Daniel Benjamin
When a bomb goes off in Europe, Americans shudder as
if rocked by the blast. Whatever the geographical reality, post-industrial Old
Europe — in Donald Rumsfeld’s deathless phrase — is, emotionally speaking, our
nearest neighbor and closest peer. So if an explosion propels shattered glass
and broken bodies in a Brussels airport, we instinctively expect it to happen
in the U.S. next.
We shouldn’t. While the jihadist threat is genuinely global, it is by no
means equally distributed.
There is, of course, no such thing as perfect
security, and as we saw as recently as the San Bernadino shootings in December
of last year, there are individuals in the United States who are prepared to
commit violence against other Americans. But the European context underlying
the attacks at Brussels Airport and the downtown Maelbeek subway station — one
of alienated, underemployed and ghettoized Muslims as well as subpar security
differs dramatically from anything found in the United States.
To begin with, consider the Muslim minority communities of North America
and Europe. In the United States, Muslim communities are mostly comprised of
reasonably well-off families from numerous Muslim majority countries. Income
and education levels are roughly those of average Americans — the only sizeable
asterisk on that statement is the impoverished refugees who have come from
Somalia.
By contrast, Europe’s Muslim communities were seeded by poor peasants
who came as guest workers for the burgeoning industries of the postwar period.
They were expected to return home. Instead, they stayed even as their
industries faded — think of Britain’s rust belt in the Midlands — and grew in
numbers due to family unification and comparatively high fertility.
They came poor and, to a large extent, have stayed poor, with little
access to higher education and much higher unemployment rates than the
non-Muslim populations. And this is in countries already plagued by high
unemployment. They tend to be concentrated in rundown urban neighborhoods that
look more like the places they and their forbears hail from — with their
satellite dishes and drying laundry — than the surrounding neighborhoods.
Although the overwhelming majority of European Muslims
want nothing to do with extremism and, as polls show, are often as patriotic or
more so than their non-Muslim fellow citizens, there are more extremists in
their midst than in the United States. In Belgium, the numbers are particularly
high. According to a Soufan Group report from December, for example, 470
Belgian Muslims have gone to fight in Syria or Iraq out of a population of
about 660,000 — in terms of rate of recruitment, it is the top supplier of
militants in Western Europe.
By contrast, an estimated 250 American Muslims have gone to the region
out of a population five or more times larger. (Demographics on the U.S. Muslim
community are problematic; Pew puts its estimate at 3.3 million Muslims.)
Overall, Western European Muslims are three times likelier to end up in ISIStan
than their American co-religionists. As an indicator of radicalization levels,
this is pretty definitive.
For another barometer though, consider this: Since
9/11, the four largest attacks in Europe — Madrid (2004), London (2005), Paris
(2015) and Brussels (2016) have claimed at least 426 lives. In the United
States, even with the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing and San
Bernadino, the total is 45. Add in a passel of smaller attacks over the years
in Europe, and the difference with the United States is a factor of ten.
One big reason why the chances of a Brussels or Paris-like attack are
lower here is that we’ve been working flat out to reduce the threat for almost
15 years, since 9/11. With one of the worst extremism problems in the West,
Britain has gone hard at this as well. But the same cannot be said for our
Continental cousins. The United States has spent upwards of $650 billion on
homeland security since 9/11. No comparable European statistic exists, but
judging by law enforcement, border security and other agency budgets, the
overall figures are much lower. The numerous French government foul-ups in the
run-up and aftermath of the Paris attacks tell the story.
Within this picture, Belgium has been an especially sad case. Deeply
riven by political conflicts between its Flemings and Walloons over political
reform, the country was distracted by a domestic political crisis that ran on
and off from 2007 to 2011. During much of this time, there was only a caretaker
government, and the Belgians’ inability to improve their counterterrorism
capabilities was a running frustration for U.S. officials. At one point, I
observed to a senior Belgian official that his country was competing with Iraq
for taking the longest time to form a government. “The comparison is not
welcome,” he replied drily. In the end, the Belgians took more than twice as
long — 541 days — to form a government; their authorities were stuck with flat
budgets and little room for new programs.
There are other reasons why Europe is — and will be — more bedevilled by
jihadist terrorism for some years to come. The United States still has the
blessing of geography — two oceans that mean that outside extremists will need
to fly to get here. As we found on Christmas Day 2009, when Umar Farouk
Abdulmuttalab tried to detonate his underwear on a flight bound for Detroit,
our aviation security, no-fly lists and intelligence needs constant updating.
But we have made major strides.
By contrast, Europe, with its weak external
borders, non-existent internal borders and a migrant crisis that has brought
close to million and a half migrants into its borders, faces multiplying
perils.
America’s advantages are no reason for complacency, even if they do
suggest that panic isn’t justified. Much could still go wrong, especially if
the U.S. presidential campaign continues to demonize American Muslims, who are
the first line of defense against extremism — and whose trust in U.S. law
enforcement is invaluable — will likely continue for months to come. And if the
violence in Europe spreads, we still face a major challenge — a fire next door
with unpredictable consequences.
Ambassador Daniel Benjamin is Director of the John
Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and
served as Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department 2009-2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment