Germany is still in denial about its terror nightmare
An empty pram lies forlorn, on a street covered in debris and police tape. In Munich, a failed Afghan asylum seeker has driven his car into a crowd. Among the injured are a mother and her small child, who are still struggling for their lives. Like many German mothers, I find myself wondering how safe it is to push my 14 month old daughter through the town where we live.
Farhad Noori, the alleged attacker named by German media, injured 39 people. Born in Kabul in 2001, he came to Germany as an asylum seeker in 2016. His asylum application was subsequently rejected but he appealed.
His case dragged on for three years and, even though it ended with a decision that he could be deported, he was given a temporary residence permit instead. He became a bodybuilder and a security guard, gaining 68,000 followers on Instagram for pictures of him posing at bodybuilding competitions.
That left him free to allegedly attack the crowd in a white Mini Cooper near a demonstration organised by the trade union Verdi, who a few weeks ago criticised the German right for wanting to reform the country's absurdly lax asylum policies.
For Germans, this sort of attack is becoming normalised. Only a fortnight ago, another Afghan asylum seeker, armed with a knife, attacked a kindergarten outing in a park. He murdered a two-year old Moroccan child and the 41-year old man who intervened to protect the children.
Yet, the German political class seems largely indifferent. When the Vice President of the Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt was recently asked on a talk show about trying to get rid of dual national criminals, she responded, 'I think that has damned little to do with people's everyday lives'. This sentiment echoes the now infamous (and hubristic) declaration by Angela Merkel during the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis: 'Wir schaffen das', 'we can handle this'.
Ordinary Germans clearly disagree, which is why the two leading parties in this month's election are both on the right: the CDU and AfD.
Whether that will change things remains to be seen. The 'Brandmauer' or 'firewall' means that the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is shamed into not cooperating with the more hardcore Alternative for Germany (AfD), which leaves the right divided.
When the CDU dared to accept AfD votes on a non-binding motion to tackle migration issues, it led to staffers in their Berlin HQ having to be evacuated to escape left-wing protestors. Rolf Mützenich from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) accused the CDU of having opened 'the gates of hell', and party leader Merz even faced internal opposition.
If the firewall still stands after this month's election, then the chance of reform on immigration is low, because the left-wing parties will be able to block it. That will mean more nightmarish stories like that of Christoph R, a young CDU member who had his throat cut in his own apartment by a Guinean asylum seeker, who went on to attack a Ukrainian woman. Once again, his asylum case had been rejected but, nonetheless, he was given temporary residence because he could speak German.
Over and over again the same story plays out. Asylum seekers, often known to the authorities, and with no right to be in the country, go on to commit horrific crimes against innocent people. There are around a quarter of a million foreigners who have been told to leave but haven't. Almost none will do so, and they are rarely forced to go by the authorities.
Mainstream German politicians face a simple choice. Either they accept that the asylum crisis needs to be tackled, or the firewall has to fall so that a united right can put an end to it. The only question is how many innocent Germans they will allow to suffer before this happens.
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