On Franco

On Franco - Joe Gandelsman was a reporter in Spain about the time the Franco government collapsed.

He has a blog today - and writes this fascinating piece about the Basque separatist and terrorist movement ETA.

He finishes:

--- MY CONCLUSIONS:
---1. ETA is small. But you don't need big numbers to do damage as terrorists.
---2. ETA's longtime goal will never happen: Spain's Basque County won't unite with France's Basque Country and there are no signs the majority of Basques want to totally break away.
---3. There are Basque moderates and leftists. They're not in sympathy with ETA.
---4. ETA's one hope, then as now, is in provoking the government to overreact and do things that upset moderate or leftists. Think of it as a wedge issue, with higher stakes involved.
---5. If you look at the history of ETA in recent years, no matter what chronology you read, you see that ETA simply never adjusted to the times and was even battling Spain's first post-Franco Socialist government.
---6. If ETA's point is to provoke the government, then murdering 200 people and injuring 1200 would be a good test of the government's patience. If they DID do it and deny they did it and the government cracks down hard on them, they can call it a diversion -- that the government doesn't want the people to know it was really done by Muslim terrorists. (In this view, evidence the police found with Muslim links was to make the government look like it's lying about who did it)
---7. ETA has gone through various incarnations with varying styles of leadership and, in that context, and you can just hear some young ETA terrorist say: "Just kill THREE people? That's so 20th century!"
---So, in the end, what happened in Madrid may be an example of Al Qaeda as a bad role model for youth......

The whole piece is incredibly fascinating. Read it.

(Via Al in my comments section yesterday. Visit his blog)

Posted by Mitch at March 19, 2004 02:35 AM