TIME EUROPE
June 12, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 23
Battle of the Basques
Political inertia combines with disunity and distrust among Spain's national and regional security forces to play into the hands of the terrorist group ETA
By MARTIN C. AROSTEGUI Bilbao
Few citizens in Europe ought to feel safer than the 2 million who live in Spain's northern Basque country. They have four separate forces looking after them: local police, regional police, national police, plus the militarized corps known as the Guardia Civil. Yet, despite a ratio of about one member of these forces for every 135 citizens, the region is one of the most violent places to live in Europe. The reason is the separatist terrorist group eta — and disunity among the various forces out to curtail it. ETA has killed about 800 people and maimed more in shootings and bombings over the past three decades. It also inflicts what Spanish security forces call "terrorism lite" — youth groups smashing property and hurling Molotov cocktails — on a daily basis.
Members of some 8,000 security services personnel operating for the Spanish National Police and the Guardia Civil have been able to infiltrate ETA terrorist teams, disrupt its arms channels and recently to intercept two huge truck bombs heading for the national capital, Madrid. They also work closely with French police to deny the terrorists the cross-border refuge they enjoyed in the past. But failure to seriously weaken ETA is increasingly being blamed on the 7,000-member autonomous Basque police, the Ertzaintza. Frustrated members of the Guardia Civil claim that the Ertzaintza — created in the mid-1980s because the Guardia Civil was seen as an instrument of the dictator General Francisco Franco — is being kept on a leash by the Basque Nationalist Party, the PNV, which controls the regional government. The reason? The PNV believes there is no military or police solution to the conflict and wants to negotiate with the separatists' political wing, Herri Batasuna.
The steady breakdown in communication between competing security services has led to the Guardia Civil and Ertzaintza sometimes mistaking each other for terrorists. In 1997, during a car chase through Bilbao, one Basque plainclothesman proved his shooting skills by grouping six pistol shots into a civil guard's abdomen, sending him to intensive care. Neither team knew that the other was operating in the same area, according to the Basque security chief at the time, José María Atutxa, who complained, "We have too many police for such a small region." Another incident between Spanish and Basque police was narrowly avoided last month outside the Basque city of San Sebastián.
In the Guardia Civil barracks at Intxaurrondo, in the region's Guipúzcoa province, Major José Luis Gómez complains, "We are no longer on the streets. Routine information now flows to the Ertzaintza, which doesn't share it with us." Basque policemen say virtually no assistance was given to the Guardia Civil to locate car bombs ETA exploded earlier this year after it ended a 14-month truce. One officer who would not be named says of a bomb attack on a Guardia Civil vehicle on March 6: "They had given us the license number, model, color, year and type." He is referring to a Renault car packed with 40 kilos of dynamite. "We ran no checks on the car," he says, with a shrug. Later that day the car bomb was detonated remotely, ripping apart the Land Rover and seriously injuring its two Guardia Civil occupants.
The Ertzaintza seems equally impotent against more rudimentary street violence by youth gangs linked to ETA. Its firebombings and widespread harassment of politicians, journalists, and public figures it considers to be against Basque independence are increasing relentlessly. Regional authorities estimate "about 1,000" as the annual total of these "low-intensity terrorism" attacks.
Marisa Arrue, a representative of Spain's Popular Party in the Basque parliament, asks, "How is it possible that these hoodlums can rampage through my neighborhood for hours at a time, preventing me from doing my work as an elected politician, without any police interference?" Her Socialist colleague, Dimas Soñudo, who is under death threat from ETA for investigating the Ertzaintza's sluggishness, accuses the Basque government of restraining the autonomous police from cracking down on Herri Batasuna militants who organize the street violence. An Ertzaintza officer, who belongs to an independent union fighting what he calls "political interference in security functions" by the regional government, says, "It comes down to a list of names of who not to arrest."
Last month, after the fatal shooting of a newspaper columnist in the Basque region, Spain's Prime Minister, José María Aznar, described the policies of the Basque Nationalist Party as "suicidal." Defending his party's dealings with Herri Batasuna — which polls less than 20% of the vote in regional elections — the Basque government's vice secretary for security, Mikel Legarda, says: "For 40 years, Spain's army and police have failed to eradicate ETA, which has proved to have a strong popular base, a resilient leadership, excellent logistics and a potent infrastructure. We have declared on repeated occasions that we want Spain's security services withdrawn from Euskadi, or reduced to a tenth of their current level, leaving us to police ourselves."
Cooperation between national and regional security forces is now "out of the question," according to a long-serving Ertzaintza member. He points out that all members of a team of Spanish officers originally assigned to the Ertzaintza have been either killed by ETA or pushed out by the nationalists. Cooperation has disappeared to the point that Spanish security officials are sometimes tailed by the Ertzaintza, according to a recent claim by a member of CESID, Spain's military intelligence organization, which recently excluded the PNV from an intelligence briefing to Spain's political parties.
Offering a long list of terrorists caught in recent years, Spanish security officials challenge their Basque counterparts to produce a similar record. "Our performance has been rather poor," admits a long-serving member of the Ertzaintza. This same officer was part of an attempt to catch one of ETA's most-feared killers. After penetrating Ertzaintza communications with his own radio, the terrorist was able to give false orders to the Basque units, then coolly drive through the cordon his instructions had weakened.
Basque security chief Legarda insists that cooperation between the forces will improve. "I'm on the phone once a week with my opposite number in Madrid," he says. The man he is referring to is Spain's Interior Minister, Jaime Mayor Oreja. A Basque, and the Popular Party's deputy for San Sebastián, Mayor Oreja is being tipped as a future lehendakari, or president, of the Basque region if his party and the opposition Socialists can between them muster a majority to oust the Nationalists in the next regional elections. The thought of having a representative of the Madrid government in the region's highest office makes many Basque nationalists shudder, even those who don't share the extreme views of Herri Batasuna and ETA. But a majority of Basques are sick of living in fear, and of the fact that the police meant to be stopping terrorism are busy fighting wars of their own.
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June 12, 2000
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