Germans will hold Merkel to account for keeping them safe

Intelligence is a uniquely harsh business, because its successes are private, but its failures front-page news. As the terrorist threat to Europe has surged over the past five years, in line with the collapse of parts of North Africa and the Middle East, the pressure on spies, policemen and their political masters has reached a level not seen in decades. Under such conditions of intense threat and no less severe pressure to deliver absolute security, mistakes will be made. But how forgiving is the public?

In the three days since Germany experienced the latest in Europe’s wave of atrocities, the country’s security services have not covered themselves in glory. A Pakistani asylum-seeker was arrested on Monday and released a day later — but not before his name was leaked to the press, with Chancellor Angela Merkel herself lamenting the possibility that a refugee might have turned on his host nation. A day later, the search shifted to a Tunisian man, Anis Amri, who arrived in Germany last year and is allegedly linked to a preacher arrested last month for ties to Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). [The suspect was shot dead by police in Milan on Friday].

The suspect’s asylum application was rejected in June, but it took an astounding six months for Tunisia to issue new papers — which arrived recently — so that he could be deported. Worse still is that the suspect, known to authorities, eluded their monitoring. The German public has reason to be profoundly concerned by this, but the context is important. More than 800 Germans have travelled to fight with Al Qaida and Daesh, and one-third are thought to have returned home.

German prosecutors are pursuing in excess of 100 investigations. Yet, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the BfV, is two-fifths the size of Britain’s MI5, despite dealing with a population more than a quarter larger. Plans for expansion were underway, but now have added urgency. The tension between privacy and security is, of course, more fraught with history in Germany than elsewhere.

The result is unusually strong curbs on the country’s intelligence agencies. Not only do domestic and foreign intelligence agencies have trouble talking to one another and with the police, but they also operate with more limited powers of domestic surveillance than their British, French or American counterparts. Berlin’s manhunt is not the first failure of Germany’s security apparatus this year. In July, a Syrian refugee slated for deportation to Bulgaria managed to conduct a suicide bombing, despite a psychological assessment that warned he might do just that. In October, a Syrian refugee arrested in Leipzig was allowed to hang himself two days after his arrest, depriving authorities of further intelligence. Only one month ago, an employee of the BfV, whose job was to monitor German Islamists, was arrested after suspicions of radicalisation. Authorities cannot know everything, and it is dangerous to ask them to do so.

Moreover, their task is complicated by intense Russia-backed disinformation campaigns, aimed at sapping German democracy by spreading false news about refugees. However, we can expect that they act on the information they have. Germans are pragmatic on refugees, and hold a more nuanced view of their chancellor than the “open door” caricature that has been adopted in Britain.

Yet, a majority of Germans also believe that refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism. They will hold Merkel to account for keeping them safe, irrespective of their views on the influx of refugees. And if the German chancellor is perceived — even unfairly — to be at the head of a bumbling security operation, that will chip at her authority. For the moment, two-thirds of citizens support Merkel’s decision to stand for a fourth term. Her approval ratings stand at a diminished, but still respectable, 57 per cent. But several years into an intense challenge from terrorism, and as Europe’s politics lurches to the populist Right, it is more important than ever that Germany’s political and security system improves its handling of the threat.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2016

Shashank Joshi is senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London.