Terror in Spain and 'free marketing'
- By Sajjad Malik
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E-mail China.org.cn, August 23, 2017
The Barcelona terror attack shows that militants are finding soft targets in Europe with ease and leisure. Their gory operations have also become very simple. What they need is just one or two perverted heads to mount on a vehicle that is big enough to do the maximum damage.
The rest is all too familiar.
The so-called Islamic State once again claimed the responsibility for these attacks in which at least 14 were killed, including 13 in Barcelona's Las Ramblas and one in the town of Cambrils.
The ISIS-inspired terrorists are using the vehicular attacks frequently.
It started with the horrible killing of French people in Nice in 2016 and repeated in London, Berlin and Stockholm. More than 100 people from various nationalities have been killed so far in the attacks involving a vehicle.
The merciless tactics by ISIS in Iraq and Syria are well known but they have expanded their bloody business worldwide. There is hardly any continent, barring the Antarctica, where this group has not spilled the blood of innocent people.
It has been able to find support abroad even at a time when ISIS suffered its heaviest setbacks in Iraq and Syria. It lost Mosul to Iraqi forces in July after resisting for over nine months. Its controlled area has shrunk in Syria where its stronghold of Raqqa is under attack.
The attacks in Europe may be part of strategy to shore up the international support for the group when it is feeling the heat in the Middle East. The 24/7 media coverage of the Barcelona attacks has been going on for days, providing free of cost publicity to the terror outfit.
Media worldwide has been unable to come up with the coverage policy which should report the terror attacks but at the same time avoid a kind of marketing of terror. If some people feel revulsion for the individuals and groups involved in militancy, there may also be some feeling the sadistic pleasure after watching the coverage.
I think prolonged coverage with minute details provides what former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once termed as the "oxygen of publicity" to rebel organizations. In her speech to the American Bar Association, on July 15, 1985, about terrorism, she said: "And we must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."
Let us persuade the global and local media to stop the non-stop coverage of terror-related incidents on an experimental basis for some time and see the result if it helped to stave out the terrorists of their promotional news coverage.
Coming back to the Barcelona attacks, it is not for the first time that Spain has been targeted. More than a decade ago it suffered the horrendous commuter train bombing of 2004 in which at least 191 people were killed and over 2,000 injured. Al-Qaeda-inspired North Africans syndicates were also involved then.
Why has Spain been targeted again?
The country has the fifth biggest Muslim population in Europe and Muslims are far better integrated than many other countries in Europe. Many Muslims are second generation Spaniards who economically and culturally are part of the society. Hence, a comparatively lesser number of them travelled to Middle East to fight for ISIS.
But for the fundamentalists, Spain was the last post of Muslim rule. There is a romantic appeal even among many moderate Muslims for the Spain of Middle Ages when Arab Muslim rulers transformed it into a highly developed society.
There are reports that Salafist-led radicalization has been going in Spain for some years. It is primarily inspired by the propaganda of ISIS which has become the main attraction from the radicals after the decline of al-Qaeda.
Since Spain is part of the efforts against ISIS, and has a large Muslim population and a history of terror related incidents, it can be an attraction for militants. But Spanish security agencies should have shown a more dedicate approach to deal with any such danger.
Neither are militants born in a day nor do the militant attacks take place suddenly. There is a series of lengthy processes which transform individuals who embed with cohorts involving in militancy. The execution of a terror plan is the last of the events.
If the intelligence agencies are alive to the dangers and ready to implement preventive strategies, a lot of terrible incidents can be avoided.
Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm
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