K.O.M.I.T.E.E. Communique Concerning The Failed Attack In Berlin-
Gruenau
After the failed attack on the newly-constructed deportation
prison in Berlin-Gruenau on April 11, 1995, we weren't sure if we'd
release any more statements. Considering the charges being brought
against some people and all the uncertainties surrounding
everything, we weren't sure if words from us would just lead to the
cops making more arrests. It seemed best to as at first to hold off
from giving any account of what happened and to see how those
affected would react given the situation. But now we have decided
that we cannot delay any longer and that we must release a
statement to limit as far as possible the political damage. We
won't, however, give a detailed account of what happened that
night, that's up to the individuals themselves to comment on if
they want to. We don't think everyone out there needs to know all
the details in order to discuss the politics of our action and act
in solidarity with those accused.
The point of this text is to look at the serious errors we
made, to point these out, and to reflect on them in a self-critical
manner, especially so that others can learn from what we did wrong.
These errors made led to non-participants being brought into
association with our action.
We have drawn the necessary lessons from our mistakes: We are
ending our project called "Das K.O.M.I.T.E.E.". The motivation for
announcing this publicly stems from the political orientation of
our project and our responsibility to left-radical politics in
general.
But before we start, we would like to explain why we started
our project of carrying out militant attacks and give a resume of
our politics up to now.
Our Project: Das K.O.M.I.T.E.E.
Since the end of the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s, the
radical-left lost more and more of its social relevance from year
to year, as the praxis and content became increasingly distant from
radical positions. As long as there was a common strength, at the
militant level as well, we didn't think it was necessary to always
appear on the scene under the same name.
As the left began to retreat and the continuity of discussions
began to lapse, and as the foundations of common action which had
been worked out began to collapse, we decided it was necessary to
constitute ourselves as a group in the context of having continuity
and openly-stated politics.
We assumed that contributions and interventions by groups
whose name has become associated with a certain praxis and
political orientation were given greater attention within the left,
their statements are read and studied more, more so than groups
with no obvious continuity. We hoped over the course of time to
have a positive influence within the leftist scene and to help
establish certain points of orientation.
We were well aware of the fact that such an approach carries
with it certain responsibilities and precision. False estimations
of the political situation, a lack of clarity in political
discussion, and reproducing out-dated or false political starting
points were all things which we had to be careful to avoid,
especially since we hoped to offer some sort of orientation for the
left.
Why Militant Politics?
Considering the status of discussion within the radical left,
the silence and refusal to take a stand, we think it's necessary
for us to explain why we decided upon militant politics in a period
of relatively little movement. We're always hearing the argument
that, after the decline of the left-radical movement, just "keeping
going" is pointless, but these people don't seem to realize that
revolutionary politics here as always been on the margins for the
last few decades and never possessed a realistic strategy for
overthrowing the conditions.
Effective militant praxis is not enough to break through the
left's external lack of credibility and internal adaptation and
lack of courage. Radical critiques of the present conditions of
hierarchy, oppression, and exploitation which do not seek out,
utilize, and discover all forms of resistance will sooner or later
lose faith in themselves. To stick with our example: A left which,
correctly, states that it is a crime to construct and operate
deportation prisons, but which does not seek out all possible ways
of stopping such construction and operation, loses its perspective
and has defeat in its own mind right from the beginning. Our
method, if it had been successful, would not have been the only
gesture and certainly wouldn't have been the best, but it would
have been a lot better than all the complaints about the
impossibility of leftist politics in an increasingly right-wing
society.
We don't think that the left will develop a comprehensive
perspective out of feelings of helplessness and the loss of its
methods of struggle, rather it should try to draw strength from
trying to close the gap between thoughts and deeds, even in bad
times. With our name and our praxis, we wanted to make propaganda
for the possibilities of direct intervention and attack,
possibilities which are open to everyone who is not satisfied with
injustice and oppression.
We aren't saying militant politics is the only way to go in
today's society, but we definitely think it was wrong to put all
praxis on ice until we could look for the exactly right strategy.
We think further development can only take place in the context of
a process of reflection and action. Learning by doing. And someday
when the conditions are better, when fundamental critiques of the
system are in a broader social acceptance, then it will be damn
important to be able to look back on a history where we didn't give
up the fight, even during times of adaptation to fundamental
mainstream positions.
