National 5 (Spotlight Weekly)

Europe’s 3-11

The repercussions of the Madrid Rail bombings may be felt for a long time to come

By Bhagirath Yogi in London

On the way to my office aboard a fast silver link train to Euston— a day after the devastating bomb attacks on the Madrid rail network, I was wondering what would be the similar target if the terrorists chose to hit London. Obviously, the busy station of Euston at the heart of the city could be the one. Panicked, I looked around and saw people—of different colour, age, and race—flipping articles and photos staring from the front pages of the day’s newspapers.

The headlines in two British newspapers –The Times and The Guardian—were same the following day: “Massacre in Madrid.” 24-hour TV channels were showing grisly images of charred remains of the Madrid trains, injured people and shocked populace. Some 200 people—going to the work on the busy hours on March 11—were killed in cold blood while nearly 1,400 others were injured. The Spanish government announced a three-day long national mourning and declared that the general elections would be held as scheduled (on March 14).

The reverberations of the bombs could be felt far beyond the Spanish borders. Financial markets around the world plunged amid fears that the deadly bomb blasts were the start of a new al Qaeda campaign against the West. Shares in the Wall Street and London Stock Exchange sustained their steepest one-day losses in almost a year and the dollar fell sharply against other currencies.

Though the Spanish government was quick to blame its own Basque separatist group—ETA , which has a 36-year old record of spreading terror in the country, ETA denied its involvement. Experts said the Madrid bombings bore all the hallmarks of the al Qaeda attacks. It was apparent that the al Qaeda wanted to “punish” the Spain for siding with the US in its Iraq invasion. And, in a dramatic twist of events, the Spanish people voted out the government of Jose’ Maria Aznar and elected socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to office. The new government has already withdrawn its troops from Iraq.

Spain was the third major ally of the US, after Britain, in its invasion of Iraq last year. A tape purported to have been from Osama Bin Laden cited Spain as one of the future targets for al Qaeda jehadis. So, was it another 9-11 for Europe?

The European governments, along with most of the countries around the world, were quick to condemn the Madrid attacks. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, reiterated his pledge to continue the fight against terrorism in the wake of the latest atrocity. His foreign office minister, Mike O’ Brien told BBC’s News Night show that no specific threat had been noticed in the UK and that the government was on full alert.

Even before the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001, terrorism remained one of the major challenges to the global security and safety. But the way the US and its allies invaded Iraq, a sovereign country, on the false premises of recovering weapons of mass destruction, the “war against terror” looked something like an excuse for the rich and powerful to bully whoever they felt could be a threat to them. While the roots of terrorism are far deep rooted than what could be described in terms of the so-called clash of civilisations, experts argue that even after the end of the cold war, the age of living in their cocoons were over for the developed countries.

In their new book, “An End to Evil, Strategies for Victory in the War on Terror,” former White House advisors David Frum and Richard Perle argue that America’s intelligence agencies failed to spot the rise of radical Islam because of their ignorance of other cultures and languages. “We must now deal with enemies who do not conduct military exercises that we can observe, who do not test weapons whose performance we can measure and anticipate, whose order of battle is constantly changing and largely unknown to us—and who may show up just about anywhere,” they said.

As governments around the world are trying to fight the “invisible” enemy, one of the first victims has been civil liberties. Governments are proposing draconian laws arguing that it could make their citizens’ lives safer. Immigration laws are becoming more stringent and people belonging to one particular faith (read: Islam) complain that they are being discriminated against out of bias.

For a country like Nepal that is already fighting with the Maoist insurgency, it could present opportunities as well as challenges. It is receiving aid from the US and its allies as part of the global fight against terror but has failed to address the insurgency that has cross-border implications. Moreover, as western countries will be looking inwards worried for their own safety and security, overseas aid and humanitarian concerns would naturally move down the list of priorities.

Terrorism has no boundaries. So, the war against terror could not be fought on a single platform. It will have to be fought at the global level and linked with the fight against poverty, diseases and unjust treatment to different societies around the world for decades. A Himalayan challenge, indeed.