Madrid Today, Toronto Tomorrow?

by John Thompson

March 22, 2004

Al Qaeda did it — the almost inescapable conclusion was easy to draw in the first minutes after 10 bombs went off in the commuter rail system in Madrid. The next question is also easy to ask, when will it be our turn?

Spanish police were quick to finger the Basque "Homeland and Liberty" group (usually referred to as the ETA). Apparently, the explosives used in the attack were identified as coming from a cache of dynamite that the Basque terrorists had stolen in France a few years ago — Madrid police found and disabled another four bombs which were sited and timed to kill rescue workers.

While ETA is as ruthless and evil a terrorist group as any, in its 40 year history they have never targeted civilians this indiscriminately, nor have they placed bombs to kill rescue and emergency personnel attending the scene of an attack. The usual ETA warning of an attack was missing, and the leaders of the group denied responsibility for the attack.

However, ETA is an old group and has become heavily involved in organized crime (narcotics particularly), and subsequent investigation may reveal that members of the group might have sold some of their cached explosives to al Qaeda. Moreover, the group is also vaguely Marxist, and it may also be that the Islamic Fundamentalist assault on the institutions and leadership of the Free World is attractive to some of its followers.

The proof of al Qaeda’s responsibility is simple enough — the attack has their modus operandi all over it. Most terrorist groups content themselves with one bomb to make their statement, simultaneous mass bombs to cause the largest possible number of deaths has been an al Qaeda trademark — witness their attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco in 2003, the 2002 attack on Israeli tourists in Kenya, the planned attack for Singapore in late 2001, and Ansar al Islam’s recent massacre of Shi’ia pilgrims in Iraq.

Another al Qaeda habit is their expert planning — again evident with the 200 deaths and 1,000 injuries in Madrid. All the bombs were carefully crafted, placed and timed to achieve this. Additionally, al Qaeda normally lets their actions speak for themselves (although some self-styled ‘military leader’ of their cells in Europe recently issued a press release claiming responsibility, but no such position exists).

Usually, some degree of forewarning that an attack is coming can come from a flurry of communications within al Qaeda circles, but such activity has been frequent lately anyway and it seems they are contemplating a series of attacks. This begs the question, who’s next?

Osama Bin Laden seldom really makes distinctions between Western nations. To him, we are all "Crusaders and Jews"; but he has mentioned that all of the Western nations are going to get it sometime. In recent years, he has specifically threatened the US and Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Israel, the Philippines and Canada — as well as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, the new Iraqi governing council, and Morocco.

In the last 30 months since 9-11, al Qaeda has successfully killed dozens of Americans, Britons, Spaniards, Australians, Saudis, Egyptians, Moroccans, Turks, Iraqis, Israelis, French, and Filipinos. Additional attacks in the US, Britain, Italy, Germany, France and Singapore were called off (the group does not commit to an attack until it is sure it will succeed).

So, who is missing from the list?

We are.

Two Canadians died in the Bali Night Club bombing (which was designed to kill over 100 Australian tourists), a Canadian Arab was killed in the mass car-bomb attack on Arab guest workers in Saudi Arabia; and three Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Yet there has been no big mass attack with truck bombs or a series of time bombs inside Canada; no attack on one of our airliners; no attack on a group of our tourists overseas; no attempt to insert a large quantity of cyanide inside an urban water system; or no signs of a series of suicide bombers massing inside a Canadian crowd.

But just because there have been no such signs of an attack on Canadians yet, we would be the true inhabitants of a fool’s paradise if we thought we would be free from threat forever.

Our ‘Madrid’ is coming, and it may come sooner than we think.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca