It is an horrific attack and the death toll is still mounting. As always with terrorist attacks, the damage is not just the terrible loss of human life and people seriously injured but also the disruption of air and train transport, of business and diplomacy—the EU in Brussels had to cancel external appointments on Tuesday—of tourism, and the costs and uncertainties of getting the security response right.
My first reflection is that there is not the same sense of shock as was felt after the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 or the Paris attacks last autumn. This time, we were almost expecting it. Saleh Abdeslam was arrested on Friday and the alleged bomb maker is said to still be on the run. Meanwhile, a Belgian prosecutor says that we still don't fully understand who organized the Paris attacks, and Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon warned only yesterday that the arrest of Abdeslam could push another cell into action.
It is also not a surprise, because the Paris attacks were a wake-up call to some European security structures. What was clear was that they did not understand the threat as well as they thought they did, were not as nimble as they needed to be in their reactions, and are not as good at sharing and acting on intelligence as they need to be.
The Paris attacks led to a recognition that a step-change was necessary in these areas, but you are not going to get a step-change in just four months. So it has been a very vulnerable time and that vulnerability has been exploited. And it could easily happen again.
Europe needs to get as close to the UK counterterrorism strategy as it can get - that means a single strategy pursued by different agencies and departments, the ability to share and act on intelligence between different organizations and agencies, and action to tackle the causes as well as the effects of violent extremism. We also need to think hard about engaging more closely with Turkey on Islamist terrorism—and one hopes that the Turks are ready for closer engagement themselves.
The author is a Former Senior Member of British Intelligence, who wishes to remain anonymous.
