“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.
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Security services face difficulties due to Belgium’s local devolution and tensions between the country’s French- and 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 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 U.S. city” in mostly gun-free Europe, he said.
Two of the attackers who killed over 130 people, 270 km 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.
“Molenbeek is a pit stop for radicals and criminals of all sorts,” said Benyaich, of the Itinera Institute. “It’s a place where you can disappear.”
George Dallemagne, a centre-right opposition member of the federal parliament, added: “Terrorists are radicalised in France, go to Syria to fight and when they come back they find in Molenbeek the logistical support and the networks they need to carry out terrorist attacks, be it here in Belgium or abroad.
“It’s like an air base for jihadists.” Dallemagne said,
“The very strong influence of Salafists ... is one of the particularities that puts Belgium at the center of terrorism in Europe today.”
One of the main attractions, investigators say, is weaponry.
Some of that said Nils Duquet, a researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute, dates back to before 2006 when Belgium, whose state-owned FN Herstal sidearm manufacturer supplied many of the world’s armies, also had a relaxed approach to gun ownership.
“With the right connections, it's quite easy to find illegal weapons in Belgium,” Duquet said.
“Criminals used to come to buy weapons legally. And they kept coming because they found the right networks and people here to get weapons, even after 2006.” — Reuters