Spain
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The Basque Conflict and ETA: The Difficulties of an Ending
Violence at the hands of the Basque separatist organization ETA was for many years an anomalous feature of Spain’s transition to democracy. This report, which draws on the author’s book Endgame for ETA: Elusive Peace in the Basque Country (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2014), explains why this was the case, examines both the factors that contributed to ETA’s October 2011 announcement of an end to violence and the obstacles encountered in moving forward from that announcement to disarmame...
Former USIP Fellows Help Foster Basque Peace Breakthrough
When they met during their fellowships at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in 2005, a lasting friendship was born. But as Pierre Hazan, a Swiss political scientist and former journalist, got to know Gorka Espiau Idoiaga, a peace activist from the Basque country of Spain, they had no idea that their friendship would bring them back together years later to help foster a breakthrough for peace in Western Europe’s last guerrilla conflict.
Ending with ETA? Elusive Peace in the Basque Country
In January the Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), announced a “permanent, general and internationally verifiable ceasefire”. On February 7, leaders of Batasuna, a political party that served as ETA’s surrogate and has been banned since 2003, presented the statutes of a new party in a bid to re-enter the democratic game and pursue the goal of independence by solely political means. With the support of USIP, Teresa Whitfield, of New York University’s Center on International C...