Last but not least, there is also a moral aspect to radical
politics: Even if we can't point out the magic solution to
everything, we don't want to just sit back and look around and try
to sort out our own cozy place on dry land.
Our Praxis
We didn't want to limit our content to just one theme. We
thought about carrying out actions in various sectors, like attacks
on fascist organizations, the rise of fascism in the society,
sexist roll-back, cutbacks on social spending, and so on.
Initially, we oriented our work towards the liberation
struggle of the Kurdish people. The important thing was for us, a
German leftist group, to act. We saw it as a sign of the bankruptcy
of the left that so many radical groups did nothing at all. Some
justified this with understandable critiques of the politics of the
PKK. But criticisms of the PKK are no justification for a lack of
solidarity as far as we're concerned. We saw the German state as
the most important partner in Turkey's war of genocide against the
Kurds, as we saw it as the duty of the German left to break through
their lethargy and actively oppose German policy.
Germany is a party to the genocide in Kurdistan - militarily,
economically, politically - and is the most trusted partner of the
Turkish military, as well as the long arm of counter-insurgency
against the Kurdish resistance in Europe.
This has not changed.
We wanted to push this theme within the left by carrying out
a series of attacks on German institutions responsible for the war
in Kurdistan.
The First Step: The Army Barracks In Bad Freienwalde
The first target of our campaign was the October 27, 1994
attack on the Defence Commando 852 barracks of the federal army in
Bad Freienwalde in the Markische Oberland area of the former East
Germany. We destroyed the barracks with a firebomb attack. In our
communique, we wrote: "We chose this piece of army property because
it is illustrative of the cooperation and active support which
exists between the German army and the Turkish 'security forces',
as well as of the foreign and domestic policies of Germany which
are directed against the Kurdish liberation struggle."
Our communique gave a detailed description of the cooperation
which exists between the German state and the regime in Turkey. We
don't need to repeat all of that in this text. We also discussed
the criminalization of Kurds in Germany and cited that as one
significant element of the cooperation between the two governments.
Potentially, our action could have helped focus more attention
on Germany's own army. True, the development of Germany's foreign
policy has not been hard to predict. Particularfy after the most
recent development in the Balkans, the first Germany military
deployment since the end of World War Two, the German armed forces
need to be placed under greater scrutiny.
All in all, our first attack was a symbolic action, but there
was a great deal of media attention given to it because of the
context of solidarity with the Kurdish liberation struggle and the
continuing smear-campaigns against the PKK. Therefore, one of our
goals, to act as German leftists in solidarity with the Kurdish
liberation struggle, was displayed widely in the open.
On The Way To Our Second Strike...
The German state will continue its attempts to break Kurdish
resistance in Germany to the genocide in Kurdistan and to exert
great repression.
Mass deportations are a guarantee of "domestic security" and
are at the core of imperialist refugee policies!
The cynical, continuously repeating debates about lifting the
ban on deporting Kurds, initially limited to those portrayed to the
public as "criminals" who have abused their "guest rights" here in
Germany, soon gets conveniently applied to all Kurds. Those who
have pushed this line the hardest are Minister Kanther (federal
interior minister), Beckstein (Bunzlauerstrasse 23, 90473
Nuremberg, Bavaria), Eggert (Saxony), and Heckelmann (Berlin).
Deportation into misery, torture, and death, hanging over the heads
of Kurds like Damocles' sword, that should make the Kurds here
peaceful. And that's necessary to preserve the economic and
hegemonic interests of the German state.
In addition to the Kurds, other refugee groups are affected as
well. So the mass deportations of war refugees and deserters from
ex-Yugoslavia has begun. The deportation agreement with Vietnam.
The "return" of Vietnamese nationals as a precursor to economic
assistance.
Large-scale deportations have to be planned. That requires an
adequate capacity of deportation detention facilities, since most
refugees don't leave of their free will.
To serve this need, a former East German women's prison in
Berlin-Gruenau has been converted. With an extra 400 beds, Berlin's
deportation detention capacity will be more than doubled. The
efficient concentration of the entire deportation process at
Schoenefeld Airport and makes deportations as easy as an assembly-
line and makes the entire process a lot cheaper.
This new deportation prison was a second attack point in our
vision.
