Germany’s growing concern over its own security in the wake of the ongoing migrant crisis has been revealed in a poll showing fully two thirds of the country anticipate an Islamic State attack in 2016.
The data showing that most Germans expect an Islamic State attack on German soil within the next year is taken from a recent YouGov poll, reports The Local.
Conducted for the Deutsche Presse Agentur news agency between 21st and 23rd December, it showed that while 17 per cent had not made up their minds and 17 per cent think it will not happen, 66 per cent of Germans believe that an Islamic State attack will occur in 2016.
Historically Germany has not been subjected to large-scale Islamist terror atrocities, but the country is nervous following November’s Paris attacks which left 130 people dead.
The only Islamist-motivated terrorist attack in Germany to date occurred in 2011. Even then it was not on the grand scale witnessed elsewhere, as it involved only one ethnic Albanian from Kosovo who shot and killed two American airmen, wounding two others, at Frankfurt Airport.
Recently the situation has changed, however.
An international football match between Germany and the Netherlands was cancelled days after the Paris attacks due to what German intelligence had seen an “overwhelming amount of chatter” about possible attacks on the game.
In addition Germany has offered its military assistance to France in the fight against Islamic State in Syria and western Iraq.
Added to the international situation, earlier this year Chancellor Angela Merkel invited migrants to Germany and announced that all Syrians would be able to settle there. Inevitably her declaration meant it has become the destination of choice for millions of migrants from the Middle East and Islamic State has claimed it has used the mass movement of migrants to smuggle in fighters.
In support of that claim, the former head of Austria’s domestic security agency, Dr Gert R. Polli, recently warned that terror groups may be taking advantage of the migrant crisis to place terrorists in Europe, as reported by Breitbart London.
Rainer Wendt, Federal Chairman of the German Police Union, agreed that the possibility of terrorists and radicals coming in cannot be excluded as “border controls to Austria are no longer intact… borders are no longer controllable.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.