Spanish Politics: Terrorism - Case Study Example

Spanish Politics (Paddy Woodworth) 09 December Introduction Terrorism today is considered to be the dominant form of international conflict in this century. Ironically, there are no exact definitions of terrorism in legal jurisprudence and many countries have varying versions of its definition. This is because terrorism as a criminal act is largely based on what causes it in the first place. People can commit terrorism based on their own agenda, whatever that might be. However, a common definition in which most experts of terrorism are agreed upon is that it consists of acts designed to create terror or fear among the populace in order to achieve coercion. The aim of the terrorist/s is to force another person to act in a certain manner that is involuntary through threat and intimidation. Terrorism is used to serve several objectives such as for political freedom, religious or ethnic recognition, revenge for social alienation, economic marginalisation or ideological aim. Likewise, there are military, scientific, technological and social aspects of terrorist behaviour. To be able to contain terrorists, one must go deeper and try to understand their motivations as to why they engage in terror tactics in the first place when other more peaceful means could be available to them to redress their grievances. Sociologists and behavioural scientists often are at a loss to explain this rather unusual human dimension (Smelser & Mitchell, 2002:vii). This paper looks at a particular segment of terrorism in a part of Europe which is the country of Spain. This country used to be quite peaceful but has lately had to contend with the threats of terrorism coming from its experience of dealing with the ETA or the Basque armed separatist organization as well as the growing domestic threat from Islamic militants within Spain itself (Woodworth, 2004:170) as well as that countrys own use of terrorist tactics. Discussion The advantages of terrorist organizations are they often decide to strike at will without any regard for the collateral damage they can cause. This means civilians and non-combatants are fair game in order for them to acquire the needed publicity and exposure for their cause. It is this indiscriminate use of violence that strikes fear and terror into a civilian populace and to those who are in power in the government. In this paper, two sides of the same coin are being examined: the terror groups which are basically stateless (mostly religious or political groups) and the rare instance of an established government that fostered its own version of terrorism on its populace to maintain political or economic power. The latter instance is what happened in Spain in the period 1982-1986 when the government sponsored state terrorism itself to help it counter the terrorist activities of the ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) by forming the GAL or known in Spanish as the Grupo Antiterrorista de Liberacion (www.onwar.com, n.d.:1). It was the Spanish government’s answer to the ETA terrorists and GAL countered by using the same tactics such as bombings and revenge assassinations of ETA activists, mostly in France. This was Spain’s little version of its dirty war against ETA separatists during that time. The use of state terrorism had angered many in the government and civil society when it was publicly exposed that death squads supported by the Guardia Civil (the police or Civil Guard) were formed to eliminate opponents of the government. The Spanish government at that time had employed the biblical saying of “an eye for an eye” which many in media and academe believed resulted to an erosion of Spanish democracy. This violent counter-terrorism strategy had likewise caused more political polarisation as the government’s actions prodded more to join ETA movement because of its perceived atrocities. This instance showed how terrorism can be on both sides of the political fence. The experience of Spain is not unique as many of the Latin American countries had undergone the same experience such as Peru or Argentina. Terrorist Tactics – when stateless people use terrorist tactics to further their objectives, it is usually by merging with the civilian populace to make detection and capture difficult. The evasive strategy and hiding in the local population is very similar to guerrilla tactics during an open war but this time, terrorism hides behind the veil of normalcy by deciding when to strike if it can see an opportunity to do or to choose an auspicious date in order to gain media focus. It is this difficult situation that often frustrates the police doing investigative work of trying to capture these terrorists before they can carry out their violent plans. In their haste to make this capture, the police and other state authorities can be tempted to take shortcuts. When this is an inevitable consequence (the taking of the shortcuts), then a dangerous precedent occurs in that certain democratic and personal liberties can be put at stake unnecessarily. Democracy is based on a rule of law although admittedly, the law can be cumbersome and quite slow to grind in producing the desired justice. However slow this route might be, it is important that political and personal safeguards are observed because once a state panics, it will put its own innocent citizens at a big disadvantage. The haste to capture terrorists can be short-circuited that will endanger innocent people who can be wrongly suspected or accused of a crime they did not commit. Suspicion can fall on anyone and democracy itself