Last week, on Tuesday, March 22, two iconic edifices — the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi — located 5,000 km apart, draped themselves in Belgium’s national colours to mourn together the wanton killing of 31 people earlier that day in Brussels. Early investigations have revealed that this latest atrocity was the handiwork of two Brussels-based brothers of Arab origin, Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, who carried out suicide attacks at the airport and a metro station, with another partner who died in the airport attack, and a fourth accomplice who escaped from the airport.
In a statement released through one of its media outlets, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for these attacks, blaming Belgium for “participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State”.
The tentacles of the ISIS have now reached out of its capital, Raqqa, in Syria, and have wreaked murder and mayhem in the capital of the European Union and the headquarters of Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation): jihad, spawned in West Asia, has struck at the military and cultural heart of the West.
After an extensive manhunt in several European countries, a number of possible associates of the main perpetrators have joined Salah Abdeslam (the last surviving terrorist involved in the Paris attacks of November 2015) in police custody, even as attacks on the ISIS bases in Syria have been intensified. A little before the Brussels attacks, the Belgian foreign minister had warned that in his four months in Brussels after escaping from Paris, Abdeslam had built up a new terrorist network in Brussels and had possibly linked his jihadi group with existing criminal networks as well.
The latest attacks have focused attention on Belgium as the “incubator of jihad”. There has been some unwelcome scrutiny of Belgian politics, with its deep divide between its French and Dutch-speaking populations that, observers believe, has weakened national institutions, including the security services. A local mayor has referred to the country’s security set-up as “a perfect example of organised chaos”.
The scale of the challenge for security forces to monitor the movements of suspected terrorists is daunting: 20 special agents are required to maintain a 24-hour surveillance of just one suspect, while the total size of the Belgium state security is only 600 officials. A few days before the Brussels attacks, the country’s head of military intelligence had called for a thorough revamp of Belgium’s security apparatus.
Belgium’s location at the crossroads of Europe, its fragile central authority and its long association with illegal arms trade on the continent have made it a congenial sanctuary for jihadi activists, both planners and operatives. Investigations after the Paris attacks in November last year had revealed that Belgium had been the logistical hub of the operation. In fact, Belgium-based terrorists have been involved with almost every major jihadi attack in the West since 9/11.
Belgian’s interior minister has admitted that there were “inexcusable” errors in his country’s handling of intelligence received last year from Turkey. European terrorism experts have now pointed that ISIS had been preparing to attack European targets for the last three years, confirming that this jihadi organisation, contrary to earlier impressions, has always had a global agenda.
The well-known authority on Al Qaeda and the ISIS, Jason Burke, in a recent article has pointed out that of the half-a-million Muslim population in Belgium (out of a total population of 11 million), nearly 500 Belgian Muslims have joined jihadi groups in Syria, the highest number per capita from any European country. He notes that Belgium has the same problems with its Arab origin community that other neighbouring countries have, i.e. the bulk of them are poorly educated, unemployed and socially marginalised, with many linked to criminal gangs and having access to weapons.
Mr Burke points out that the majority have been lured to jihad not by radical preachers but by social peers who have played on their idealism and adolescent rebelliousness. European jihadis of course include some extremists as well, often, like the El Bakraoui brothers, with a long criminal record. While about 80 Belgian recruits have been killed in the battlefields of Syria, some have returned to their home country to carry out terrorist attacks in Europe, such as the Paris attacks in November last year and the assault on the Copenhagen Cultural Centre and Synagogue in February this year.
Since the ISIS was proclaimed in June 2014, it has carried out 75 attacks in 20 countries, outside Iraq and Syria, in which nearly 1,300 people have been killed. The Brussels attacks are also the sixth attack by the ISIS in the last six weeks, the earlier ones having taken place in Baghdad, Damascus and Homs in Syria, in Tunisia, and then in Istanbul just a few days ago.
Experts have noted that, with the earlier Paris attacks and more recently the encounter between ISIS terrorists and the Belgian police at Verviers in January, the radicals are showing considerable sophistication in evading detection, putting up a professional defence when attacked, and cheerfully facing death when cornered. It is clear that even as the ISIS is receiving powerful blows in its home territories from the international coalition and has even lost some major towns, it is making up for these setbacks by carrying out audacious attacks far from home, taking advantage of cadres experienced in war, terror and subversion in Syria and Iraq.
Perhaps, to boost European morale, US secretary of state John Kerry has asserted that “the caliphate is collapsing”, but European leaders continue to believe that the ISIS remains a serious threat. In response to the latest carnage, sober policymakers and commentators have called for restraint, emphasising the need to address the alienation of Europe’s Arab population, rather than resort to unrestrained rhetoric and firepower.
But the most likely impact of the latest attacks will be calls in Europe for restrictions on free movement across the Schengen zone, curbs on receiving refugees, and heightened Islamophobia fanned by Right-wing extremists who expect to reap considerable electoral gains. Thus, the idea of “Europe” will get corroded and the continent’s enlightenment values, nurtured over three centuries, questioned and possibly abandoned: a significant achievement for a jihadi organisation that came to public attention just two years ago.
