Basque separatist terrorism

 

 

Terrorism has returned to tarnish Spain's image as a prosperous and self-confident European nation. ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty), the radical Basque separatist group, has killed 13 people and wounded many more since it called off a 14-month truce in December 1999, making this the bloodiest summer in seven years. ETA supporters clash regularly with riot police in the Basque cities of northern Spain. Buses are burned, banks and post offices are vandalised and local entrepreneurs and their families receive letters of extortion.

 

A string of recent police successes indicates that the power of the organisation, which has killed almost 800 people in its 41-year campaign for a separate Basque state, is much diminished. Yet chances seem slim that a negotiated political settlement to end the activities of Europe's most lethal terrorist group can be found soon.

 

 

Despite the latest violence, ETA is a mere shadow of its former self. The arrest of 37 suspected operatives in mid-September represented one of the worst setbacks in its fight for an independent Basque state comprising the Basque Autonomous Community – to which Spain granted limited self-rule in 1978 – as well as the Spanish province of Navarra and part of the French department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

 

On 13 September, investigators despatched by Madrid judge Baltasar Garzón arrested 20 people presumed to belong to ETA's élite in a dawn operation across the Basque Autonomous Community, Navarra and Madrid. Two days later, in raids planned with the Spanish police over many months, French security services searched safe houses, arms depots and a bomb factory in south-western France and arrested 17 people. Among them was Ignacio Gracia Arregui, also known as Iñaki de Rentería, believed by the government to be ETA's top military commander. His capture in Bidart, near Biarritz, took place just a day before Spanish King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia were due to inaugurate a museum in Hernani, a stronghold of Basque separatism, accompanied by Prime Minister José María Aznar and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

 

Garzón's crackdown was the fourth in a two-year operation to isolate ETA's military core from its supporting organisations within the Basque National Liberation Movement (MNLV). This includes the political coalition Basque Citizens (EH) (whose most important member is Herri Batasuna, ETA's Sinn Féin equivalent); a trade union; media; women's groups; prisoner support organisations and the youth movement, Haïka. The MNLV gives radical separatism a civilian face, shields its illegal operatives and supplies both morale and resources – including recruits.

 

In May 1998, Garzón dismantled an MNLV money-laundering network operating in Latin America. The following July, ETA's press mouthpiece, Egin, was closed. ETA's 'foreign-affairs unit' Xaki (a support group for fugitives and exiles) was disbanded in January 2000.

 

Most of Garzón's latest arrests are members of EH and charged with belonging to Ekin, the political strategy unit of the separatist movement believed by Garzón to be working alongside ETA's military leadership. Ekin first appeared publicly in October 1999, shortly before the truce was cancelled. It has been accused of identifying potential victims, fundraising and organising public demonstrations and street violence. The unit is the successor to the notorious KAS (Patriotic Socialist Co-ordinating Committee), installed in 1975 as the civilian nucleus of the MNLV. KAS had dissolved itself as soon as Garzón started his operations. Ekin's choice of name – 'to act' in Basque – was symbolic, being ETA's original name when it was founded in 1959. Ekin's creation marked the re-emergence of the Basque separatist movement's most hardline wing.

 

The detentions in France were even more debilitating. Around 420 people accused of involvement in Basque terrorism are now in prison and about two dozen commando units, usually consisting of three to four people, have been dismantled in the last four years. However, especially significant was the arrest of Iñaki, Spain's most wanted terrorist. He is believed to have been behind an assassination attempt on Spanish King Juan Carlos in 1995. Iñaki rebuilt ETA after its three top leaders were captured in 1992 in Bidart. The other detainees – forgers, electronics experts and bomb-makers – form ETA's corps of engineers. ETA's strategic rear base in the French Basque country has therefore been effectively incapacitated.

 

 

The blow to ETA is by no means mortal. Prosecuting the radical separatists' network may prove difficult. In July 1999, the Spanish supreme court overturned the sentences of 22 members of Herri Batasuna's directorate imprisoned for using a video showing masked ETA fighters in the 1996 elections. Garzón was the investigative judge in that case. He has yet to argue his case in court against the Ekin members or the suspects detained in the first three crackdowns. Although some have convictions or police files in connection with terrorism, it may be hard to prove any links to ETA.

 

Iñaki was undoubtedly an iconic figure and his arrest represents a severe setback. But the group tends to rule by committee. Other senior guerrilla leaders, such as Mikel 'Antxa' Albizu and Soledad Iparaguirre, are believed to be in hiding in France or Belgium. An unknown number of commando units remain intact, particularly the Commando Guipúzcoa, which is named after Guipúzcoa province, a hotbed of separatism. These clandestine operatives are estimated to number no more than 50, compared to around 400 at ETA's peak, but they can call on a network of 300–400 legales, or collaborators not yet on police files.

