Terrorism

To have “no fear is the best weapon against terrorism”

It was the perfidious strategy of the terrorists to people everywhere confuse, says anxiety researcher Borwin Bandelow in the DW-Interview. On the duration of constant Terror could lead to a blunting.

Barriers in Brussels after the terrorist attacks

Deutsche Welle: Paris, Istanbul, Ankara, and now in Brussels: The risk of terrorism is currently, – at least felt – very large. What such attacks will make with the people?

Borwin Bandelow: people are naturally insecure, completely, whether or not you can now go to the Central station of Munich, whether you can now fly from Berlin, and perhaps the victim of a plot. It makes the people at the Moment is very, very unsafe, especially because it’s been a few months again and again.

Such attacks happen almost exclusively in large cities. The fear is greater, simply because it is enclosed in a terrorist attack in the city?

It’s so that someone who is in a certain place, such as, for example, Munich airport, then thinks: This could be the next place for a stop. But you have to say: The Chance to come to Germany through a terrorist attack killed, is very, very low compared to other dangers that lurk daily on us.

For example, 3,000 people die in accidents every year on the car and no power in the morning thoughts, when he sits in the car, whether he might be the next victim. But the people who stay at certain critical points, of course, have great anxiety, and also people who have to work there and every day go to.

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Is it rational to have fear?

If a danger comes, appears as an uncontrollable and, above all, is new, unsettled, these people are more than well-known dangers. The statistical probability of dying in a terrorist attack were killed, is completely compared overestimated, with the other dangers that lurk on us.

Terrorists don’t achieve their goal, if people from fear of terrorism to restrict your life?

The perfidious strategy of terrorists: they want to unsettle the people in any country, anywhere. You are mainly to this uncertainty. You have to remember that terrorists are people who often have mental health problems, but also very much the imagination develop as you this Western world to its foundations can be shaken. Consider, then, for so long, until you can do it in a way that the mass effect is particularly strong. That can be achieved with relatively little effort, an extreme effect, that is the goal.

And we must say: to have No fear of attacks, is our best weapon in the fight against terrorism. If we don’t try to change our life completely, to refrain from air travel or to go to Play football. As a result, we can fight terrorism better, than if we lay low now, into my shell.

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But if you but anxiety – what can you do?

There is no Trick on how you can work off this fear. You can say, of course, that the statistical probability is quite low that a single Person is caught from a stop, but this will be much of a consolation when you hear now of many of the Victims in Belgium. There is no special recipe on how you can protect yourself from this fear. Of course you have to know that life is always fraught with a certain amount of risk.

The people today are more afraid of Terror than in the past?

There were always waves. In September 2001, (red. Note: after the attacks in New York and Washington), it was already so, that there was a great fear of terrorist attacks. Now we have a long series of attacks in recent times, one has the feeling, it comes to nothing for the rest, it just goes on and on. The very concern, because of this effect, which occurs typically after four weeks that the people calm down again, at the Moment, again and again interrupted by new attacks.

This will lead one day to people to move perhaps faster to the agenda, as you have made it otherwise. So similar to how people in Baghdad, life, the, unfortunately, have to live with the fact that all of few days of a bomb. You get used to it and go to the market to shop. So similarly it will be also in Germany, that a bit dulls to these attacks. But at the Moment it looks that all of them are insecure.

Professor
Borwin Bandelow is an expert in anxiety disorders and President of the society for anxiety research. He is also Deputy Director of the clinic for psychiatry and psychotherapy of the University medical center Göttingen.

The conversation Helena Baers.