Last week, armed terrorists have shot and killed the vice president of the Calabrian regional authority, Francesco Fortuno while he voted in the left-wing primary elections (16/10/05).

Strangely, you might think, terror obsessed prime minister Silvio Berlusconi remained conspicuously absent from the list of politicians expressing condolences and solidarity with Fortugno’s widow. The terrorists in question, though, were of a home grown variety – the Calabrian ‘ndragheta (and their target, a left-wing politician).

Is it too cynical to imagine that had a similar attack been staged by Muslim extremists, that the government’s reaction might have been more strident (Interior Minister Pisanu has ordered a blitz on the ‘ndrangheta – the very least one could do).

The anti-mafia commission, as politician Giuseppe Lumia pointed out, has been warning about the danger of the ‘ndrangheta for over a year, but high profile murders seem to be needed before concrete measures are taken.

Meanwhile, a leading magistrate, investigating the whereabouts of current mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano, shocked the country with common knowledge. Provenzano, he remarked, has been protected not solely by “a criminal organisation, but also by an entire section of society”[1], including politicians, doctors, and businessmen.

Provenzano, who took over the mafia after the arrest of Toto Rina (who himself roamed Sicily freely for years while being the most wanted man in Italy), has rarely been sighted but yet managed to travel unimpeded from Sicily, through the Italian peninsula, to Marseilles in France, where he underwent a routine operation. The operation was carried out under false documentation, and charged to the regional health board of Palermo.

Italy is under attack by terrorists seeking to undermine a fragile democracy, but they ain’t called Al-Qaeda so don’t expect much to be done.