đ° Is Spain Ready For Jihadi Terror On The Costas?
(08/04/2015) From the radical Islamic terror perspective, Spain must seem like a target-rich environment.
(Originally published on April 8, 2015)
Another 11 jihadi suspects were arrested in Spain on Wednesday morning, again in several towns in Catalonia, including the regional capital Barcelona, where Mr. Espadaler said the group was fully operational and ready to attack, searching for new recruits to fight with the Islamic State. The police think they managed to do so successfully on at least one occasion. Five of those arrested were native Spaniardsârecent converts to radical Islamâand they had been taking photos of emblematic buildings in Barcelona. The Spanish Home Secretary, Mr. FernĂĄndez DĂaz, said on Catalan radio this morning that half of the more radical Salafist mosques in Spain are to be found in the north-eastern region, as is approximately a third of Spain's Muslim population.
Next Monday, Spain will host a multilateral summit, in Barcelona, on how Mediterranean countries can combat Islamic extremism.
The terror threat alert in Spain has officially been at three, out of a total of five levels, since the raid on Charlie Hebdo in Paris at the beginning of January, although some strategic high-risk targets have been on maximum alert. Around 30 people have been arrested in different Spanish towns for belonging to some kind of Islamic terror group since then. Two Spaniards, Catalan residents, were killed in the jihadi assault on the Bardo museum in Tunis on March 18. Attending the march against terrorism in the Tunisian capital, the Spanish Foreign Minister, Mr. GarcĂa Margallo, said: "we are facing a global threat, probably the gravest we have faced" since the Second World War.
Spain is no stranger to terrorist attacks, or to radical islamic horror. The Madrid train bombings in March 2004, the largest terror event on European soil after the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, killed 191 and injured almost 2,000. Beyond the immediate carnage and destruction, the effect they had on the national psyche and political debate was extremely corrosive. In contrast to other nations' reactions, many Spaniards were not united but driven further apart. The bombings, and the lies and deceit that followed in their aftermath, reversed the expected outcome of that year's general election, led to Spain's withdrawal from Iraq, and caused years of acrimonious conspiracy theories, which some commentators argue still remain unresolved.
Al Qaeda's methods, though, were not those of the Islamic State today.
Al-Andalus, historical moorish Spainâthe most extended version of which covered three-quarters or more of the Iberian Peninsulaâhas been on the radical Islamic wish list for years. Whereas Al Qaeda went for what terror experts sometimes label 'spectaculars'âbig coordinated strikes on things like aircraft, large buildings and train systems (New York, Madrid, London)âIslamic State jihadis are more sadistic, more basic and more territorial, favouring the commando-style urban terror tactics first seen during the onslaught on Mumbai in India and then again in the operation against the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. This year's attacks in Paris and Tunis, and the one on the coffee shop in Sydney in December, all followed that model.
They have no need for rucksack bombs or to smuggle plastic explosives or dynamite in to the country or out of a mine, no complex improvised explosive devices that need the skill of a master bomb maker to assemble. Just some automatic weapons, a few thousand rounds of ammunition, perhaps some grenades and a willingness to seek martyrdom after slaughtering as many innocent bystanders as they can take with them in the meantime. They are less restrained even than Al Qaeda and more concerned with attacking cultural, tourist, historical and religious targets than transport systems.
Spain is chock full of tourists, history, culture and Catholicism. Ranking third on the list of countries with the most UNESCO world heritage sites, 60.7 million tourists visited the country in 2014, spending about âŹ49 billion, or nearly 5% of Spanish GDP. After the attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis, cruise companies and tour operators waited less than 24 hours before pulling out and beginning to organise alternate Easter destinations for hundreds of thousands of their customers around the Mediterranean. Spain, already a frequent port of call on cruise itineraries, was among the leading benefactors. No one wants their gentle morning shore excursion to a place of peace, culture, history and relaxation to be ripped apart by sudden, vicious, violent jihadi terror that fills the air with loud bangs, zinging bullets, panic, screams, blood, destruction and death.
From the radical Islamic terror perspective, Spain must seem like a target-rich environment.
Is Spain ready for the shock of jihadis on the costas or in its major tourist cities? Spanish security forces have been on the ball since January, pro-actively arresting those whom they suspect formed part of an Islamic State cell but French, Australian and Tunisian security services were no less aware of the threat, and they couldn't stop the plots in their countries. Spain is again living through a major election year, and set for even bigger tourist numbers this year than last. What would a distributed Islamic State urban terror blitz on key tourist and cultural targets, perhaps in more than one city at the same time, live tweeted and broadcast around the world as it unfolded, do to the national psyche this time? There are no big foreign wars for Spain to withdraw from in 2015 but given the vital importance of tourism for Brand Spain, how big a hole would an attack blow in the nation's economic recovery?
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