(Published in Papeles FAES,  May 11 2005)

 

 

 

A persistent threat, and on the rise

 

In spite of the image that the Socialist Government wants to project, Spain has not gotten rid of the Islamic terrorist threat after having withdrawn from Iraq. Though an attempted bombing of the track of the high-speed AVE train Madrid-Seville right after the Madrid bombings could have been interpreted as a part of the same sequence, we cannot say the same about the plans, thwarted by the Police, to blow up the Audiencia Nacional (a special court with competence for trying terrorist offenses) in Madrid; or about the never-ending trail of terrorist detentions related to Al-Qaeda in our country. In Spain, like in the rest of Europe, the Islamic terrorist threat has only increased.

 

It was only logical that Spain would continue being a target, no matter that the Madrid bombings and that the People’s Party (PP) foreign policy were not related. The terrorists that committed suicide in Leganés, just as Bin Laden did before, demanded the withdrawal of the Spanish troops not only from Iraq but also from Afghanistan and from Muslim soil. The condemnation against international troops in Afghanistan is still in force according to Al-Qaeda’s instructions and as long as Spanish troops keep on participating in the political and economic reconstruction there, we will still be the enemy that must be defeated. This can be read in numerous websites linked to Islamic terrorism.

 

The terrorists not only got what they wanted from Spain but they are convinced now that they can carry on with impunity meddling in our political life whenever they want to. In Al-Qaeda’s mind, Al-Andalus is an essential reference in all their speeches and programmatic objectives.  It is not a rhetorical quote, the Islamic terrorism believes that its decadence started with The Reconquista -- Spanish for reconquest that was the military conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christian rulers, led against the Moors from 718 to 1492 -- and that it is necessary that they recuperate our land in order to rebuild the Caliphate. That the terrorists’ moves are local does not mean that their inspiration does not harbor those motives.

 

 

Just like 9/11 for the United States, the Madrid bombings meant a big change for Spain, but in the opposite direction: Concession instead of resolve, retraction instead of external action, partisan use instead of national mobilization, and neglect instead of readiness. After the March 11^th attacks, Zapatero’s Spain withdrew its troops from Iraq; its foreign policy changed course radically, alienating consolidated democracies such as the United States or the United Kingdom and approaching instead Cuba, Syria and Venezuela. Defense expenditures were frozen and the transformation process of the Armed Forces turned into mere intent.

The feature of the Socialist Government’s action is to put forward a triple kind of disarmament: Conceptual, institutional and international.

 

The conceptual disarmament is self-evident in the “Alliance of Civilizations” formula. Under that name, we find concealed a peculiar vision of the terrorist phenomena: Dialog is better than resolve or confrontation; violence has its roots in our actions -- recent ones: Foreign policy decisions; remote ones: Acts that cause poverty, exploitation and resentment. There is never a reference to the role that political oppression plays as well as internal corruption or theocracy in the Arab world.  On the other hand, dialog with the enemy is imperative for the Socialist Government, something considered totally counterproductive. In Spain, we have unfortunately more than enough evidence that when you negotiate or open a dialog with the terrorists, the ones that come out reinvigorated are the terrorists and not the State. There is not a hint of any different behavior from Islamic terrorism. It is the opposite instead.

 

The conceptual disarmament refuses to admit that Islamic terrorism is unpersuasive. To think that our Armed Forces and State Security Forces encased within our borders are going to serve as dissuasion force to this menace is not only to be reality-blind but reckless, too.

 

Institutional disarmament: The Zapatero Administration has made no changes in any of the three basic pillars of our national security – Armed Forces, State Security Forces and Intelligence community—in order to enhance their abilities against the terrorist threat. This lethargy clashes tremendously with what our neighbors and allies are doing.

While the Defense Strategic Review (2003) outlined a role for the Armed Forces in their struggle against terrorism, the Zapatero doctrine about the (non) use of force reduces the role of armies to aid the State Security Forces -- Police and Civil Guard (“Guardia Civil”) -- in those areas where, for example, they cannot be protecting basic infrastructures.  This means that in reality our armies will never engage in counterterrorism missions overseas. As a general strategy is a gross error of judgment. The suicide terrorist cannot be dissuaded; he needs to be stopped before he puts his plans into practice. Neither the directive of National Defense nor the National Defense Draft bill recently approved by the Cabinet has established active defense missions.

 

We are not making progress in acquiring new military capabilities either. The lower budget effort is combined with acquisition policy inertia, jeopardized by big platform purchases. Unlike NATO’s profound transformation approaches, the Spanish Defense Ministry is stuck in the past.

 

About the State Security Forces, Zapatero also disassociates himself from his partners and allies. Unlike the USA, the Spanish Government has not planned to deeply reform its domestic security system; unlike the United Kingdom, Spain does not want to modify its antiterrorist legislation as required by the nature and the intensity of the threat upon us. The Administration seems contented having added some extra translators and 300 more agents for the units devoted to fight Islamic terrorism.

 

This deep reform must include the Intelligence services. The only step meant to improve the flow of information has been the creation of an antiterrorist center, scarcely provided of personnel and devoid of operational capabilities. The idiosyncrasy and extension of the Islamic threat would demand a clear redirection of resources and priorities as well as the improvement in the information exchange and coordination among different intelligence services.

 

The Socialist Government’s domestic insecurity is even more obvious if we keep in mind another factor: Immigration. The policy has become more porous and permissive under this Administration. Not only for the terrorist threat, but because of it, our present immigration policy needs a reform to allow tighter controls over who goes in and stays in our country. Just as our neighboring countries do, we must improve the surveillance and control of our borders. This would require to round off the deployment of an integrated external surveillance system (its Spanish acronym: SIVE), to introduce new and more effective high tech devices at airports and to strengthen land border controls. Zapatero can offer very little in this area.

 

And in third place: International disarmament. When a country can not guarantee its security by itself, it looks out for something to compensate its weakness by joining alliances and bilateral or multilateral commitments.

 

This Administration has decided to embrace a project like the European Union, whose policy, in matters of security and defense, is at the “under construction” phase.

 

This government has not promoted a closer relationship with NATO; they have opposed all the main proposals contained in the agenda of the organization, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

 

Zapatero’s Spain is not only a waning Spain, less influential and without prominence within our own strategic scenario, it is also a Spain that has chosen to ally itself with genuine insecurity-exporting countries.

 

 

Assailability depends greatly on how suitable the adopted policies to face a threat really are or how unsuitable the response is. This Administration’s policies during their one-year tenure have not succeeded in reducing the intensity of the Islamic terrorist threat; instead our vulnerability has increased for carrying out the wrong policies: Starting with an all-in-a-hurry withdrawal from Iraq to the “Alliance of Civilizations” bliss.

Furthermore, Zapatero’s Spain is not only assailable but it is the West’s most assailable country thanks to the policies that this Socialist president has imposed to our country, moving us further away from our natural strategic surroundings and mixing it with a policy of continuous weakening of the State in favor of secessionist forces. Some more, some less, but everybody has done something to be better protected, but not the Spanish Government; everybody has strengthened their alliances against terror, but not the Spanish Government; everybody has decided to confront the enemy, but not the Spanish Government.