The Global Intelligence Files - Re: DISCUSSION GERMANY/CT-The Story Behind Germany's Terror Threat

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## Re: DISCUSSION GERMANY/CT-The Story Behind Germany's Terror Threat

Released on 2012-08-12 00:00 GMT

Email-ID | 1015294
Date | 2010-11-22 17:34:28
From | marko.papic@stratfor.com
To | analysts@stratfor.com
List-Name | analysts@stratfor.com

Any thoughts on where you guys are thinking of going with this?
Der Spiegel article is indeed interesting.
On 11/22/10 9:28 AM, Sean Noonan wrote:
Great report from Der Spiegel (thanks Mikey). I suggest anyone
interested to read the whole thing. They ask the right questions, and
while not as much detail as I hoped, give us a much better understanding
on the threat in Germany.
The BKA (germany's FBI) must be extremely busy verifying the details of
this virtual walk-in. It obviously caused the germans to shit their
pants. But the real questions are buried in the article---how real was
this plot, how real is the source, is the source just trying to get back
to the land of brezeln and bier? Trying to double-cross them somehow?
Also note the tip off from the FBI (cue fred), not the usual CIA liaison
with BND.
For Eurasia, there's a lot in here on the internal politics of the
interior minister position, and the relation between state and federal
government.
On 11/22/10 8:55 AM, Michael Wilson wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [OS] GERMANY/CT-The Story Behind Germany's Terror Threat
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:38:21 -0600
From: Graham Smith
Reply-To: The OS List
To: os@stratfor.com
11/22/2010 11:38 AM
Fears of a Mumbai Redux
The Story Behind Germany's Terror Threat
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,730377,00.html
By Matthias Bartsch, Yassin Musharbash and Holger Stark
Germany is currently in a state of high alert. Security officials are
warning that they have concrete information pointing to a possible
terror attack on the federal parliament building in Berlin, a
massively popular tourist attraction. The days of Interior Minister
Thomas de Maiziere's reserved stances in dealing with such warnings
appear to be over.
The call came from abroad, and the man speaking hurriedly on the other
end of the line sounded as if he feared for his life. He wanted out,
he told the officers of the German Federal Criminal Police Office
(BKA) -- out of the terrorist scene. He wanted to come back to
Germany, back to his family. Then he asked if German officials could
help him.
Right now, they're trying to do just that. The BKA is pursuing the
case under the codename "Nova." The apparently remorseful man could be
an important possible whistleblower from a dangerous region of the
globe. In fact, he is also the most recent reason why German Interior
Minister Thomas de Maiziere put the entire country in a state of
fright on Wednesday.
During a hastily called press conference that day, de Maiziere stated
that Germany faced the threat of terrorist attacks that might be
launched against the country at some point in November. As he put it,
Germany is "presently dealing with a new situation."
Just two days earlier, the source had called for the third time in
just a short period and provided more information. He told officials
that a small group of terrorists wanted to conduct a raid on the
Reichstag building in Berlin, which houses the federal parliament, and
that that was only one of the targets included in their attack plans.
Germany on High Alert
Since then, Germany has been in a state of high alert. The Reichstag
is surrounded with barricades and its popular cupola tourist
attraction temporarily closed to visitors. Police armed with
submachine guns are patrolling major railway stations and airports.
And vacations have been called off for officials at the country's
security agencies. Wherever they have cause for doing so, the
authorities are secretly monitoring communications, conducting
surveillance operations and launching undercover investigations. At
the moment, investigators seem to be at a loss; their modus operandi:
"We'll prod the shrubs and see if we can flush out any birds."
"There is cause for worry, but no cause for hysteria," de Maiziere
assured his listeners. But while he has never been much of an
agitator, his colleagues at the state level have described the
situation in much more drastic terms. Uwe Schu:nemann, for example,
who has been the interior minister of the northwestern state of Lower
Saxony since 2003, stated that he had "never experienced a heightened
security situation like this one." And Berlin Senator for the Interior
Ehrhart Ko:rting, whose position is tantamount to that of a government
minister in the city-state, has already even gone so far as to call on
the inhabitants of the German capital city to report
suspicious-looking individuals of Arab origin to the police. "If you
suddenly see three somewhat strange-looking men who are new to your
neighborhood, who hide their faces and who only speak Arabic,"
Ko:rting said, "you should report them to the authorities."
