Terror Attacks in Brussels - A Deep-rooted Malaise

Four days after one of Europe’s most wanted terror suspects - Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving terrorist of the November 13 attacks in Paris - was captured in a joint French-Belgian police operation in Brussels, multiple bomb attacks left the Belgian capital reeling.

 Two blasts, minutes apart, tore through the departures area of Zaventem airport — the main Brussels airport — shortly after 8 a.m. local time. 

 Within an hour, an explosion hit a train near Maalbeek metro station, close to the EU institutions and around 350 meters from where European leaders hold their summits. 

 Belgian authorities confirmed one explosion at the airport was caused by a suicide bomber. A second was caused by a bomb detonated from a distance.

Two blasts targeted the main hall of Zaventem Airport at around 8:00am (0700 GMT), with prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw saying the assault likely involved at least one suicide bomber. 

A third hit Maalbeek metro station near the European Union's main buildings, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour.

"A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast," airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura told AFP, his hands bloodied.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Abdeslam told authorities that he had created a new network and was planning new attacks.

The capture of Abdeslam in Belgium was hailed as a breakthrough in the police investigation into the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. However, there was no let up in the hunt for other accomplices of Abdeslam who were identified as Mohamed Abrini, a 30-year-old of Moroccan origin and 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui who had travelled to Syria in 2013. According to investigators, Laachraoui had been using the false name of Soufiane Kayal - the name with which he rented an apartment in Auvelais in Belgium and from where the terror attacks were planned. Laachraoui also went under the same false name when he crossed the border between Austria and Hungary on September 9th when he was travelling with Abdeslam and Mohamed Belkaïd, a third terror suspect who was killed in a shoot-out with police in Belgium last Tuesday.

There is bewilderment about the choice of Belgium as a target of ISIS latest attack. Apart from the fact it houses the headquarters of NATO and EU it is not a frontline military power; on the contrary it is the logistical hub of the Islamic State and serves as a launch pad from where IS could carry out its strikes throughout the European continent. While it may not be possible to know why IS targeted Brussels the following factors made Brussels vulnerable to a terror strike.

Belgium’s Complex Polity

 

Belgium has the trappings of western political structures, but in practice those structures are defective and have long been so. The academics Kris Deschouwer and Lieven De Winter gave an authoritative account of the development of political corruption and clientelism in an essay published in 1998. Almost from the beginning, they explain, the state suffered problems of political legitimacy.

Belgium came late, by western European standards, to statehood. In Belgium there were already existing allegiances to the locality, and although Belgium’s liberal elite threw off Dutch rule in 1830, it could neither uproot nor supplant these attachments to the local community, often intertwined with the Roman Catholic Church. So the formal structure of a Belgian state was erected but framing within it the cultural, social and welfare structures of the Church’s state within a state. Ranged against the Christian Democrats and the socialists were the anti-clerical and middle-class liberals, who constituted the third corner in Belgium’s political triangle. They did not have the same popular support, or the equivalent social structures. That was followed in due course by the development of a socialist/labor movement with its rival structures for mutual assurance, cultural associations. Ranged against the Christian Democrats and the socialists were the anti-clerical and middle-class liberals, who constituted the third corner in Belgium’s political triangle. They did not have the same popular support, or the equivalent social structures.

Eventually, the formal state developed its own services in areas like education, health care and other expressions of a welfare state, but it was obliged to do so respecting (and indeed using) the structures of the political parties. 

Administrations were divided by their political allegiances. Politicians were masters of patronage, with jobs and money at their disposal, and, as a consequence, public service suffered.

Although attempts at reforms were made, in many cases those reforms were not deep-rooted, but involved formalizing the division of spoils, for instance, to allocate control of certain jobs between different political parties.

Belgium’s unique geographical and linguistic status

Belgium is a small country of about11 million people which is divided by language and culture. Slightly more than half of Belgium's population is Flemish. They speak Dutch and live in the north, in Flanders. Less than half are French and live in the southern region of Wallonia. The framework of the Belgium government and the fact that the country's security and intelligence agencies are divided internally makes it relatively easier for these kinds of attacks to happen.

