Word: cuenca
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...Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, a sociologist at Madrid's Cumpletense University who specializes in ETA, the answer to why ETA continues its violent fight is more chilling. "From ETA's own internal communications we know that they themselves can no longer justify the violence," he says. "They realize they're not going to get negotiations. They realize they're not going to radicalize the [mainstream] Basque Nationalist Party. They have no theory of violence anymore. For the past three or four years, it's been purely reactionary. It's all they know...
...inertia of habit may ensure that after 50 years, even a debilitated ETA could be hard to eradicate. "Think of those communist parties in Western Europe, or neo-Nazi groups, who don't have the slightest chance of ever returning to power - they're still around," Sánchez-Cuenca says. "An organization is a lot harder to kill than an individual...
...time, some observers, such as sociologist and ETA specialist Ignacio Sanchéz-Cuenca saw the vitriol as "limiting Zapatero's room to maneuver" in the peace talks. The author Chislett agrees. "To get a deal with terrorists, you have to be able to bend the rules a little," he says. "Crispación meant that Zapatero couldn't do that. And the peace deal has gone out the window...
...with one more violent leader behind bars, those pro-independence supporters who might consider politics rather than terror the better tactical option have a little more room to maneuver. "In the sense that these were the hardest of hardliners, " says Sánchez-Cuenca, "the absence of Txeroki and Thierry could work to the favor of those who want to work within the political system...
...meantime, the newly headless group will likely only grow weaker. "More and more, the structure of ETA is eroding," says Sánchez-Cuenca. "It's not clear anymore who is making the decisions." Thus there is cautious hope that Europe's last anachronistic terrorist grouping, which has more than 800 deaths to answer for over the last forty years, may finally be heading towards the obsolescence of Northern Ireland's IRA, Germany's Red Army Faction and Italy's Red Brigades. But such hopes have been cruelly dashed before...