So it starts again. Men in white suits raking through shards of metal and bone. Analysis of blast patterns and communications records. And, of course, the grieving — which will go on long after the investigation, arrests and convictions have been forgotten. But few get away with murder on the scale of the atrocities in Madrid. The perpetrators of almost every major terrorist attack of the past decade have been caught — or at least identified. We know the faces of most of the Palestinian or leftist terrorists of the seventies, of the Irish republican bombers of the eighties, of the Islamic militant bombers of the nineties.
But it can be three to six months before the real details of a single attack become clear. No one wants to wait that long. When massive, deliberate violence shatters our sense of security, the fear provoked demands instant answers and instant certainty.
This weekend no such answers are possible. When terrorists struck in Tunisia, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq — only the most prominent of recent attacks — Islamic militants have quickly and correctly been blamed. Today there are two main suspects: ETA, the Basque separatist group which has waged a terror war against the Spanish state for 45 years, and Al-Qaeda, the group of Islamic militants led by Osama Bin Laden. There are also two other theories. That the attacks were the work of a new, free-lance group of Muslim radicals acting in the style and along the agenda of Bin Laden’s outfit but not connected to them, or resulted from some kind of collaboration between ETA and Islamist activists. The latter idea can be dismissed. Islamic militancy is based on personal associations, through tribal or familial ties. ETA members are Europeans committed to a quasi-Marxist ideology at odds with the radical Islamic worldview.
Last year Bin Laden said that Spain, because of its support for the Iraq war, was a target. It is also one of the “crusader nations” that Islamic militant ideologues believe have worked for the domination of Muslims for over a millennium. In his first broadcast after Sept. 11, Bin Laden referred to Andalusia as a land that should be restored to Islam. He and his aides are known to want to pull off a major attack on European or US soil.
Simultaneous bombs, without warning, is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda, as is a willingness to cause mass casualties. In addition, a claim of responsibility from the Abu Hafs Al-Masri Brigade, a name used before by militants linked to Al-Qaeda, was faxed to an Arabic newspaper favored as a recipient of such communiques. Finally, there is the cache of detonators, with a Qur’anic tape, in a town through which the trains passed on their way to Madrid. But so soon after the attack, the evidence is far from conclusive.
Some Spanish officials believe the detonators were “a ruse”. It is unlike Al-Qaeda to issue a claim of responsibility, let alone so promptly. Bin Laden still has not unequivocally admitted he was behind Sept. 11. His men learn to build bombs from ammonium nitrate (petrol and fertilizer) and a small amount of plastic explosives; early analysis indicates the Madrid bombs were dynamite. Al-Qaeda triggers its bombs manually; these were set off by mobile phones attached to detonators. Most import of all, Al-Qaeda bombers die, their suicide an integral part of the message sent to their primary audience — the vast majority of Muslims who have hitherto shunned the extremists’ ideology.
The bombers’ deaths make a clear statement: “The war will be won by faith and by willing sacrifice. We will die and we will win. The enemy is weak. Join us.” Crucially, every Al-Qaeda attack so far has been against a symbolic target — a US Embassy, a British Consulate, a synagogue — not commuters.
There is an outside chance that the strikes were by an Islamic group operating independently of Bin Laden. More than two years of the war on terror have seriously impaired Bin Laden’s ability to commission and execute terror attacks and to control the “network of networks” he once ran. Instead, modern Islamic militancy comprises a wide and varied movement, with cells forming and reforming. One of these, acting in its own way, might conceivably be responsible. Given the history of Islamic militant activism in Spain, such a group is likely to be formed of Algerians, some of whom may have connections with groups such as the Groupe Islamique Arme, who bombed Metro stations in the nineties in Paris.
Then there is ETA, for which, one US counterterrorist source told me, the evidence is “screaming”. It has hit railways before, using virtually identical devices to last week’s attacks, a plot to attack a railway in Madrid was thwarted last December, and 10 days ago ETA operatives were caught trying to drive a 1,200lb bomb into Madrid. It has denied responsibility, but so did the IRA after attacks that looked politically damaging. Mobile phones wired to dynamite is an ETA trademark. Analysis shows that the explosives used were similar, if not identical, to those used in previous blasts associated with the group. In one of the bombed trains police found a gym bag filled with shrapnel and explosives — as often done by ETA. The timing, three days before a general election, also suggests the Basque group.
But why would ETA commit an act of political suicide? The carnage is unprecedented for ETA, but the past two years has seen significant stress on the group, with scores of senior operatives arrested and younger, more radicalized elements moving up the hierarchy. The men found with the bomb last month were novices, according to one source. Inspired by the “successes” of Al-Qaeda, hardcore young activists known as the “Kale Borroka” may be responsible. “People are thinking: Why bother with the chickenshit? Look what these guys have been doing. Let’s do that,” said one US intelligence source. Modern terrorism is an opaque, complex phenomenon. We can be sure of insecurity for years to come — and, for the moment, of little else.
— Jason Burke is the author of Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror (published in the UK by IB Tauris).
