Category Archives: Belgium

A view of ISIS’s evolution emerges from new details about Paris attacks

The New York Times reports: Investigators found crates’ worth of disposable cellphones, meticulously scoured of email data. All around Paris, they found traces of improved bomb-making materials. And they began piecing together a multilayered terrorist attack that evaded detection until much too late.

In the immediate aftermath of the Paris terror attacks on Nov. 13, French investigators came face to face with the reality that they had missed earlier signs that the Islamic State was building the machinery to mount sustained terrorist strikes in Europe.

Now, the arrest in Belgium on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, who officials say was the logistics chief for the Paris attacks, offers a crucial opportunity to address the many unanswered questions surrounding how they were planned. Mr. Abdeslam, who was transferred to the penitentiary complex in Bruges on Saturday, is believed to be the only direct participant in the attacks who is still alive.

Much of what the authorities already know is in a 55-page report compiled in the weeks after the attack by the French antiterrorism police, presented privately to France’s Interior Ministry; a copy was recently obtained by The New York Times. While much about the Paris attacks has been learned from witnesses and others, the report has offered new perspectives about the plot that had not yet been publicized. [Continue reading…]

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What is it about Molenbeek? The bit of Belgium that was a base for Paris terror attacks

By Martin Conway, University of Oxford

Just as during the German invasions of 1914 and 1940, war, it seems, is coming to France through Belgium. If one follows the logic of the statements of various French political leaders since the bloody attacks in Paris on November 13, Belgium has become the base from which Islamic State has brought the conflicts of the Middle East to the streets of Paris.

There is much about that logic that would not withstand serious analysis. France has grown many of its problems within its own suburbs. And groups committed to armed action, from the Resistance movements of World War II to the Basque nationalist groups of the 1980s and 1990s, have often found it expedient to use neighbouring territories as a base from which to launch their operations.

That said, the French authorities have a case. Molenbeek – an urban commune on the north-western edges of Brussels – is unlikely to feature any time soon on tourist-bus tours of historic Brussels.

Though it lies only a couple of kilometres from the Grand Place and the Manneken Pis, and a mere taxi ride from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s office, Molenbeek is another world. This inner-city area, now on the front pages of newspapers across Europe, is deprived of funds, social cohesion and effective government.

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Video found in Belgium of nuclear official may point to bigger plot

The New York Times reports: A suspect linked to the Nov. 13 Paris attackers was found with surveillance footage of a high-ranking Belgian nuclear official, the Belgian authorities acknowledged on Thursday, raising fears that the Islamic State is trying to obtain radioactive material for a terrorist attack.

The existence of the footage, which the police in Belgium seized on Nov. 30, was confirmed by Thierry Werts, a spokesman for Belgium’s federal prosecutor, after being reported in the Belgian daily newspaper La Dernière Heure.

The news set off an immediate outcry among Belgian lawmakers, who charged that they and the country had been misled about the extent of the potential threats to the country’s nuclear facilities, as well as about the ambitions of the terrorist network linked to the Islamic State that used Belgium to plot the Paris attacks, which killed 130 people.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and the State Department also confirmed on Thursday a report by Reuters that radioactive material had disappeared since November in Iraq, where the Islamic State controls broad areas of territory, adding to fears that the group may be able to acquire material for an attack with newly disconcerting dimensions. [Continue reading…]

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Suspects arrested after plotting New Year’s Eve attacks in Ankara and Brussels

The New York Times reports: Two Islamic State militants who were plotting a suicide attack on the Turkish capital, Ankara, on New Year’s Eve have been detained, Turkish officials said on Wednesday.

The two men were held after an early morning counterterrorism operation at a house in the Yakupabdal neighborhood of Ankara, according to the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency. Their identities and nationalities were not disclosed, but the Turkish news media reported that the men were of Turkish origin and had traveled to Syria.

They were planning attacks on the central Kizilay Square in Ankara, where large crowds gather annually to usher in the new year, a senior government official said. [Continue reading…]

CNN reports: Belgian authorities have arrested two people on suspicion of being involved in a plot to attack “emblematic sites” in Belgium’s capital during New Year’s celebrations, the country’s federal prosecutor’s office said Tuesday.

