CentralEuropeanUniversity
Department of Political Science
A LONG-TERM TERRORIST CAMPAIGN AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE: THE ROLE OF ETA IN SPANISH POLITICS
By Asta Maskaliūnaitė
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Supervisor: Carol Harrington
Budapest, June 2007
I hereby declare that this work contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions. This thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another person, unless otherwise noted.
Abstract
The attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States gave a renewed impetus for the development of the studies of terrorism. These new studies, however, tend to focus exclusively on the Al Qaeda-type Islamic terrorism and forget that there are numerous historical cases of terrorism that are enlightening when we try to understand the phenomenon. In addition, the studies both before and after the September 11 attacks tend to leave aside one important element of terrorism, i.e. its political nature, or, more precisely, the impact it has on the politics of the country (or region, or the entire world).
The objective of this thesis is to assess how the presence of a terrorist group influences the the political life of the country and the discourse of the country’s main political actors. For the purposes of this thesis, the case of Spain in its fight against the Basque separatist group ETA is taken as a situation to examine. The analysis is based on two assumptions which guide the outlook of the work: first, that we cannot assess the impact of terrorism on the political system without analyzing the discourse of the political actors and, second, that the discourse on terrorism is not created in a vacuum, but builds on the discursive elements that are present in the historical discourse of the country (culture, civilization), and, through the combination of these elements, allows us to understand the terrorist violence and provide it with meaning.
The investigation goes through three stages: the first chapter presents the main theoretical concepts and frameworks that are further used in the investigation of the role of the ETA violence in the country; then, the historical discourse on the nation and violence is studied in both Spain and the Basque Country; finally, the last two chapters examine in detail two crucial moments in reshaping of the discourse on violence, namely, signing of the Declaration of Lizarra and the electoral campaign of 2004. Here a particular emphasis is given on the influence that the events of March 11 had on the discourse.
Based on the findings of the investigation the following conclusions have been drawn: (1) democratic political actors take the elements available in the historical discourse for their respective discourse constructions; (2) democratic actors connect these different elements in the discourse according to their own needs. There are different types of logic (the logic of equivalence or the logic of difference) that can be employed in an attempt to hegemonize discourse and it is up to the democratic political actors which of them will be given priority to. However, the presence of violence often brings forth the “war frames”, i.e. the logic of equivalence, where everyone who is not with us is against us. Finally, the constructed equivalential chains are not based on neutral political divisions, but represent the moral dimension and the moral choices between good and evil.
Acknowledgements
I am truly grateful to all those who added to this thesis with their suggestions, ideas, proposals and comments. First of all, thanks to my supervisor Carol Harrington for her unfailing help, support and comments on the endless pages with which I was flooding her inbox. Thanks to Paul Roe who believed that I can do something when very few did (I hope this is not a terrible disappointment) Also thanks to my first supervisor Andras Bozoki for initial help with my work.
I am grateful to the Department of Political Science and the Library of CEU for providing just the right environment to write this dissertation. A special gratitude also goes to Marie Curie program of EuropeanUniversity, my host, the DeustoUniversity in Bilbao and above all to my supervisor in Bilbao Josetxu Martínez Montoya who helpedenormously for me to start orienting myself in the Basque labyrinth.
Over the long years of writing this work numerous people left an indelible impression on my life and on my thesis. I am truly thankful to everybody who was with me this time –Zoli, Ksenia, Anna, and Robertin Budapest; Biljana, Ana, Txomin and Iñakiin Bilbao; all who supported me through the last stages of my struggle in Tartu and all who make my coming to Vilnius always so pleasurable. My dearest friends, without you I would have achieved nothing. You are in my thoughts even when I don’t call or write emails. My enormous gratitude goes to Lena, who managed to persuade me that “obvious” might not be obvious at all.
Finally, I cannot but be eternally grateful to my family. Therefore, thanks to my sister and my mother for help, suggestions and comments especially on the last days of this long journey; to my father for making my life more comfortable and to my grandmother for knowing so well when I will desperately need herring.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction
Chapter I. Theoretical framework. Moving beyond “terrorology”
“Culture of terror” – anthropological explanation of violence
Witches, heretics and other communists
Discourse, frames, identities
Frame analysis
Schools of discourse analysis
Identity connection
Discourse construction. Concepts and ideas
Chapter II. Historical discourse. Spain: free, one and indivisible
Creating the Spanish identity: from Reconquista to the end of 19th century
“The Disaster”, generation of 1898 and its enemies
From the First World War to Franco
Transition to democracy and drafting of the Constitution
Conclusions
Chapter III. After transition. Using historical discourse to deal with violence
Violence in transition: between terrorism and golpismo
The PSOE government: protect the State, protect democracy
The PP government: Protect the Nation
The new PSOE government
Conclusions
Chapter IV. Alternative history – Basque nationalism and ETA
From the “origins” to Civil War
The Civil War
Birth of ETA to Transition
Transition and Democracy
From Ajuria Enea to Lizarra
Conclusions
Chapter V. Declaration of Lizarra and national unity. There and back again
There: the changes in Basque politics 1997-1998
Plan Ardanza. Testing ground?
Declaration of Lizarra and the truce of ETA
End of truce to the 2001 elections
Meanings of Lizarra 1. Radicalization of the PP discourse and appropriation of the “constitutionalist” front
Meanings of Lizarra 2. Search for new discourse in the PNV
2001 elections
Conclusion
Electoral campaign of 2004 and the events of 11-M
The background: Caso Carod and the truce for Catalonia
Framing processes
Diagnostic framing and the antagonist identity field
Protagonist identity field, prognostic and motivational frame
Frame resonance
Experience of dislocation. From 11-M to 14-M
Dealing with dislocation
Conclusions
Conclusions
REFERENCES
Secondary sources. Books and articles
Primary sources, documents
Periodicals
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EA – Eusko Alkartasuna – Basque Solidarity party
EE – Euskadiko Ezkerra – Basque Left party
ERC – Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya –Catalan Republican Left
ETA – Euskadi ta Askatasuna – BasqueLand and Freedom
HB(EH) – Herri Batasuna (Euskal Herritarok) – Unity of the People (We Basque People) Also referred to as Batasuna
IA – Izquierda Abertzale – Patriotic Left, the people sympathizing to the ideals of Basque independence, also the organizations belonging to this environment; in another interpretation – ETA environment
IU – Izquierda Unida – United Left
MLNV – Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Vasco – Basque National Liberation Movement
PNV – EAJ/PNV – Eusko Alderdi Jeltzalea/Partido Nacionalista Vasco – Basque Nationalist Party, further referred to simply as PNV
PP – Partido Popular – Popular Party
PSE-EE – Partido Socialista de Euskadi-Euskadiko Ezkerra – the Basque branch of the Socialist PartyPSOE, later referred to as PSE
PSOE –Partido Socialista Obrero Español – Spanish Socialist Workers Party, later referred to simply asSocialist Party
UCD – Unión de Centro Democrático – Union of Democratic Center
Introduction
The attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States gave a renewed impetus for the development of the studies of the phenomenon of terrorism. The scale of the attacks as well as their spectacular nature, the reaction of the world’s super power and the “war on terror” becoming the order of the day, made terrorism one of the most trendy topics in the field. Academic, journalistic and fiction production on the topic soared in the last five years and the amount of works flooding the libraries, book stores and web pages increased significantly in number, though not always in quality. Al Qaeda, once known only to the selected few, became one of the most famous organizations in the world, surpassing in fame any of the existing terrorists and non-terrorist organizations. Terrorism as a phenomenon suddenly appeared to be exotic and new, or, better said, if terrorism was not new, then at least what we were facing now was “new terrorism.” (see, e.g. Simon, Benjamin 2000)
What seemed to be forgotten was that there were many instances when terrorist methods were used to advance one or another course of action, one or another idea, to protect against one or another type of policy. What seemed to be forgotten was that many phenomena have their roots in the past, follow similar patterns of development as analogous phenomena in history and that in order to understand some of the recent events it makes sense to revisit comparable situations in the past. Searching for these analogies can shed more light on the phenomena than trying to investigate them as something new. Examining these analogies allows us to better assess and evaluate the responses to problems and possible patterns of their development.
For the purposes of this work, I will look at the development of the long-term terrorist campaign from a historical perspective and attempt to find general patterns to use to understand the current terrorism. In addition,I will address an issue of the impact of terrorism on the political space, on the democratic political actors or the relations between them, which is often ignored in the literature.
The definition of terrorism is a source of one of the greatest controversies surrounding the subject. The debate on the issue is a longstanding one, but so far no common agreement has been reached on what exactly we mean by denominating some events as cases of terrorism or certain groups as terrorist organizations. My task here is not to go deeper into this controversial issue,[1] my concern is the discourse of terrorism in which naming has an important role. My interest is not in whether the designation of some groups as terrorist corresponds to some scientific criteria of what terrorism is, but more in what impact such identification has and how the presence of such groups shapes the field of political discourses in the country.
Most of the mainstream theories in terrorism research do not provide a sufficient answer to this question. They are mostly concerned with finding causal explanations for the phenomenon and,consequently, its prevention. However, my research did start with the analysis of the existing theories of terrorism.It might be useful to assess the problematique in this area of research in order to position better the current work in the theoretical field.
The upsurge of terrorist activities in the 1960s[2] generated a great concern and interest in the phenomenon. Since then, social scientists started spilling more ink than the terrorists themselves spilled blood in trying to understand the phenomenon, to paraphrase Alex Schmid (1988), but they commenced their work in a virtually void land. Terrorism as such, of course, was not an unheard-of phenomenon at the moment: the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution that brought the term into the political vocabulary also prompted numerous examinations of this form of violence and attempts to explain its occurrence.There were Russian revolutionaries of the 19th century who resorted to terrorist tactics at one point of their development; “national liberation” movements in Ireland, Israel or Algeria were incorporating terrorist tactics into their strugglefor independence and a few other cases. Many researchers and intellectuals saw these struggles and the means employed as legitimate and understandable in the face of oppression that the countries were suffering from their colonial rulers, until the developments of the “urban guerrilla”[3] in the midst of the economically advanced and democratic states of Europe and North America started changing the attitude and brought up intensive discussions about the nature of the phenomenon, its causes and effects.
These events prompted the rapid development of what could be called true “knowledge industry” on the topic and established, together with the governing elites, the principal frames of reference to use when discussing the phenomenon. Though the governments possess the monopoly of naming in the issue of terrorism, they also often turn to the scientists to support the denominations they propose and to design ways of combating it. The same way it happens to immigration, unemployment, poverty or trafficking, the scholarly research helps problematize the issue and structure our perceptions about the phenomenon. Thus, if we want to know what counts as terrorism and why terrorism is perceived as such an enormous problem, it is necessary to start from the examination of terror knowledge industry and how it develops the understanding of the phenomenon.
The initial theories analyzing this type of violence in the so-called developed world focused mainly on the extraordinariness of terrorism and the terrorists, attempting to explain the incidents of this violence by conspiracy theories and/or the psychopathological makeup of the people engaged in terrorist violence. These theories (while never losing their attraction in the popular culture and the pseudo-scientific lore) soon gave way to a more seriously grounded research and theories that tried to examine terrorist violence in its many places and means of apparition, and eventually managed to create within the framework of social sciences a corner for the studies of terrorism.
However, this situation was put to doubt by the events of the new millennium. The September 11, 2001 attacks in the US seemed to indicate a failure not only of the security services, but also of the theorists that were expected to predict and prevent them. The attacks of March 2004 in Madrid and of July 2005 in London have prompted new questions to the agenda – it appeared that the security services of the respective countries paid more attention to the so-called “old” terrorist groups, ETA in the first case, and the IRA in the second, and somewhat overlooked the threat of Islamic terrorists. This brought up an excuse that the “new” terrorists were completely different from the old ones and that the theories were lacking that would be able to explain such events, their causes and effects. The “terrorologists” were put to blame here as well – a lack of prediction seemed to indicate a lack of theoretization.
There rises a natural question whether the occurrence of these attacks carried as much of a responsibility of the theoreticians of terrorism and their inability to explain and by so doing prevent the terrorist acts from taking place? Can “terrorology” in general be expected to act as a positivist science with its demands for the predictability of social events? What is the place of the study of terrorism both within the social sciences and in between the theory and practice, e.g. for the prevention of terrorist acts? These are some of the questions that should be addressed in discussing the theories of terrorism.
As it has been mentioned, the scientific qualities of terrorism research are often considered doubtful to such an extent that even the term “terrorology” is regularly employed in a negative or disdainful manner. There are several reasons for that: first, the aforementioned lack of scientific quality in a great part of terrorism research that relies so much on rumors, stereotypes and prejudices. Secondly, the topic itself is often considered to be that of the popular “entertainment” than a matter of serious political science, which should concern itself with more serious matters (e.g. parties and party systems). And finally, but importantly, the policy concerns of the majority of the leading figures in terrorism research make the scientific neutrality or critical viewpoint doubtful.
The first of these criticisms can be easily dismissed – though it is true that a lot has been written about terrorism and most of it belongs more to the sphere of fiction than to serious science, this does not warrant the claim that there are no serious theories of terrorism. The ones who claim that are perpetuating the prejudice in the same way as the people they are accusing. The second is also easily dismissed as whether we like it or not, it still remains a fact that terrorism is a phenomenon of great importance in political sphere, and thushas to be studied with the same concern as other phenomena of the kind.