Molenbeek now Islamist ‘airbase’

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BRUSSELS, Nov 16, (RTRS): “A breeding ground for violence” the mayor of Molenbeek called her borough on Sunday, speaking of unemployment and overcrowding among Arab immigrant families, of youthful despair finding refuge in radical Islam. But as the Brussels district on the wrong side of the city’s post-industrial canal becomes a focus for police pursuing those behind Friday’s mass attacks in Paris, Belgian authorities are asking what makes the narrow, terraced streets of Molenbeek different from a thousand similar neighbourhoods across Europe.

Three themes emerge as Molenbeek is again in a spotlight of Islamist violence, home not just to militants among Belgium’s own half a million Muslims but, it seems, for French radicals seeking a convenient, discreet base to lie low, plan and arm before striking their homeland across the border: Security services face difficulties due to Belgium’s local devolution and tensions between the country’s Frenchand Dutch-speaking halves; the country has long been open to fundamentalist preachers from the Gulf; and it has a thriving black market in automatic rifles of the kind used in Paris. “With 500-1,000 euros (dollars) you can get a military weapon in half an hour,” said Bilal Benyaich, senior fellow at Brussels think-tank the Itinera Institute, who has studied the spread of radical Islam in Belgium. “That makes Brussels more like a big US city” in mostly gun-free Europe, he said.

Two of the attackers who killed over 130 people, 270 kms (170 miles) away in Paris on Friday night were Frenchmen resident in Belgium. Belgian police raided Molenbeek addresses and seven people have been arrested in Belgium over the Paris attacks.

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“Almost every time, there is a link to Molenbeek,” said 39-year-old centrist prime minister Charles Michel, whose year-old coalition is battling radical recruiters who have tempted more than 350 Belgians to fight in Syria — relative to Belgium’s 11 million population, easily the biggest contingent from Europe. But “preventive measures” of the past few months were not enough, Michel said, describing Molenbeek as a “gigantic problem” and saying: “There has to be more of a crackdown.” His interior minister, Jan Jambon, vowed to “cleanse” the district personally. Conservatives blamed lax oversight on left-wing predecessors, nationally and in Molenbeek town hall, and duelled over whether Dutchspeaking Flanders or mainly Frenchspeaking Brussels and the south did more to curb the radicals.

Such differences, which have translated into a profusion of layers of government and policing in an effort to appease centrifugal forces that long threatened to break Belgium apart, have created problems for intelligence and security services. Jambon has complained himself of a profusion of police forces across state and language lines, including six in Brussels alone, a city of just 1.8 million. “Belgium is a federal state and that’s always an advantage for terrorists,” said Edwin Bakker, professor at the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. “Having several layers of government hampers the flow of information between investigators.” Contrasting Belgium with its centralised Dutch neighbour, he added: “It’s much more difficult for groups to disappear from the radar just by moving 10 kilometres.”

Given the difficulty of gathering intelligence in places like Molenbeek, a borough of 90,000 where some neighbourhoods were up to 80 percent Muslim, any gaps in the information chain were problematic, Bakker said: “In parts of Brussels there are areas on which the police have little grip, very segregated areas that don’t feel they’re a part of the Belgian state. “In such a case it’s very difficult to get feedback from the community. That means while the neighbours may have seen something going on, they’re not passing it to the police. Then it becomes very tough for intelligence agencies as only relying on them and not local police is not sufficient.” Political complication is also blamed for slowing the passing of new laws, for example to rein in the preaching of hate in mosques or recruitment for and travel to the Syrian war.

Tumbling
While some of Molenbeek’s old factories — it once enjoyed the industrious nickname “Petit Manchester” — have made it a smart address for bohemian loft living, areas tumbling out from the ship canal, offering halal butchers, street stalls and backstreet mosques are some of the poorest in northwest Europe. The 25 percent jobless rate, rising to 37 percent among the young, is significantly higher than other parts of Brussels, also home to a thriving, cosmopolitan middle class drawn by the European Union institutions on the other side of the city.

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