IT is no exaggeration to say that the March 11 mass murder of railway commuters at the Spanish capital Madrid, is the biggest, the worst, utterly outrageous and egregiously detestable terrorist attack any European country has ever suffered. Leaders of Spain, other European countries, the United States and indeed across the globe have tried to find words strong enough to condemn the unspeakable slaughter of the innocents not always successfully. Suffice to say that 3/11 has become to Europe what 9/11 has been to America for two-and-half years.

Like the Americans then, the Spaniards now are united as one in their anger with and opposition to the perpetrators of the orgy of murder and mayhem. Even while Madrid was still a city of funeral candles and a metropolis of mourning, its citizens came out in the streets impressively to demonstrate their solidarity. In fact, despite their shock and sorrow they applauded their Prime Minister’s measured declaration that "no line of inquiry" would be left out to find the execrable terrorists who would then be meted out their just deserts.

All this is entirely understandable. In their hour of grief and hurt – 200 killed and nearly eight times that number injured grievously are not digits that can be easily dismissed – Spain has the heartfelt sympathies of people all over the world. As one of the most frequent victims of terrorism, this country understands and perhaps shares the pain of the Spaniards, as Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha has aptly said in his message to his Spanish opposite number. But that cannot be the end of the matter. The key question is what is to happen to the scourge of terrorism that persists virulently despite a global war having been declared on it 30 months ago.

In this perspective, it does seem odd that not only immediately after the horrific events but also much later the Spanish authorities as well as the European media, particularly the BBC, continued to point the finger of suspicion in the wrong direction. The Basque separatist organisation, ETA, has been using terrorism in pursuit of its demand for Basque’s independence for 35 years. Immediately after the first wave of horror, it was perhaps natural that the outrage should have been blamed on it. However, it should have been clear that the scale and sophistication of the terrorist operation was well beyond ETA’s capacity.

This gang concentrates on the assassination of individual politicians. The worst it has done is to eliminate 22 people in a bomb attack. In any case, ETA, together with its political face, Matasuna Party, has denied responsibility for the carnage emphatically. Circumstantial evidence bears out their claim that neither the "targets hit nor the modus operandi" conformed to ETA’s policy or style.

Moreover, and more importantly, an outfit, clearly aligned to Al Qaeda, has lost no time in claiming full responsibility for the despicable deed. It sent a detailed e-mail to a London-based Arab publications explaining why it did what it did. This could have been dismissed as bombast but then almost immediately the Spanish police discovered a van that contained many detonators and recording of Quranic verses.

It is no secret that the US has been pressing Pervez Musharraf hard to intensify the operations to arrest Osama bin Laden in good time for the voting in the American presidential election. In fact, as Seymour Hersh, an extremely knowledgeable US journalist and commentator, has claimed there already is a deal with Musharraf for sending American troops into Pakistani territory to flush Osama out in return for America’s decision to let Pakistan get off the hook over nuclear proliferation.

Musharraf is denying this strongly, of course, and saying that even the impending visit to the subcontinent of the US Secretary of State Colin Powell would not persuade him to permit GIs to come into Pakistani territory. But no one can say what might happen behind the scenes. The GIs might not be welcome. But Pakistan already has hundreds of CIA and FBI top operatives on its soil. They would almost certainly supervise Pakistani efforts to apprehend Osama.

Osama, who knows all this, has made no secret of his plans to "punish" the United States again and also to teach a lesson to those who have joined America in its "aggression" on Iraq. American and European governments have issued several security alerts on this score. Osama’s men have bided their time and found an appropriate and soft target.

Next only to Britain, Spain has been Europe’s most ardent supporter of the Iraq war. According to some terrorism experts in this country, Al Qaeda’s collaborators perceived a "gap" in physical security in Spain and exploited it most ruthlessly. No wonder the e-mail in Arabic said that the Americans and Europeans could not arrogate to themselves the right to kill Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine without inviting retaliation in kind.

Altogether therefore, Spain and other European countries must learn to face the rude reality. They should not overlook that the terrorist group accepting full responsibility for the Madrid massacre has been an integral part of the International Islamic Federation (IIF) that Osama founded in 1998 in Kandahar. From Chechnya to Philippines, the IIF’s various constituents have unleashed a terrible chain of terrorism. It has now reached Spain.

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