 

 

Madrid's interior ministry has admitted that it was caught off-guard by the speed and thoroughness with which ETA reorganised and rearmed during the truce. Commandos comprise two distinct groups: experienced operatives called back from exile in France, Belgium or Latin America and younger recruits.

 

ETA's new generation continues to profess the twin goals of an independent Basque state and socialist government. It uses its predecessors' methods: shootings, car bombs, kidnapping and arson. Kidnap ransoms and 'revolutionary taxes' extracted from Basque entrepreneurs form its main income. Its explosives and other hardware are usually stolen.

 

ETA's strategy follows the Latin American guerrilla model, using violence to provoke and escalate state retaliation, with the eventual goal of a mass uprising against the perceived oppressors. The group increasingly targets civil society rather than the police and military, especially local government officials affiliated with Spain's ruling conservative Partido Popular (PP) and moderate Basque nationalists. In the 1990s, organised riots and arson attacks became part of ETA's destabilising strategy.

 

Younger recruits have few memories of the repressive policies of General Francisco Franco, which radicalised the centuries-old Basque sense of difference. Their formative experiences are a transition to democracy that has avoided any stock-taking of war crimes committed by the Franco regime during the Civil War and ensuing dictatorship; and the crippling of regional industry – once the motor of the Spanish economy – by the double challenges of EU accession and globalisation.

 

Yet the shock of economic and political modernisation has been mitigated by generous government spending and a sense of belonging to a cohesive and egalitarian society. Spain's 2.1 million Basques have enjoyed comprehensive autonomy since 1978: they have their own parliament, administration, courts, police, Basque-language schools and tax-raising powers. The conservative Madrid government's police strategy is tough, but it seems to have eschewed the 'dirty war' tactics of its socialist predecessor. The economy has bounced back and unemployment, although high at 13.9% or 27.9% of the region's youth, is the lowest in 15 years.

 

A small, but significant, number of ETA's recruits are children of first-generation activists who went underground in France, taking their families with them. The majority, however, come from rural communities and the urban lower-middle to working class. Older ETA renegades are chilled by the younger ranks' ruthlessness, evinced by a preference for point-blank shootings in broad daylight.

 

With 13 murders and one near-lethal attack in only eight months, ETA's enfeebled state does not appear to make it less dangerous. Police successes will make ETA more inclined to use violence in order to strengthen its negotiating position.

 

 

Achieving a political settlement would require all democratic parties to unite against the radical separatists and EH, their political wing. At present, this contradicts the short-term interests of the main players.

 

The region's Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) government, in a minority since April, is paralysed. The largest party in the Basque region, the PNV has governed the region in coalition with the Basque Socialist Party since 1978 – despite supporting Aznar's PP government in Madrid. But in 1998, the PNV's charismatic veteran leader, Xabier Arzalluz, instead forged a deal with EH, which was able to deliver around 15% of the vote. ETA declared a truce shortly thereafter. But rather than negotiating, ETA's political arm wrenched one humiliating concession after another from the moderate nationalists.

 

Now that ETA has ended the truce, Basque President Juan José Ibarretxe is in desperate straits. He severed parliamentary links (although not contact) with EH after the murders resumed. His appeals for support from the socialists have failed. Arzalluz regularly expresses support for the terrorists'aims, if not their methods, and castigates each police success as Madrid government propaganda – statements that his numerous critics within the PNV fear will land the party in opposition.

 

This would please Aznar. The Prime Minister, who survived an ETA assassination attempt in 1993, believes in a tough police strategy and has just drafted laws criminalising support for ETA or its actions. He has refused to accommodate moderate nationalist demands even where flexibility is conceivable – in the treatment of prisoners, for example. After winning an absolute majority in Madrid in the March 2000 elections, he is beholden only to the PP.

 

Aznar's actions are likely to polarise the situation. PP officials in the Basque country have announced plans to call for a vote of censure against Ibarretxe in the regional parliament. They could not win the vote even with socialist support, but it is likely to weaken the PNV further. If the PP (which won 28% of the regional vote to the PNV's 30% in the March polls) managed to oust the nationalists, Aznar could install his Interior Minister Jaime Mayor Oreja, himself from San Sebastián, in the Basque capital Vitoria. Aznar could then intensify the police campaign in an attempt to bring ETA to its knees and to secure himself a strong negotiating position.

 

The PP's ability to oust the PNV is far from certain, however, and the present stalemate could be prolonged. Basques are increasingly infuriated by the violence, but radical separatism is entrenched in local culture. Basque schools, the Church and other institutions, including the PNV, have long played on a sense of 'otherness' and collective victimhood. While much effort has gone into appeasing the radicals, the suffering of the victims and their families has long been ignored. The Basque polity may yet have a long way to go before it feels ready to repudiate violent separatism once and for all.