Sir Timothy Garden
Centre for Defense Studies,
Joint Services Command and Staff College, London

Are we in the opening stages of a new century of terrorism? The analysts argue over whether ETA or al-Qaeda are the perpetrators of the killings in Madrid on Thursday. Yet the awful truth is that both of these two very different terror groups are real possibilities. We live in a time when terror attacks may come from militant Islam, secessionist fighters, animal rights advocates, lunatic cults, anti-abortionists or drug dealing criminals. In the age of global news, terror is communicated far beyond the scene of a bombing.

The 20th Century was the age of mass killing of peoples by governments. Two world wars, the holocaust, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and totalitarian regimes all combined to bring premature violent deaths on an industrial scale. It could have been worse. A nuclear war between the West and the Soviet Union would have added countless millions more to the body count, and left a much less attractive future for those who survived. With the end of the Cold War, we hoped for a better world. Democracies displaced dictatorships. Occupied countries in Europe were free again. Wars were fought for humanitarian reasons. We could look forward to a civilised world where trade and economic interdependence made conflicts between countries unthinkable and unnecessary.

Terrorism was also a part of the security scene of the last century. Sometimes states would use it as a way of waging war by other means, or as a way to keep its citizens in order. Groups used terror
to further their political agenda. Some were successful, and eventually moved into government as in China, South Africa and Israel. The success of these terror movements depended on being eventually able to mobilise much wider support for their cause, and this constrained their tactics. Atrocities generated publicity for their cause, made governments look ineffectual and triggered repressive measures on the general population. This was designed to increase dissent against colonial or authoritarian governments. However, if the terror groups caused too much suffering with large numbers of deaths, they risked losing the support from the wider population. The scale of terrorism tended therefore to be limited. The Marxist Basque secessionist movement, Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), has in the past conformed to this traditional model of restricted aims.

The end of this comfortable assumption about the limited nature of terrorism dates from 1995. In that year, Aum Shinrikyo Aleph, a Japanese religious cult, released Sarin nerve agent in the Tokyo underground. While they killed only 12 people, a further 6000 commuters were injured. A more effective dispersal system for the gas might have caused deaths in the thousands. Even so, a fanatical Japanese end of the world cult seemed to be an aberration without much wider significance. We believed that a closer watch on the lunatic religious fringe by intelligence agencies should be able to handle the threat. And then came 9/11.

The development of al-Qaeda and its associated terror groups is now much more widely understood. In the Cold War, the West supported groups prepared to take on the Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan. Those guerrilla fighters were motivated by their own brand of Islam rather than a love of the West. Once the Soviet Union left Afghanistan and the West lost interest, Osama bin Laden had a ready source of trained and motivated recruits. Militant Islam has a much longer history than just the terror groups of the last fifteen years. Yet the training bases in Afghanistan, which were funded by bin Laden, have produced a new phenomenon: large numbers of disciplined extremists with technical training in modern killing methods. It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to track this new emerging threat.

The creed of this brand of religious extremism has its roots in the radical doctrines of Wahhabism, which were developed 200 years ago in Saudi Arabia. The concept of martyrdom when fighting for the cause was a central tenet. Now the pieces of a terrible puzzle fall into place. We have a large international movement as fanatical as Aum Shinrikyo, with followers who welcome martyrdom, who have the weaponry of the modern world coupled with the beliefs of mediaeval times. Their stated aim is to establish a pan-Islamic Caliphate throughout the world. Here there is no possibility of political negotiation or compromise. In that sense, we are at war. The succession of al Qaeda sponsored attacks around the world have sought to maximise casualties. Bombings in August 1998 of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania killed over 300 people and injured more than 5,000. The civil airliner attacks on Washington and New York in September 2001 killed nearly 3000. A year later, 180 died in the bombing of a Bali nightclub. If Madrid were an al Qaeda attack, the 200 dead and 1400 injured would not be out of line with their previous atrocities.

Terrorism, with large scale casualties, is now a very real threat anywhere in the world. Spain is a nation which must meet such threats from multiple sources. ETA or al Qaeda can each bring random death to the streets of Madrid. Little wonder that leaders everywhere search for quick and easy solutions. The first responsibility of government is the security of its citizens. Yet, it may be time for governments to face up to the limits of their powers. They cannot eliminate crime, disease or natural disasters. They work where possible to reduce the incidence of such events, and over a longer period set in hand work to tackle underlying causes. Similarly terrorism will not disappear in the near term, whatever governments may do. Nevertheless, there is much that can be done beyond the rhetoric of "the war on terrorism".

The first, and perhaps most difficult, task is to treat our citizens as adults. Modern living is full of risks from both natural and manmade hazards. Yet, in the developed world, we are all living longer and more productive lives. Terrorism is designed to sow terror. It fails if we refuse to be terrified. The millions of Spaniards who demonstrated on the streets of every town on Friday night showed the way. In Britain, when Irish terrorism threatened life in London, commuters showed their spirit of the Blitz by getting to work through scares and bombs. Traveling to the US last month on Friday the 13th, I found every seat on the American Airlines flight full. Terrible as terror outrages are, people are resilient and cope. In the face of much larger natural disasters like the earthquake in Iran last December, the people have had to rebuild their lives after 45,000 deaths. In Iraq, we expect the country to establish itself against a backdrop of daily bombings and killings.

Governments must co-operate internationally and share intelligence. They must be make sure that prudent precautions are taken to reduce vulnerability. They must provide adequate emergency response to cope with the aftermath of terror attacks – and perhaps international co-operation can help here as well. They must work in the long term to isolate extremism wherever it occurs. This will require much more generous help for less fortunate regions of the world. Yet above all else, leaders must resist the temptation to throw away our individual liberties in the hopeless search for absolute security. Coping with terrorism is the challenge of the century.

Professor Sir Tim Garden is a former air marshal and is now at the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College London and at Indiana University.