Why would ETA do something that eliminates any possibility of achieving their goals?
They would hardly be the first terrorist/nationalist group to act against their own best interests. The Basques already have local autonomy; these terrorists are demanding full independence with a good chunk of northern Spain and southern France to boot. Nothing that any Spanish PM would find negotiable, and indeed, negotiations were already tried and broke down.
I was just listening to a counter-terror expert on NPR explaining that the leaders of these cells are quite isolated, often on the run, and tend to develop tunnel vision in which they are Good, their enemy is Bad, and anything goes in The Struggle.
The counter-terror expert noted that most nationalist movements wind up by being bought off, or working out some compromise wrt to autonomy. Of course, that does not cover the cases where the terrorist group makes a decision to brook no compromise, or to compromise then break all bargains. We obviously see those cases too (cf Israel/Palestine)
NPR is now reporting that Spanish police have found a van full of detonators in Alcala (on the same trainline that got blown up) with Islamist Arabic-language tapes. So it does look like ETA has joined up with AQ. Also, Batasuna (sp?), ETA's political wing, has condemned this attack, which they have never done for previous ETA attacks.
BTW, Reuters finally found an occasion to report a "terrorist attack" without the use of sneer quotes. If it's found to be AQ, I wonder if they'll put back the quotes?
Edit: now they are reporting the tapes found were the Quran in Arabic. |
