Germany Braces for Trouble From Without and Within

The World Cup opened in Germany on Friday as security forces prepared for terrorism, racial attacks, hooligan violence and neo-Nazi rallies aimed at rousing the past and spoiling the nation’s image before a global audience.

The monthlong soccer tournament will be played in 12 cities, creating a massive security grid of hundreds of thousands of police officers, surveillance equipment, bomb-sniffing dogs, intelligence operatives, fighter jets and other anti-terrorist tools of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Germany is expecting up to 1.5 million visitors from dozens of countries, and the security presence was evident this week with police ringing stadiums and helicopters skimming overhead as arriving fans waved flags and chanted songs. The nation’s borders were tightened and German authorities worked with police in Britain, the Netherlands and other countries to stem the flow of thousands of hooligans.

“There’s hardly a better target than the World Cup,” Bavarian state Interior Minister Guenther Beckstein said. “Some matches are watched by billions of people around the world.” Beckstein oversees Munich, where a match between Germany and Costa Rica opened the tournament.

Europe has been unnerved in recent years by terrorist cells that carried out bombings in Madrid and London. Germany and other nations are also battling rising right-wing extremism. And the ranks of soccer’s indelible troublemakers, drunken fans with penchants for vandalism and violence, have been thinned in some countries but are growing in others.

Memories also linger of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, when Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian militants. A rescue attempt left 11 Israelis, five terrorists and a police officer dead.

The Munich attack and the specter of today’s international terrorism led to debates recently in Parliament about deploying German troops around stadiums. Since World War II, the use of the army on home soil has been a sensitive subject. In this case, the government has opted to dispatch soldiers in a visible role only if catastrophe strikes.

A major concern of German police is that neo-Nazi and skinhead groups will exploit the tournament’s international media coverage. Using text cellphone messages and websites, right-wing extremists have been planning rallies and meetings with radicals from around Europe. The National Democratic Party, a remnant of Hitler’s Nazi machine, has told members to march in Leipzig on June 21 when Iran plays Angola. The German far right supports Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s calls to annihilate Israel.

“The neo-Nazis are well-organized, and that’s what we’re afraid of,” said Andreas Nowak, a security expert and lawyer for the German police union. “If the neo-Nazis march, that means we’ll have counterdemonstrations from left-wing anarchists that could lead to clashes. The right wing wants to send those pictures to show neo-Nazis still exist in Germany. They want to see themselves on TV.”

The radical right is a fringe movement deplored by most Germans. But a recent government report shows that right-wing, racially motivated violence jumped 23% in 2005 and that the number of right-wing extremists willing to use force rose from 10,000 to 10,400.

National attention focused on the trend on Easter morning when an engineer of Ethiopian descent was beaten into a coma by three extremists in Potsdam. Sixteen suspected neo-Nazis were arrested weeks later in connection with attacks on dark-skinned foreigners in three German cities.

Right-wing extremism is strongest in the east, where unemployment, anger and prejudice against immigrants is high 16 years after German reunification. A former politician recently said that parts of the east should be considered “no-go areas” for blacks. The African Council of Berlin-Brandenburg has advised blacks to stay in groups and be aware that “the more people at the site of an attack, the higher the probability that nobody will step in to help.”

German security forces want to avoid the atmosphere of the 1990s, when a spate of immigrant deaths conjured up scenes from the nation’s past and led to a crackdown on neo-Nazis. “During the World Cup, everyone can feel safe wherever he goes in Germany,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.

Hooligans are more difficult to contain. Fueled by alcohol, their violence is more sporadic -- fights in pubs and stadiums and rampages through streets. Their actions were epitomized for years by hundreds of Britons who traveled to soccer matches throughout Europe.

More than 15 countries have been working with German authorities to confiscate passports to prevent known hooligans from attending the World Cup.

“Hooligans from England aren’t the biggest danger anymore,” Nowak said. “We’re afraid these days of Polish hooligans because they don’t have to travel far to get to Germany. There’s a very dangerous hooligan scene in Poland.”

In what was described as a warmup fight to the World Cup, about 100 Polish and German hooligans clashed in the woods near the nations’ border in November.

Forty people were injured in the rumble, which also included bouncers and members of a motorcycle gang. Eighty-three brawlers were arrested. Police fear similar violence when Poland’s soccer team plays Germany on June 14 in Dortmund.

“I don’t think the problem facing the World Cup is terrorism or racism,” said Michael Backendorf, who studies and writes about soccer violence. The danger, he said, is hooligans and other radical groups coming together “where all it takes is one day, on one street, in one cafe for bad things to happen.”