WORLD_ Belgium Threatened by Jihadis Returning From Syria

Bloomberg News

Belgium Threatened by Jihadis Returning From Syria By Caroline Alexander and Gaspard Sebag Jan 17, 2015 11:01 AM ET



Photographer: Marcel Van Hoorn/AFP via Getty Images
Police officers and forensic police work in a cordoned off section of Colline street in Verviers, eastern Belgium, on Jan. 15, 2015, after two suspects were killed during an anti-terrorist operation.

After attacks in Paris last week by Islamist gunmen, Belgians were reminded of the particular threat they face from fighters returning from Middle East war zones.

Belgium has the highest number of jihadis per capita among western European countries, data from the London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalisation show. The government estimates that, as of October, 350 Belgian nationals had traveled to Syria and Iraq since violence escalated there nearly four years ago and more than 70 have returned.

Among them were the two gunmen killed on Thursday night in a police raid near the German border, according to Belgian prosecutors. The men were part of a suspected Islamist cell who fired automatic weapons at officers attempting to detain them. Thirteen people have been arrested by police in Paris and Berlin as suspected terrorists.

“There’s always been jihadi activity within Belgium,” said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent historian who studies Belgian Islamists. “It doesn’t surprise me that right now we are facing this high number of Belgians going over to Syria and Iraq to fight.”

The trend started in the late nineties, with fighters returning from wars in Algeria and Afghanistan, and may be linked with economic and social disenfranchisement, he said.

There’s no standard profile for the current Belgian jihadis, Van Ostaeyen said. The biggest group are second and third generation members of the country’s large Moroccan migrant population that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s. Some are from other ethnic minorities and there are also Flemish converts.

450 Jihadis

“The wider radicalization in Belgium might have to do something with the field politics towards the Muslim community,” Van Ostaeyen said. “The fact that the number of people without a job in the Muslim community is rather high. And the fact that they perceive themselves as second-rank civilians.”

The actual threat may be several times greater than the government figures suggest, according to Van Ostaeyen. His analysis number of of traditional and social media reports suggests as many as 450 jihadis may have returned to Belgium from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq.

Belgian Islamists made front page news last May when four people were killed at the Jewish Museum of Brussels by a French gunman, who authorities said had spent most of 2013 in Syria.

Terrorism Charges

Several months later, eight members of the radical Islamist group Sharia4Belgium appeared in court charged with belonging to a terrorist organization and brainwashing young men into fighting abroad.

Prosecutors said they were led by Fouad Belkacem, who lured recruits through street preaching and is currently serving a jail term for inciting hatred. The group he set up in Antwerp in March 2010 was dissolved in October 2012.

Most Belgians fighting in Iraq and Syria are from the bigger cities in Flanders -- Antwerp, Mechelen and Vilvoorde -- and the capital, Brussels, according to Van Ostaeyen. They settle most in Aleppo and Raqqa in Syria and many joined Nusra Front, which is al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, and Islamic State.

To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net; Gaspard Sebag in Brussels at gsebag@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net Ben Sills, Leon Mangasarian

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