BERLIN, July 12 (UPI) -- Germany is moving increasingly into the focus of Islamist terror because of its engagement in Afghanistan, according to an expert.
"If you look at all the terror acts and plans since 2003, they have been directed mainly against countries that took part in the Iraq war," Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at London's King's College, said Tuesday at a press roundtable in Berlin. "If you look at the last six to eight months, however, the focus of Islamist terror has been directed at other conflicts, mainly Afghanistan. So Germany is endangered as well."
Neumann said his Center for Defense Studies at the King's College came to such a conclusion after it was monitoring Islamist websites.
The Bundeswehr -- Germany's armed forces -- have 2,700 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force, a U.N.-mandated peacekeeping mission. Terror attacks on German convoys have upsurged in recent months, and Bundeswehr officials according to a military report obtained by journalists from news magazine Der Spiegel are more and more worried about the safety of their soldiers.
Green Party lawmaker Hans Christian Stroebele said the terror threat would rise and fall depending on German foreign policy, an obvious reference to the country's resistance to the Iraq war, which gained Berlin sympathies in the Muslim world.
"How can we create safety?" Stroebele asked. "I'd say 80 percent to 90 percent are politics."
