Germany’s Merkel remains confident in coping with refugee challenges

Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged Thursday to do “everything humanly possible” to ensure security in Germany following a string of attacks – including two carried out by asylum-seekers and claimed by the Islamic State group, which she said mocked the country that took in the assailants.

Unlike French President Francois Hollande, who on Tuesday visited Normandy where two assailants killed a priest, Merkel has not been to the scene of any of the attacks in Germany – an absence that has raised questions about her leadership.

“I did not say that it would be an easy task”, Merkel told reporters about finding a solution to the refugee crisis, adding she had expected challenges ahead when she made the decision to open borders last summer. More than 1 million came to Germany previous year, although the influx has since slowed dramatically.

“I am disappointed by the unwillingness of some in Europe to accept refugees”, she said.

Adding: “The basic principle that Germany stands by [is that] its humanitarian responsibility is the right thing”.

These attacks, as well as the recent ones in France and Turkey, have broken a “taboo of civilisation”, because they “happened in places where any of us could have been”, Merkel said.

“I am still convinced today that “we can do it” – it is our historic duty and this is a historic challenge in times of globalization”, she said.

In two other attacks – a mass shooting in Munich that claimed 10 lives, including the attacker’s, and the stabbing of a woman at a restaurant in Reutlingen – the motive is still unclear but Islamic extremism is not suspected.

Germany’s commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration is calling on mosques across the country to be more pro-active when it comes to preventing extremism among Muslim youths.

“All our predictions have been proven right”, Horst Seehofer, Bavaria’s state premier and a long-standing critic of Merkel’s open-door refugee policy, said on Tuesday.

She noted that attackers were not known by police and that an “early alarm system” would need to be established. He had applied for asylum in Germany but had been rejected because he had an asylum application already pending in Bulgaria, German authorities said.

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies throughout the world are struggling with the threat of attacks not only from people with little to no affiliation with ISIS but from returning foreign fighters, the consulting firm said.

And on Sunday, a failed Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up outside a music festival in Ansbach, wounding 15 people at a nearby cafe after being turned away from the packed open-air venue. In a calm and measured delivery, Merkel said it was a struggle against the self-declared “Islamic State”, (IS) “in my opinion, a war”.