Understanding the threat following the Xmas market attack in Germany

Posted: 21/12/2016

21 December 2016 - RPS Partnership

The attack in Germany this week will hit Europe and its neighbours hard. RPS Partenrship now offers "Active Shooter" Training which allows your staff to take control of their security if they find themselves caught up in a terrorist or lone gunman attack.

Contact us for more details on [email protected] and see our borchure attached. We are bringing you this interesting article by PGI Intelligence which reflects on the recent attacks.

US intelligence predicted the likelihood of attacks on German Christmas markets this year, a fact that led to a State Department travel alert in November. This does not necessarily suggest that the horrific attack on Berlin on 20 December had been predicted specifically: Christmas markets take place across Germany and further afield; the State Department’s alert merely told its citizens to “exercise vigilance when attending large holiday events”.

But the possibility of an attack was sufficiently well established to have reached the British tabloid press in late November, albeit with no specific detail of which market might be targeted.

In the world of counter-terrorism, dealing with threat intelligence is the hardest call. In the mid-2000s I found myself working as a counter-terrorism official in the British Embassy in Baghdad and recommending that the British Embassy in Jordan be closed in response to information received in Iraq about a potential terrorist attack on our mission in Amman. The Jordanian authorities can rightly be proud of the professionalism and track record of their security services and were dismayed that a prominent ally made this decision, which could have been interpreted as a vote of no-confidence in the Kingdom of Jordan's ability to keep the British Embassy safe.

When no firm evidence emerged of any attempt against the Embassy, the Jordanians felt that their instincts had been fully vindicated and the Embassy reopened.

The UK’s cautious approach was in part a response to the Bali bombings of October 2002 which killed over 200 people, including around 30 British tourists. Two days prior to the attacks the CIA passed warnings to British intelligence that Islamist terrorists were planning to attack Bali nightclubs; this intelligence followed earlier, more general threats to tourists in Indonesia.

The Foreign Office made no specific change to its travel advice which already warned visitors of "an increased threat to visible British interests" from terrorism and called for "extra vigilance" in public places. A subsequent parliamentary inquiry concluded that the Foreign Office's travel advice "did not accurately reflect" the threat. The same inquiry concluded that, "on the available intelligence, we do not believe that the attack could have been prevented."

In the febrile world of counter-terrorism, governments can rarely be right: threat information is often of little use to the general public as it is rarely, if ever, detailed enough to prevent an attack from taking place.

But a failure to share such information is rightly condemned (the Bali inquiry spoke of a "serious misjudgement"). Our choice to advise closure of the British Embassy in Amman revolved around the thought that, however infinately small the probability, had we known in advance of a direct threat and decided to dismiss it, the greater responsibility would not be embarrassment caused to the host government, but innocent lives lost.

In Germany this week we can assume that a frantic review of existing intelligence is underway: this will be particularly urgent as the suspect, at the time of writing, is still at large.

It may be very unlikely that this attack could have been prevented, although I can't help noting that someone of my acquaintance who works in risk management decided not to allow his teenage daughter to attend a school trip to a Christmas market on the basis of the earlier threat reporting.

It is safe to assume that what was covered in the media would have been a fraction of what might have been shared by the US authorities with their German counterparts. With the horrible benefits of hindsight, would this intelligence have allowed the Germans to limit vehicular access to public events, preventing the truck from killing 12 people?

We can expect subsequent inquiries to leap to conclusions: if there is a hint of political complacency, this event will seriously undermine Angela Merkel's re-election chances, with all the knock-on effects for Europe's wider political stability.

But an open society does not want to live under the shadow of lurid threats from intelligence agencies and people are quick to assume that the event not happening is evidence of incompetence or even deliberate fear-mongering. It’s hard to be right, as we learned in Jordan eleven years ago.

At the heart of this lies a deeper question regarding threat intelligence: given terrorists' natural inclination to plan acts of mass murder, does threat intelligence offer anything of value to security services? Do we have the tools to interpret and act on it appropriately in a democratic and accountable society? The said conclusion from Berlin, borne out by my own experience, is that we do not.

The article was written by PGI Intelligence’s Managing Director Arthur Snell on the attack in Berlin on 20 December. With thanks from RPS Partnership for allowing us to share this.

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