Earlier this week a small, homemade bomb was discovered at the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona. A policeman was lightly injured and a sniffer dog killed when they were attempting to remove it. What is interesting is that graffiti at the Institute proclaimed "freedom for Italian prisoners" and had a circle with the letter A - the symbol for anarchists.

Italy has been a major Islamist target for some time, and it was mentioned in the claim of responsibility for the London bombing as being next. Interestingly, Walter Laquer reports in his "No End to War" that after 9/11 an Italian anarchist group started claiming its bombings as being in sympathy with al-Qaeda.

It is unlikely that this incident is the harbinger of a new grand alliance. Anarchists, being anarchists, are terrible allies because they are so disorganized. But it is an interesting phenomenon highlighting the attention-seeking motivation for some terrorists. There are more ominous possibilities inherent in this sympathy by anarchists towards Islamists. It appears that Islamist groups are using local cut-outs for most of the logistics, while providing expert support for bombmaking and planning. Following this strategy, it is certainly conceivable that a group of anarchists could be pulled into an Islamist orbit and used for their purposes.