The men are members of a Muslim biker gang called the Kamikaze Riders and are suspected to have discussed attacking Brussels’ Grand Place square and other places where crowds gather as well as police and military facilities, a senior Belgian counterterrorism official told CNN on condition of anonymity. [Continue reading…]

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What the Paris attacks tell us about ISIS strategy

Der Spiegel reports: For years, experts have worried that the up to 4,000 young men and women from Western Europe who are believed to have gone to Syria and Iraq to either fight with Islamic State or live inside it might one day return and conduct attacks here. European IS fighters have long been using social media platforms to openly discuss their dreams of attacks on their home countries.

“Attacking Europe is in the DNA of many of those who have traveled from Europe to Syria,” says jihad expert Wassim Nasr of French international news channel France 24. Still, he argues, it is very unlikely that individual members like [Abdelhamid] Abaaoud made the decision to actually carry out the attacks on their own. He see it is “an issue of such strategic importance that it has been directed from the highest level of IS.” And it appears that the decision was taken months ago.

It’s not surprising that IS chose France as the target of its first attack in Europe. With around 1,200 current and former fighters, the largest number of IS jihadist from Western Europe originate from France. With its numerous military deployments in Africa and the Middle East, France is very much in the terrorists’ crosshairs. Measured against its overall population, the only country in Europe with a greater per capita number of IS fighters is Belgium. Germany also has several hundred residents who have gone to the region as jihadists.

The Europeans tended to play a relatively minor role in combat for the IS in recent years, but they have an important function in terms of recruitment. And under Islamic State’s new strategy, they are also in charge of bringing the war to Europe. The terrorists who struck in Paris may have spent some time in Syria, but they are the product of our society. In that respect, fighting in Syria to prevent Islamic State terror in the West can only have a limited effect. [Continue reading…]

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Belgium is politically splintered and vulnerable to terrorism. So is Europe

The Economist reports: Brussels, wrote Tony Judt, is “a metaphor for all that can go wrong in a modern city”. The late historian, writing in 1999, was referring to the civic neglect that has left much of the Belgian capital, home to most institutions of the European Union, an unsightly mess of concrete and roadworks with the worst traffic in Europe. But his words could just as well apply to the string of terrorist plots and attacks that has provided Brussels, and some other Belgian cities, with a scabrous reputation as an incubator of jihadi ideology and a paragon of law-enforcement incompetence.

Belgium has long been the butt of European jokes, thanks in large part to its dysfunctional politics. In 2010-11 squabbles over the rights of Flemish-speakers on the outskirts of Brussels held up the formation of a government for 589 days, a world record. But the terror threat has exposed the darker side of Belgium’s maladministration, in the form of uncoordinated security services and neglected areas like Molenbeek, a down-at-heel Muslim-majority commune in west Brussels. After the Paris attacks, French officials sniped at their Belgian counterparts on learning that several of the perpetrators had hatched their schemes in Brussels. Two had been questioned by Belgian police earlier this year. One of them, Salah Abdeslam, fled to Brussels after having driven three of the Paris suicide-bombers to their destination.

Now Brussels is enduring its own threat. On November 21st Belgian officials raised the terror alert in the capital to its highest level, citing fears of multiple Paris-style attacks. The “lockdown” was not the near-curfew portrayed in some foreign media. Yet schools, shops and underground transport were closed for several days, concerts and sporting events were cancelled and armed troops patrolled the streets. It is hard to think of a European precedent for such a suspension of civic life, and it is not over. A series of police raids failed to net Mr Abdeslam, and Brussels will remain on high alert at least until November 30th. [Continue reading…]

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Terrorism response puts Belgium in a harsh light

The New York Times reports: A month before the Paris terrorist attacks, Mayor Françoise Schepmans of Molenbeek, a Brussels district long notorious as a haven for jihadists, received a list with the names and addresses of more than 80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area.

The list, based on information from Belgium’s security apparatus, included two brothers who would take part in the bloodshed in France on Nov. 13, as well as the man suspected of being the architect of the terrorist plot, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Molenbeek resident who had left for Syria to fight for the Islamic State in early 2014.

