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Spain Rocks
The leading playing behind the country's remarkable surge. [Mar. 15, 2004] |
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Jihad's Spread
al-Qaeda's frightening new methods and message. [Dec. 1, 2003] |
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| LUIS GENE/AFP-GETTY IMAGES |
| MADRID MOURNS: More than 2 million people marched in the streets of the Spanish capital |
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Posted Sunday, March 14, 2004; 16.37GMT
And it didn't take them long to connect the dots. Nearly 24 hours before Acebes announced the arrests, Spanish authorities were warning French security services that the Madrid blasts could indeed be the work of an Islamic group. Sources tell Time that this was one of the reasons the French government boosted its security status to red, the second-highest state of alert. Paris was already concerned about the possibility of an attack by an Islamic terror group. In a recent taped message bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, explicitly warned of retribution against France's ban on Muslim head scarves in public schools. The Spanish intelligence forced France to consider itself in the crosshairs, according to a French security official. "We know if we're not next, we're after the ones who are next," he said. "And that's what everyone in Europe is thinking to themselves today."
Back in Madrid, news of the arrests brought about a shift in the political mood just hours ahead of the general election. Until then, analysts had believed that widespread anger at ETA would favor the Popular Party of departing Prime Minister José María Aznar, which has advocated a hard line against the Basque group. Some opponents charged the government with exaggerating the evidence against ETA and downplaying the al-Qaeda theory for political gain. On Thursday, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio had sent out a dispatch to all Spanish ambassadors requesting that they "take advantage of any occasions that present themselves to confirm ETA's responsibility for these brutal attacks." Analysts suggested that if voters believed al-Qaeda was responsible, they might take their anger out on the PP, which had put Spain on bin Laden's hit list by signing up for the war in Iraq.
There certainly was anger in the air outside the PP headquarters in Madrid as Acebes announced the arrests. The spontaneous antigovernment demonstrations that started at 6 p.m. in front of PP headquarters in Madrid grew substantially. By the early hours of Sunday morning, there were an estimated 5,000 people gathering close to Atocha station. Angry over what they see as government manipulation, many demonstrators blamed Aznar for provoking the attacks. "Yesterday, we were marching in mourning. Tonight it's out of revulsion at the politics that produced this terrorism," said Francisco Rodríguez, a middle-aged insurance-firm employee. "I hold the government responsible for the deaths on Thursday because we went out to support an unjust war."
To be fair, it wasn't just politics but also recent events that led the Spanish government to see the attacks through an ETA prism. On Feb. 29, police arrested alleged ETA operatives with a vanload of explosives. Last Christmas Eve, the Spanish police thwarted an attempt by two ETA operatives to blow up a train in another of Madrid's major train stations, Chamartín: they caught one of them trying to put a suitcase packed with 28 kg of the explosive Titadine on the train before it left for the Basque Country, and later found another with 20 kg of the explosive onboard. And on Dec. 19, 2002, two men were apprehended carrying 130 kg of an unidentified explosive that police said they planned to place throughout Madrid and detonate simultaneously.
If the style and scope of the Madrid attacks differed from some of the established ETA patterns, that could have been an indication that the group has changed. Since the arrest of most of ETA's top tier in a series of Franco-Spanish operations over the past decade, control may have passed to a generation of younger, less experienced and more extreme leaders who may be radical — or just plain inexperienced — enough to commit an atrocity like last week's attacks.
A report on trends in terrorism published in December 2002 by the Council of the European Union, the E.U.'s ministerial-level policymaking body, cites the alarming rise within ETA of younger men from inside the culture of kale borroka, the Basque term for "street violence." Unlike the group's founders, who were hardened by General Francisco Franco's repressive dictatorship, these kids grew up in a democratic Spain and are mostly middle class. Yet "they are exposed to radical ideology in the family and to peer pressure," says Pedro Ibarra, a professor of political science at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao. Some go on to join ETA and could have planted the bombs to show their elders they were tough enough "to continue to be the protagonists of this awful story."
But public outrage over the attacks suggests that if ETA was behind them, it may have signed its own death warrant. "Some people think we drink champagne when attacks happen," says Ainhoa Osinalde, spokeswoman for Pagotxeta, a pro-independence group close to Batasuna, the banned party often described as ETA's political wing. "That's not true. We have to do everything we can to stop these things from happening again." Many moderate Basque nationalists share ETA's goal of independence while condemning its terror tactics, but even the few people who still support the armed struggle will likely be repulsed by the Madrid carnage. If it was involved in this atrocity, "it's the end of ETA's support in the Basque country," says Ibarra.
Even before al-Qaeda's claims of responsibility, intelligence experts in Washington saw bin Laden's fingerprints in the wreckage. "There's no doubt in my mind it's al-Qaeda," said one senior counterterror veteran at the FBI. Wherever this investigation leads, the war on terror has taken yet another deadly new turn. As one U.S. intelligence official notes, the absence of suicide bombers in Madrid is a sobering development. "You don't have to kill yourself to blow something up," this official says. Since suicide bombers are a finite resource, terrorists could be more inspired than ever to mount devastating attacks by remote control. In other words, Madrid rolled out an innovation that other terrorists will surely copy, says Tarine Fairman, who retired last month as a top international counterterrorism agent at the FBI. "They've introduced a technique that we knew about and were concerned about," he warns, "but are not prepared to deal with."
Reported by Timothy J. Burger, Viveca Novak and Elaine Shannon/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Walter Gibbs/Oslo, Helen Gibson/London, Samuel Loewenberg and Jane Walker/Madrid, Scott MacLeod/Cairo, Pelin Turgut/Istanbul and Enrique Zaldua/San Sebastián
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Fight Over Federalism [Mar 15, 2004]
The power struggle between regions and central government shakes up the election [en español]
The Contenders [Mar 15, 2004]
After Aznar Leaves the Stage[ en español]
Divide And Conquer [Mar 8, 2004]
Basque terrorist group ETA throws a "message bomb" into the Spanish general-election campaign
Blaming The Messenger [March 11, 2003]
Spain's heavy-handed attempt to fight Basque terrorism by closing a Basque newspaper is only spreading rage and fear
The Next Terror Nexus? [Feb. 16, 2003]
Colombia fears that the I.R.A. and ETA may be using the country as a base for weapons testing and training
Uncle Osama Wants You [Mar. 16, 2003]
A journalist infiltrates a radical network in Paris, and gets a rare glimpse of a terror recruiter in action
Living With Fear [Dec. 08, 2002]
Bali, Mombasa — and where next? Terror is the new reality. Here's what the allies will do to prevent even more devastating strikes
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