Eta surrender their weapons: Sad waste of life

Even in a Europe challenged by Friday’s fatal truck attack in Stockholm and Saturday night’s controlled explosion in a subway in Norway’s capital Oslo the decision by the Basque separatist group Eta to surrender its weapons to “civil society” in France must be welcomed.

It also offers the usual lesson about how terrorism is almost always a pointless waste that does little other than defer inevitable negotiations.

Eta was established in 1959 to secure a Basque homeland in the territory straddling north-west Spain and south-west France. The group, believed to be responsible for more than 800 deaths, says it gave up its armed campaign six years ago.

Like our domestic terrorists, who say they want to reunite a country rather than break one up, Eta did not have support to persist with their anti-democratic violence.

They had no prospect of success in a Europe where tolerance and cooperation trump the ideas of separatism and fragmentation.

How sad it is then that as one of Europe’s last terrorist groups stands down, defeated and powerless having wasted so many lives, that the threat of external terrorism grows apace.