The terrorist attacks in Brussels this week highlight two things: First, the Islamic State is ramping up its efforts to attack the West, and second, Europe is fundamentally unprepared to confront the growing specter of violent radical Muslim extremism.
Tuesday’s attacks in the heart of Europe were tragic but certainly not surprising to any intelligence professional. This was the third major terrorist attack in Western Europe in little over a year, and even the most casual of observers can recognize that what is happening in Western Europe is a pattern of behavior rather than one-off occurrences. This was no lone wolf attack but the work of an organization, and the Islamic State’s later claim of responsibility confirmed this suspicion.
The Brussels attacks demonstrated a sophisticated degree of resolve, planning, coordination, and discipline to strike targets in Western Europe, and this brings me to my second point: Europe is fundamentally unprepared to face this menace.
Having served as a CIA Station Chief in Western Europe, I know well the capabilities and the limitations of intelligence services on the continent. The reality of Europe today is that you have an unhelpful mixture of loose immigration policies, porous borders, an unprecedented flood of immigration from the Middle East, and the diaspora of thousands of committed jihadists from Europe traveling to Iraq/Syria and then returning to Europe, sometimes to continue to make jihad there. In the face of this multifaceted and growing threat, you have mostly shrinking intelligence and defense budgets, and a fractured and uncoordinated intelligence system that spans a couple dozen European countries. For terrorists, it’s a dream come true: no border checks, easy immigration, and a generous social welfare system. Europe is vulnerable.
Brussels, in particular, seems particularly vulnerable. They have one of the highest per capita rates of Muslim immigration in Europe and correspondingly, they have one of the highest per capita rates of citizens going to jihad in Syria and Iraq. And whether they are successful in their efforts in Syria, or unsuccessful, many of these jihadists will be coming back to their European countries of citizenship. Furthermore, if I were a terrorist recruiter and was developing a young and impressionable Western European recruit online, and if he expressed some desire to get into the jihad in Syria, I would tell him to stay put in Brussels, because the best and most effective place for him to do jihad was right there in Brussels.
There are some sobering stories in Europe of the lack of assimilation of Muslim immigrants. There are immigrant slums developing in places like Brussels, London, Paris, and elsewhere. Many young men in these areas identify first with being Muslim, maybe secondly with their tribe, or the country of origin of themselves or their parents, and only very tangentially with the country of their European citizenship.
In the British train and bus bombings of 2005, we were all shocked to find out that the perpetrators were all British citizens—Some born and raised in England (to Pakistani parents). These were young men who grew up in England and had lived their entire lives in England. In a suicide video taped before the attacks, one of the British born terrorists noted that his attack was only, “… the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger…” More recently, everyone was shocked to find an ISIS spokesman, nicknamed Jihadi John, who spoke beautiful English with a British accent while he coolly beheaded his victims. Jihadi John, aka Muhammad Jassim Abdulkarim Olayan, was also raised in England, having moved there from Kuwait with his parents when he was six.
With great resolve, increased intelligence budgets, more intelligence sharing, better policing, better border security, and a more thoughtful immigration policy, Western Europe can face these terrorist challenges. It won’t be easy, and new laws will have to be written, but the alternatives are worse. As Winston Churchill said, “One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But, if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.”
