Why Brussels Become Home to so Many Terrorists?
Why Brussels Become Home to so Many Terrorists?
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BRUSSELS - Brussels, it's a quaint but bustling city, famed for its picture postcard squares, its chocolate and its beer. But it is rapidly becoming infamous too, as a fertile recruiting ground for jihadi fighters.
According to police, the carnage of the Paris attacks was plotted here, and it was in these streets that fugitive Salah Abdeslam hid out in an apartment after abandoning his mission, dumping his suicide belt in a Parisian street and calling friends for help, after apparently driving his co-conspirators to their deaths.
That Abdeslam was caught at all appears to have been an enormous stroke of luck. Despite a massive security operation, the trail appeared to have gone cold, until police, initiating a search for evidence at Abdeslam's safe house on Tuesday, encountered a barrage of gunfire which tipped them off that something or someone important was inside.
Three days later, on Friday, officers finally cornered him in a daring daytime raid on another apartment, bringing to an end an international manhunt that had lasted more than four months.
But authorities here still don't know what -- if any -- terror plans are in the works, even with Abdeslam himself finally captured alive and charged, awaiting extradition to France.
Hotbed of jihadist ideology
Belgium remains wary and on edge, its alert level stuck at "grave" -- the second highest stage -- with security forces warning of a very real threat of attack.
In the past several weeks, CNN went to Molenbeek, a working-class district that has found notoriety as a hotbed of violent jihadist ideology, to find out what -- if anything -- had changed since the bloodshed in Paris four months ago.
It took months to coax people to meet with us. Many had received threats from self-proclaimed extremists directly to their mobile phones, warning them against speaking to the media.
Inside a terror breeding ground.
Belgian officials have been unable to quell the flow of fighters traveling to ISIS territory, and -- perhaps more worryingly, authorities are terrified the fighters will bring another Paris-style attack -- back to Europe.
Brussels is just a short drive away from a host of major cities: Paris, of course, but also Amsterdam, Cologne, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Berlin; hop into a car or onto a train and almost anyone can travel between any number of European cities within a few hours. Only recently, especially after the Paris attacks, did some European nations begin implementing immigration checks.
Per capita, Belgium has the highest number of foreign fighters in Syria of any Western European nation. Experts say nearly 500 men and women have left Belgium for Syria and Iraq since 2012.
At the same time, they say more than 100 Belgians have returned home from ISIS territory, many facing immediate arrest. But everyone spoke to admits these numbers err on the conservative side; no one knows for certain exactly how many have gone and how many have returned.
Racism a push factor too
The majority of young Muslims are well integrated into Belgian society, but admits his government has more to do to make some feel "at home" in their own country, given that a sense of alienation can leave them open to the threat of radicalization.
"We're talking about third- and fourth-generation (immigrants), these youngsters are born in Belgium, even their fathers and mothers are born in Belgium, and still they are open for these kind of messages. This is not normal -- in the U.S., the second generation was the President; here, the fourth generation is an IS fighter -- so that is really something we have to work on," Belgium's Interior Minister, Jan Jambon said.
Van Ael says Belgian Muslims must also do their part.
"There is no reason why you shouldn't feel Belgian -- this is the country you were raised in. This is the country where you have been fed, where you went to school, where you had your friends, where you practiced your sports. So why all of a sudden you don't feel Belgian?" he asks.
"There is no reason to feel like that. I believe that it is part of our Islam that we protect the country we were raised in and that we try to make the country we live in prosper."
But for those left behind by would-be jihadis, Ali has a stark warning. He says his brothers' decision to go to Syria -- and the Belgian authorities' treatment of those they left behind -- has "destroyed" his family.
"This has broken everything," he says, sobbing. "Our future looked bright but now nothing is left."
For those at the front lines of this battle everything is at stake.
According to police, the carnage of the Paris attacks was plotted here, and it was in these streets that fugitive Salah Abdeslam hid out in an apartment after abandoning his mission, dumping his suicide belt in a Parisian street and calling friends for help, after apparently driving his co-conspirators to their deaths.
That Abdeslam was caught at all appears to have been an enormous stroke of luck. Despite a massive security operation, the trail appeared to have gone cold, until police, initiating a search for evidence at Abdeslam's safe house on Tuesday, encountered a barrage of gunfire which tipped them off that something or someone important was inside.
Three days later, on Friday, officers finally cornered him in a daring daytime raid on another apartment, bringing to an end an international manhunt that had lasted more than four months.
But authorities here still don't know what -- if any -- terror plans are in the works, even with Abdeslam himself finally captured alive and charged, awaiting extradition to France.
Hotbed of jihadist ideology
Belgium remains wary and on edge, its alert level stuck at "grave" -- the second highest stage -- with security forces warning of a very real threat of attack.
In the past several weeks, CNN went to Molenbeek, a working-class district that has found notoriety as a hotbed of violent jihadist ideology, to find out what -- if anything -- had changed since the bloodshed in Paris four months ago.
It took months to coax people to meet with us. Many had received threats from self-proclaimed extremists directly to their mobile phones, warning them against speaking to the media.
Inside a terror breeding ground.
Belgian officials have been unable to quell the flow of fighters traveling to ISIS territory, and -- perhaps more worryingly, authorities are terrified the fighters will bring another Paris-style attack -- back to Europe.
Brussels is just a short drive away from a host of major cities: Paris, of course, but also Amsterdam, Cologne, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Berlin; hop into a car or onto a train and almost anyone can travel between any number of European cities within a few hours. Only recently, especially after the Paris attacks, did some European nations begin implementing immigration checks.
Per capita, Belgium has the highest number of foreign fighters in Syria of any Western European nation. Experts say nearly 500 men and women have left Belgium for Syria and Iraq since 2012.
At the same time, they say more than 100 Belgians have returned home from ISIS territory, many facing immediate arrest. But everyone spoke to admits these numbers err on the conservative side; no one knows for certain exactly how many have gone and how many have returned.
Racism a push factor too
The majority of young Muslims are well integrated into Belgian society, but admits his government has more to do to make some feel "at home" in their own country, given that a sense of alienation can leave them open to the threat of radicalization.
"We're talking about third- and fourth-generation (immigrants), these youngsters are born in Belgium, even their fathers and mothers are born in Belgium, and still they are open for these kind of messages. This is not normal -- in the U.S., the second generation was the President; here, the fourth generation is an IS fighter -- so that is really something we have to work on," Belgium's Interior Minister, Jan Jambon said.
Van Ael says Belgian Muslims must also do their part.
"There is no reason why you shouldn't feel Belgian -- this is the country you were raised in. This is the country where you have been fed, where you went to school, where you had your friends, where you practiced your sports. So why all of a sudden you don't feel Belgian?" he asks.
"There is no reason to feel like that. I believe that it is part of our Islam that we protect the country we were raised in and that we try to make the country we live in prosper."
But for those left behind by would-be jihadis, Ali has a stark warning. He says his brothers' decision to go to Syria -- and the Belgian authorities' treatment of those they left behind -- has "destroyed" his family.
"This has broken everything," he says, sobbing. "Our future looked bright but now nothing is left."
For those at the front lines of this battle everything is at stake.
(rnz)
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