Paris and Brussels attacks prove Europe's on deathbed
As was widely expected, the Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing of the airport and a subway station in Brussels, which have left 31 people dead so far and 260 wounded. Belgian authorities have identified two of the bombers as Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui, brothers who had criminal records but were not on terror watch lists.
A third man, Najim Laachraoui, who has been identified by the media as being at the airport before the explosions, remains at large. Laachraoui, who was born in Morocco and has trained in Syria, is believed to have been the bombmaker for the Paris attacks of November 2015. His DNA was found on the bomb abandoned by Salah Abdeslam during that attack.
This was the second major terror attack in Europe in just over four months and it came just days after the main suspect in the Paris attacks that killed 130 people was arrested in Brussels. The arrest last week of Salah Abdeslam had heightened fears of terror attacks in Belgium even as officials were warning that many people who were involved in the Paris attacks were still at large.
The carnage and the chaos have exposed Belgium as the hub of Islamist extremism in Europe, and have raised troubling questions over the competence of the country's police and intelligence services. With extremist networks having become entrenched over a period of time, Belgium and the larger Europe is now confronted by a threat beyond what security services had ever anticipated - Belgium has seen a larger share of its Muslim population fight in Syria than has any other European country, and the Molenbeek district of Brussels was the home of several of those involved in the Paris attacks.
The failure to detect and intercept the Paris attacks had underscored the capacity deficit in Europe in tackling extremism and terrorism. Even as the continent's angry Muslim youths were getting radicalised and recruited into the ISIS in Iraq and Syria for years now, European countries largely stood by and watched.
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| Belgian soldiers and a police officer on patrol in central Brussels.[Reuters] |
Today they seem to have far too many terrorism suspects and resulting leads to manage, which is much beyond their institutional capacity to handle. Last week's arrest of Abdelslam and failure to detect and disrupt a major terrorist attack in the very heart of Europe similar to that of Paris has led many to openly question the competence of the European security apparatus.
The use of explosives in the suicide missions at the Belgian airport and the subway system suggests that a significant terrorist facilitation network likely remains in Europe empowering attacks the Al Qaeda had always dreamed of executing but for which it lacked the operational support capability.
Exposed by the Paris attacks, a very divided Belgian government has been hurrying to implement an anti-terrorism plan focused on stronger law enforcement in Brussels' immigrant quarters, more power for prosecutors and more resources for the country's underfunded intelligence and security forces.
The proposals included extending the period for taking suspects in temporary custody from 24 to 72 hours, increasing prosecutors' right to tap phones and communications, as well as investing in intelligence and pooling information by security authorities. But those proposals are yet to become fully operational.
According a recent report, 470 Belgian Muslims have gone to fight in Syria or Iraq out of a population of about 6,60,000. In terms of rate of recruitment, this makes Belgium the top supplier of militants in western Europe. More broadly, western European Muslims are three times likelier to end up in ISIS-tan than their American co-religionists. As an indicator of radicalisation levels, this is pretty definitive.
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| Bullet impacts are seen in cafe window as a man places a candle outside one of the attack sites in Paris, November 15, 2015. [Reuters] |
Compared to the US spending more than $650 billion on homeland security since 9/11, European spending on law enforcement, border security and other related agencies remains underwhelming. The efforts are also marred by an inability to reach a consensus on the best way forward. The result of this disarray is that states like the UK have taken a unilateral approach to manage their own security.
This is happening at a time when Europe is facing a multitude of challenges including the persisting Eurozone crisis, slowing down of economic growth, the problem in Ukraine, growing right-wing xenophobia, resurgent nationalism, and the toxic Brexit debate.
With its weak external borders, non-existent internal borders and a migrant crisis that has brought close to a million-and-a-half migrants into its borders, Europe is struggling to cope with rising internal contradictions which are exposing its fundamental vulnerabilities.
The terror attacks could spook Europe into closing its doors even tighter. Whether the attackers turn out to be refugees or not is beside the point. Across Europe, the big fear is one of Islamisation. That's even the case in Germany, where concerns over the long-term impact of accepting more than one million Muslim refugees last year is fuelling a backlash against chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal migration policies.
It now seems that the Schengen Treaty, the open border pact that allows for passport-free travel across most of the continent as the essence of European Union (EU) membership is on its deathbed.
How European leadership manages to alleviate the concerns of its local populace will determine the future of one of the most successful liberal projects in international politics. Post 9/11, the US was asking itself "Why do they hate us so much?" and Europe was by and large aloof from the turmoil that the US was going through.
There was much preaching in European capitals about American foreign policy blunders and how a militaristic America perhaps deserved what it was getting. It is now Europe's turn to ask: "Why do they hate us so much?" And the answers are not very flattering.