The capacity in the older deportation facilities in
Kruppstrasse and in the police stations in Gothaer Strasse and
Beimlerstrasse have been overflowing for some time now. Over-
crowding and inhumane conditions have often led to prisoner revolts
and protests by humanitarian groups. But these protests usually
focused on the poor conditions in the deportation detention
centers, but they didn't necessarily question deportation as such.
Typically of such an mind-set is a certain Albert Eckert, a deputy
of the Green Party, who stated in October 1994 that foreigners
should only be arrested immediately prior to their deportation.
As a "temporary measure" to help solve the problem, the former
U.S. army prison in the McNair barracks in Steglitz was filled with
30 deportees. According to press reports from the end of July 1994,
the police station in Gallwitzallee in Lankwitz will soon have 80
deportation spaces. We don't know what will come of these sites.
In order to head off possible protest, the interior ministry,
as was the case with the high-tech prisons in Weiterstadt and
Plotzensee, pointed to the many great features of the Gruenau
facility: sufficient capacity, common rooms, small-group detention
units, a medical ward, sports facilities, translators, social
workers, hell, they are even going to expand the courtyard space
for the detainees, so that "the deportees can stretch their legs a
bit" (Norbert Schmidt, Berlin senate interior ministry spokesman).
Refugees about to kicked out of the country should feel good
in German deportation prisons, before deserters from Yugoslavia are
sent back to sacrifice their lives for nationalist madness, before
Kurds disappear in the torture chambers of the Turkish secret
police MIT.
Finally, these measure not only represent more control to
prevent revolts and break-outs, rather they also signify the
increased rationalization of the deportation process. In the face
of this, protests against poor conditions in the detention centers
are mute.
We should not be concerning ourselves with more human
deportation practices. We are out to abolish deportation detention
altogether on the way towards a general right to stay for all
refugees!
Our contribution to this was to have been blowing up the new
prison in Gruenau. A successful attack would have had far more than
a symbolic nature. It would have been an effective intervention in
the deportation process, at least a temporary halt to the expansion
of deportation machinery.
The Failed Attack In Gruenau
A lot of what the press wrote about that night of April 11 is,
in fact, correct. It was merely an unfortunate coincidence that the
two cars were discovered at the parking lot in Rabindranathstrasse.
One was a stolen vehicle which contained the explosives and other
materials for the action, for example a locksmith device which we
had with us in case we came across any doors that needed to be
opened, and inside the other car were some ID cards and other
personal effects. A cop car which just happened to be in the area
saw the two vehicles and decided to investigate. The discovery of
the two cars and the subsequent search for four individuals were
not the result of some careful scheme, rather a major screw-up on
our part for being careless about possibly involving non-
participants. We won't say any more about that, rather we'll leave
it up to those people who are on the run to go public and explain
why they are being sought after if that's what they want to do.
True, we did want to blow up the deportation prison. The media
reported that the construction site was well-guarded. That's not
true. There was one guard post in a corner of the site, which was
being manned. Despite careful and repeated surveillance missions,
we never detected any patrols. A few days after our failed attack,
some cops were stationed in a watch tower, but they hadn't been
there before. After using a ladder to get over the wall we were
able to walk around the entire prison and check everything out.
There were no locked doors.
For the explosives, we were utilizing 4 propane gas canisters
filled with 30kg of an 80:20 ratio mixture of nitric chloride and
powdered sugar. We placed the canisters in the cellar of the
prison. This would have caused maximum damage to the facility, and
according to our calculations, the entire thing would have to then
be torn down.
Outside, we had painted signs warning of the blast to come and
displaying our group's name. These were to be placed at various
entrances to the building in order to warn any eventual patrols of
guards and to tell them to get to safety. But based on our
surveillance, we didn't think that would happen.
We had ruled out the possibility of any other persons being
harmed by the blast.
Media claims that the bombs were armed and that we were
walking around with the timers ticking are just ridiculous. Another
stupid claim is that our homemade mixture would have had eight
times the effect of the Oklahoma City explosion. (In Oklahoma, in
the USA, a federal building which housed an office of the CIA, as
well as a kindergarten, was destroyed by fascists.) The obvious
intent here was to associate us with dead children in Oklahoma. The
bomb in the USA was 95% ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) and 5%
gasoline or diesel and was hence the "correct" way to make an
ammonium explosive, one which is much more powerful than an
explosive made of a nitric chloride mixture.