Under heightened pressure, officials in Germany's 16 federal states
are now checking to see when and where major events are scheduled to
take place this coming week within their boundaries. And nothing
suggested as a possible target is being discounted, no matter how
unlikely. For example, officials in Rhineland-Palatinate warned the
state's interior minister, Karl Peter Burch, that there was always a
lot going on at IKEA stores on Saturdays.[WTF]
Serenity, Scaremongering and Strategy
Since last week, German politicians at both the state and federal
levels have once again had to figure out how they will handle
themselves when making warnings about terrorist attacks. They have had
to come up with a language that can simultaneously convey both an
alert and a sense of calm.
This is no easy task. For one thing, this isn't the first time this
has happened. In September 2009, for example, right before federal
elections were held, there were concrete threats that resulted in a
heightened security situation. But, in the end, nothing happened. This
time around, people are wondering whether they are on the precipice of
an emergency or whether these are once again empty threats.
Still, one thing is certain: For the time being, Germany has become a
different country -- more nervous, more anxious, more agitated. And
Germany's domestic security policies are being put to the test.
When Interior Minister de Maiziere assumed his office in October 2009
in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, he aimed to
cool down the heated sense of alarm regularly fanned out by his
predecessors. What's more, the man who had served as Merkel's chief of
staff in Chancellery until being moved to the role of interior
minister in her new government, was given the task of nurturing a more
relaxed relationship between her party, the Christian Democratic Union
(CDU), and its new coalition partner, the business-friendly Free
Democratic Party (FDP). In particular, it was his job to not draw out
the long-standing conflict over domestic security policies with the
Justice Ministry, which has been led since the 2009 election by Sabine
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the FDP. Indeed, Merkel
feared that the quarrelsome FDP might try to capitalize on the issue
to win over more voters, so she assigned de Maiziere to prevent that
from happening.
In fact, the plan was to repeat the same strategy that the CDU and its
Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), had used when
they were in the so-called "grand coalition" with the center-left
Social Democratic Party, between 2005 and 2009. At the time, they made
a point of undermining the SPD by championing what had traditionally
been the latter party's issues.
A Game-Changer
But now the game plan has changed. This November will drastically
alter de Maiziere's understanding of his role in office. If he tries
to return things to their previous state of calm, he's going to have a
very tough time. In fact, it's much more likely that he will be a
completely different interior minister.
For a while now, de Maiziere's softer stance has prompted opposition
by politicians on the right involved with domestic security issues.
But they are now calling louder than ever for a tougher course to be
followed. Merkel is also adjusting to the new situation and is
reportedly happy with the way de Maiziere handled himself last week.
Likewise, no one seems to have voiced any criticism last Thursday
evening during a meeting of the Coalition Committee, a regular
gathering of the parties that are part of the government.
The almost complete lack of protest has a lot to do with where the
alarming information is coming from. In fact, information regarding
the supposedly imminent attacks has come from two independent sources.
Shortly before receiving the telephone call about the planned attacks,
BKA officials had received a cable from their American counterparts at
the FBI, America's federal police force, warning of possible attacks.
Still, what truth is there in these "security-related" pieces of
information coming from both domestic and foreign sources? And, given
all the discrepancies in the warning messages, just how much do they
deserve to be trusted? Indeed, even among security officials
themselves, there is some doubt about how legitimate these statements
are -- and about just how acute the danger threatening Germany really
is.
An Attack Modelled after Mumbai[plot details in this section]
What the caller reported was undeniably alarming. According to him,
al-Qaida and associated groups based in Pakistan were making joint
preparations for an attack in Germany. One idea was to remotely
detonate a bomb using a mobile phone. Another called for a small group
of terrorists to storm the Reichstag with guns blazing, take hostages
and end everything in one calamitous bloodbath. Indeed, BKA officials
learned that the latter plan had been modeled on the storming of
luxury hotels in Mumbai, the Indian capital, almost exactly two years
ago, in a massacre that left 175 people dead.
According to the caller, the plan called for the terrorists to procure
the submachine guns, automatic rifles, explosives and whatever else
they would need to storm Germany's parliament building in the Balkans.