The country at every level and almost every public service -- schools, hospitals, even policing -- is split along linguistic lines. There are French schools and Flemish schools, French hospitals and Flemish hospitals.

Brussels is the capital of Belgium and Flanders, but Brussels is French-speaking.

Lack of intelligence sharing and poor co-ordination internally and within the EU

At least one of the attackers Brahim (or Ibrahim) el-Bakroui was deported by Turkey to the Netherlands in 2015 with a clear indication that he was a jihadist. Yet no action seems to have been taken either by the Dutch or the Belgian authorities. There have been repeated calls for a pan-European intelligence agency that would effectively share information from different countries. Members of the European Parliament denounced, again, the lack of coordination.

According to experts, even within states, intelligence-gathering agencies – France alone has 33 of them – have trouble cooperating. 

"Is it not in the nature of intelligence agencies to keep the information for themselves?" asked Jean-Marie Delarue, who until recently headed the French agency that reviews surveillance requests from these intelligence services.

"Information is power," Delarue said in a recent interview. "In intelligence, one only has enemies, no friends."

Cross-border cooperation would probably have helped prevent Tuesday's attacks.

Europe has had a "counter-terrorism coordinator" for much of the last 10 years, but this fact-finding institution was dismissed as "weak" in a recent French parliamentary report and as "having no operational capacity to offer."

In the absence of an effective centralized European counter-terrorism agency, it is up to the member states to cooperate with one another. Yet they do so only haphazardly.

There are plenty of databases, for instance, but the information they contain is either incomplete or inaccessible, numerous officials complained.

A fundamental one that contains criminal suspects' surveillance records — the Schengen Information System, or SIS — is only weakly supported by most of the member countries. The French parliamentary report last month said the French internal intelligence agency "is the only one that regularly feeds this database" and criticized "the very spotty nature of the information furnished by" other European nations.

"There is nothing automatic about what goes into the SIS," said Francois Heisbourg, a French intelligence expert. He said a decade of European squabbling over the issue had still not resulted in the creation of a minimal tool, the Passenger Name Record, of airplane travelers.

It is not just the main SIS database that is woefully lacking.

Some 5,000 EU citizens are known to have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State and other groups. Yet the Europol database "contains only 2,786 verified foreign terrorist fighters entered by EU member states," the counter-terrorism coordinator pointed out in a recent report.

"I think the biggest problem lies in the different levels of professionalism among the security services in Europe," according to Guido Steinberg, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

The French parliamentary report ruefully acknowledged, without citing a specific assault, systematic "gaps in the transmission of information, which, if they had been realized in time, could have forestalled the attack" in Paris.

The cross-border cooperation failures in the case of the November Paris attacks are a telling case study. Belgium was unable to apprehend Salah Abdeslam, the Belgian-born French citizen of Moroccan descent, one of the key plotters of the Paris attacks swiftly considering the fact that he was stopped the morning after the attack near the Belgian border but was not detained. 

Geographical proximity

 

Brussels' proximity to major European cities and historic lack of internal cohesion makes it simpler for jihadists to move about without much impediment. Brussels, the capital of the European Union, is just a short drive away from a host of major cities: Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne, Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Berlin can be reached within a matter of few hours by road or rail.

Belgium’s  Jihadi link
 

Many extremists in Belgium have been inspired by the once-powerful radical group Sharia4Belgium, which targeted vulnerable and disenfranchised communities marred by rampant crime and unemployment.

The group gained prominence in 2010 and was disbanded five years later after a trial that resulted in its designation as a terror organization. [Sharia4Belgium was a Belgian radical Salafist organisation which called for Belgium to convert itself into an Islamist state. In February 2015 the group was designated a terrorist organization by a Belgian judge, and its spokesman, Fouad Belkacem, was sentenced to 12 years in prison].

Today, Belgium has the highest per capita of foreign fighters of any Western European country. Of the 5000-6000 Europeans who fought in Syria up to 550 are reportedly Belgian nationals. 

Over the last two years there had been a Molenbeek link to almost all the terrorist incidents in Europe including the May 2014 shooting by Mehdi Nemmouche at the Jewish museum in Brussels, Charlie Hebdo attack (January 2015), the failed attack by Ayoub el-Khazzani in August 2015 on a Thalys train. Salah Abdeslam, one of the key plotters of the Paris attack was arrested from Molenbeek a few days ago. Thus all the perpetrators of the myriad terror attacks had ties to Molenbeek.  

The inability of Belgian security services to control the flow of fighters traveling to Syria/Iraq to fight alongside IS, and -- perhaps more worryingly -- their failure to track them on return, only indicates that many jihadists have gone unnoticed. Authorities in several neighboring countries believe other attacks are likely. The European Union needs to have re-look at the migration policy and Schengen regime and to have in place an intelligence coordination committee for dissemination of intelligence inputs to thwart attacks in future.

Paris 13/11 - An Analysis

This post looks into the possible lapses in intelligence, post-attack investigation and measures that may be taken to prevent another 13/11.

Investigation into Friday the 13th massacre made considerable headway with the names and identities of some of the suspects who took part in the attack was disclosed by the security agencies. Few of the suspects were either French or Belgian nationals and who appeared to have some kind of criminal antecedents.

The Suspects with connections to France/Belgium

Bilal Hadfi, a Belgian resident aged about 19 or 20 went under the names "Abu Moudjahid Al-Belgiki" and "Bilal Al Mouhajir," has been identified as one of the three suicide bombers who struck outside the Stade de France. 

Samy Amimour, a French national, aged about 28 years was born in Drancy, a north-eastern suburb of Paris was one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up at the Bataclan Concert Hall.

Ismael Omar Mostefai, aged 29 years, was a resident of Chartres, France who blew himself up at the Bataclan Concert Hall. "He was considered a radicalized person and had a security report," Paris prosecutor François Molins said. A Turkish official told the Guardian that French authorities were tipped off twice about Mostefai by Turkey, but only received an information request about him after the Paris attacks.

Ibrahim Abdeslam was a 31 year old suicide bomber who blew himself at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe on Boulevard Voltaire.

Saleh Abdelam aged 26, a Belgian-born French national and brother of Ibrahim  who escaped from the scene of the attacks. He is suspected to have rented a car used by the group.

Intelligence Lapses?  And The Molenbeek Angle

According to the Associated Press, Iraqi intelligence sent a dispatch saying the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had ordered an attack on coalition countries fighting against them in Iraq and Syria, as well as on Iran and Russia, through bombings or other attacks in the days ahead. 

The dispatch said the Iraqis had no specific details on when or where the attack would take place, and a senior French security official told the AP that French intelligence gets this kind of communication "all the time" and "every day." 

Without commenting specifically on the Iraqi warning, a senior U.S. intelligence official said he was not aware of any threat information sent to Western governments that was specific enough to have thwarted the Paris attacks. Officials from the US, French and other Western governments have expressed worries for months about Islamic State-inspired attacks by militants who fought in Syria, the official noted. In recent weeks, the sense of danger had spiked. 

According to the Iraqis the Paris attacks appear to have been planned in Raqqa, Syria — the Islamic State's de-facto capital — where the attackers were trained specifically for this operation and with the intention of sending them to France. The Iraqi officials also said a sleeper cell in France then met with the attackers after their training and helped them to execute the plan.There were 24 people involved in the operation, they said: 19 attackers and five others in charge of logistics and planning. It appears that though the timing of the attacks may not have been known, the fact that an attack on Paris was imminent was known to the French. While it may be unfair to accuse the French intelligence of lapses, the security agencies could have increased surveillance of known terror suspects both in France and Belgium.

In the previous post a reference was made to Belgium because certain parts of Belgium had become a safe haven for jihadis owing allegiance to the Al Qaeda or the Islamic State.

Molenbeek, an impoverished suburb of Brussels  for instance has a large, predominantly Muslim population of first-, second- and third-generation immigrants from North Africa that has gained an unwelcome reputation as a hotbed of jihadism.

In January 2015, police raided a suspected IS terror cell in Verviers in Eastern Belgium and killed two suspects who were alleged to be on the brink of a major Paris-style attack. The cell members, including the man alleged to be orchestrating the plot from abroad, Belgian-Moroccan Abelhamid Abaaoud, belonged to the Molenbeek suburb. Incidentally, it is now being reported by The Independent that Abelhamid Abaaoud was the mastermind of the Paris attacks. The train gunman, Ayoub El Khazzani, 25, a Moroccan national who opened fire on a train from Paris to Amsterdam in August 2015 is also said to have spent time in Molenbeek prior to the attack.

