Will Paris be the next Islamic target?

TOLEDO, Spain – Newspapers often project cruel images. Yesterday’s dailies here in Spain all published a photo of France’s President Jacques Chirac and German Kanzler (Chancellor) Gerhard Schroeder enjoying a hearty laugh – with the object of their loud guffaw apparently the discomfiture of their "unilateralist" foe, America’s George W. Bush.

The two leaders had bitterly opposed any "invasion" of Iraq last year, warned about its consequences, and had roundly assailed Bush and the United States for going it alone, with the help of Spain, Britain, and two score other little countries, including reluctant Philippines, in the "Coalition of the Willing". The laughter must have been provoked by the new Socialist President-elect of Spain, Prime Minister-incipient Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announcing that Spain’s 1,300 peacekeeping troops would be pulled out of Iraq by the end of June.

The new "unwilling" Socialist Spain, with Zapatero’s PSOE suddenly thrust into power in last Sunday’s elections, may have precipitated a stampede on the part of America’s other allies in Iraq for the Exit Door.

Spain had been poised to take over (from Poland) the command of the Multilateral Forces in Iraq, but now, under new Leftist Management, the Spanish forces are packing up.

Netherland’s Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, by coincidence now visiting Bush in the White House, has declined to comment on whether The Hague might keep its 1,300 Dutch troops in Iraq beyond July either.

As for staunch ally, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, he has reassured Dubya that Italy’s 3,000-strong contingent will stay. However, La Reppublica, one of Rome’s most popular dailies, has just dredged up a poll showing that two-thirds of the Italians would like their boys to come home to mamma and home-made pasta al dente. Since Italy maintains the third largest troop emplacement in Iraq, next to America’s and Britain’s, such a departure would be unsettling.

Yesterday, a 46-year old woman who had been on one of the four death trains last Thursday morning (March 11) succumbed to her injuries, bringing to 201 the death toll of last week’s terrorist "massacre in Madrid" (which is how they’re calling the tragedy). Another 1,500 were wounded.

There were Masses everywhere last Tuesday night, too, in commemoration of the fallen, one led by Her Majesty Queen Sofia herself, with Bishop Antonio Ma. Rouco Varela, in the huge La Almudena cathedral – where, by the way, a royal wedding of Crown Prince Felipe with his attractive lady journalist fiancée is still scheduled for May 22, with the three-day period of mourning just ended.

Other Masses were held, including one evening memorial service in the miraculous church of the "Nazareno", near our own hostelry, where a standing black Nazarene is reputed to be a "brother" to our own Black Nazareno in Quiapo.

Last Tuesday, too, marked the first anniversary of the meeting in the Azores in which the now-exiting President and Prime Minister Jose Ma. Aznar, leader of the then ruling Partido Popular, had joined Mr. Bush and the UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair in forming a triumvirate girding to assault Saddam Insane and his Iraqi regime.

How times flies! How it derails the plans of mice and men. Aznar, who had brought Spain to full growth without a peseta or euro of debt, and gotten unemployment down to 9 percent, had been riding high. Now he’s in the dumps of depression, while the once-proud banners of the PP (pronounced Pe-Pe) are being dragged in the dust. The PSOE (pronounced Pi-soy, as in Tisoy) is assuming the helm, with triumphant smirks on their faces.

Although Mr. Zapatero has made it clear he intends to undertake a gentle transition "in all humility", he and his vice presidents – namely, Arenas, Caldera, Zarzalejos and Rubalcaba – are busily organizing the new Gobierno. Almost everybody in situ is losing his or her job. The moving vans are on "alert" to get every government official of rank out of the area, while loading up to move the new conquistadors, Socialist-type, into the seats of power.

La Vanguardia of Barcelona bannered yesterday’s issue accurately: "ZAPATERO MODIFICA EL TABLERO INTERNACIONAL." (Yep, he’s changed the international picture).

The front page was illustrated with that gleeful photograph of Chirac and Schroeder meeting in Paris last Tuesday. The caption chortled: La ‘Vieja Europa’ sonrie ("Old Europe" laughs) – a play on US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s sneer last year at France and Germany representing only "Old Europe", while the "New Europe" of former Warsaw Pact nations was in full cry, supporting the US-UK-Spanish assault on Fortress Saddam. The caption described the scene as "Chirac y Schroeder no ocultaron ayer en Paris su alegria por el retorno de España al nucleo historico de la Union Europea, de la mano de Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero."

Couldn’t conceal their delight? Wait till the terrorists strike next, I can only insert the caveat.