“What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track possible terrorists,” Ms. Schepmans said in an interview. That, she added, “is the responsibility of the federal police.”

The federal police service, for its part, reports to the interior minister, Jan Jambon, a Flemish nationalist who has doubts about whether Belgium — divided among French, Dutch and German speakers — should even exist as a single state. [Continue reading…]

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European fighters in ISIS were radical before they were religious

In August, Paul Cruickshank at West Point’s Combatting Terrorism center spoke to Alain Grignard, a senior member of the counterterror unit in the Brussels Federal Police: Are we seeing the emergence of a new breed of jihadi in the West?

Grignard: There’s no doubt there has been a shift. The travel flow we are seeing to Syria is to a significant degree an extension of the “inner-city” gang phenomenon. Young Muslim men with a history of social and criminal delinquency are joining up with the Islamic State as part of a sort of “super-gang.”

Previously we were mostly dealing with “radical Islamists”—individuals radicalized toward violence by an extremist interpretation of Islam—but now we’re increasingly dealing with what are best described as “Islamized radicals.” The young Muslims from “inner-city” areas of Belgium, France, and other European countries joining up with the Islamic State were radical before they were religious. Their revolt from society manifested itself through petty crime and delinquency. Many are essentially part of street gangs. What the Islamic State brought in its wake was a new strain of Islam which legitimized their radical approach. These youngsters are getting quickly and completely sucked in. The next thing they know they’re in Syria and in a real video game. The environment they find themselves in over there is attractive to them. Just like in gangs in Europe, respect is equated with fear. They feel like somebody when they’re over in Syria. If someone crosses you there, you put a bullet in his head. The Islamic State has legitimized their violent street credo. The gang dimension, and the group loyalty that it creates, make the social media messages by Belgian fighters in Syria to their circle back home encouraging attacks especially concerning.

CTC: Are you seeing any links between organized crime and Islamist terror cells?

Grignard: So far the links we’ve uncovered are almost all to unorganized crime rather than organized crime. The link between petty crime and Islamic terror is not of course a new phenomenon. For some time we’ve seen so-called takfiris operating in Europe who justified criminality through their radical interpretation of Islam. Additionally, we saw some young Belgians with a history of delinquency joining up with al-Qa`ida in the tribal areas of Pakistan in the late 2000s. But it has now become a much bigger phenomenon. Islamic State propaganda distributed over social media has had a big accelerating effect.

As we saw with the Brussels Jewish museum shooting and the Paris kosher market attack it’s all too easy for young men with a history of criminality to get access to weapons. And petty criminality has been the main source of funding for terrorist plots since 9/11 in Europe, whether it’s stolen cars, stolen credit cards, or fraudulently applying for bank loans.

Prison radicalization is a big factor in all of this. The message of radical recruiters inside jail to Muslim inmates goes something like this: “You had no choice but to carry out criminal actions because you were part of a discriminated against community. You were only defending yourself. And if you now put yourself in service of the cause by supplying false papers and weapons, not only are these actions legitimate but they will win you redemption and reward in paradise.” It’s a message that is unfortunately resonating. [Continue reading…]

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What is it about Molenbeek? The bit of Belgium that was a base for Paris terror attacks

By Martin Conway, University of Oxford

Just as during the German invasions of 1914 and 1940, war, it seems, is coming to France through Belgium. If one follows the logic of the statements of various French political leaders since the bloody attacks in Paris on November 13, Belgium has become the base from which Islamic State has brought the conflicts of the Middle East to the streets of Paris.

There is much about that logic that would not withstand serious analysis. France has grown many of its problems within its own suburbs. And groups committed to armed action, from the Resistance movements of World War II to the Basque nationalist groups of the 1980s and 1990s, have often found it expedient to use neighbouring territories as a base from which to launch their operations.

That said, the French authorities have a case. Molenbeek – an urban commune on the north-western edges of Brussels – is unlikely to feature any time soon on tourist-bus tours of historic Brussels.

Though it lies only a couple of kilometres from the Grand Place and the Manneken Pis, and a mere taxi ride from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s office, Molenbeek is another world. This inner-city area, now on the front pages of newspapers across Europe, is deprived of funds, social cohesion and effective government.

Continue reading →

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