The suspected master mind of the Paris attacks, Abaaoud, who authorities suspect orchestrated the Verviers plot from Greece, is believed to have joined ISIS in Syria in early 2014, according to CNN. At some point, his 13-year-old brother joined him there, becoming the youngest Belgian jihadist in Syria.

After the Verviers plot was foiled, Abaaoud evaded European authorities' efforts to apprehend him. He later was featured in an ISIS propaganda magazine, claiming to have returned to Syria.

The information about known suspects were available with Western intelligence agencies, but for reasons best known they were not collated properly. Like in the case of Mumbai, the security agencies failed to connect the dots and preempt the attacks.

Hitting back

 

There cannot be a hasty, haphazard response to the carnage. What is needed is a cool, calculated and ruthless retaliation which will ultimately deter potential terrorists from executing a similar strike on any city in the West. Most of the foot soldiers save and except one Saleh Abdelam are dead. The planners and those who provided logistical support are the ones who need to be neutralised. Firstly, it would be expected that French intelligence, both the DGSE and DGSI would activate their network of agents around Europe and beyond in order to track the organisers of the attacks. Secondly, friendly states and coalition partners of France would be providing inputs in order to help France and other states in preventing a repeat of 13/11. France must be willing to use its Special Forces both within France and beyond to eliminate terrorists, their sympathisers and financiers much like the Israeli special operation teams which liquidated members of the Black September Organisation. Given the chaotic situation in Syria, with requisite intelligence and logistical support, it would be viable to send Special Forces to carry out targetted killing of the leadership of the IS. The effectiveness of air strikes which are being carried out at present is extremely doubtful.

Secondly, France and the rest of the EU members must shut its doors on migrants who enter Europe under the guise of refugees. Given the nature of the prevailing political climate and the limited resources at its disposal, none of the members of the EU, barring Germany has the capability of monitoring potential risks posed by the so-called refugees to Europe's security. Human rights' activists and civil liberty groups may protest against such a policy, nevertheless, today with the very idea of Europe and its cherished values being under attack from a group like the IS, barbed-wire border controls are necessary.

Thirdly, France and other EU members must in concert strip all those individuals, who have travelled to Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan to fight along side terror groups like the IS, Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, Taliban or other Islamist groups of citizenship. The families of these terrorists must also be deported to their country of origin. 

Conclusion

French intelligence may not have had specific intelligence about the scale or nature of the attacks. However, the authorities were aware that an attack was likely especially attacks by lone wolves like Chérif Kouachi and Said Kouachi (Charlie Hebdo shootings), Amedy Coulibaly (Fontenay-aux-Roses, Porte de Vincennes) and Ayoub El Khazzani (train gunman) had taken place. At the same time, the terrorists failed in their plans to storm the Stade de France. Had they succeeded, the scale of the massacre would have been much greater. The French police and SWAT teams did well in rescuing hostages from the Bataclan Concert Hall. 

All said and done neither France nor its European Union partners have the means and resources or requisite laws to enable it to take wide-sweeping preventive measures - often based on sketchy intelligence - that  probably the US can.

And fail-safe operational monitoring of the sheer number of potential threats on European soil, in the form of sympathisers with groups like ISIS, many of whom have actually travelled to Syria and spent time with the group, is extremely difficult for any security service.

[At the time of writing, it has been reported that French police have continued their hunt for Salah Abdeslam – believed to be one of the three brothers involved in Friday night’s attack, who is on the run – and others thought to have been involved in orchestrating the attacks on Paris on Friday.

Overnight raids have taken place in Toulouse, Grenoble, Jeumont (on the French-Belgian border), and the Paris suburb of Bobigny. The raids were carried out under the national state of emergency declared by the president, François Hollande. At least one, in Bobigny, is reported to be directly linked to the Paris attacks.

Several arrests have been reported across those locations, with buildings searched. Weapons were reportedly seized in Toulouse].