As an expert on Islamism and terrorism, Dr Guido Steinberg was catapulted straight into the German Federal Chancellery after 9/11. The alumnus of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities feels that his studies prepared him well for conversations with Syrian secret service agents and other difficult situations.
Interviewer: Eva Schissler
Mr Steinberg, you studied Islamic studies, politics and history. Did you specifically choose to do so at the University of Cologne?
Yes, I deliberately chose the Department of Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Cologne. I really wanted to learn Arabic. Werner Diem, then Professor of Oriental Philology, told me that they don’t make it that easy for anyone. I would have to learn Turkish and Persian in addition to Arabic. That’s when I knew: this is my subject, my department and my university. I then went on to spend most of my time studying oriental languages. So if you think the arts and humanities are a bit more relaxed – in my case they certainly weren’t.
Shortly before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, you were working at Freie Universität Berlin. How did you get your job at the Federal Chancellery?
After my doctorate, I had my first job at FU Berlin. As is common in academia, it was a non-permanent part-time position. After 9/11, I was looking around for jobs and there were several job offers, one of them as a terrorism expert for the Federal Chancellery. I knew right away, that’s what I want to do.
How did you experience this turbulent time there?
At first, it was a huge cultural shock for me: from a humanities department to Germany’s centre of power. It starts with how to dress: I first had to buy suits and ties. There was no such thing as a ‘casual Friday’. I was in the department responsible for coordinating the intelligence services and supervising the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst). They had not had a terrorism expert up to that point. I dealt with cases that have also made the news, such as Murat Kurnaz, who was imprisoned in Guantanamo for five years without charge, or Khaled al-Masri, who was abducted by the CIA to Afghanistan.
I was also involved in cooperating with Syria. At that time, the prevailing opinion in the Federal Intelligence Service – but also among security people in the Chancellery – was that we had to cooperate with the Assad regime in order to better combat al-Qaeda. The moment that struck me most from that time was a meeting with Assef Shawkat. At the time, the brother-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad was the ‘grey eminence’ of the Syrian security authorities. Everyone in Syria knew him as a symbol of the regime’s repression. It was a time in which Germany was actually considering the expansion of cooperation in the fight against terrorism with people like him. He was killed in an attack in Damascus in 2012. Many Syrians would say: fortunately. This cooperation was later the subject of much controversy in Germany.
Can an arts and humanities degree prepare you for such situations?
I am surprised myself at how well the university prepared me for my four years in the Federal Chancellery – I now work at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Of course, I learnt about the countries, languages and cultures in Islamic studies; but my minor subject political science gave me a very cool, power-orientated view of international politics. At the time, I studied and obtained my Master’s degree under the supervision of Professor Werner Link, a renowned expert in foreign policy and international relations, and was strongly influenced by him.
How do you see the future of international Islamist terrorism?
The terrorist organizations are currently very fragmented. There is no one organization today that could claim a kind of ‘market leadership’ like al-Qaeda in 2001 or the Islamic State in 2014. One group that still stands out is the Islamic State – Khorasan Province in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the organization that poses the greatest threat, having most recently carried out attacks in Kerman in Iran in January and in Moscow in March. Various attacks were also planned in Europe. But as long as there is no large transnational organization, Europe is less threatened than the Islamic world.
We have to be aware: Germany, the USA and other western countries have effective security authorities, even if that does not always appear to be the case in the public view after an attack like the one in Solingen. Unfortunately, the silent radicalization of a ‘lone wolf’ is almost impossible to predict. Many other countries do not have functioning security apparatuses, especially the countries of origin of refugees. So Islamic terror still exists, it just usually doesn’t reach us. Countries such as Mali, Niger, Pakistan and others continue to have major problems and many civilian casualties.
Currently the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has flared up again following the terrorist attack by Hamas. Do we have to look at it in the context of the wider regional conflict?
We must take the local dimension seriously, because otherwise we run the risk of forgetting about the Palestinians. Israel’s military response to the terrorist attack of 7 October 2023 is perfectly understandable. But the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians did not begin on 7 October; Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank has also contributed to the escalation. We have to look at the conflict in isolation to realize that a détente is only possible together with the Palestinians and that the current war in Gaza, with its many civilian casualties and the lack of any prospect of a political solution, is leading Israel into a dead end. If we look at the bombardment of Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel by Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthi militia, regional actors are also playing a role, which makes it more complicated. The conflict between Israel and Iran comes into focus, too, which is currently escalating massively as a result of the Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and Iran’s missile attacks. I have the impression that the German public does not realize how close this region actually is and how threatening Iran as a revisionist power is to Israel, but also to Europe. When I left Cologne to study Arabic in Damascus for a year, it felt like a very distant place for many people. We realize today that this is not the case. It is possible to walk from Syria to Germany.
In Germany, demonstrations calling for a caliphate have recently provoked strong reactions. Are we overestimating or underestimating the danger of domestic Islamism?
Firstly, there is a security problem. We have a certain number of violent Islamists, and then a larger number of people who are on the verge of becoming violent. By and large, our security authorities can cope with this. But the number of problematic cases has increased with the waves of immigration since 2015. This should come as no surprise when we take in people from the three civil war countries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, where Islamists have always been strong. Then statistically, there will be a certain percentage of extremists.
But when we talk about the social consequences, we must look beyond the numbers of attacks carried out or thwarted. The growing threat posed by Islamists goes hand in hand with that posed by right-wing extremists. After all, that’s precisely what both sides want. Open borders make the issue more problematic overall: They lead to an increase in political violence from various sides. The democratic parties often only recognize this security policy dimension when it can no longer be ignored, as was the case after the attack in Solingen.
How can we improve internal security in order to avert the threat of Islamism?
To strengthen internal security, we need to work on our security apparatus, which is far too weak for what Germany will be facing in the coming years. We are still too dependent on the USA, and all it takes is the election of the wrong president to leave us defenceless. In my view, that is the biggest problem.
I am pessimistic when it comes to integration. Since 2015, schools in particular have experienced massive problems due to the high number of new arrivals. However, this is the only place where equal opportunities can be created. Today, this is no longer the case. We need completely new migration policies which do not abolish asylum and the protection of refugees, but carefully control who enters the country to minimize security risks. Because if the democratic parties in Germany and Europe do not manage to control the borders, other parties will eventually do so. We are beginning to see this happening in countries like Hungary and Italy, but also parts of eastern Germany.
Dr Guido Steinberg worked at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin in 2001. From 2002 to 2005, he worked in the ‘International Terrorism’ department of the Federal Chancellery. He then went to the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) in Berlin, where he has been researching the Middle East, Islamism and Islamic terrorism ever since. Since 2006, he has also acted as an expert in almost all proceedings against Islamist terrorists in Germany and has also provided expert opinions in Austria, Denmark, Canada and the USA.