As a modest, if prosperous nation of just 11 million, Belgium rarely
makes news headlines, yet today it has the unenviable distinction of being
Europe’s Jihadist hothouse.
After the Paris attacks, police quickly traced the terrorists to
Brussels, raiding addresses in the Molenbeek district and arresting seven
suspects. It was in the grimy, run-down, neighbourhood that investigators
believe the Paris plot was hatched by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-born son
of an immigrant shopkeeper from Morocco.
Abaaoud is only part of a web of Belgium-based foot soldiers, whose
exploits have left a trail of death across Europe. And beyond: around 500 young
Belgians have gone to Syria to fight for Jihadist groups like Isis – per
capita, no other European country has sent more foreign fighters.
Why is Belgium at the heart of Europe’s most destructive wave of
terrorism in a generation? There is no single explanation, but rather a number
of ingredients, from post-war immigration from north Africa, hate preachers,
ghettos, poverty, and marginalision. There is also a belated realisation by the
Belgian authorities that complacency towards extremism has allowed the
pernicious Islamic influences to fester.
Islamist extremism has a long history in Belgium. While there have been
few attacks on Belgian soil, there has been significant involvement in
atrocities elsewhere. There are links to the murder of the Afghan anti-Taliban
fighter Ahmed Shah Masoud – just before the September 2001 attacks in the US –
and the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant (GICM), which had a major role in
the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In 2005, Muslim convert Muriel Degauque, became
the first known female Western suicide bomber, when she blew herself up in
Iraq.
Some of the problems are thought to have deeper roots, including a 1970s
decision to allow Saudi Arabia to send preachers with fundamentalist, Salafist
teachings to Moroccan immigrants. The Great Mosque of Brussels is still owned
by the Saudi royal family. However, it was the Syrian civil war that gave the
jihadists their recent fillip. Belgium’s chief police commissioner Catherine de
Bolle says that of 474 Belgians linked with the Syria conflict, about 130 have
returned, 77 have died in the conflict, and more than 200 are still over there.
Intelligence officials say that Syria – in particular, the ultra-violent
ideology of Isis – represents a paradigm shift from seeking a regional
caliphate to global Jihad.
The Belgian connection was laid bare in the recent trial in Antwerp of
Fouad Belkacem, the leader of the radical group Sharia4Belgium, which claimed
to be an Islamic information network, but was actively recruiting fighters for
Syria.
Mr Belkacem, a 32-year-old Islamic radical, was accused by prosecutors
of belonging to a terrorist group and brainwashing young people. In February,
he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. It was the largest trial of its kind in
the country: 44 other members of Sharia4Belgium were given sentences ranging
between three and 12 years, although most of them in absentia, as they were in
Syria.
The trial revealed how sophisticated the underground
Jihadist pipeline had become. Although Belgian security services have
infiltrated mosques more effectively in past decade – in part, after
discovering a Belgian connection to the 2005 Madrid bombings –
Sharia4Belgium and others have found ways to evade surveillance by using
internet chat rooms and social media.
Almost all the trails linking Belgium to terrorism find their way to
Molenbeek, the deprived Brussels commune. Belgian Prime Minister Charles
Michel, who has promised a crackdown on extremism in the country, says there is
a “huge problem” in Molenbeek, and has suggested closing some of the commune’s
22 mosques.
The situation is not helped by a fractured law enforcement – the
Brussels region has 19 communes and operationally independent police zones –
and a shortage of Arabic speakers in the Belgian intelligence services.
Bilal Benyaich from the Itinera Institute, a Brussels-based think tank,
says Molenbeek is a melting pot of malign elements. “You have big Muslim
communities boxed into tight housing in poor neighbourhoods,” he says.
Mr Benyaich says that many young Muslims feel marginalised from
mainstream Belgian life. “This real or perceived sense of exclusion is combined
with extreme Islam,” he says. “All these problems come together in a complex
process of indoctrination and alienation.”
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