FEAR FACTOR:
At Atocha station, a shrine takes shape
Now What Do We Do?
After Madrid, who'll be next? That question hangs in the air as Europe confronts its failure to thwart Islamic terrorism or heal its own deep political divisions
Posted Sunday, March 21, 2004; 9.59GMT
For days after the attack, Europe literally didn't know what had hit it. But even after Islamic terrorism was blamed for the 10 horrific blasts that killed 202 people in Madrid on March 11, the response outside of Spain was oddly muted, especially compared to the flood tide of emotion and solidarity in the days after Sept. 11. Slowly, however, as investigators unearthed enough evidence to charge three Moroccans with carrying out the bombings, a terrible dread crept across the Continent. In France, an antiterror official declared that another attack was "imminent." In Britain, Scotland Yard's chief John Stevens said a strike against London was "inevitable" and the Madrid bombers had a "definite link" with British-based Islamic extremists. And in Warsaw, Jerzy Dziewulski, a terrorism expert and member of the Polish parliament, said, "We have to assume we will be a target. We have to be prepared for the worst."
No one knows where the worst will strike next, but Osama bin Laden has given many countries reason to worry. In a statement attributed to him last October, he said al-Qaeda "reserve[s] the right to retaliate … against all countries involved [in Iraq], especially the U.K., Spain, Australia, Poland, Japan and Italy." A message last week from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which claimed responsibility for Madrid, named Britain, Italy and the U.S., among others. Even countries that hadn't been singled out, such as Germany, knew they couldn't rest easy.
The Madrid attacks represent a self-evident failure by Spanish counterterror services, who let the prime suspect in the case slip through their fingers in 2001 — in part because they were too focused on Basque terrorism. But the bombings also raise crucial questions about all of those hunting jihadists in Europe — specifically, whether Europe has yet learned the lessons of Sept. 11. "They have forced us all to completely re-evaluate everything we thought we knew about the jihadist threat in Europe, and just how well we've understood and battled it," a French antiterror investigator told TIME. "If these kinds of networks are operating and striking in Spain, they're set up and moving toward attacks elsewhere. And unless we uncover them fast, they'll do just that."
The antiterror cops weren't the only ones reeling. Political temblors rumbled throughout Europe and beyond after Spanish voters threw out the conservative government that had been expected to win until the terrorists struck. The carnage spurred some Spaniards to demand distance from George W. Bush's deeply unpopular war in Iraq, which Prime Minister José María Aznar had sternly backed. Other voters were convinced that Aznar's government tried to cook the election by suppressing evidence of jihadist involvement in the blasts, pushing instead the politically advantageous theory that Basque terrorists were the culprits. Whatever the reason, the Socialists scored a victory — which, awkwardly, is exactly what the terrorists wanted.
The incoming Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, reiterated his campaign pledge to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by June unless the U.N. takes over the occupation — and did so with the hot rhetoric of a candidate rather than the smoothness of a statesman. "Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and self-criticism," he said. "You can't organize a war with lies." He called the occupation a "fiasco" and said he was determined to re-establish "magnificent" relations with France and Germany — but even they were surprised Zapatero publicly rewarded the bombers and was so eager to rip open the wounds of the Iraq war. And so the murderers of Atocha forced Europe to confront some life-and-death questions: Can counterterrorist agencies learn to collaborate to thwart future attacks? Will terrorists use mass murder again to exploit Europe's political disagreements? Or will Madrid be a wake-up call, forging real unity against a menace everyone expects to spread?
In the wake of the bombings, Europe's governments scrambled to tighten their defenses. Britain announced an extra €22 million for antiterror police, on top of existing plans to boost employees of the security service by 50%. Reports of suspicious parcels on the London Underground surged 300%. Stevens, London's police commander, called for vigilance not only on the rails, but "in buses, nightclubs, pubs and roads." Greece asked NATO to help with security at the Olympic Games by providing naval patrols, AWACS surveillance planes and a battalion trained to handle chemical, biological and nuclear threats. Additional steel barriers were erected outside major government buildings in Rome. Germany pressed ahead with plans to use iris scanners at airports and urged the adoption of E.U.-wide biometric standards to help catch terrorists as they move across borders. The Czech government, which like Spain has troops in Iraq, upped police patrols and tightened passport controls — the first line of defense in an E.U. about to expand to 25 members.
France, though a prominent opponent of the Iraq war, also steeled itself for attack; its ban of Muslim head scarves in state schools had brought condemnation from Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2 (who last weekend was rumored to be surrounded by Pakistani troops). France raised its terror alert to red, the second-highest level, and doubled the number of soldiers on antiterror patrols to 1,500. The government was jittery. Determined to avoid any cover-up charge of the sort that wounded Aznar, the office of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin released a letter from a previously unknown Islamic group threatening to punish France for the head-scarf ban. But its candor was too hasty: intelligence experts concluded the letters lacked the hallmarks of a genuine Islamic threat. In fact, some Interior Ministry analysts believe they were concocted by right-wing extremists trying to whip up fears before regional polls this week.
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