifies terror networks based on ideological association and he arrives at four groups: Islamist, Far Right, Far Left, and the Third Position. By the Third Position Laqueur means anarchistic groups whose main reason for existence is to challenge the spread of globalization and its diffusion of Western secular liberal capitalism.

As Laqueur readily acknowledges, neat ideological classifications of terrorists and terror groups are difficult to make in a postindustrial age. Many of the older micronationalist terror groups like ETA and the Irish Republican [End Page 122] Army (IRA) combine conservative nationalism with communist ideology.4 In ETA one can see patterns of crossgenerational recruitment and mobilization of young militants fueled by both Basque nationalism and Marxist-Leninism, which make for a very combustible and nihilistic mix.5 The quest for an independent Basque homeland stretching from northern Spain to southern France encouraged militants to attack Spanish and French interests. ETA's recent announcement of a permanent cease-fire has raised as many doubts as it has hopes.

Laqueur's Third Position could cover some Islamist groups, given that these movements have borrowed much from the ideology, charismatic leadership, and organization of past European fascist and communist movements.6 Paul Berman sees many parallels in the anti-Semitic ideology and culture of death of al Qaeda and the Nazis.7 These similarities are evident in the nihilistic rage against Western liberalism...

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