He said that two men had already traveled to Germany six to eight
weeks earlier, adding that one had the nom de guerre of "Abu Mohammed"
and that the other one was a German of Turkish origin. Both apparently
had roots in the Greater Berlin metropolitan area, were currently
unemployed and living off of welfare payments and had immersed
themselves in the anonymity provided by a major city -- until the time
should come for their activation.
Likewise, there were allegedly four other volunteers -- including a
German, a Turk, a North African and another jihadist of unknown
identity -- in the training camps run by al-Qaida and related groups
waiting for the signal to travel to Germany. And, according to the
telephone source, al-Qaida's plan was to attack in February or March.
The only question now relates to just how credible the caller's
statements are. He is an insider who joined up with armed groups
several months ago and has earned a reputation as a fanatic fighter.
But could it be that he is only trying to tell German officials the
juiciest things possible in order to raise his own market value and
thereby prompt them to extract him from the terror scene? Or could it
be that al-Qaida is even planning a second spectacular coup like the
one in December 2009, when the Americans allowed a supposedly
top-level turncoat onto an American military base without any sort of
pat-down, who went on to detonate his explosive vest and blow seven
CIA officials to bits?
A Strange Message
A clear picture has yet to emerge. And one reason for this is also the
fact that it was only two weeks ago that the FBI first decided to
share information about another possible attack with German officials.
In this case, even the way contact was made was unusual. Under normal
circumstances, liaisons from the CIA station in Germany are the ones
to communicate American warnings to their German counterparts. But,
this time around, it was an apparently particularly anxious FBI that
chose to directly notify the BKA.
The FBI told the Germans about an obscure Indian group called "Saif,"
or "sword." Despite being a Shiite group, it had allegedly made a pact
with al-Qaida, a Sunni organization, and sent five of its men to the
Pakistani province of Waziristan for training. According to the FBI,
two volunteers -- who were already equipped with visas allowing them
to travel freely within the 25 European countries belonging to the
Schengen zone -- were supposedly already en route to Germany and would
enter the United Arab Emirates on Monday, Nov. 22. There, they would
allegedly be provided with new travel documents before traveling on to
Germany. One of the men is supposedly named "Khan," which is about as
common in that part of the world as "Smith" is in English-speaking
countries. And no firm conclusion had been made about their
nationalities.
The FBI agents even named the presumed masterminds behind the
operation. A certain Mushtaq Altaf Bin-Khadri, who is in charge of
finances and training for "Saif," allegedly dispatched the terrorist
squad. But the FBI was not in a position to comment on the targets of
the two men in Germany.
One name came up time and again in the communique, and one that
pricked the Germans' ears: Dawood Ibrahim. The 54-year-old arms trader
is "India's most-wanted man." The US government has listed him as a
"global terrorist" and persuaded the United Nations to place his name
on a list of supporters of terror. Ibrahim is rumored to be the head
of D-Company, a criminal syndicate named after himself, and is
believed to be in charge of smuggling the suspected terrorists into
Germany.
Both the FBI and the BKA are attaching a lot of importance to the
information in the FBI communique. But the intelligence services of
the two countries -- the CIA in the United States and the BND and
Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany, the
country's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, respectively --
point to internal contradictions as reasons for their skepticism. As
they see it, for example, it is highly unlikely that a Shiite group
would team up with Sunni terrorists, especially since a good part of
al-Qaida propaganda vilifies Shiites. Other reasons for doubt include
the facts that none of the intelligence agencies was previously
familiar with an organization called "Saif," that there have been no
previously recorded threats against Germany by Indian extremists, and
that the whole scenario seems rather implausible.
On the other hand, the FBI information is uncommonly concrete. In
addition to the names of the suspects, it also provides information
about the exact day on which they are supposed to arrive in the United
Arab Emirates. Moreover, Ibrahim is believed to be one of the men
behind the terror attacks in Mumbai. If he really is involved, that
alone would be reason enough for worry.
Abnormal Circumstances
Under normal circumstances, a message of this kind from the United
States would no doubt be cause for serious-minded scrutiny, but it
would not be a cause for alarm. For example, the BKA would go through
all recent visa applications, and federal police officers would take a
closer look at all the people entering Germany from Arab states. And
the intelligence services would make the rounds to see if any of its
partners had any helpful information on the matter.
