Who Needs Italy?
Why Italy matters.

By Francis X. Rocca, a writer in Vicenza, Italy
October 23, 2001 9:15 a.m.

taly's leaders keep sounding wobbly in their support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. A few days after September 11, Defense Minister Antonio Martino told a TV audience that Italian troops would not join the coalition against terrorism. He retracted his remarks the next day, but left a lasting impression of less-than-Blairite zeal. The week before last, the center-left opposition split over a parliamentary resolution backing the strikes on Afghanistan: the Greens and the Communists chose to condemn them instead. And last Wednesday, Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero called it "important that military operations in Afghanistan end the soonest, achieving their goal," adding that the bombing "has a political price because ... civilian victims have repercussions on the public opinion of both Arab and Western countries." The Wall Street Journal noted that Ruggiero's statement was the "first such call for an end of the U.S. military operations to come from a major NATO ally."

Fervently pro-American Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has pledged that his country stands "shoulder to shoulder" with the U.S., and last week he traveled to Washington just to make that point. Yet even Berlusconi has said that he hopes Italy will not be asked to send troops to Afghanistan.

It won't be. The U.S. has no need of Italian men or firepower to beat the Taliban or any other conventional enemy, and has no plans to use them for that purpose. (At most, the Pentagon has talked of freeing up American soldiers keeping the peace in the Balkans by replacing them with Italian troops.) U.S. bases on Italian soil are potentially important to Operation Enduring Freedom, but there's no question of losing access to those — that didn't happen even during the Kosovo war, when the government in Rome was headed by an ex-Communist who opposed the bombing of Serbia.

So why should America care if Italian politicians hedge and quibble?

Because, as we've heard ceaselessly repeated over the last six weeks, the struggle against Osama bin Laden and his ilk is a "new kind of war," in which the fighting in Central Asia is just a highly conspicuous opening phase. In the longer term, it's a war in which Italy is bound to be a crucial battleground.

Italy's proximity to the Balkans and North Africa, and its long, highly porous, border make it a natural gateway into Europe for bin Laden's al Qaeda network. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan is "the most important base of al Qaeda in Europe — a station from which weapons, men and money travel the whole world." Italy's Muslim population of over one million offers plenty of water for bin Laden's fish to swim in. Last Wednesday, Public Administration Minister Franco Frattini told parliament that there are at least seven "epicenters" of Islamic extremism in the country, stretching from Naples in the south all the way to Turin in the north.

The government has already moved to act against the backyard threat. Earlier this month, police arrested two al Qaeda suspects in Milan. A special committee will now monitor financial transactions in order to track the flow of suspected terrorism funding. And Italian terrorism laws have been expanded to cover groups with foreign targets. The considerable expertise that authorities have gained in fighting domestic political extremists and the Mafia, they can now use against al Qaeda and similar organizations.

Fighting the war on this less visible front, while politically appealing in a country with little taste for military action, nonetheless carries big risks. Does anyone believe that Osama bin Laden will be a good sport about the dismantling of his network?

As General Fabio Mini, chief of staff of NATO forces in the southern Mediterranean, acknowledged recently in interview with Il Nuovo: "The terrorist threat to our country is real, not only because of our proximity to the international centers of terrorism, but because of our official support for the struggle against terrorism." However, the general warned, implicitly recognizing his compatriots' temptation to tread lightly, "We will only become a worthwhile target if we show ourselves to be one of the weak points of the coalition in the struggle against terrorism."