Spain revives terrorist by reaching out

Washington Post:

Call it prophetic or defeatist or just plain cynical. But when the Basque separatist group known as ETA shattered its so-called "permanent cease-fire" in December with a massive bombing at Madrid's airport that killed two people, former ETA leader and convicted killer Eduardo Uriarte was not surprised.

What had stunned him, he said, was that nine months earlier, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had bothered to reach out to ETA, which seemed close to final defeat after a nearly 40-year campaign of terror and assassinations that has left more than 800 people dead.

"ETA had almost disappeared, and the decision to have a dialogue with them brought ETA back to life," said Uriarte, 61, who spent eight years in prison for his part in the first ETA killing, in 1968. He was released in a general amnesty in 1977 and is now a peace activist.

"A government cannot give a terrorist group credibility and dignity like the Spanish government did," Uriarte said. "ETA is not looking for negotiation. They're looking for victory."

The Dec. 30 bombing at Madrid's Barajas airport, which leveled a five-story parking lot and killed two Ecuadoran immigrants, may not have surprised Uriarte, but it shocked Zapatero's government and many Spaniards who had dared to hope that peace talks with ETA, formally known as Basque Homeland and Liberty, would finally settle one of Europe's last and longest violent campaigns for independence.

Now, the peace process is in tatters, with no clear way forward. The bombing destroyed ETA's credibility, eroded confidence in Zapatero's government and emboldened the opposition Popular Party, which has adopted an increasingly strident tone against any compromise with Zapatero on his drive to resolve the issue.

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A former high-ranking official in the Interior Ministry, who would discuss domestic terrorism only on condition of anonymity, said that many top Interior officials opposed Zapatero's peace dialogue with ETA because the group was on the verge of being eradicated. A fundamental flaw in the process, he said, was that ETA never renounced violence, nor did it discontinue it, even after announcing the cease-fire.

"None of our reports provided support for the what the president wanted to do," he said. "We found leading counterterrorism offices around Spain saying ETA would be dead by spring, the group was so weak, and Batasuna was not able to mobilize anything" in the way of public support.

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Liberals have this enduring belief that talks can solve irreconcilable difference in all cases. They are particularly insistent when dealing with violent terrorist organizations.

In the mid 50's State department policy attempted to push the diem regime into negotiating with his opponents whose goal was to destroy him and his government. giving them a seat at the table was not going to change that reality and diem wisely refused. He largely succeeded in destroying most of the enemies of the government in south Vietnam. When the communist started invading his country through Laos, the State Department stepped in again and negotiated an agreement called the Geneva Accords which was supposed to get all foreign troops out of Laos.

It became a unilateral agreement that kept US and South Vietnamese out but not the communist, yet the State Department maintained the fiction of compliance allowing the communist violations to continue and to use Laos as a transit point for killing South Vietnamese and US troops.

You see the same mentality in Spain today with the ETA terrorist and unfortunately you see similar advice in Iraq keeping hope alive for the Sunni terrorist.