Indeed, under normal circumstances, there are always a lot of these
communiques, most of which turn out to be false alarms. But these are
no normal circumstances. Germany is in a state of emergency. Other
countries, such as the United States, employ a system of official
warning levels based on color codes that change -- from yellow to
orange, for example -- when the danger level is thought to increase.
But, in Germany, the interior minister is the barometer: He consults
with experts -- and then it is he who must call the shots.
For the minister, a situation like this presents a dilemma. If he
remains silent and something happens, he's a failure. If he makes loud
warning and nothing happens, he's just a rabble-rouser trying to push
through controversial tougher security laws. And, of course, the
public never thanks you if everyday life continues in a normal,
peaceful way.
Absolute Security Remains a Pipe Dream
When de Maiziere became Germany's interior minister, he had planned to
lead the ministry in a level-headed way. For example, he prefers to
use phrases such as "internal calm" rather than "internal security."
And it was only six weeks ago that he uttered the sentence: "There's
no cause for alarm." But, since then, the chorus of warning voices has
only ballooned in size.
This change in course is the combined result of everything that
happened beforehand. It might very well turn out that the alleged
Indian terror squad stays home and that the raid on the Reichstag
never happens. But what will remain is a well-founded supposition that
there is a critical mass of terrorists in the border region between
Afghanistan and Pakistan that is thinking about launching attacks in
Europe -- and certainly in Germany, as well.
Raw Nerves
Given such circumstances, there is a major sense of alarm among German
officials. Last Thursday, just a day after de Maiziere's shocking
press conference, the BKA issued a press release "in connection with
the current high-risk situation." It reported that a piece of
suspicious luggage had been discovered a day earlier in Windhoek, the
capital of Namibia, before being loaded onto a plane bound for
Germany. The laptop bag contained batteries, wires, a detonator and a
clock -- in other words, all the ingredients you need for a potential
airborne catastrophe.
It sounded as if another terror plot had been foiled. Had there been a
plan to blow up Air Berlin Flight 7377 en route to Munich? And had the
authorities, yet again, discovered an explosive device at the last
minute? In the end, all the worry was unfounded. As it turned out, the
piece of luggage was a test device built by a company that designs
"real test" suitcases to be used to test security measures. It remains
unclear who checked the bag in. But the fact that the BKA was so quick
to go into alarm mode -- and publicly so -- has been a communications
debacle.
Of course, these days, nobody wants to be the one that wasn't
sufficiently circumspect, the one who took too long to speak up. No
one wants a replay of situations like the one from the beginning of
November, when de Maiziere didn't know for hours whether the package
that had arrived at the Chancellery contained actual explosives or was
just a false alarm. Now, the threshold for sounding the alarm is
already much lower.
Bonded by Fear
Of course, you can never be too sure. Over the last 12 months, a
series of attacks concocted in the Afghan-Pakistani border region have
been foiled in the West. For example, in May, a car bomb set in New
York's Times Square by a man with ties to the Pakistani Taliban failed
to properly detonate. In Copenhagen, al-Qaida had made plans to storm
the offices of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper as revenge for its 2005
publishing of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. In October 2009,
David Headley, an American citizen with Pakistani roots, was arrested
after having already visited the newspaper's offices in order to scout
them out before the planned attack. Other targets reportedly included
the subway systems of New York City and Washington.
On the other hand, absolute security is a pipe dream. For example,
British authorities had even conducted rehearsals for how to respond
to possible attacks. But, even so, when attacks claiming 56 lives
(including those of four attackers) did strike London, on July 7,
2005, they were unable to prevent them. Likewise, US intelligence
services had warned India a number of times that terrorists were
planning attacks in Mumbai.
The new situation in Germany has at least had one positive side
effect: For the time being, the traditionally quarrelsome interior
ministers from both the state and the federal levels have refrained
from their usual bickering. Following informal talks held last
Thursday in Hamburg, Minister Bruch of Rhineland-Palatinate noted that
he had "never experienced such harmony within this group" that has
apparently been bonded together by their shared fear.
Translated from the German by Josh Ward
--
Sean Noonan
Tactical Analyst
Office: +1 512-279-9479
Mobile: +1 512-758-5967
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
www.stratfor.com
--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Marko Papic
Geopol Analyst - Eurasia
STRATFOR
700 Lavaca Street - 900
Austin, Texas
78701 USA
P: + 1-512-744-4094
marko.papic@stratfor.com