Ankara, Berlin, Zurich: Terrorists' Goal is to Separate Muslims from "Christian" Europe

By Military Analyst Nedžad Ahatović 

Islamic radicalism and its followers aim to separate Muslim communities from “Christian” Europe through terrorist attacks like the recent one in Berlin, and to undermine the tolerance of diversity cherished by EU countries.

The methodology they use in terrorist acts is brutal and directly targets the consciousness of a wide TV audience and social media users who follow such news with interest, thereby causing direct damage primarily to proponents of European tolerance and the civic political concept, while simultaneously providing “ammunition” to the European right to politically strengthen and promote nationalism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia.

Terrorists did not choose pre-Christmas events in Germany as their target by chance.

All of this was deliberately chosen to provoke a counter-reaction that would gradually initiate a spiral of violence in which Muslim communities in Europe would become targets, with the aim of recruiting new cannon fodder from within these Muslim communities for the “jihad” in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan for the needs of private paramilitary groups that, for a hefty fee or war spoils, supposedly defend the ideas of pan-Islamism and fight against Christians.

They are seriously counting on disenfranchised Muslim youth whose religious affiliation and position in society are marginalized and demonized by some political actors in the Western countries where they were born.

Islamic radicalism as an ideology, which despite the claims of its propagandists, has absolutely no basis in Islam and which uses Islam as a religion and the difficult situation of Muslims in various countries as an excuse for vandalistic attacks on innocent people, cannot be countered with the logic of “an eye for an eye.”

Islamic radicalism is neutralized on two grounds. First, through a decisive, well-planned, and continuous action by military and security services aimed at effectively dismantling the online recruitment network, its personnel and organizational structure, cutting off financial flows, and destroying the bases of terrorist organizations in the war zones of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Second, by nurturing positive societal values such as the unity of faiths and ethnicities and their tolerance. Precisely in this regard, the reaction of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the terrorist and vandalistic act committed in Berlin last night was very intelligent, measured, balanced, and at the same time decisive. 

The Chancellor sent a very strong and reassuring message that the attack in Berlin was an attack on all Germans, regardless of their religious, ethnic, and national affiliation. Such an approach significantly reduces the impact of terrorist activities. Of course, the loss of a human life is a terrible tragedy that leaves a deep scar. Someone’s joy, love, family happiness, and holiday excitement were instantly interrupted by absolute vandalism and the senselessness of the concept of collective guilt, and this collective guilt of Germans who have accepted and sheltered over 2 million Muslims, refugees from war zones in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, the reaction of the newly elected US President Donald Trump is, to say the least, amateurish, lacking any good taste or sense. Publicly stating that the terrorist act in Berlin represents “the slaughter of Christians that must stop and that terrorists must be wiped off the face of the earth” is merely Trump’s pandering to his electorate. However, such statements directly play into the hands of both the European right on one side and Islamic radicalism on the other. They are of inestimable value to the terrorist propaganda machine that recruits young people through social networks and uses such statements out of context to create its own ideological view and positions. 

I agree with President Trump that the United States must take a more decisive stance, but it must be based on an inclusive approach that involves Muslim communities both in Europe and the US, as well as entire countries in the Middle East, precisely in the context of “wiping off the face of the earth” all terrorist organizations.

By excluding Muslim communities and countries from the process of countering terrorist threats and eliminating entire organizations, Islamic radicalism, which bases its political and ideological positions precisely on this principle of the perversion of Muslims from the Western concept of modern democratic states, achieves its goal. Therefore, it does not take much intelligence to assert that the threat of Islamic radicalism will grow proportionally to the exclusion of Muslim communities from all aspects of Western democratic societies. This will cause shockwaves in geopolitical and geostrategic terms, from which those who advocate for a clash of civilizations on a religious basis and the redrawing of internationally recognized borders by force, under the guise of defending the legality and legitimacy of various autocratic regimes, will benefit the most.

In a military-security sense, the terrorist threat expressed in individual terrorist acts by individuals or small groups is an unconventional approach to endangering the national security of any state, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. This threat is eliminated through effective prevention, constant dialogue, and a responsible attitude of the state, security services, and religious communities. In a geopolitical sense, it can be stated that the wave of terrorism towards Europe continues, and that the US, the EU, nor Russia, given the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey, have adequate solutions to prevent these vandalistic acts.

This further destabilizes NATO and the EU and increases the tensions and aspirations of certain countries to leave the EU in order to increase security and strengthen right-wing political options. Such a development of events benefits Russia, which builds its interests and foreign policy on a very skillfully hidden attempt to break up, first and foremost, the NATO alliance and the EU through very aggressive anti-globalist propaganda that is also felt in our Balkan regions. 

In a geostrategic sense, the world expects the EU, the US, and Russia to reach a strategic and very important consensus on effectively countering terrorism as a global threat. However, this agreement is disrupted by the geostrategic, geopolitical, and economic interests of Russia on one side, and the EU, Great Britain, and the US on the other. This causes stagnation and gives a respite to terrorist groups based in Iraq and Syria, which constantly generate new threats and carry out new attacks, causing innocent victims like those tragically killed in Berlin and Zurich.

Therefore, the role of the US must be proactive, decisive, and very intelligently thought out from a propaganda perspective in order to first eliminate the terrorist threat from public discourse, i.e., the virtual world of information through media and social networks, and then in a physical sense through joint military efforts, from which Russia should not be excluded, unless Putin himself does so.

In this process, everyone can participate, including our region, where Croatia, as a member of the EU and NATO, must play a far greater and more constructive role than it currently does, so that, together with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, the region is free from any ideas of destabilization, wherever they may come from. 

We in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and especially we in Sarajevo, best know that feeling of trauma from loss and the feeling of helplessness from daily terrorization.

Therefore, at the very least, I expect that at the New Year’s celebration in Sarajevo, at the concert of Dino Merlin, which has not been postponed, a minute of silence will be observed for all victims of senseless violence, and that the concert will be dedicated to those killed in Aleppo, Berlin, and Zurich, and that Sarajevo that night will be a bridge between East and West, and that in defiance of violence and terror, it will mourn the fallen with dignity and reverence, celebrating its diversity as our common wealth.