Ignore the lessons of Brussels at your peril

The jihadi terror attacks in Brussels were just waiting to happen. Domestic political instability in Belgium, whose capital hosts the headquarters of both the European Union and Nato, can be traced to the 1980s with known links to the Algerian civil war. Belgium produces more jihadis, relative to its population, than any other West European nation, with hundreds of acolytes joining Sunni militant outfits in Syria and Iraq like ISIS or Al Qaeda affiliate Jhabrat-al-Nusra. Around 40 per cent of Brussels’ youth lives in poverty, so there is a ready pool of disaffection waiting to explode. Brussels was also the hotbed of terror where the Paris attacks were planned.

There are ominous signs that more attacks are coming, as seen in a Twitter post circulated by ISIS backers warning: “What will be coming is worse.” The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and open societies face greater problems devising methods to secure public places, aviation hubs and transport networks like metro systems. The fight against terror, truth to tell, is really just beginning. While the attackers have enough resources to sow panic and fear with a few coordinated attacks like those in Paris and now Brussels, the overstretched security and intelligence forces have to save the world from well-plotted or lone wolf hits.

There is no part of today’s connected world this is immune to attacks. The importance of social networks in recruiting foreign fighters for dreaded outfits like ISIS can never be underestimated. While the forces ranged against them must be vigilant 24x7, including snooping on the Internet to ferret out plotters, a lot must be done to get to the heart of the problem. Minorities need to be integrated into mainstream life, youth joblessness must be tackled on a war footing and society, generally, made more inclusive so that the call of jihad holds lesser appeal.

India lies in a region that is prone to terror, and not only from the imported, ISI-inspired Pakistani kind. The data on the number of terrorist cells in the country owing allegiance to foreign outfits is not comprehensive. The belief that those who went to Syria or Iraq to support ISIS were too few to matter will only lead to complacency. It was Margaret Thatcher who once famously said “they” had to get lucky just once to wreak mayhem and make a government look weak and ineffective. Continuous monitoring of the indoctrinated, who went to ISIS and returned disenchanted, is called for as keeping tabs on anyone with his mind on terror is vital. As part of the free world, India must be particularly vigilant. That is the least we may have learnt from recent attacks on our soil as well as in Europe.