Forty years of terror

The Spanish government broke off the peace negotiation with the Basque terrorist organization ETA in recent days, following the terror attack of 30 December on the airport of Madrid, which caused the death of two Ecuadorian citizens, numerous injuries and serious material damage to the new terminal building. The Spanish bishops, who have already published a pastoral instruction on the matter, have also issued a statement to express their “affection for and solidarity with the victims” and to condemn terrorism, which they brand as a “structure of sin”. The bishops recall that terrorism is “intrinsically perverse, and wholly incompatible with a moral view of life”. “The government, the political parties and all the state institutions – they write in their statement – must work jointly together, with all the legitimate means at their disposal, to put an end to terrorism as soon as possible. All are obliged to place unity against terrorism before legitimate political or strategic differences”. We publish below a brief review of the history of Basque terrorism and the difficult negotiations with the political authorities. THE END OF A NINE-MONTH TRUCE . The third attempt to bring the almost forty-year-old history of Basque terrorism to a definitive conclusion lasted just nine months. The truce announced by the ETA – the Basque separatist group – on 22 March 2006 was brusquely interrupted on 30 December with the bomb blast that ripped apart the newly built Terminal 4 of Madrid’s Barajas Airport, costing the life of two Ecuadorian workers who were sleeping in their car at the time. On 2 January, the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, announced that the process of pacification and the dialogue with ETA had been interrupted, given that the terrorist organization had resumed its killing spree after almost four years. THE ORIGINS . The history of Basque terrorism originated in the 1960s, when Euskadi ta askatasuna (Basque Country and Liberty), founded in 1959 as a left-wing splinter group of the youth organization Partido Nacionalista Vasco , became an armed movement fighting for the recognition of the Basque identity. That identity had been reborn (or, according to some, “invented”) in the late 19th century. Its supporters had been harshly oppressed by the Franco regime since the 1930s. The rise of ETA coincided with the twilight of the Franco regime and culminated in the spectacular assassination of Franco’s Prime Minister, Admiral Carrero Blanco, whose car was blown up – its debris catapulted five storeys in height – on 20 December 1973. The Franco regime, to be sure, fell not as a result of Basque terrorism, but of natural implosion following the death of the ageing dictator. Nor did the terrorist violence cease after the end of the regime; it continued to cast a dark shadow over the new democratic Spain, even after the Statute of Guernica had recognized wide regional autonomy to the three Basque provinces of Alava, Guipozcoa and Vizcaya in 1978. On the contrary, ETA’s killing spree gained in momentum: the number of dead rose to 868,to whom have now been added the two Ecuadorian workers killed during the bomb blast of Barajas on 30 December. ATTEMPTS TO MAKE PEACE . The peace process that has now been broken off had begun on 22 March 2006 with ETA’s announcement of a permanent ceasefire. After the Algiers talks with ETA, sponsored by Felipe Gonzales in 1989, and the truce under Aznar in 1998-99, Zapatero, current Spanish premier, also sought a way out of the long Basque conflict at the beginning of 2006. But his attempt was not supported by the main opposition movement, the People’s Party, and also met with strong hostility in the AVT, the association that represents the victims of terrorism. Both the PP and the AVT have repeatedly accused Zapatero of accepting impossible conditions from ETA, and of giving away too much without any cessation of the violence. And in fact the ETA ceasefire has been at the very least ambiguous over the last nine months. The murders may have been interrupted, but there was no cessation of the Kale borroka , i.e. the daily urban guerriglia conducted by ETA against various objectives (party headquarters, public offices, cash machines, the homes of political leaders), nor of the practice of extortion of Basque businessmen, with the aim of self-financing the group. The theft of weapons in a raid at Nimes on 22 October 2006 had further increased doubts about ETA’s willingness to really renounce violence, at a time when its “sister” organization, the IRA, seemed to be finally laying down its arms for good in Northern Ireland. QUESTION MARKS ABOUT THE FUTURE. Apart from causing the death of the two Ecuadorians at Barajas, the latest ‘exploit’ of Basque terrorists has re-opened one of the last conflicts in Europe. Now the hot potato of the Basque conflict has been tossed back into the hands of the entire Spanish ruling class, which will have to pose itself the question whether the way of repression is in itself a sufficient means of tackling the problem. But the stakes are also being raised within ETA himself, where, according to some commentators, a battle is underway between those favourable to an end to the violence – led by Josu Ternera – and an irreducible hard core who remain committed to the armed struggle and to whom some attribute the terror attack of 30 December.