A strike on Italy's identity

The suicide bombing in Iraq of a Carabinieri barracks has united Italians in a flood of support for a much- loved force, writes John Hooper

Thursday November 13, 2003

If the intention of the suicide bombers who crashed through the gates of the Carabinieri barracks in Nassariya yesterday was to strike at the very fibre of Italy as a nation, then they chose their target with sinisterly accurate precision. 

Two of the 18 Italian victims were civilians. Four were army soldiers. But the bulk were members of the Italy's paramilitary police. And, as events since the explosion at Nassariya have shown, the Carabinieri have a unique place in Italy's affections.

Public sympathy for the corps was already running high after an incident earlier this month in which an officer was injured opening a terrorist parcel bomb at a Carabinieri station at Viterbo, north of Rome.

But the death of so many of its force in a single attack has unleashed a tide of emotional solidarity with the corps for which it would be hard to find a parallel in the aftermath of any other recent terrorist tragedy.

Telephone calls have flooded in to Carabinieri stations from the Alps to the Mediterranean, doubling the routine daily traffic. Housewives on their way to shop have deposited bouquets and wreaths outside Carabinieri posts. Today's newspapers are full of profiles of the victims and their work on behalf of their communities.

"I couldn't sleep last night," said engineer Eduardo Bartolozzi, after leaving a bunch of orange flowers by the entrance to the headquarters in Rome. "The Carabinieri are the best of Italy's young."

It is not so much that they are a symbol of national identity. Indeed, they were founded before the unification of the country, in the north-east, in what was then the kingdom of Piedmont, back at the start of the 19th century.

It is more that the Carabinieri are a symbol of national pride. Always smart, always fit, and usually tall (the height requirements are more stringent than for the Polizia dello Stato), they look like a force to be reckoned with. And they are. They have been present, often heroically, at most of the decisive moments in Italy's history.

Other paramilitary forces have a more chequered past and tend to be viewed correspondingly with greater suspicion. The US National Guard is still associated in many American minds with the 1970 Kent State shootings. The Guardia Civil in Spain has yet to recover fully from its involvement with the attempted coup of 1981 that almost put an end to the country's renascent democracy, and the Republican Guard in Portugal had a long and intimate involvement with the Salazar dictatorship.

But while it is true that some senior Carabinieri officers played a role in the subversive plotting that was a part of Italy's cold war experience, the ordinary Italian is more likely to associate the force with the brisk but compassionate men and women he encounters when he goes to report a theft or crash at his local Carabinieri barracks. 

In an all too corrupt, chaotic nation, the men and women in the dark, distinctively red-and-white trimmed uniforms stand for continuity, order and efficiency. Ask most of its citizens what really works in Italy and you will probably get a pretty short list. But it will most likely include the Bank of Italy, the Roman Catholic church ... and the Carabinieri.

It is a strange relationship though, because Italians like to poke fun at their paramilitary police as much as they respect them. Traditionally, the Carabinieri have been recruited from the poorer south of the country and have - or at least had - a reputation for being stronger on brawn than brain.

That affectionate ambiguity is perfectly captured in a passage from a letter written by a young, crusading anti- corruption magistrate to his wife in 1983 and quoted in Paul Ginsborg's book Italy and its Discontents.

"It is four o'clock in the morning", wrote Michele Del Guadio. "We've just finished signing the arrest warrants. I'm tired, but I'll be able to rest only for two hours on a divan in the Carabinieri barracks. I wanted to tell you about Bozzo, who's a colonel in the Carabinieri. 'Colonel', I said to him while we were waiting for the public prosecutor, 'you're not by any chance one of those Carabinieri who is the butt of everyone's jokes? 'Sir, we're the subject of fun and we intend to stay that way, but we also mean to remain the pillars of Italian democracy'. And he wasn't joking."

If, as the deputy prime minster, Gianfranco Fini, said, November 12 was "our September 11", then in the Carabinieri Italians have found their New York firefighters.