Story highlights
Germans have unsettling fear that country is not prepared for security and integration challenges, writes Atika Shubert
"Angst," the Germany word for fear, is now commonly heard during conversations in local beer gardens, she says
An ax attack, a mass shooting, a machete assault and now a suicide blast. Four attacks in one week, all in Germany’s Bavaria region.
They appear to be unrelated for now. But three of the attackers were recently arrived refugees. One was a German-Iranian dual citizen. And all were young men between the ages of 18 and 27.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister, Joachim Herrman, was visibly shaken early Tuesday morning, hours after a Syrian refugee blew himself with a backpack explosive.
“I have been Interior Minister in Bavaria for nearly nine years,” he told the press. “And I have never experienced anything like this until now.”
Germany is on edge. “Wilkommenskultur” – the buzzword that welcomed more than a million refugees into the country last year – has given way to an unsettling fear that the country is not prepared for the security and integration challenges of taking in a diverse, often traumatized population that comes with their own emotional baggage.
Police are still piecing together how and why Mohammad Daleel, a 27-year old Syrian refugee living in Ansbach, decided to pack a bag of explosives, screws and bolts and detonate it outside a crowded music festival.