Terror in the Pyrenees

With a leg on each side of the Pyrenees, the Basque Country ranges from the gentle mountain slopes of southern France and the rough Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic coast to the sophisticated cities of Bilbao--home to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum--and San Sebastián. This is also the last terrorist redoubt in Europe.

Fighting for a mixture of old-fashioned Marxism and secular nationalism, the group named Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Fatherland and Liberty) is still killing after forty years. ETA has murdered almost a thousand people, kidnapped seventy-seven and held the business class hostage by demanding and collecting millions of dollars in "revolutionary taxes." Those who refuse to pay face harassment, abduction or even death. Some 5,000 acts of politically motivated vandalism--targeting banks, public property and government offices--were linked to ETA between 1996 and 2000. The organization is on the US State Department's updated list of global terrorist organizations, along with Hamas and Al Qaeda. Last November London and Washington announced they would freeze ETA's foreign bank accounts, along with those of twenty-four other terrorist organizations, and in February, the Bush Administration blocked the assets of twenty-one people linked to ETA.

ETA's violent struggle for its goal of an independent homeland comprising the seven Basque provinces (four in Spain and three in France) continues even as today the Basque Country enjoys considerable autonomy within the Spanish polity. Spanish policemen have been mostly replaced by Basque officers, who are often welcomed as a buffer between the people and the terrorists. The Basque language is taught in schools and widely spoken. The Basque Country collects its own taxes and pays for central government services; controls the educational, judicial and health systems; and has its own premier and Parliament.

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