the economist
Mar 3rd 2011, 16:25 by B.U. BERLIN & T.J.
GERMANY had been nervously bracing itself for its first post-September 11th attack by Islamist jihadis. Now it seems to have happened. Yesterday afternoon a man wielding a pistol opened fire on a busload of American troops at Frankfurt airport, killing two and severely wounding another pair. The suspect, Arif Arid Uka, a 21-year-old of Kosovo Albanian origin, was arrested after he ran into the terminal building. His gun reportedly jammed, which may have averted worse carnage.Mr Uka appears to have succeeded where others failed. Although Germany has until now been spared Islamist violence, it has been a hub of terrorist activity and, in part because of its participation in the Afghanistan war, a frequent target of threats. The September 11th attacks in the United States were largely planned and executed by the members of the so-called “Hamburg cell.”
In 2007 police arrested the four-member “Sauerland Group” before they could launch their car bombs. They are said to have planned attacks on airports and on the American air base at Ramstein, a big logistics base for the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the destination of the soldiers killed yesterday. In 2006 two men planted suitcase bombs on trains leaving Cologne; they failed to explode.
Investigators have found evidence that Mr Uka had Islamist leanings, including a Facebook page that lists him as a fan of sites such as "Reign of Islam." News reports quote his uncle as saying that he had worked at the airport. The fear is that Mr Uka may be part of a cell that is planning further attacks. He has apparently confessed to the murders—one report said he was driven by anger about German involvement in Afghanistan—but says he acted alone.
Mr Uka's family hails from Mitrovica, a Kosovar town divided into an Albanian south and a Serb-controlled north, although many reports say he himself was born and raised in Germany.
Most Albanians, inside and outside Kosovo, are fanatically pro-American following the US-led NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 that led, eventually, to Kosovo's declaration of independence. There is a large statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. The influence of the American ambassador on local politics there remains enormous.
The Kosovar government immediately issued a statement describing yesterday's attack as a “macabre act” carried out by an individual "acting against the tradition of the people of Kosovo, who will always and forever be grateful to the United States of America”. Zeri, a newspaper, headlined its story on the murder "Shame" while this morning’s edition of Koha Ditore says that the murders are a "stain" on Kosovo’s already-damaged reputation, a reference to recent allegations of election fraud and a grisly organ-harvesting scandal implicating the country's prime minister.
If Mr Uka was radicalised in Germany rather than in Kosovo, some may draw parallels with other cases, in particular the so-called Fort Dix plot. In 2009 three ethnic-Albanian brothers from Debar in western Macedonia were convicted in the US of being part of an Islamist plot to attack Fort Dix, an army base in New Jersey. The brothers, all in their twenties, had left Macedonia as children, and reports suggested that they had never been back.
The attack may also bolster concerns in Germany that the country is failing to integrate its immigrants. Last October Angela Merkel, the chancellor, said that multiculturalism had "utterly failed" in Germany.
But there are no immediate signs of alarm. Many German newspapers did not make the attack their lead story this morning. The new interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, seems inclined to follow the cautious policy of his predecessor, Thomas de Maizière (who left the job today to become defence minister after the fall of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg). In his first day on the job Mr Friedrich has declined to raise the terrorist threat level.
GERMANY had been nervously bracing itself for its first post-September 11th attack by Islamist jihadis. Now it seems to have happened. Yesterday afternoon a man wielding a pistol opened fire on a busload of American troops at Frankfurt airport, killing two and severely wounding another pair. The suspect, Arif Arid Uka, a 21-year-old of Kosovo Albanian origin, was arrested after he ran into the terminal building. His gun reportedly jammed, which may have averted worse carnage.Mr Uka appears to have succeeded where others failed. Although Germany has until now been spared Islamist violence, it has been a hub of terrorist activity and, in part because of its participation in the Afghanistan war, a frequent target of threats. The September 11th attacks in the United States were largely planned and executed by the members of the so-called “Hamburg cell.”
In 2007 police arrested the four-member “Sauerland Group” before they could launch their car bombs. They are said to have planned attacks on airports and on the American air base at Ramstein, a big logistics base for the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the destination of the soldiers killed yesterday. In 2006 two men planted suitcase bombs on trains leaving Cologne; they failed to explode.
Investigators have found evidence that Mr Uka had Islamist leanings, including a Facebook page that lists him as a fan of sites such as "Reign of Islam." News reports quote his uncle as saying that he had worked at the airport. The fear is that Mr Uka may be part of a cell that is planning further attacks. He has apparently confessed to the murders—one report said he was driven by anger about German involvement in Afghanistan—but says he acted alone.
Mr Uka's family hails from Mitrovica, a Kosovar town divided into an Albanian south and a Serb-controlled north, although many reports say he himself was born and raised in Germany.
Most Albanians, inside and outside Kosovo, are fanatically pro-American following the US-led NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 that led, eventually, to Kosovo's declaration of independence. There is a large statue of Bill Clinton in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. The influence of the American ambassador on local politics there remains enormous.
The Kosovar government immediately issued a statement describing yesterday's attack as a “macabre act” carried out by an individual "acting against the tradition of the people of Kosovo, who will always and forever be grateful to the United States of America”. Zeri, a newspaper, headlined its story on the murder "Shame" while this morning’s edition of Koha Ditore says that the murders are a "stain" on Kosovo’s already-damaged reputation, a reference to recent allegations of election fraud and a grisly organ-harvesting scandal implicating the country's prime minister.
If Mr Uka was radicalised in Germany rather than in Kosovo, some may draw parallels with other cases, in particular the so-called Fort Dix plot. In 2009 three ethnic-Albanian brothers from Debar in western Macedonia were convicted in the US of being part of an Islamist plot to attack Fort Dix, an army base in New Jersey. The brothers, all in their twenties, had left Macedonia as children, and reports suggested that they had never been back.
The attack may also bolster concerns in Germany that the country is failing to integrate its immigrants. Last October Angela Merkel, the chancellor, said that multiculturalism had "utterly failed" in Germany.
But there are no immediate signs of alarm. Many German newspapers did not make the attack their lead story this morning. The new interior minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, seems inclined to follow the cautious policy of his predecessor, Thomas de Maizière (who left the job today to become defence minister after the fall of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg). In his first day on the job Mr Friedrich has declined to raise the terrorist threat level.
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