In the aftermath of the devastating bombing in Madrid on 11th March wide sections of the media concluded that not only Spain but the whole of Europe had now experienced its "nine-eleven". The attack has made it crystal clear to the first world, perhaps the first time, that it isn't an island of exemption as far as the new kind of threat is concerned.

Not a new phenomenon

Political violence is not a new phenomenon in our part of the world, said Andreas Wenger, ETH Professor of Security Policy, co-initiator, with Dr. Doron Zimmermann, of the conference on counter-terrorism experts that took place last week at ETH Zurich. "What has changed, however, is that terrorism operates along global lines, that the perpetrated acts of terror aim to kill or maim as many people as possible and that the terrorists are organised in nebulous network structures."

Since 11th September 2001, Wenger went on to say, terrorism has become a transnational problem. "So the world of nation states can only adequately respond to the situation by working together." This was the majority view of participants at the conference.

Italy and Poland as future terrorist targets? Terrorism specialist Rolf Tophoven from Essen fears that this might be the case.

Under the leadership of the USA, with sanctions and military operations in terrorist recruiting centres in Afghanistan and some spectacularly successful searches for known terrorists, UNO had probably managed to limit acts of terror emanating from al-Qaeda. "But the underlying ideology has survived intact and remains dangerous," says Wenger. The influence of a radical Islamic mind-set, ready to use extreme force, has hugely increased in what until now have been mostly locally operating groups.

International terrorism can only be combated with a wide range of measures, says Andreas Wenger, ETH Professor of Security Policy Studies.

First attempts to find a common policy

While unanimous cries of outrage from the international community give the illusion of a common awareness, the phenomenon of terrorism is nevertheless not uniformly perceived. As Wenger said, "The conference at ETH showed very clearly that countries that have experienced terrorism at first hand are far more sensitive towards the issue – and have more effective countermeasures, either legal or police and armed forces means at their disposal to fight terrorism – than countries that have been spared until now." The conference also made clear that first signs of an international counter-terror concept are beginning to emerge.

The most urgent sphere of action was improving co-operation in intelligence. A delicate matter, according to Wenger, "because when intelligence crosses borders protection of the sources comes under fire. But without these individuals intelligence services couldn't do their job." Co-operation between western intelligence services functioned well. But there was a lack of trustworthy co-operational structures between the west and the countries in other parts of the world where terrorism prevails, such as the Middle East, Africa or Asia. Only local intelligence services in these hotspots had access to information from individuals.

Co-ordinated countermeasures

As pitiless as terrorist acts generally are, using brute force to counter them would be wrong, according to experts, because it would produce no effect. "I'm convinced that in the long run only wide tactical measures will succeed," says Wenger. In addition to intelligence this naturally also involves the police and the armed forces. But an equal amount of energy must also be expounded in learning about the economic roots of terrorism and strengthening the intercultural dialogue. And countries like Switzerland, that has not been bothered too much up until now, had to ask themselves the uncomfortable question whether, for example, their legal systems could adequately respond to terrorist challenges. Since the "Fichenskandal" at the end of the 1980s (when it emerged that Swiss authorities kept dossiers on citizens it suspected of subversive ideologies) political attention had been focused on the protection of the private sphere and freedom of rights. Bugging became a taboo. "The protection of society as a whole disappeared from the agenda."

Evidently, preventative measures against terrorism couldn't be put into place without linking them to a discussion of citizens' freedom of rights. "If we want to act as quickly as possible we need to launch a widespread discussion now, setting out what price we as a society are prepared to pay – and what we are not," summarises Wenger. Because one thing is certain, "the next attack is only a question of time."