Thu, 14 May 11:00 2009

Terrorists’ transit route

A NEW report, issued by Washington at the end of last month, reveals that the 11,770 global terrorist attacks in 2008 were 18 per cent fewer than in 2007 when there were 14,506. Fatalities caused by terrorism dropped to 15,765 compared with 22,508 deaths in 2007.
The review, presented by the State Department’s acting coordinator for counter-terrorism, Ronald Schlicher, said that Al Qaeda and its associated networks, “continued to lose ground, both structurally and in the court of world opinion”. He conceded, however, that Al Qaeda remained the greatest terrorist threat faced by the United States and its allies.
Despite the reduction in terrorism and notwithstanding Iran’s continuing ‘malign role’, Russell Travers, of the National Counter-terrorism Centre, warned that, once Iraq was removed from the equation, it was possible to perceive a slow but steady rise in attacks and fatalities. This, he said, was directly attributable to the deteriorating security situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The Taliban were the defeated protectors of Al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden and, although routed late in 2001, their influence is gradually being felt once more. Not all analysts or intelligence agencies are convinced that Al Qaeda exists as a structured organisation but, with its meaning of ‘The Base’, the term is as effective as any other for rallying Moslem extremists.
It is not necessary to go as far as Afghanistan to locate Al Qaeda redoubts. In Europe, Spain provided a refuge for fundamentalist terrorists well before the September 11 attacks and was often the destination of choice for mujahideen who had fought in Chechnya or Yugoslavia.
There, in the days when illegal immigrants were pursued less diligently, they could rest and recover from their injuries, effectively camouflaged amongst North African workers in the Mediterranean’s fruit and vegetable growing areas.
That changed after the September 11 attack, which was finalised in Spain in July, 2001, between the suicide pilot, Mohammed Atta and Ramsi Binalshibh, the now-imprisoned brains behind the World Trade Centre and Pentagon bombings. What also changed was the perception that Spain’s importance as a bridgehead for North African Islamist terrorists afforded it a certain degree of immunity from terrorist activity.
This was demonstrated as a misconception on March 11, 2004, when bombs on four Madrid commuter trains killed 191 people in Europe’s worst terrorist attack.
According to the State Department study, ETA, the Basque separatist terrorist group, continues to represent the principal threat for Spain although, throughout 2008, the country still remained important as a base camp and stop-over for terrorists in transit.
The Spanish connection is clearly still strong but, with 65 suspected terrorists having been arrested there during 2008, it is no longer secure.

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