is debased. When police authorities start bodily searching every person to see if they are carrying a bomb or not, it will put restrictions on free movement of the citizens which itself is already a form of reduction of personal freedom. Other forms of curtailment may soon follow such as censors trying to control the free flow of information, ostensibly to help the police in their work. Even the media organisations can be prevented from doing their work such as reporting the news. It is this paranoia that will soon gradually turn a free society into a society based on fear and the ever-present feeling of having something hidden from the people by their own government. It can get worse and the worst threat is to democracy because all rationality can go out the door or flies out of the window of reason and calm logic. Everybody is now uniformly afraid. Little Dirty War – the first home-grown terrorists on Spanish soil are the members of the ETA which had long sought autonomy for their Basque region in Spain. When their own political demands were not met by successive Spanish governments, they turned to their brand of terrorism which usually involved bombings in the Spanish capital of Madrid and elsewhere although ETA always issued prior warnings to minimize collateral damage. The real purpose of their bombings was primarily to draw attention to their political cause than to kill unarmed or innocent civilians. Spain had a long history of violence but the ETA group came into life as a consequence of Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s dictatorship after the Second World War. He had defeated the main political party in the Basque region and suppressed it militarily too. The ETA had started out as a mere study group designed to study political alternatives to what it saw as oppression by the central government in Madrid. It turned to terrorism later on when its political demands were ignored and saw it as their only viable alternative. In other words, Spain had much experience in dealing with terrorism long before the March 11, 2004 train attacks in Madrid. The main protagonists were the ETA membership and the police in a close cooperation with the Guardia Civil or the intelligence services of the authorities. During the most intense periods of the ETA struggles, the organisation committed several terrorist attacks and killings of Spanish police personnel to the point it had threatened the country’s transition to full-fledged democracy after the death of Gen. Franco (Woodworth, 2001:33). ETA soon adopted the policy of indiscriminate violence to provoke the government into doing something that is politically stupid which is for the government to impose a new crackdown that will agitate the general public against it and generate sympathy for the ETA. The organisation resorted to political assassinations that gradually escalated from 43 killings in 1975 to 78 in 1978 to 118 people killed by 1980 (Encarnacion, 2008:38). Spain is known for its military coups and ethnic conflicts before and the nascent democracy was in danger because of the terrorist activities of the ETA and Spain almost went back to dictatorship. March 11, 2004 Bombings – the precise timing of the coordinated train attacks on this date (3 days before the general presidential elections) had the authorities scrambling to find out who instigated the bombing attacks. The Spanish government of Pres. Aznar at that time had pointed to the possible involvement of the ETA as the mastermind or the culprit but the evidence did not support this view. He as the president up for a re-election had an interest for the ETA to be blamed because it would probably tip the election in his favour. Blaming ETA for the attacks would justify the iron-fisted tactics employed by his government which had resulted into the capture or killing of several top ETA operatives in their organisation. At any rate, the country had used several extra-judicial measures to deal with the terrorist group and it seemed to be working at that time despite its curtailment of certain democratic processes. The newly-elected successor government of Pres. Zapatero under his PSOE party or the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party did not resort to strong-arm methods to capture suspects but used solid police investigative work to pinpoint the hideouts of the criminal terrorists. In this regard, the government did not over-react by curtailing democratic processes or freedoms. Unlike the previous socialist regime under Pres. Felipe Gonzales, the new government did not resort to extra-judicial means to catch the terrorists this time, which were home-grown Islamic fundamentalists or radicals. No Spanish democratic freedoms were threatened in the aftermath of the train bombings. Spain has been moving inexorably towards liberalisation and a process that is deemed irreversible with the newly-capitalist society (Sullivan, 1988:63). Spanish democracy was already deemed strong enough to withstand terrorist attacks unlike during the early 1980s when the GAL or death squads were employed by the Spanish government as a counter-terrorism response (BBC, 1998:1). This is an example of two very similar events of terrorism but elicited quite different government responses in tune with the times of democratic revival in Spain after dictatorship. In responding to threats of terrorism, governments must not go overboard by disrespecting civil rights (Bovard, 2004:148). Over-reaction – terrorists make big gains, not the government, as they gain attention from the media and the general populace to their cause