Progress Pond

The Madrid Summit

March 11, 2004:
“Ten bombs exploded on four trains during rush hour in Madrid. More than 190 people died, almost 2,000 were injured.

“One year on, Madrid was the setting for a unique conference, the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security.”


The Club de Madrid has just published the full set of the Madrid Conference papers. As an example of the content, in the Intelligence section of Volume 2 (PDF), intel expert Brian Jenkins begins:

Our discussions took place in the shadow of perceived intelligence failures, dramatically revealed in the 9/11 and Madrid attacks, but also in the erroneous intelligence connected with the Iraq War – the failure to find weapons of mass destruction or to anticipate the ferocity of the Iraqi resistance. These perceived failures have led to intense examination of the intelligence services by various government commissions, legislative committees, and internal boards. Official inquiries have been augmented by a broad public discussion of how to ‘fix’ intelligence. …

These documents are worth perusing. More below:
Writes Victor Comras, a noted authority on al Qaeda and terrorism financing, for the Counterterrorism Blog:

During the months preceding the Madrid Conference some two hundred experts and scholars exchanged views via a system of password-protected web-logs. These discussions were continued in conference meetings and resulted in the final papers prepared by each working group. They are now available in three separate volumes.

The First Volume [ALL VOLUMES ARE IN PDF FORMAT] deals with the Causes of Terrorism, including its psychological roots as well as political, economic, religious, and cultural factors.

The Second Volume is on Confronting Terrorism and deals with policing, intelligence, military responses, terrorist finance, and science and technology.

The Third Volume concentrates on a “Democratic Response” to terrorism including the role of international institutions, legal responses, democracy promotion, human rights and civil society.

There is a load of excellent material in these volumes for consideration by policy makers, practitioners, advisors, and scholars. I will be posting my own reflections on these materials shortly.

The first section, for example, includes:

Introduction by Kim Campbell


Addressing the Causes of Terrorism Psychology By Jerrold M. Post

Political Explanations By Martha Crenshaw

Economic Factors By Ted Robert Gurr

Religion By Mark Juergensmeyer

Culture By Jessica Stern

The Club de Madrid Mission and Activities

List of Members

The Madrid Summit

The Madrid Agenda


Victor Comras’s link to the full set of documents (PDF format).

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