Making sense of the deadly attacks in Germany: lone wolves?
German Chancellor Merkel remains undeterred after the deadly attacks in Würzburg (Jul 18), München (Jul 22), Ansbach (Jul 24) and Reutlingen (Jul 24):
Die Welt -- "Die Täter verhöhnen das Land, das sie aufgenommen hat" (Jul 28, 2016)
Schon jetzt ist erkennbar, dass es neben der Bedrohung durch organisierten Terrorismus eine neue Gefahr durch Einzeltäter gibt, die den Sicherheitsbehörden nicht aufgefallen sind. "Wir werden auch die neue Herausforderung bewältigen", sagte Merkel und fügte wieder hinzu: "Wir schaffen das."
The Würzburg and Ansbach attacks have been claimed by ISIS while the München attack seems to have had a broadly xenophobic motive (or just pathetic self-pity) and the Reutlingen murder may have been a crime of passion. All four attacks were committed by migrants -- three of them recent -- which makes Merkel's staunch defense of Germany's generous migration policy all the more remarkable and frankly admirable. But tension is mounting, with harsh criticism from the CSU party within the governing CDU/CSU faction:
Bild -- CSU wirft Merkel naiven Selbstbetrug vor (Jul 28, 2016)
Der Bayernkurier (Herausgeber: CSU-Chef Horst Seehofer) hatte in dem Kommentar so hart mit Merkel abgerechnet wie noch nie zuvor und geklagt: "Deutlich wird vor allem, welchen Sicherheitsrisiken uns die Kanzlerin mit ihren offenen Grenzen und Armen ausgeliefert hat. Zehntausende Menschen, meist junge Männer im „kampffähigen“ Alter, die nicht ordentlich registriert wurden, sind in unserem Land. Von vielen kennt der Staat weder den richtigen Namen, noch das richtige Alter, noch den aktuellen Wohnort. Natürlich werden nur die Wenigsten davon „ausgebildete“ Terroristen sein und nur wenige davon werden sich später zu Terroristen radikalisieren. Doch Würzburg, Ansbach und Nizza zeigen: Ein Einzelner reicht schon.“
The attacks in Würzburg and Ansbach took place in Bavaria (the largest and second-most populous state in the German federal republic). Focus explores the possibility of a Bavarian ISIS cell to explain where the "lone wolves" got their support:
Focus -- Terror-Experte äußert Verdacht: IS-Zelle mitten in Bayern? (Jul 26, 2016)
„Es ist bekannt, dass Islamisten sich oft an junge Flüchtlinge heranmachen und versuchen, sie für ihre Zwecke zu instrumentalisieren“, sagt Krause. Es sei denkbar, dass es ein mögliches IS-Netzwerk in Nordbayern dort vermehrt auf Flüchtlinge abgesehen hat – und bei den Anwerbeversuchen nun zweimal binnen kürzester Zeit erfolgreich war.
„Bei dem Lkw-Attentat in Nizza hieß es zunächst auch, dass es ein Einzeltäter war.“ Mittlerweile wurden jedoch sieben Männer festgenommen, die laut Staatsanwaltschaft den Attentäter unterstützt haben sollen. „Ob die Attentäter von Würzburg und Ansbach auch solche Terror-Komplizen hatten, werden die Ermittlungen der Sicherheitsbehörden in den kommenden Wochen zeigen“, sagt Krause.
Because "lone wolves" are frequently, well, not all that alone, argue Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Nathaniel Barr:
Foreign Affairs -- The Myth of Lone-Wolf Terrorism (Jul 26, 2016)
Observers have repeatedly erred by definitively categorizing attacks as lone-wolf operations when they would later turn out to be connected to broader cells or networks. At a minimum, individuals labeled lone wolves are often in communication with other militants, sometimes using encrypted services that are difficult to detect and decipher. There is a danger in rushing to label operatives as disconnected from others, as doing so can cause analysts to overlook the networks that facilitate and encourage attacks. It is time to put the myth of the lone wolf to rest.
A man on a mission, Gartenstein-Ross has argued for years that "lone wolves" are actively influenced by others and that radicalization may be explained by shared ideology which is reinforced by social ties:
As I mentioned, some scholars argue that religion is relatively unimportant to jihadi terrorism, full stop. One study that argues to the contrary, written by Mitchell Silber and Arvin Bhatt (both then of the New York City Police Department, which published their report), is entitled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.
[...]
The most noteworthy aspect of Muhammad's claim to be affiliated with al Qaeda is that he explains it based on shared values: based on his desire to purge the Islamic world of paganism and infidels, and to re-establish the caliphate. He does not claim any sort of formal affiliation, such as having taken an oath of bayat (a formal oath of allegiance) to the jihadi group.
[...]
Muhammad's time in Yemen gives rise to questions about his social relationships. Many studies on radicalization—including those of McCauley and Moskalenko, and Sageman—highlight the importance of social dynamics. Indeed, often lone wolf terrorists are only alone in carrying out their attacks, and are actively influenced by others in every step leading up to undertaking violence. [...] ideological and social explanations for radicalization may be mutually reinforcing rather than in competition with one another.
The case study also helps us understand the reach and impact of Geert Wilders' anti-Islamist work:
Muhammad also claimed that the night before he carried out the shooting, he had watched the video Fitna Exposed, which was a response to Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders's anti-Islam movie Fitna. Muhammad explained that this was the sole and unexpected trigger for his shooting: “I started seeing more pictures of just women being raped you know, gang raped and you know it's one woman named Fatima, she's in a (inaudible) prison so she got raped more than nine times on one—one day and uh she was wanting to kill herself and you know it was just—it was a point of insanity, I—I think is what happened and I just like blacked out you know. And—and I just kind of went insane all of a sudden.”
Radicalization is a two-way street with dead ends both ways.
