Institute Dedicated To Study of Terrorism Opens

The Institute for Research on Terrorism and Security Policy (IFTUS) has been set up to offer information on terrorism to a wider public as well as analyzing just how bad the global terrorist threat really is.

The institute is to be headed up by one of Germany's top terrorism experts, Rolf Tophoven, and will provide associations, private customers and businesses with information and advice on understanding militant terrorism.

No clear and present danger

Tophoven (photo), who had a stint at the end of the 1980s as the deputy head of Bonn's Institute for Terrorism Research, told Deutsche Welle at the institute's opening ceremony on Thursday that Germany was not in clear and present danger from the global terrorist threat, but the risk of attack was still there.

"Germany is not first in the firing line for international terrorists," he said. "The USA, Great Britain as well as other countries involved in the war on Iraq are more at risk, as well as Jewish and Israeli interests. But there are certainly Jewish and Israeli interests in Germany, and it is here where there is a risk."

However, Tophoven said, there is a high "abstract danger" to Germans and added it was likely German tourists would be targeted again, as was the case with the recently released adventure tourists taken hostage by Islamic militants in the Sahara Desert.

Tophoven said recent car bomb attacks in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq confirmed how necessary a basic analysis of terrorism and its threat has become. Above all, he said, it is necessary to have a clear picture of the enemy the world is now dealing with.

" I am absolutely certain that what the Americans are currently experiencing in Iraq is the result of a poor understanding of the ideology behind Islamic terrorism," he said. "Any regime can be taken out with tanks and aircraft warfare. But what comes afterwards is another matter. It's necessary to recognize the structure of militant Islam."

Engaging with the terrorist threat

As well as engaging in top-flight research in the coming months, IFTUS will also provide interested parties with seminars and day courses as well as a quarterly newsletter. That will pick up on the main issues of security policy as well as focusing on current terrorism-related news.

Tophoven has a few questions he'd like to pose the institute himself.

"What sort of defense mechanisms can free democratic societies create to ensure that our citizens are protected, but also ensure that their rights are not limited? And what are the chances of being able to predict future terrorist attacks?" he asks.