Belgium: The Scale of the Threat Facing Europe
| Publisher | Jamestown Foundation |
| Author | Alexander Sehmer |
| Publication Date | 1 April 2016 |
| Citation / Document Symbol | Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 3 |
| Cite as | Jamestown Foundation, Belgium: The Scale of the Threat Facing Europe, 1 April 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 3, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/570382af4.html [accessed 3 November 2019] |
| Disclaimer | This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. |
Link to original story on Jamestown website
Belgian counterterrorism forces are under particular scrutiny following the attacks in Brussels that left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured. The attacks on the morning of March 22- which consisted of three blasts, two at Zaventem airport and one at the Maalbeek metro station, just down the road from the EU's headquarters-came four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, wanted in connection with last year's Paris attacks (Le Soir, March 18).
Abdeslam, who had been on the run since he allegedly failed to detonate his suicide vest in the French capital in November, had been able to evade capture in Brussels for months, at one point hiding in the same apartment in Schaerbeek for three weeks (La Dernière Heure, February 19). After his capture, Belgium interrogators reportedly treated him with kid gloves, interrogating him for just one hour as he was recovering from a gunshot wound in the leg sustained during the operation to apprehend him. Then, in the wake of the attacks, it emerged that crucial information about Abdeslam's whereabouts had not been entered into the police database (VTM, March 25), and that Belgium had ignored a warning from Turkey that it had arrested Brahim el-Bakraoui, one of the Brussels airport bombers, on the border with Syria in June last year (BBC, March 24).
Belgian's security forces are undoubtedly struggling - and have admitted a catalogue of errors (BBC, March 30) - but to accuse them of being entirely complacent is unfair. They face an uphill task. There are at least 117 Belgian citizens in the country who have returned home from fighting in Syria, according to figures released this year by the interior ministry (Le Soire, February 22). Other European countries face the same problem, an issue explored further in this issue of Terrorism Monitor in "Finland Raises Terror Alert as Jihadist Scene Grows More Complex" by Juha Saarinen.
For all the fanfare around Abdeslam's arrest, Belgian interior minister Jan Jambon had already warned security forces that jihadist networks were stepping up plans for an attack (EU Observer, March, 21). A joint French-Belgian raid on a Brussels apartment on March 15 had uncovered Salafist material, along with weapons and ammunition. It also ended (unexpectedly, it seems) in a shootout in which another Islamic State (IS) operative in Europe connected to the Paris attacks-an Algerian named Mohamed Belkaid-was killed.
Under pressure in Iraq and Syria, IS has promised further assaults on Europe. Germany, which made at least two arrests in the days following the Brussels attacks, has grown increasingly nervous since the events in Paris (Deutsche Welle, March 26). A day after the Brussels attacks, the pro-IS Wafa Media Foundation published a message in which it promised, in typically verbose fashion, to plunge all of Europe into a "black nightmare" and went on to direct comments at UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
The events in Brussels have led to an inevitable wave of arrests across the continent. The issue may lie less in the complacency of the Belgian authorities, and more in the extent of the counterterrorism task facing Europe's capitals.
