Belgium, a country known worldwide for its beer and chocolate, has been connected with Islamic extremism as police and military forces conduct a series of raids in Brussels hunting for the last remaining fugitive linked to the Paris attacks.
The raids in the Belgian capital have seen hundreds of troops patrolling streets and authorities searching for Salah Abdeslam, a fugitive since being named a suspect in the Paris attacks that killed 130 and wounded more than 350 on Nov. 13.
Molenbeek linked to other attacks
One specific district, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, has been not only be linked to the terrorist attacks but also to the train bombings in Madrid in 2004; the killing of four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum in 2014 and the attempted shooting on a high-speed train earlier this year, according to the Associated Press.
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Why Molenbeek has been connected to so many terror-related incidents is hard to pin down says Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor at the Royal Military College who specializes in terrorism.
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But one reason is the complex structure the city of Brussels itself and the deep division between French and Dutch speakers that has led to justice and security problems.
“Brussels isn’t one city, it really is 19 cities, each with its own mayor, each with its own bureaucracy and infrastructure,” said Leuprecht. “So it’s very difficult to have any coherent policy for the city as whole. Until recently they even had 19 police forces, but they managed to bring that down to six.”
Last week, the Belgian prime minister acknowledged the complicated structure of the city has led to problems in the fight against extremism.
“We have to do more and we have to do better,” Prime Minister Charles Michel told legislators on Thursday.
Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told the RTL network that the fugitive Abdeslam “must have a lot of support on our territory. That’s why all these searches being conducted at the moment are important.”
Jambon said another challenge is that most Belgians who join terrorist groups are citizens, whose families have lived there for several generations, making it difficult for authorities to take away their passports to stop them from traveling to Syria.
Societal divisions
Leuprecht says the divisions in Belgian society between 6.5 million Dutch speakers in northern Flanders and the 4.5 million French speakers in southern Wallonia have led to problems in creating policies.
“Municipal integration strategies makes it difficult to have coherent labour market strategies,” said Leuprecht, which has led to high-unemployment in districts like Molenbeek.
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The lack of police coordination and intelligence sharing has also allowed Islamic extremism to go unchecked in Molenbeek. The Islamic radical group Sharia4Belgium was allowed to operate in Belgium for years and it wasn’t until February 2015 that it was formally designated as a terrorist organization and its leader sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Unemployment and disenfranchisement are examples of social problems that need to be solved through local agencies in the fight against extremism, said Leuprecht.
“We have central governments responding to things that are ultimately local problems,” he said. “If people have social problems, if they are unemployed, have challenges at school or aren’t integrated well … these are issues you don’t solve with central government, you have to solve at the local level.”
*With files from the Associated Press
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