* * *

In Paris, the gendarmerie and security police, Defense du Terretoire, etc., are already on red alert. A radical Muslim group, calling itself Les Serviteurs d’Allah Le Puissant et Le Sage (The Servants of Allah the Strong and the Wise) has cheekily put out a big ad in the daily, Le Parisien containing a warning letter they had sent to Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin, that their group will strike soon. The French are taking this threat very seriously, on the heels of the Madrid train "massacre," particularly since the Easter holidays next month, April, will find millions of French commuters, many of them students out for Easter "break" taking to the railways.

Another Islamic group, named AZF, has for two weeks also been making threats, unless millions of euros are "paid", and unless Muslim girl students are permitted to go back to wearing Muslim head-scarves, a fundamentalist practice which is now banned by French law upholding the secular nature of society.

The British, as well, are contemplating sending the army for deployment on the street, believing themselves to be the next target of Muslim retaliation – while pressure builds on the embattled Tony Blair to decamp from Iraq and also bring "the boys home".

Britain’s 1.6 million Muslim community – its ranks swelled weekly by Islamic asylum-seekers who sneak in – poses an everyday pressure point. Blair’s Labour Party has lost half its Muslim supporters since the last general election owing to the UK’s role in the Iraq war, according to the results of a special Guardian/ICM poll published last Sunday.

As for the French, they have more than 11 million Muslims, with voting rights, in their country. My old friend, Serge Dassault, chairman emeritus of the famous Dassault Aviation (Mirage, Falcon jets), a longtime mayor of Corbeil town, lost his bid for the National Assembly a few years ago by a measly one per cent just because his opponents had spread the canard that Dassault had been selling Mirage fighter-bomber jets to the Israelis. (On the contrary, Serge and company had been selling to the Arabs.)

In any event, Serge Dassault has recently bought control of the influential daily, Le Figaro, and the newsmagazine L’Express so he can get the truth across speedily – the next time.

War is hell. War against Muslim terrorists is even worse than hell. This is because the twisted jihadis believe that if they blow you up and themselves die in the enterprise, they will go to Paradise, where anything from 22 to 77 virgins await them as, the abovementioned, servants of Allah.

In the case of the train bombings in Madrid’s Atocha, El Pozo, and Santa Eugenia, the Muslim bombers didn’t have to suicide-bomb. They affixed movils (cellphones) to the knapsack, backpack packaged Goma-dos explosives, to ring and provide the trigger for the treacherous explosions. One shocked rescue and emergency worker, who rushed to the scene of one train’s carnage, found shattered bodies strewn everywhere – everyone dead. "The only living sound," he gasped, "had come from the cellphones (movils) of the bundled corpses, which were still operating."

He surmised that, hearing the news flashed on the radio of the catastrophe, friends and family members had been desperately calling to find out of their loved ones were safe, or still alive.

How tragic and how sad.

* * *

The six Moroccans suspected of having planted the bombs (the explosives used were made in Burgos) are now being pinpointed as belonging to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (a.k.a. GICM, in French acronym), probably a cell of eight members. Three of the cell were arrested here in Madrid Saturday, two days after the ten bombs exploded on those four doomed commuter trains.

The suspected ringleader, Jamal Zougam, was described by neighbors as quiet, innocent-looking, who wore Western clothes and hadn’t appeared radical at all. It’s the same story everywhere. The meekest and unlikeliest-looking of types are the real killers. The two other Moroccans being held are Zougam’s half brother Mohammed Chavil and Muhammed Bekhail, who ran a telephone call center in the south central Madrid district of Lavapies.

The GICM was founded under another nom de guerre in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1993, and enrolled mostly former Muhahideen fighters and recruits from armed training camps in Afghanistan. EU anti-terrorism experts say it is financed by al-Qaeda and cooperates with other North African extremist groups, such as the Jihad Salafista, which is blamed for the suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, of last May in which 43 victims perished. (The GICM has known network in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, and Denmark.) An Algerian man was also nabbed by Basque policemen in the northern Euskadi city of San Sebastian.

Washington, DC has rushed CIA teams to Spain to assist in the investigation.

In the meantime, prayerful Madrileños and foreign visitors continue to flock to the scenes of death, lighting candles, bringing bundles of flowers, pinning up messages, in memory of the dead. They are doing so also in front of the government building at the Puerta del Sol, the heart of the city.

The entire metropolis mourns. And waits to see what the incoming Socialist government will look like – and what it will do.

Spain is both expectant and fearful for the future. But life goes on. The sun shines brightly on a nation’s tears.