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Friday, Mar 11, 2005

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Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Living with the pain

By Vaiju Naravane

Terribly scarred by the Madrid train bombings of a year ago, most Spaniards are unhappy at the slow pace of the investigation.

ONE YEAR after the horrific Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004 that claimed 191 lives and injured 1,900 people, the Spanish Government appears bewildered about how best to deal with rising Islamic militancy and the ever-present terrorist threat.

The sight of widespread carnage, mangled bodies, crumpled railway cars, overflowing morgues and grieving distraught relatives sent shock waves throughout Spain and resulted, a few days later, in the unexpected electoral defeat of Jose Maria Aznar's conservative Popular Party. Mr. Aznar, an ardent supporter of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, was quick to pin the blame on Spain's Basque separatist organisation, ETA, when all the evidence pointed to Islamic terrorism. He paid the price for hubris — for first foisting an unpopular war upon his people, then misleading them about the identity of the terrorists — and was duly defeated at the polls.

Supporters of the Popular Party are still smarting under that humiliation. They consider the poll verdict unjust and accuse Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's ruling Socialist Party of manipulating public opinion to win the election. Which is why a parliamentary commission named to look into the March 11 terrorist blasts has been bogged down in inter-party squabbles, prompting Pilar Manjon, a leader of victims' support groups, to pour scorn on politicians who, she said, had reduced the fate of victims and their families to a game of political one-upmanship.

"The Socialist Party claims that the bombings were caused by Mr. Aznar's erroneous decision to side with the Americans and send Spanish troops to Iraq. They therefore want the PP to take responsibility for the blasts. The truth is however much more complex than that. The people who bombed Spain were fuelled by jihadi ideology. For sure they were angered by Spain's participation in the war. But Spain has long been seen as a land lost to Islam — Al Andalus — which has to be brought back under Islamic rule, has to made part of Dar el Islam. Let us not forget that the Arab conquest of Spain lasted for 800 years from 711 to 1492 when they were finally driven out of Cordoba. The jihadis want to recapture what they once possessed and that makes Spain doubly vulnerable," Casimiro Garcia-Abadillo, Vice-Director of the influential conservative Madrid daily El Mundo told The Hindu .

The extent of the carnage, the size and scale of the operation, the systematic and highly organised manner in which the attacks were planned and executed left Madrid's political and security establishment reeling. "All this was very sudden and unexpected. As far as terrorism was concerned, we had our eyes firmly fixed on the Basque separatist organisation, ETA. We thought Spain was relatively safe from Islamic terrorism because France, Germany, Britain and others had much larger populations of Muslim immigrants. Spain has been an extremely homogeneous country, a country of emigration, not immigration," explains Juan Aviles Farre, the Director of the University Institute for the Study of Internal Security.

There are an estimated 800,000 Muslims in Spain — almost 90 per cent of them of Moroccan origin — a substantial number of whom are illegal immigrants. Most of the 74 persons arrested in connection with the March 11 blasts are of Moroccan origin with a sprinkling of Syrians, Tunisians, Algerians, an Indonesian, a Palestinian, an Egyptian and one Spaniard. Eleven Pakistanis figure on the list of those detained. Muslim immigration into Spain began in the 1990s and is therefore a relatively new phenomenon.

Because of historical reasons, Spaniards have always looked upon the Moroccans with something like contempt, referring to them as "Los Moros" or the moors, people they drove out of Spain to re-establish Christianity. This feeling has been exacerbated since the March 11 attacks and has triggered something of a demographic panic, with the most xenophobic segments of Spanish society warning that in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities Muslims would outnumber the Catholics in a matter of decades. Regularly they hold up Amsterdam or Rotterdam as examples, where immigrants now account for over 45 per cent of the population.

The Zapatero Government's approach towards the Moroccan community has been one of integration, not isolation. "Right now, as far as the Moroccan community is concerned, we suffer from a knowledge gap. We do not know where the terrorist breeding grounds within Spanish frontiers are located. There are an estimated 400 mosques, 50 per cent of which are clandestine outfits in people's basements or garages. We don't know where they are and what messages they are preaching. The Government is looking at both repression (increased policing, better intelligence, tougher immigration laws) and prevention (more social assistance, better housing, schools, more comprehensive integration policies). We do not have enough Arabic-speaking officers to infiltrate the milieu, not enough translators for phone taps and electronic surveillance. That is the security challenge. The other challenge is that of integration, creating a genuine sense of citizenship and belonging amongst the immigrant community — better schools, Arabic-speaking social assistants, more investment in depressed, high-density immigrant neighbourhoods. That takes time and money and both are in short supply," a senior policy planner told The Hindu .

The Government's proposal to finance mosques so as to make them legal, transparent and controllable and to allow the teaching of Islam in schools has run into heavy weather, bringing forth howls of protest from the extremely conservative Catholic Church and more importantly those Catholic voters who voted Socialist. Consequently the Zapatero Government has had to engage in a delicate balancing act.

Even more complex and complicated is Spain's relationship with its southern neighbour, Morocco, from whom it is separated by 50 km of water in the form of the Straits of Gibraltar. Mr. Aznar, the former Conservative Spanish Prime Minister, was abrasive in his dealings with Rabat, adopting an unnecessarily confrontational approach (sending in troops rather than negotiate over the Moroccan occupation of the tiny Mediterranean islet of Leila, talking ultra-tough over clandestine immigration) as a result of which there was little real cooperation from the Moroccan side. Even after the Casablanca terrorist attack of May 16, 2003, some 10 months before the Madrid bombings, relations between Rabat and Madrid were so strained that there was little exchange of intelligence.

One of Prime Minister Zapatero's challenges is to build a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. That he might be succeeding is evident from the fact that Morocco's King Mohammed VI is in Madrid for an international conference on terrorism and to commemorate the first anniversary of the Madrid bombings. Morocco is the biggest beneficiary of Spain's development aid programmes. However, says Spanish officials, the Moroccans have not done enough by way of social reform and development and revenue indicators are consistently low when compared to neighbouring Tunisia. Although the King of Morocco has taken some steps in favour of women's rights, female literacy levels remain abysmally low.

"The gap in per capita income between neighbouring states is highest between Spain and Morocco. Obviously, you have frustrated, unemployed youth in the cities of Casablanca or Tangiers and all they dream of is crossing the straits," Fidel Sendagorta, Head of Policy Planning at the Spanish Foreign Ministry told The Hindu .

Spain remains terribly scarred by the deadly events of a year ago and most Spaniards are unhappy at the slow pace of the investigation and what it has achieved so far. Seventy-four suspects are in custody and are likely to be brought to trial next spring. "We have to conclude our investigations and we are awaiting the result of enquiries now under way in Morocco, Algeria, France and Belgium," Olga Sanchez, the Public Prosecutor leading the investigation, said. Seven terrorists who blew themselves up after their hideout was surrounded by the police planned to carry out even more deadly attacks, she revealed. Ms. Sanchez also pointed to a number of cabalistic factors that guided their actions including the fact that March 11 fell 911 days after the World Trade Center attacks. There was no evidence, she said, that the Basques were involved.

Supporters of Mr. Aznar stubbornly maintain their theory of a Basque connection. "The investigation is far from complete. We still don't know who built the bombs, who masterminded the operation, how many participated and exactly how the attack was carried out. This would be the first time that Islamic terrorists have tried to influence the electoral process. Only ETA could have profited from a change of government since Prime Minister Aznar was their sworn enemy. So a possible ETA connection cannot be ruled out," said El Mundo's Casimir Garcia-Abadillo.

The families of victims wish to be left alone to get on with their lives and mourn their dead in private. "Please, this is not a sideshow. We don't want television footage of our loved ones to be aired for public consumption. Respect our grief. Allow our dead to rest in peace," a grieving mother said on hearing that one of the channels is to broadcast a television docu-fiction reconstructing the events of 3/11.

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