International Cooperation and the Fight against Terrorism: The Case of ETA

The proposed paper will study the impact of external actors in the history of the terrorist group with a special focus on the influence that external actors have had in the termination of the armed activity of the Basque terrorist group. The study will look at this relation from two different perspectives. The first one analyzing how an international audience has influence the strategy that the armed group has followed in different periods on its existence. Secondly, we will study the role that actors external to the Basque conflict had in pressing the group to give up its violence defence of the recognition of Basque people as subject of political rights as a nation. The paper will pay a particular attention to the influence that the September 11 attacks in United States in 2001 (and consequent the reaction to it of the international community) had in the difficulties that the Basque terrorist organization had to regenerate its operational structures that lead to its current situation.