Basque Kit Case

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) was founded in 1959, and by the time Spain’s Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s regime was replaced by an interim government under Prince Juan Carlos in 1975 and then by a democracy in 1978, this Marxist-Leninist organization had escalated into a paramilitary terrorist organization dead set on a creating a separate Basque nation, carved out of that area of northern Spain and part of bordering France where roughly 3 million Basques live. About one third of this population base actually speaks Basque (the last remaining pre-Indo-European tongue in Western Europe), a language very different from French or Spanish.

Since 1968, ETA has mounted an aggressive, violent and deadly campaign of terror, unleashing car bombs and other terrorist attacks across Spain and France, much focused on Spanish police forces in the Basque region. An estimated 825 people have died in this carnage, and over 700 Basque separatists are currently incarcerated in French and Spanish prisons. With each major arrest, the respective French or Spanish government will issue a report that the ETA threat has now been crushed. Until the next explosion. What is strange is how little we as Americans know about this long-established separatist movement in the middle of what we perceive to be a stable Europe.

With narco-terrorism in Colombia and Mexico, state-sponsored terrorism from countries like Iran, al Qaeda and Hezbollah blowing stuff up and seeming terrorist states like North Korea, nationalist/separatist movements – such as the Tamil separatist revolt in Sri Lanka (pretty heavily crushed) and the ETA movement in France and Spain – seem pretty small potatoes. Marx-Lenist separatist movements – including the old Baader-Meinhoff or the Red Army leftist movements of the 1960s and 70s – are so passé; the IRA/Sinn Féin battles in Northern Ireland with the British have long since departed the headlines, diffused by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. We just don’t see these separatist movements as mainstream, headline-grabbing stories anymore.

9/11 changed our focus, but for people living or visiting the colorful Basque region of Europe, the potential for disaster is always just around the corner. There have been nine attacks so far this year, and while there are often anonymous phone calls warning civilians of impending blasts, the ETA isn’t always so generous. The latest blasts include one (no warning phone call), which blew the face off a 14 story police residential facility in the local capital of Burgos on July 29, that didn’t kill anyone, but it injured more than 60 people (one third of the residents were the children of the Spanish officers), damaged surrounding buildings and left a water-filled crater as a reminder of the power of the explosion. The car bomb blew the van carrying the explosive mix about 230 feet away from its parked spot.

The other bombing on Spanish soil, on July 30^th, killed two police officers and is also attributed to the ETA; this attack occurred on the tourist-friendly Mediterranean island of Mallorca, far from Basque territory. I’m sure when the relevant arrests are finally made, the authorities will repeat how they have once again cut the head off the ETA monster.

The story of separatist movements is literally “history.” America was born of “freedom fighters,” but I suspect that back in 1776 the British troops, who thought it cowardly for soldiers to hide behind barriers to fire their weapons, called the colonial fighters “terrorists.” The Stern Gang and the Irgun fought their way against British forces using similar “terrorist” techniques until the state of Israel was born in 1948, and you know how German occupying forces felt about partisan resistance during World War II if you have seen an old movie or two.

The fact that a grassroots strategy of sabotage and random attacks has worked in the past – although the victors always reclassify their status as “freedom fighters” – suggests that this is an inexorable part of the human condition. Even small minorities, with little real followings, believe that with persistence and the passage of time, somehow, their blowing up innocents (collateral damage in the cause of freedom in their eyes) will achieve the blessed goal of “independence” – well “independence” on terms that conform to the underlying philosophy of the successful militant group in power.

Whether motivated by passionate and militant religious beliefs or a blinding commitment to a nationalist, ethnic or political ethos, these “small pockets of discontent” will shape our history as militant factions try, often unsuccessfully, to carve out their vision in the flesh of those around them, a reality of particular import when political borders are drawn to unite people of fundamentally different belief systems. Like the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in the Iraq we will soon leave behind.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.