My latest for Jamestown, this time looking once again at the German Jihad and particularly its new rising star Bekkay Harrach. While the elections seem to have passed without a hitch, his threat still holds and we shall see if he has something to push through.
Still having to access this through awkward means, so apologies for the fact that this one and the last are both printed as one long text. Hoping to be able to fix this in the next week or so.
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35563
Bekkay Harrach: The Face of German Terror
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 30
October 1, 2009
By: Raffaello Pantucci
Germany’s federal elections passed without incident on September 27, though they took place against a backdrop of intense concern in the German security services about a growing number of increasingly pointed al-Qaeda videos threatening Germany over its military deployment in Afghanistan. These messages included a videotape from Osama bin Laden on September 25, entitled “To the Peoples of Europe.” The video had English and German subtitles along with footage of German cities and monuments (Al-Fajr Media Center, September 25). The message appeared only two days before the German elections. Germany has 4,200 troops in northern Afghanistan, where they have come under more frequent attack in the last year as the Taliban insurgency spreads.
While the message from bin Laden is alarming, it appeared to only incidentally target Germany, without the terrorist leader naming it specifically. A more direct threat came from a series of videos released by Bekkay Harrach (a.k.a. Abu Talha al-Alamani), a Moroccan-born German citizen who has joined al-Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier region.
Filed under: Jamestown Foundation | Tags: Afghanistan, Germany, Pakistan, terrorism
My latest for Jamestown, looking at Al Qaeda’s new focus on Germany – am also shopping some other piece around about this, but no bites yet. Interesting topic, but hard to know what exactly is going to happen – is this all going to lead to something? Or is it simply hot air? I am also very interested in the parallels between the situation in Germany and that in the UK – happy to expand if anyone is interested.
Afghanistan Deployment puts Germany in al-Qaeda’s Crosshairs
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier tours a German ISAF contingent in Afghanistan (German Federal Foreign Office photo)
Speaking in accented but fluent German, Abu Talha al-Alamani made al-Qaeda’s most direct threat to the German nation yet in a recent video, saying that Germans were “naive and gullible” if they thought they could “emerge unscathed” from being the third-largest troop provider in the NATO alliance in Afghanistan (al-Faloja.info, January 19). The video, released by al-Qaeda’s al-Sahab media wing and entitled “Das Rettungspaket Fuer Deutschland” (The Rescue Package for Germany), first emerged on jihadi websites on January 17 (though it is dated October 2008). The video showed a turbaned individual identified as Abu Talha al-Alamani (Abu Talha the German) brandishing weapons in a rocky environment, before switching to a direct picture of him preaching to the camera. In the half-hour video, Abu Talha declares that it has been his “wish to blow myself up for Allah since 1993,” and provides a nuanced overview of the German political environment highlighting the nation’s involvement in Afghanistan. [1] Germany currently provides over 3,300 troops to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and has agreed to increase the size of its deployment to 4,500 troops.
(more…)
