As Europe digested the full horror of the Madrid bombings, commentators in Friday’s European newspapers feared that the attack signalled a new and growing terror threat putting the continent on alert.
Many likened it to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, not only for the shock of the indiscriminate killings but because of a suspicion that it might have been the work of extremists linked to al-Qaeda.
Even if, as the Spanish government believes, the bombings were the work of the Basque separatist group Eta, it showed how extremists were learning from each other, they argued.
”What happened in Spain was the al-Qaedisation of terrorism in Europe,” the German daily Die Welt said.
It signalled ”the implementation of a tactic invented by Islamists, which does not pursue a political goal such as the overthrow of government but finds its value in causing the most pain possible in the worst chaos.”
Al-Qaeda, the group headed by Osama bin Laden blamed for the 2001 suicide attacks in the United States that killed more than 3 000 people, ”deserves at least to be described as the moral co-author of these crimes,” commented the French daily Liberation.
According to The Times of London, the seeming intention of the bombers to cause large-scale civilian casualties marked a change in the terrorism tactics witnessed inside Europe.
”Indeed, their very brutality seems to many characteristic of the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda and its sympathisers,” it said in an editorial.
Europe was now facing ”something wider: international understanding among extremists, who copy each others’ methods, supply each other with arms and coordinate attacks on their common enemies.”
Belgium’s Le Soir agreed. ”Basque terrorism or Islamic terrorism, Europe now has proof that it is also sheltering bin Ladens or that it has become their target,” it said in an editorial.
Austria’s Die Presse said Europe now had to be on increased guard.
”The law of terror is timeless. If it does not happen here and now, then it will be tomorrow and elsewhere.”
That elsewhere could be Poland, the nation’s highbrow Rzeczpospolita daily said, pointing to its involvement, like Spain, in the US-led invasion of Iraq last year.
”The organisers of the Madrid attack called it the ‘train of death’. Poland could find itself on the same route,” it warned.
Writing in Italy’s Corriere della Sera, editorialist Sergio Romano thought the Madrid attacks could mark an alliance between Basque and Islamic terrorism.
”If this hypothesis is borne out in fact, yesterday’s date will prove, in many respects, more important than September 11,” he said.
”The war will have moved to Europe … a European war the (European) Union must fight with a much improved unity and solidarity than it has demonstrated in the last few months.”
Russia’s Kommersant said the scale of the Madrid bombings showed the global war on terror had provoked an escalation in attacks.
But amid the warnings of a new and imminent threat, there was also a plea not to use the attacks as an excuse to crack down on civil rights.
”Herein lie the seeds of defeat,” commented Sweden’s largest daily, Dagens Nyheter, referring to a raft of US policies introduced after September 11.
”Since terror attacks are aimed at our free lives, every new restriction on people’s lives, and every new method of surveillance, is a step in the wrong direction.” – Sapa-AFP
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