Germany's Solidarity With US Waning After Sept. 11

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder promised "unlimited solidarity" to the US after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- all the more so as it would soon turn out that three terrorists who took part in the attacks had previously lived in peace in the German city of Hamburg.

Because there have been no grave terrorist attacks in Germany, Germans do not feel threatened. According to a poll that studied German fears in Aug. 2006, cuts in the social welfare system and unemployment are very high on the list. Only one quarter of the Germans polled are worried about the possibility of a terrorist attack. Climate changes, on the other hand, are troublesome to many more.

Defense in Hindukush

Germany's seeming security is often explained with the country's opposition to the Iraq war -- a popular decision, which is generally believed to have won Schröder a re-election in 2004. Pulling out of the "coalition of the willing" lead to a period of icy US-German relations, but at the same time Germany's voice in international relations gained in importance -- especially after German soldiers got engaged in the fight against terror elsewhere.

Hardly anybody could have imagined before Sept. 11 that large contingents of German soldiers would be stationed over years in Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa. Now, however, Germany is being defended "in Hindukush, too," as former German Defense Minister Peter Struck said. Resistance to this fact is mostly visible on the outer edges of the political spectrum.

But Germany's apparent security turned out to be deceptive -- at the latest in Aug. 2006, as suitcase bombs were discovered in Koblenz and Dortmund. Thanks to the badly constructed detonators and pure luck, two regional trains were not blown up. But Germany's intelligence had no idea that attacks were being planned. That is by no means a good sign for German anti-terror measures.

Taking measures

Five years after Sept. 11, politicians are still trying to figure out a clear security concept. After the shock of the terrorist attacks in the US, the coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green party set in motion a series of measures.

Then Interior Minister Otto Schilly tried his best to fulfill the wishes of Germany's intelligence agencies -- whether they had to do with granting access to social, banking and travel data, surveillance of public and private spaces, freedom restrictions or the possibility of taking measures against foreign terrorist organizations in Germany.

The Air Safety Law of 2005 once again stepped up the personnel, cargo and passenger checks. Originally, it even contained a paragraph allowing preventative mass murder as a prevention measure against an even grater mass murder -- the shooting down of a kidnapped airplane. Germany's highest court, however, decided that this stipulation was unconstitutional.

Security holes

Police sources say that in the months following Sept. 11, it was enough to slide a suggestion under the door of the interior minister in the evening to find it as a bill initiative the next morning.

"Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, so many comprehensive safety packages were agreed on that we really can't say that there are security holes left in Germany," said Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger of the opposition free-market, liberal FDP party.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was Germany's minister of justice from 1992 to 1996. She resigned in 1996 in protest of what she saw as the state's excessive rights in fighting crime. She has been fighting for the rights of the individual ever since.

"Unfortunately, these rights no longer have too many defenders in our liberal democracy, even though they represent for us the indispensable constitutional foundations," she said.

Not only after terrorist plans are discovered or attacks carried out, but also before every state parliament election, it has become a matter of political ritual to make further demands for giving more authority to the police and intelligence agencies or for making penalties tougher. The army, not to mention the country's unemployed, should -- according to some members of the government -- get involved in the war on terror.

Inefficient tools

But improvements are actually needed elsewhere.

"We have many tools for fighting terrorism," said Klaus Jansen, president of the German Association of Police Investigators. "But most of them are useless." Problems lie in the area of cooperation and coordination.

Five years after Sept. 11, the bundling of competences and exchange of information has not been decisively pushed forward -- that is the "curse" of the federal system. Seventeen agencies for the protection of the constitution still do not have a common database for investigating terror suspects because German federal states cannot agree on what data should be shared. An efficient federal police organization -- similar to the FBI -- is also missing.

According to Jansen, there are altogether 37 institutions in Germany that are responsible for fighting terrorism. The newly established Common Anti-Terror Center (GTAZ), which is supposed to pull all the strings together, has been fulfilling its role in a highly unsatisfactory manner. Internationally, this has been met with disbelief. An efficient European -- let alone transatlantic cooperation -- in the fight against terror seems impossible if information cannot flow even within Germany itself.

Disbelief in the USA

Germany's justice system is also not seen in a positive light abroad. Above all, from an American perspective, it seems slow, all too legalistic and mild as far as sentencing is concerned. Applying the European Arrest Warrant has been, for instance, classified in Germany as unconstitutional: One terror suspect sought after by Spain had to be set free. Germany's chief federal prosecutor at any rate pressed charges in 11 cases and achieved seven convictions against Islamic terrorists. Most noteworthy was above all the process against members of the Hamburg group, which were close to the attackers of Sept. 11.

The Washington Post was not the only voice of doubt that "anybody will be sentenced here eventually" in this lengthy process. Mounir al Motassadeq was in the end sentenced to 15 years in prison for being an accessory to more than 3,000 counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization. But the federal constitutional court annulled the sentence and the defendant got in the end a six-year sentence for his membership in the Hamburg cell. Abdelghani Mzoudi, who was on trial for the same charges, was acquitted.

In 2004, Germany passed a new immigration law. Since then, it has become easier, for instance, to extradite extremist foreigners. According to political scientist Christoph Butterwege, this is indicative of the way in which migration and security have become connected in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

"The immigration debate got intertwined with discussions about terrorism and inner security," said the author of "Mass Media, Migration and Integration." "That's a dangerous combination."

Integration instead of exclusion

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, Muslims have complained that they have been treated with general suspicion as if every religious Muslim were a potential mass murderer. Debates about head scarves, honor killings and integration in Germany-- which partially bordered on hysteria -- often overlooked the fact that experts see the composition of the Muslim community in Germany as one reason for the country's relative safety: three quarters of the three million Muslims in Germany come from secular Turkey and not, like they do in Britain, mostly from Pakistan or Bangladesh, where fundamentalist Islamic currents are much more influential.

But exclusion because of generalized suspicion seems in the case of German Muslims to be leading to a return to religion: A study by the Center for Turkish Studies in Essen has concluded that the importance of religion for Germany's immigrants has significantly increased since Sept. 11. Udo Ulfkotte, an expert on terrorism, said he believes that avoiding a radicalization of the Muslim community in Germany must be a matter of priority for counter-terrorist policies.

"We cannot deal with terrorism only by installing addition 10,000 video cameras," Ulfkotte said. "We have to get to the root of the problem."