The terror attacks in Brussels are a shocking turn of events, but for anyone closely observing the city over the past few years, it wasn’t exactly a surprise: While the Belgian capital had once been known best as a centre for European culture and politics, its reputation had been tainted recently because of links to extremism and terror plots.
Those links were hammered home just last week, when Belgian authorities finally captured terrorism suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels’s predominantly Muslim Molenbeek quarter. Abdeslam, 26, was the last known surviving participant in November’s attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.
It had been known for months that Abdeslam had traveled back to Belgium after the attacks, but it was only in the past few weeks that Belgian authorities got a lead and captured him and an alleged accomplice. Worryingly, there were signs that Abdeslam and the network around him had been planning more attacks.
In the wake of the Paris attacks, it quickly emerged that the attackers’ suspected ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was a Belgian citizen. Abaaoud was killed in a raid in Paris just days after the attack. Prior to the raid that netted Abdeslam, there were a number of other of raids that uncovered suspected jihadists and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel warned that the threat of an attack was still “serious and imminent.”
Much of the attention in the aftermath of the Parisian attacks last year focused on French problems such as disenfranchisement and segregation in suburbs and radicalization in the country’s prison system. However, it soon became clear that Belgium may suffer from even worse problems.
Molenbeek, an area of northwest Brussels home to around 100,000 people, has emerged as a particular area of concern. “There is almost always a link with Molenbeek,” Michel said last November. “That’s a gigantic problem of course.”
The area first began to fill up with Turkish and Moroccan immigrants around 50 years ago. But while the area has seen some levels of gentrification in recent years, it remains a sharp contrast with more affluent areas of the city nearby: Unemployment has been estimated at as much as 40 percent, and there are many seedy and rundown shops in the area.
Often those from immigrant backgrounds find themselves at a competitive disadvantage on the job market as they speak only French and Arabic when many jobs in the city require a knowledge of French, Flemish or Dutch, and sometimes English. A growing right wing political movement in Belgium has led to feelings of division in the country: Some Muslims say that a 2012 ban on Islamic veils like burqas and niqabs in public spaces is a sign of their community’s alienation from the Catholic mainstream.