The Amer­i­can Prospect has a good inter­view with Jes­sica Stern, ter­ror­ism expert at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity and author of The Ulti­mate Ter­ror­ists and Ter­ror in the Name of God: Why Reli­gious Mil­i­tants Kill. In the inter­view, she spec­u­lates on pos­si­ble link­ages between ETA and al Qaeda. While all signs seem to point to al Qaeda, she brings up an inter­est­ing point that al Qaeda might be recruit­ing from within ETA.

Do you think that there is a rela­tion­ship between the two groups?
I have to won­der whether there’s coop­er­a­tion between ETA and Al Qaeda, and what this rela­tion­ship might con­sist of. Al Qaeda is prag­matic and likes to avail itself of local oper­a­tives, exper­tise, and lan­guages. They espe­cially like to recruit locals. Al Qaeda has a large pres­ence in Spain, so look­ing for part­ners like ETA would be at the top of their list.
We know that the major­ity of peo­ple in Spain oppose the war in Iraq, so it makes me won­der whether some mem­bers of ETA have been infil­trated by the Al Qaeda net­work. There’s also the chance that Al Qaeda might be recruit­ing within ETA.
I think the prag­ma­tism of ter­ror­ist groups is emerg­ing as they mature, as is a will­ing­ness to coop­er­ate with orga­ni­za­tions that would seem to be pro­mot­ing com­pletely dif­fer­ent agen­das. Also, some­times we see that as pos­si­ble ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions get closer to achiev­ing their osten­si­ble objec­tive, zealots remain and carry out unprece­dented attacks (as hap­pened with the IRA). It’s not impos­si­ble to imag­ine that ETA could have done this even though it would be unprece­dented for them.
Reports have said that Al Qaeda has claimed respon­si­bil­ity for this bomb­ing. Are these reports cred­i­ble?
No. The group claim­ing to speak for Al Qaeda is noto­ri­ously unre­li­able — they even claimed respon­si­bil­ity for last summer’s black­out. Intel­li­gence offi­cials really don’t know any­thing about the group.

At any rate, I think it’s far more likely al Qaeda or at least an Islamist group is respon­si­ble. My ini­tial sus­pi­cions — that ETA and al Qaeda may have been in league — are feel­ing less sure now with more and more evi­dence point­ing to bin Laden’s net­work emerg­ing daily. Also, a Qaeda attack fits in with my hypoth­e­sis that a spring offen­sive from both sides in the ter­ror war is in the works. I wrote that al Qaeda would attempt to desta­bi­lize or over­throw the Saudi regime, desta­bi­lize Pak­istan and/or weaken U.S. resolve with mas­sive attacks within the coun­try, pos­si­bly with WMD. Well, now add a fourth option: crack away at the U.S. alliance by forc­ing its Euro­pean allies — Spain, Poland, Britain and Italy, for the most part — to with­draw from Iraq. Why is this impor­tant?
Two words: logis­tics and man­power.
The war on ter­ror and Iraq are linked, although not in the way that Pres­i­dent George W. Bush would like. They’re linked because much of the U.S. mil­i­tary is tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, Spain’s 1,300 troops cer­tainly weren’t adding much to the fire­power there, but they were of sig­nif­i­cant sym­bolic value. If Span­ish Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zap­a­tero makes good on his promise to pull Span­ish troops out by June 30, that will adversely affect the abil­ity of the U.S. to get other coun­tries to help out after the sov­er­eignty hand-over on June 30 — even with U.N. sup­port. That means the bulk of the secu­rity respon­si­bil­ity in Iraq will con­tinue to fall on the U.S. far into the fore­see­able future with a ham­per­ing of its oper­a­tional capac­ity else­where. The U.S. mil­i­tary, as pow­er­ful as it is, sim­ply can’t keep up with Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and now North Africa. Al Qaeda is count­ing on this.
But back to Spain. I’m of two minds on this. One the one hand, I thor­oughly sup­port the demo­c­ra­tic process and there is no doubt that despite a hor­rific bomb­ing, the peo­ple of Spain had their voices heard loud and clear. The war in Iraq was immensely unpop­u­lar in Spain and it strikes me as stun­ningly arro­gant for a pur­port­edly demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment to go against the wishes of so many of its cit­i­zens. On the other hand, I’m a full-blown sup­porter of the war against al Qaeda. I was at my desk work­ing at 8:46 a.m. when the first plane snarled low over my neigh­bor­hood and slammed into the north Tower. I watched those build­ings fall to the ground from my rooftop and saw my neigh­bor­hood turned into an armed camp for a week after­ward. I know mass ter­ror. I’m against any­thing that gives al Qaeda breath­ing room — which is why I opposed the Iraq war.
It was a hor­ri­ble, need­less dis­trac­tion. There were no sig­nif­i­cant ties between Saddam’s gov­ern­ment and al Qaeda. It was unlikely there were any Qaeda forces in Iraq prior to the fall of Bagh­dad — except for Ansar al-Islam in the area con­trolled by the Kurds out­side of Saddam’s con­trol. As far as being a threat to the United States, he was pre­vented from mov­ing into two-thirds of his coun­try, he was weak­ened by inter­na­tional sanc­tions and he had ene­mies on all sides: Turkey, Kur­dis­tan, U.S. forces in Saudi Ara­bia and Kuwait and Iran. He had no weapons of mass destruc­tion to give to al Qaeda even were he inclined to do so. Hell, even the ratio­nale that he was a very bad man — a fact not in dis­pute — is tak­ing a shel­lack­ing because all the mass graves seem to date from when he was either a U.S. pup­pet thug or imme­di­ately after the 1991 Gulf War in which the U.S. encour­aged the Shi’as and the Kurds to rise up, only to have the rug pulled out from under them. They ended up in mass graves, in no small part due to the United States’ reluc­tance to act on their behalf.
Iraq was a colos­sal blun­der that has costs thou­sands of lives and bil­lions of dol­lars. There is, as yet, no end in sight.
But the fact of the mat­ter is that the U.S. is now in Iraq and in need of allies if it hopes to pros­e­cute the war on ter­ror suc­cess­fully. Bill­mon has a typ­i­cally insight­ful take on this:.

I under­stand, and emo­tion­ally sym­pa­thize with, the desire of many read­ers to see Sunday’s elec­tion as a vic­tory for the Span­ish peo­ple — or for the pro­gres­sive left, or for both. I, too, am glad the neo-Francoists of the Pop­u­lar Party got the boot.
But as much as I might like to, I can’t apply that par­tic­u­lar coat of sugar to the results, because I still think that some­thing sig­nif­i­cant (and omi­nous, from an Amer­i­can point of view) has hap­pened here: A well-timed ter­ror­ist attack has directly and dra­mat­i­cally influ­enced the results of a national elec­tion in a major coun­try allied with the United States. What’s more, it has caused, or at least con­tributed to, a deci­sive defeat for a rul­ing party that had aligned itself closely with the cur­rent U.S. strat­egy for fight­ing ter­ror­ism — which, like it or not (and of course I don’t like it at all) includes the occu­pa­tion and paci­fi­ca­tion of Iraq.

Word.
One the one hand, the Spaniards can argue that they have unyoked Iraq from the greater war on ter­ror, which is how it should have been all along. On the other, now that the world’s go-to guy on fight­ing Islamic fanati­cism is tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, is this really the time to pull up stakes and say you’re on your own? I wish I had a decent answer. But I feel the Span­ish, while remain­ing true to them­selves as a democ­racy, may have just embold­ened the real enemy.
PS: Back from Japan finally, but will, unfor­tu­nately, miss SXSW. My apologies.