German terrorism cell is exposed before it can strike

Islamic terrorism obviously knows no borders.

German authorities have apparently thwarted a bomb plot that involved as many as a dozen people. But while the plot was hatched and would have been executed on German soil, its prime targets, investigators believe, were American facilities and citizens.

And the plot was on a time schedule tied to a date in American history, Sept. 11.

But what these most recent arrests show is the truly international nature of terrorism and that the loyalties of Islamic terrorists to their religious-political movement transcend nationality.

Two of the plotters who have been arrested were German converts to Islam. The third was Turkish. Little information has been released on the others being sought.

But for even more insight into how borderless terrorism can be, consider what German authorities have said so far about the men arrested.

They had undergone training at camps in Pakistan that were run by the Islamic Jihad Union and had formed a German cell of the al-Qaida-influenced group.

Officials described the Islamic Jihad Union as a Sunni Muslim group based in Central Asia that is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an extremist organization with origins in that former Soviet state.

They defy typecasting

From Germany, to Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is believed to be in hiding, and back to Germany. But with an organizational and ideological allegiance to a group from Uzbekistan. There is no pigeon-holing these terrorists.

Clearly, no single country — not even the United States — can claim to be leading or winning the war against terrorism. The terrorists are, potentially, everywhere, and even the United States cannot be everywhere.

The German terrorists had accumulated military-grade detonators and 200 gallons of concentrated hydrogen-peroxide, the equivalent of 1,200 pounds of TNT. Police said the bombs were similar to but more powerful than the bombs that killed 191 people in Madrid, Spain, and 52 in London.

The bombers’ targets were said to be the U.S. Ramstein air base and Frankfurt airport, both central to an area with a large American military presence. After the arrests, police raided 41 houses and apartments and were looking for about 10 additional persons of interest.

Once again, the face of evil is that of disaffected European males, with a strong immigrant and Islamic connection, clandestine visits to terrorist training camps and the willingness to slaughter innocents.

Germany and the United States can take comfort that this particular threat has been defused. But no one can take comfort in the ever-widening network of potential terrorists, and it becomes increasingly difficult to see how the war in Iraq is containing terrorism. It’s much easier to imagine that the images produced by the war are being used by propagandists to inspire potential terrorists throughout the West.