The press reports not only reflected the lack of knowledge and
the absurd fantasies of journalists, but rather they also hid the
interests of the intelligence agencies, from whom they may have
originated. The goal was to create a horrible image, one in which
anyone could have fallen victim to our action, and thereby to
create great distortion. This would then prevent a discussion of
the political context of our action and make solidarity impossible.
Our Mistakes
For carrying out the action in Gruenau, we had decided upon a
fixed time schedule. As the day for the action approached, it
became clearer to us that we hadn't allotted any time for
unforeseen problems or to deal with and collectively solve the
latent fears of individual participants. We were missing something,
which was nothing new for this group of men; it was left to each
individual to his assigned task and thus we each lost sight of the
broader task at hand. This was a mistake. All actions, especially
one of this dimension, should allow time for intermediate
collective decision-making. The goal of the action or some time
schedule should not hide the actual situation of the individual
participants involved.
For the planned action in Gruenau, we were using the same sort
of timing devices as during the attack on the barracks in Bad
Freienwalde. We had also painted warning signs displaying our
group's name. Therefore, before this action was even carried out,
we were already making ourselves complicit in a previous attack.
Many people probably asked themselves, how could we possibly
violate one of the ten commandments of autonome militancy, namely
just doing things once in any given manner. Well, here's our
"reasoning" on that issue.
Long before we planned the Gruenau attack, we had perfected a
certain type of timing device whose dependability we could count
on. Of course, we could have come up with another method before
Gruenau. But, the way we looked at it, if any of us was going to
get discovered and busted, then it would probably be on the grounds
of the prison itself where the chances of getting away are slim -
prisons are good at trapping people. Since we figured the charges
for trying to blow up a prison would be pretty heavy, the added
stigma of the Freienwalde action would not be too severe. So, we
stuck with our trusty old timing device.
And, according to this logic which made us already connected
to the Bad Freienwalde attack, there was no reason not to write our
group's name on the warning signs, Besides, a warning sign with a
recognizable group name on it would be taken more seriously. What's
more, if the bombing had been a success, the press reports would
naturally mention our first action and thereby publicize the
political context of our attack.
It's pretty clear from all of this that we were operating
under a sort of "All or Nothing" logic. As the turn of events and
the subsequent pig investigations show, we were very short-sighted.
Those people who are now in the cops' sight because of our mistakes
now have to deal with problems like membership in a terrorist
organization. Without the similar timing devices and the warning
signs, that would not be the case.
Our approach also entailed unnecessary risks to ourselves as
well. All actions should be planned in such a way that, in the
event of an arrest before or during the action, no previous actions
can be pinned on the person busted.
Conclusion
In contrast to the picture portrayed by the media, Berlin-
Gruenau was not some sort of kamikaze stunt, rather it was a very
realistic action. The fact is, though, we produced several serious
mistakes during our planning. The biggest one, we think, was not
giving ourselves enough time to have the option of bailing out if
need be or to solve any sudden problems which might arise. Most of
the other mistakes stemmed from this lack of time and the inability
to come together and discuss the problems until the best possible
solution had been found.
We must draw consequences from these mistakes. No amount of
regret from us can change the fact that some people are in trouble
with the authorities because of us. All we can do is try and limit
the damage.
We did not live up to the responsibilities which we claimed at
the beginning of this text. Our intention was to mobilize the
radical-left, but now, just the opposite has happened because of
our failure!
We will end our political work as the K.O.M.I.T.E.E. This
decision is necessary because of the sum total of all the mistakes
we made.
Continuing to be active politically under this name could
potentially cause more harm for those who are already in trouble.
We all well aware of the judicial vengeance of Germany's 129a
trials, and we know that those accused will be tried according to
political opportunity, not evidence.
Our decision to disband is by no means a renunciation of
militant politics, rather our personal consequences from a debacle.
Now, just as ever, we thinks it's important and correct to
intervene, with militant means, against the political and military
plans of the ruling powers and to point out, prevent, and attack
their projects wherever possible.
We are very pleased by the initiative of the
K.O.L.L.E.K.T.I.V. who have taken up our theme and are carrying it
forward.
