“It was only fitting … that when police arrested the suspected terrorist Salah Abdeslam in the gritty Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels late last week, across town, European Union leaders were meeting at the plush EU Commission headquarters to discuss the immigration crisis that bedevils Europe,” writes Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez. “Fitting because the Molenbeek neighborhood represents the division and separation that exist in European society, and why there is a fear that migrants arriving in Europe in their hundreds of thousands could find in such places networks ready to radicalize those migrants.”
Could find? They already have. Salah Abdeslam, the alleged mastermind of last year’s carnage in Paris was traced back to Molenbeek, and angry local residents tossed bottles and rocks at police when they arrested the neighborhood’s “hero.” That outburst underscored another disturbing reality, as in local press reports stating the “whole neighborhood” knew where Abdeslam was hiding — and did absolutely nothing to help authorities find him.
Yet if truth be told, Belgian authorities shoulder a portion of the blame here. Last year, following the second attack in Paris, Jan Jambon, Belgium’s home affairs minister, warned that the government does not “have control of the situation in Molenbeek.” The Guardian referred to the neighborhood as “Europe’s jihadi central” because it is “the source of the highest concentration in Europe of jihadi foreign fighters going to fight in Syria and Iraq and returning battle-hardened and determined to take their fight to the capitals of Europe.”
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1 comment:
We've had more terrorist attacks here than in Europe...why aren't we shouldering the blame? I know, I know...limp-wristed resident at 1600 Penn Ave.
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