when a government makes a strong reaction or even an overreaction to certain terrorist attacks. Many studies had shown that a direct correlation exists between democracy and press freedom through so-called reduction of grievances theory (in which access to the press allows non-violent means of redress for some specific grievances, problems and issues). Terrorists get free media mileage at the expense of the government. Places where political freedoms are exercised have experienced less of the terrorism in other countries where governments are very repressive. Police and government authorities would instinctively crack down on some freedoms whenever there is a terrorist threat or an actual attack that had just taken place. However, in a study of about 100 countries from 1972-1995, greater openness in a society is not associated with more international terrorist activities (Lutz & Lutz, 2007:1). Despite the passage of many years since the end of the dictatorship, Spain’s democracy can still be considered to be weak as it is still in transition. In this regard, its political system is vulnerable to terrorism because police, military and other security forces are often still in disarray. The transitory period is the time when the previous control mechanisms are being dismantled and together with personal freedoms suddenly enjoyed by society, there is opportunity for violent elements to take some advantage of the chaotic or weak condition of the government. Loss of Freedoms – a crackdown will result into an erosion of personal freedoms and democracy is damaged in the process. Governments must be careful at this point because if they take excessive actions, they end up destroying civil rights by removing or reducing the protections for civil liberties. The aim of the terrorists is to force a government to clamp down on society as a whole (since it cannot easily distinguish the terrorists living among them) and turn the people against their government. A weak intelligence-gathering capability will justify strong-arm tactics like increased surveillance and more checkpoints will damage democracy. Because a democratic society can in most likelihood become a fertile ground for the presence of terrorists because of their openness and ease of infiltration and exfiltration, there is the need for the government to have precise information on the presence of terrorists and to know where they are in order to spare society a wholesale crackdown. Permissiveness in most democratic societies allows terrorist networks to operate more easily but an equally effective government can catch the terrorists without resorting to authoritarian tactics. Spain did this in the latest terrorist attacks on its commuter trains by catching the most-likely culprits without resorting to any clampdowns or invoking martial law. There is a big difference between the terrorism of the ETA and the Islamic terrorism of the later years. The Spanish democracy can be considered to have matured enough to withstand terrorism. In the latter case, government did not resort to state terrorism like the GAL to contain the new terrorist threats. Conclusion There is a very fine line indeed separating government actions which are effective in the neutralization of criminals and terrorists but still maintain a good democratic system of government and civil society. The difficulty of dealing with terrorists is their ability to merge with society which makes detection and capture more difficult. The tactics they employ are asymmetrical but a strong democracy can survive its attacks if there is no over-reaction on the part of the government which will turn its citizens against it. Spanish democracy had survived a crucial test initiated by the commuter train attacks because it was able to identify the most probable suspects without resorting to extra-legal or extra-constitutional methods of dealing with terrorism. The Spanish government had upheld the rule of law in dealing with the terrorists and did so quite effectively although it is admitted they failed to prevent it from occurring in the first place. But their responses in the aftermath showed enough political and social maturity in which Spanish democracy is now strong. It is indeed true that terrorism is a tool of the weak while democracy is for the strong. References Bovard, J. (2004) Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil. New York, NY, USA: Palgrave MacMillan. British Broadcasting Company (1998) Europe: Spain’s State-sponsored Death Squads. [on-line]. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/141720.stm [Accessed 08 Dec. 2010]. Encarnacion, O. G. (2008) Spanish Politics: Democracy After Dictatorship. Cambridge, UK: The Polity Press. Lutz, J. M. & Lutz, B. J. (2007) Democracy and Terrorism. Perspectives on Terrorism, 4(1), 1-5. Onwar.com (n.d.) GAL Terrorism in Spain: 1983-Present. [on-line]. Available at: http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/sat/spain/fspain1983.htm [Accessed 06 Dec. 2010]. Smelser, N. J., Mitchell, F. and the National Research Council (U.S.). (2002) Terrorism: Perspectives from the Behavioural and Social Sciences. Washington, DC, USA: The National Academies Press. Sullivan, J. (1988) ETA and Basque Nationalism: The Fight for Euskadi, 1890-1986. London, UK: Taylor & Francis. Woodworth, P. (2001) Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy. Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press. Woodworth, P. (2004) The War Against Terrorism: The Spanish Experience from ETA to al-Qaeda. International Journal of Iberian Studies, 17(3), pp. 169-182. Read More