* Suicide blast ends Swedish sense of immunity
* Neutral status no longer a shield (Repeats to add Bildt's title)
By Simon Johnson
STOCKHOLM, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Two centuries of neutrality, decades of good relations with the Middle East and years of liberal immigration policies have led many Swedes to believe their country was a safe haven.
But the Stockholm bombing has forced a rethink -- not about their values or the government's policies but about their security.
"The attack was a game changer," said Magnus Ranstorp, Research Director at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College.
"It goes against the grain of the Swedish psyche. We are the moral guardians of the world, we work through the United Nations, we are doing good humanitarian work. Why would anyone want to target us?"
Part of the explanation for why is that Sweden has linked itself increasingly closely to other Western nations, not least through its membership of the European Union. It joined in 1995.
"Sweden has become more of a 'Western' state, like others," Ulf Bjereld, professor of political science at Gothenburg University said. "For someone standing outside, it is more and more difficult to distinguish Swedish foreign policy from that of other European countries."
The country has had troops in Afghanistan since the early 1990s, making it easy to identify Sweden with anti-Muslim aggression in the eyes of militants.
Furthermore, the publication in Swedish and Danish newspapers of drawings lampooning the Prophet Mohammad drew massive criticism from Muslims around the world and death threats against the artists.
Taymour Abdulwahab, the man who blew himself up in Stockholm last Saturday -- after a bomb belt he was wearing went off prematurely -- gave Afghanistan and Swedish artist Lars Vilks as motives.
Sweden and Denmark stood up for the artists' rights to free speech, drawing the countries' governments into the controversy, although Sweden was at pains to try to conduct a dialogue with Muslim nations over the affair.
Now, Sweden has joined the United States, Britain, Spain and other nations as a target of politically motivated violence.
IMMIGRATION
Sweden's open immigration policy is seen as a prime factor.
Sweden has taken in waves of refugees over the last decades -- from Chileans fleeing a military dictatorship in the 1970s to Iraqis escaping the chaos of their war-torn land.
A tiny minority are radicals, though Swedish police had thought they presented more of a threat abroad than at home. [ID:nLDE6BE1M9]
Security scholar Edwin Bakker said that the Dutch too had thought they were immune from attack.
"We had this (idea) here in the Netherlands for a long time: 'It won't happen here because we are all so nice'," said Bakker, professor of counter-terrorism studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
But it is no longer possible for countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden to think about their populations as homogenous groups with shared values and world views, he said.
Attitudes toward immigration in the Nordic region have been hardening too. Denmark's People's Party has gained influence in recent years and the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats took seats in parliament for the first time in September.
Bakker, however, warned against drawing conclusions too hastily by linking the attack to Sweden's foreign or immigration policies, saying the bomber's real motives may never be known.
"We have to be careful not to politicize it too much," Bakker said. "There can be a lot of personal motivations, frustrations etc, and maybe some political ideas to legitimise them."
"NOT SAFE"
Analysts say that in the wake of the Saturday bomb attack, the first of its kind in Stockholm, Sweden is likely to remain a target.
"Sweden is not safe from terrorism ... so of course we cannot provide full guarantees this will not happen again," said Jan Garton, one of the leaders of the Swedish security police's investigation. "We are putting our full resources into this."
The government has ruled out a policy rethink.
"The terror attack in Stockholm on Saturday underlines the importance of not bowing before fundamentalism and of standing up for freedom, democracy and an open society, even outside Sweden's borders," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said.
Abandoning Afghanistan could lead to a civil war in the country, Bildt said. What he did not talk about was the consequences Sweden could face from sticking to its policy. (Editing by Jon Boyle)
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