By Claudia Parsons
(Reuters) - April 6 2004 13:56
MADRID (Reuters) - Ask the average Spaniard why Madrid was the target of a suspected al Qaeda attack and he will say because Spain sent troops to Iraq, but analysts say it's not that simple and very few countries can feel secure.
"The reason we've got terrorists on our doorstep is the war in Iraq, it's pretty clear," said Toni, a 40-year-old woman attending a demonstration in the suburb where up to six suspects in the Madrid train bombings blew themselves up at the weekend.
The march honouring a policeman killed by the bombers turned into an anti-war protest demanding Spain bring home the 1,300 troops it has sent to Iraq.
Charles Powell of San Pablo-CEU University said Spain's very visible support of the war in Iraq was partly behind the attack.
Outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar joined George W. Bush and Tony Blair at a summit in the Azores days before the war, and Spain backed Washington strongly at the U.N.
Moreover Powell said a purported al Qaeda text found on the Internet last December contained a sophisticated analysis of the political situation in Spain, where the opposition Socialists had opposed the Iraq war long before March elections.
Professor Fernando Reinares, author of a recent book on terrorism, said in an editorial in El Pais that Spain was a target simply for being a Western country.
Moreover it was a soft target "because of the porous nature of its frontiers and the presence of dense communities of immigrants from north Africa", and Spanish authorities have arrested a number of al Qaeda suspects in recent months.
El Pais said in February the final details of the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities were worked out at an al Qaeda summit in Spain.
WHERE NEXT?
Kevin Rosser, terrorism expert at consultancy Control Risks Group, said the Iraq war was "a convenient excuse".
"Plenty of other countries have been targeted by terrorists whatever their foreign policy," he said. Al Qaeda is linked to attacks from the United States to Indonesia, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey, from Morocco to Kenya.
"We've got to get out of the mode of seeing individual attacks as being linked to individual policies," Rosser said.
The March 11 bombings of four Madrid commuter trains killed 191 people three days before general elections. Aznar's government was thrown out with many voters blaming him for initially insisting Basque separatists were behind the attacks.
The incoming government has pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq unless the U.N. takes more power, but it is under pressure not to be seen to bow to militants' demands.
Powell said Italy now looked vulnerable since Romano Prodi, leader of the opposition centre-left, said he would bring Italian troops back from Iraq if the left was in power.
"That's an open invitation," Powell said. "Also Rome is an obvious target because there's the religious significance."
Portugal, which hosts the Euro 2004 soccer championship in June, was also vulnerable, and it was likely that Spain itself had more independent groups of militants waiting to act.
"They're warming up towards the November elections in the States and trying to create as much havoc as possible between European states and in transatlantic relations," Powell said.
Jonathan Stevenson, senior counter-terrorism fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Olympic host Greece was another obvious target, while past attacks indicated a pattern of moving up the chain of U.S. allies -- from Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, to Spain, with Britain next.
"It doesn't mean that eliminates countries like France and Germany that opposed the war," Stevenson said. "Al Qaeda, because it's decentralised and has to relinquish initiatives to local affiliates, has to be opportunistic as well as focused."
An "apocalyptic" attack on the United States, he added, was the ultimate goal.
