Armed Belgian police and soldiers patrolled
an eerily empty Brussels this week as part of
an unprecedented security lockdown, and
U.S. officials warned Americans traveling
overseas to “avoid large crowds,” amid
fears that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
was planning more terrorist attacks following
the Paris massacre that killed 130 people.
Universities, museums, and the subway
system in Brussels were shuttered as police
carried out dozens of raids in an effort to
root out ISIS-linked militants, and Prime
Minister Charles Michel cautioned anxious
residents that the capital faced an “imminent and fierce” threat.
Security forces were hunting in particular for Salah Abdeslam, 26,
a Belgian national allegedly involved in the Paris attacks who is
believed to be in the country. One possible clue to his movements
surfaced this week, when a street sweeper found a suicide vest on the
outskirts of Paris, near where Abdeslam’s cellphone signal had been
detected by investigators shortly after the attacks. The belt’s detonator
had been removed, suggesting the fugitive may have aborted his
suicide mission before fleeing France.
French President François Hollande flew to Washington this week
to urge President Obama to join him in a more aggressive campaign
against ISIS, pressing for more airstrikes in Syria and greater
coordination with Russia on targets and intelligence. Obama
pledged “total solidarity” with France and said the two nations
would “step up” their campaign against ISIS. But he declined to
shift his basic ISIS strategy or work more closely with President
Vladimir Putin.
What the editorials said
The true test of the West’s resolve against Islamist terrorism “begins
not in Syria, but in Belgium,” said the Chicago Sun-Times. Almost
every jihadist attack in Europe in recent history has had a Belgian
connection. One planner of the 2004 Madrid train bombing lived in
Molenbeek—a poor Brussels suburb with a large Arab community
and several extremist mosques. A Frenchman who killed four people
at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014 bought his weapons in Molenbeek.
Now two Molenbeek residents, Abdeslam and his brother,
Ibrahim, have been implicated in the Paris attacks. “A crackdown in
Molenbeek, internationally supported and
coordinated, is long overdue.”
If Europe wants to be safe, it needs tougher
borders and better intelligence sharing, said
The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Abdelhamid
Abaaoud, the alleged Belgian mastermind of
the Paris attacks who died in a French police
raid last week, sneaked into the European
Union from Syria by hiding among refugees
arriving in Greece. He “then exploited the
untrammeled freedom of movement” in the
EU to reach his target. Only 40 percent of
European Muslims fighting in Syria and Iraq
are currently identified on a European terrorism database. “Such
gaps in knowledge, like gaps in the border, can be deadly.”
What the columnists said
“How things have changed,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN .com.
A dozen years ago, French President Jacques Chirac called for
restraint “as George W. Bush was bristling” to invade Iraq. Now it’s
the French who are trying to rouse a cautious U.S. president who
believes war in response to terrorism “often goes awry.” Hollande
came to Obama with visions of a grand anti-ISIS coalition, but given
Putin’s support for Syria’s Bashar-al Assad, that’s unlikely to happen.
Obama is right to be cautious, said Gerald Seib in WSJ.com. ISIS
and its army of Sunni Muslim radicals will only be defeated with
the help of moderate Sunnis in Syria and Iraq. But if the U.S. forms
an anti-ISIS coalition with Russia, it will be signaling to Syria’s
majority Sunni population that Assad and his repressive Alawite regime
will be allowed to stay in power. His continued presence will
simply drive “disaffected Syrian Sunnis into the arms of ISIS.”
An ugly compromise in Syria would be better than a never-ending
civil war, said Ulrich Speck in The American Interest. If nothing is
done, the EU will continue to be inundated with refugees. “Large
parts of the population will increasingly vote for xenophobic, farright
parties.” Europe’s Muslims will in turn become more alienated,
boosting the number of potential recruits for jihadists. The
U.S. and Europe must push all players involved in Syria—Russia,
Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia—to strike a deal to end this war.
The alternative is too horrific to consider.
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