From Bali to Madrid, Attackers Seek to Inflict Ever-Greater Casualties

The immediate assessment by the Israeli security service of the September 11 attacks was that a new benchmark for terrorists to attract public attention had arrived. Madrid yesterday morning became the latest victim of this inflation in terrorism.

Jonathan Eyal, director of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said yesterday: "It is not a matter any more of scores of victims like Omagh or a supermarket in Barcelona. You have to go into three figures or, ideally, four figures. That is what happened this morning. They were deliberate: not only the morning commuter train but timing it when it arrived at a station, with people on the platforms."

He added that it was a sad fact that "what used to frighten people, an attack at Harrods or Canary Wharf, has been dwarfed by 9/11".

The Madrid attack was designed for maximum carnage. Eta normally gives bomb warnings, although al-Qaida does not. There was no warning yesterday.

John Gearson, a senior lecturer at King's College's defence studies department, agreed with Dr Eyal, but he said that this inflation in terrorism predated September 11. He recalled a chilling quote attributed to one of the American bombers who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City in which they said they "needed a high body count to get attention".

Ronald Noble, secretary general of Interpol, linked the bombing to the worldwide "war against terrorism", saying: "Since September 11 2001, Interpol has underlined that the global fight against terrorism is not only against al-Qaida."

Since September 11, there has been a series of outrages that has produced high death tolls, from Bali to Istanbul. Most of these have been the work of al-Qaida or a related Islamist militant group.

What was different about yesterday was that if it was the work of Eta it would be the first time that a traditional western European guerrilla group with a specific political goal had engaged in an outrage of this scale.

Tim Garden, former assistant chief of defence staff and associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was guarded about the idea of an inflation in terrorist attacks. He said that limited bomb attacks conducted on a regular basis could just as equally create a sense of terror.

He drew a distinction between aims of extremist Islamist militants and people with political aims in a specific country. "Those wanting political change hope for a solution of some kind and Eta has an endgame in mind and cannot afford to outrage public opinion," he said.

The consensus among analysts yesterday was that the scale of the attack will have been counter-productive for Eta, in the way that the Omagh bombing was for the Real IRA.

Even before yesterday's attack, Spain had been linked directly to the "war on terrorism".

The Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, took advantage of the new mood after September 11 to use extensive counter-terrorism laws to crack down not only on Eta but any Basque groups regarded as militant. Suspects have been held incommunicado and a Basque language newspaper closed down.

But Jürgen Storbeck, head of the European Union police agency, cautioned that the Madrid attack was not consistent with Eta's usual methods. "It could have been Eta ... But we're dealing with an attack that doesn't correspond to the 'modus operandi' they have adopted up to now," he said.

A well-placed British source said: "If it was al-Qaida, there will be a great deal of surprise. Intelligence showed Eta was still active and wanted to strike back."

Magnus Ranstorp, of St Andrews University's centre for the study of terrorism and political violence, said the nature of the attacks pointed away from Eta.

But he then referred to a different generation of Eta activists, one that was prepared to make a "gigantic leap to establish they're back in business" despite tough counter-measures by the the Spanish authorities.

British security sources also pointed to a "generational shift" in Eta which, if reflected in other extremist groups, would have widespread implications for the "war on terror".

Joachim Krause, University of Kiel security expert, said yesterday: "Even though Eta has been partially wiped out, there is still a radical core that has survived and this core apparently has no qualms about killing mass numbers of people ... They've perhaps taken al-Qaida as a role model ... They've seen that's how to get media attention."

Mustapha Alani, an Iraqi-born terrorism analyst and adviser to the Royal United Services Institute, put it another way. For al-Qaida and Islamist extremists, he said, suicide bombings prove you have the ability to attack and had a propaganda value. The Madrid bombings merely proved that what he called a "small group of young people" could cause a large number of casualties. "Technically it is not complicated" to make the kind of bombs that were detonated and timed to kill commuters on the the Spanish trains, said Mr Alani.

Dr Eyal said it was not just a matter of terrorism inflation but also professional pride among attackers to show off their skills. They wanted "to stage it elaborately and carefully but also audaciously". He recalled a tape of senior al-Qaida members excitedly discussing the flawless and spectacular nature of the New York attack.