FOR BETTER? OR FOR WORSE?

"Your people getting on bad," someone remarked on the Thursday morning of  the Madrid train bombings and I knew instantly that by "my people," the  source of the comment was referring to the Spaniards and, in particular, to  the violent Basque separatists from the north of Spain, ETA. ETA was the acronym for "Euskadi Ta Askatasuma", which means "Basque  Fatherland and Liberty" in the Basque language. The group was formed in 1959  by young activists after Spain's former dictator, General Francisco Franco,  sought to ban the Basque language and clamp down on the area's distinctive  culture. Since then ETA had been fighting for an independent Basque country in the far north of Spain and south-western France. ETA's bloodshed had hit its peak in the 1970s and 1980s with scores of car bombs and gun attacks against judges, politicians and police. It sometimes targetted the Spanish tourism industry and journalists.

I decided to respond to the "your people" remark in the same sardonic manner the statement had been made. And so I said: "These attacks were not the work of ETA. We don't do this sort of thing." Now, let me explain. I really don't know any ETA terrorists. I admit that when I resided in Spain's Aragon during the eighties, I did meet several people who supported ETA, unsurprising given that Aragon is next door to the two areas ETA claims for an independent Basque nation: Navarra and the Basque region. Some of the Basque nationalists I met used rhetoric that was quite frightening. One man in particular never hid his glee when ETA successfully hit a Civil Guard, police or political target. He used to repeatedly boast that had it not been for ETA, Spain's fascists would have remained in power beyond the death of Franco. ETA, you see, had via a car bomb set off in Madrid, eliminated Franco's successor, Luis Carrero Blanco, the Prime Minister appointed in 1973, two years before Franco's death. Back then, even some non Basques appeared to vacillate between admiration and gratitude for that ETA killing and their innate abhorrence of terrorism.

But "my people"? ETA? Or the Basques? Hardly. I didn't speak Basque for starters, a unique language, unrelated to none other in Europe. I could only communicate with them in Castillian Spanish, a language they made clear was their second, not their native tongue. Whenever I travelled through the Basque region, at first with no end of concern for my safety, I could tell that these people were extremely nationalistic and they made no attempt to hide it. Outsiders, though welcome, were outsiders. The message was unambiguous: they the Basques were a linguistically and culturally distinct Christian group that had lived since the Stone Age in the mountains between the border between modern-day Spain and France. And they deserved their own country. I knew that they were not all in agreement with ETA's methods of achieving this independence, but I knew even better that when Basques started talking politics to keep my Trini mouth shut.

However, though I was no ETA member or supporter, I felt the Spanish Government's haste to blame the group for Madrid suspect. Yes, ETA had been known for targetting civilians such as its June 19, 1987 attack in which 21 people were killed in a car bombing at a supermarket parking lot in Barcelona. It also tried to assassinate judges and politicians. ETA also kidnapped wealthy Basque businessmen for enormous ransoms to fund its terror campaign. But ETA usually preferred to attack Spain's paramilitary forces such as the shocking attack on the morning of December 11, 1987 against an Aragon living quarters of Civil Guardsmen in which a car bomb killed 11 guardsmen and five of their children. An assault, however, on hundreds of  working class people, like the one on the morning of the 11th of March or “11M” as it is being dubbed in Spain, did not smell like the Basque separatists.

That's why I responded to the "your people" question as I had. I could not and did not deem ETA responsible for 11M. And if I, a Trini who had merely lived in Spain for a few years knew this, then Spain's outgoing Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, a Spaniard by birth, leader of its Popular Party, also had to know. It thus suited Aznar's political purposes — winning the looming general election — for ETA to be responsible. ETA was his home-grown, long time enemy. If ETA was to blame, then the Madrid bombings were not the work of Islamists, not retaliation for Spain's participation in the invasion of Iraq. Aznar's American, British and Italian allies, Bush, Blair and Berlusconi, respectively, quickly rushed to the Spanish Prime Minister's defence, by joining the chorus of ETA condemnation. Bush could not even pronounce ETA properly. He sounded out each letter by itself, converting a group of  terrorists into someone's expected time of arrival. One wondered if George W had ever heard of ETA before 11M. When al Qaeda eventually claimed responsibility for 11M, then the Iraq coalition spin machine started to spew out new propaganda: ETA and al Qaeda had links. This has been true of many terrorist organisations. Links between Irish republicanism and Basque separatism are thought to stretch back more than 30 years, when ETA provided the IRA with handguns in the early 1970s.

Basque militants have also been named in the past as an organisation, which helped the IRA acquire Semtex, even though Sinn F?in, the IRA's political voice, has insisted that the relationship between Irish republicans and Basque nationalists has always been solely political. ETA thus, may well have aided al Qaeda in the Madrid bombings without realising the intended scale or location of the attacks. It too had much to gain in ousting Aznar. But even if the Basque separatist group had been an accomplice in the carnage of Madrid, this didn't change an essential fact: Bush's war on terrorism was spiralling out of his control almost one year after he had declared "victory" in Iraq. One year after his invasion of Iraq, the American President had made the world not safer, but a lot more unpredictable and definitely more perilous. I can also assure you that after half a century of living with ETA's terrorism, not even "my people," in this case, the Spaniards, would have thought such a thing possible.

Suzanne Mills is editor of the Daily Newsday