Germany substitutes war against terror for war against communism

Soon after the downfall of the Berlin Wall, the service had to change course and start thinking about the new threat to the German state, namely that of terrorism. Fortunately, Germany had enough specialists on the Middle East.

A few weeks ago, the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad sentenced a 58-year-old French man and a German woman to life in prison for joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (aka Daesh and ISIS). The woman, called Nadia, entered Syria and then Iraq through Turkey in the company of her mother and her daughter Yamama. At the time of her travel to the turbulent Arab states, her lawyer says, Nadia was still underage.

Nadia said at the court that she had been raped by ISIS members. She travelled to Iraq, she said, to escape from the terrorists. She noted that she was, however, arrested in Mosul in July 2017. According to the French daily afternoon newspaper Le Monde, Nadia's mother was initially sentenced to death in January 2018, but the ruling was then commuted to life in imprisonment.

The daily French general-interest newspaper La Croix succeeded in conducting an interview in October 2018 with Seffeyan, a German national who converted to Islam, but was arrested and detained by the Kurds in Syria. Seffeyan, 36, travelled to the southwestern German city of Stuttgart in search of the caliphate. Seffeyan, who worked in medical footwear making, said he had never participated in war before. He added that he used to work at a hospital.

He said he got married to a Syrian woman and had a child. Seffeyan added that he dreams of making a new beginning.

"I know, however, that I will go to jail in Germany if I return," Seffeyan said.

He expressed hopes that the authorities would pardon him.

Those two accounts prove that Germany, which did not establish colonies on any Islamic territory – unlike France – in the past, was not immune from Islamist terrorism. According to German security agencies, around 1,000 German nationals had travelled to Syria and Iraq for jihad. The same agencies expect around 100 children of these jihadists to return to Germany. German security agencies also estimate the number of extremists in Germany at 9,200. They say 1,200 of these people can be involved in terrorist actions in the future.

The change of course was far from easy for the Federal Intelligence Agency. The agency is directly supervised by the German chancellor and is based near Munich.

The service was established in 1956, during the Cold War. The service's main job was to prevent the infiltration into Germany of spies from the Eastern Bloc, especially from East Germany. The service was at the heart of the intelligence war until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was linked to the US intelligence service. The service was previously accused of spying for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

People do not easily change their habits, let alone their enemies. Germany is a federal republic. The responsibility for countering international terrorism in Germany is distributed to a number of agencies. The federal authorities have to share information with the 16 states of Germany. Following the Christmas market bombing on December 19, 2016, German authorities found out that the perpetrator of the attack was a Tunisian national called Anis Amri who was listed as a security threat in western Germany. However, the same man was not listed in Berlin where the authorities did not care about him as such. The lack of information sharing among German states caused this problem.

Al-Banna, a fan of Hitler

Nonetheless, German intelligence agencies are not inefficient. These agencies had operated in the Middle East, Egypt and North Africa since the 1930s with the aim of reining in the British and French empires. Those who enthusiastically followed Thomas Lawrence (widely known as Lawrence of Arabia) know well that the Arabs were betrayed by the West.

Did not they fight side by side with Britain against the Ottoman state because they were promised a united Arab kingdom? This kingdom had never seen the light of day. The Mufti of Jerusalem Sheikh Amin al-Husseini had reportedly called the ambassador of the German Reich in Iraq in December 1936 to request arms to fight the British and the Jews. Germany, however, apologized politely. The European state was still weak, compared with the British.

Nevertheless, the situation changed in 1937 when al-Husseini called the German consul in Jerusalem. A week later, the consul told officials at the German Foreign Ministry that a close associate of al-Husseini, namely Moussa al-Alami, would arrive in the Reich's capital secretly to hold talks with German officials. This opened the door for the presence of a German-Arab alliance. In 1938, the head of the German military intelligence paid a visit to the Middle East, using fake identification documents. He met al-Husseini who admired him greatly. Middle Eastern political leaders reportedly admired the totalitarian actions of European fascism, both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Bernard Lewis, a leading British-American oriental studies specialist who died this year, said Nazi Germany – and Fascist Italy before it – made huge efforts to spread their national ideologies in Arab countries with the aim of undermining Western forces.

Arab nationalism, Lewis said, was strongly affected by Nazism and Fascism, especially when the Italians started their campaign in 1935 and the Germans in 1938. This invites attention to the possible effect the Mufti of Jerusalem might have had on the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al-Banna as far as Italy and Germany were concerned. Al-Banna did not hide his admiration of Nazism.

In 1940, al-Banna was influenced by Nazi youths and founded the Muslim Youths, a movement that was affiliated to the Brotherhood and was widely known as the "Khaki Shirts". The members of the movement took to the streets of Cairo every evening, carrying Islamist signs that express the strength of their movement. The same people were involved in attacks on commercial shops owned by Jews.

According to Egyptian-Qatari scholar Youssef al-Qaradawi's book, "Secret History of the Muslim Brotherhood", the political project al-Banna wanted to execute was so similar to the Nazi project.

Mufti in Berlin

The mufti of Jerusalem took cooperation with the Germans many steps forward. He was wanted by the British. This was why he travelled to Italy on October 27, 1941. In Rome, al-Husseini was received by Benito Mussolini. The Italian leader promised him a huge financial support if he had stayed in Rome. Nevertheless, al-Husseini preferred Nazi Germany. He was received there by Adolf Hitler on November 28, 1941. Hitler reportedly admired al-Husseini's blue eyes and considered him to belong to the Aryan race.

During the remaining part of the war, al-Husseini managed a radio program in Berlin that addressed Muslims. The radio broadcast songs and recitation of the Holy Quran. The radio also broadcast anti-Semitic slogans and called for killing the Jews.

On September 15, 1942, al-Husseini suggested the establishment of a major propaganda center to ease cooperation between Arab countries, on one hand, and the Axis powers, on the other.

Al-Husseini participated in the same year in the formation of the 13th Brigade in the Balkans. The brigade was made up of 19,000 men whose job was to attack the followers of Josip Broz Tito in Croatia.

The situation in both Palestine and Croatia, al-Husseini said, is the same.

"The two sides fight the same enemy, namely the British and their Jewish allies," he added.

Brotherhood reception

Federal Germany protected the old Nazis who were conversant with the Arab world after World War II came to an end. The German city of Bonn received Muslim Brotherhood figures escaping from Egypt and Syria. In 1970, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Essam al-Attar, travelled to Germany after he was sentenced to death back in Syria. In 1981, Syria sent a commandos force made up of three people to kill al-Attar's wife.

In 2005, al-Attar, 78 then, referred to the prevalence of the Islamist movement in Syria. The Muslim Brotherhood, he added, is only part of this movement.

"It is wrong to view the Brotherhood as a group of people who are dangerous," al-Attar said. "The fact is that the Brotherhood represents the current of moderation."

Al-Attar added that he no longer held any positions of leadership inside Syria's Brotherhood or spoke for it.

However, when al-Attar was asked about the Alawis, a Shiite group to which the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad belongs, he said they were not Muslims.