Two years and a day

Sunday marked two years since ETA announced a definitive end to its armed activity, while the end of July saw the fourth anniversary of the terrorist organization’s last fatal attack. The second of these facts confirms the first. However, many of the people and groups who are most active against terrorism are experiencing this period as one of frustration, as a result, for example, of Monday’s Strasbourg ruling on the “Parot doctrine,” which some see as a concession of impunity to prisoners who have been behind bars for 20 years. This frustration is due to the fact that ETA’s ceasefire has not led to a formal dissolution of the organization and a surrender of weapons that would represent its ultimate defeat. Allied to this is the fact that the once-outlawed abertzale (Basque secessionist left) political parties, which represent ETA’s ideology, now enjoy a legal status that allows them to run for local and regional elections in the Basque Country, receiving considerable electoral support.

ETA is making its disbanding conditional upon favorable penal treatment being given to all ETA prisoners; and the Spanish government makes any lenient penal measures conditional on the dissolution of the organization. The sticking point is that although ETA has agreed to renounce the further use of violence, it holds to its claim that its past violence was justifiable. And the formula under which it combined these attitudes was to maintain the demand for negotiation on prisoner treatment as the only way toward formally closing the door on that past, while reaffirming the usefulness of armed struggle in general.

The negotiation would supposedly proceed upon the issues of prisoners, surrender of weapons, and the withdrawal of Spanish security forces from Basque territory. Only when it became clear that neither Spain nor France would accept this last demand did the abertzale left suggest a change of strategy, which involved acceptance of the existing legal procedures for prisoners’ parole requests and admission of the damage done as a prior step for early release. The internal tug-of-war was resolved by ETA in a communiqué issued at the end of September, in which it rejects these proposals, insists on negotiations and calls on the abertzale left for more active support.

The other cause of frustration, the presence of the abertzale left in local and regional governing bodies, generates a current of complaints about how the government and the judges seem to be settling merely for a cessation of attacks, without considering the continuity of the political objectives of ETA and its subculture. In politics, one problem is seldom solved without in turn raising another. ETA accepted what judges, politicians and the public demanded of it: that it renounce the practice of killing for its ideas, not that it renounce the ideas themselves. It did this in exchange for the legalization of ETA’s political wing; but this involved the appearance of a new problem. Not only those who had advocated terror could now run for election, but also, their strong electoral performance and resulting access to governing bodies posed unexpected dilemmas. The renunciation of violence has not eradicated the streak of fanaticism that persistently crops up, for example, in the glorification of convicted ETA killers.

However, such incidents need not necessarily be countered with new bans and judicial actions, but rather with better arguments and political initiatives. And this is something that can now be undertaken more easily than when it involved becoming a target of ETA and of its juvenile harassment gangs.