A deadly raid on a terror cell and several arrests in Belgium highlight a growing threat in the tiny European country better known as a center for diplomacy, banking and diamond exchange.
At least 15 people were arrested in the nation Friday as police conducted dozens of anti-terror raids throughout Europe amid a renewed urgency to combat the growing threat of Islamic extremism.
More than two dozen possible terrorists were arrested in raids in France, Belgium, and Germany on Friday. Two suspects were killed in one raid that potentially stopped a major impending terror attack. VPC
Two terror suspects were killed and another injured late Thursday in the Belgian town of Verviers. The suspects had recently returned from Syria, where they fought for the Islamic State, and they were preparing an imminent attack on police. The raid came after last week's terrorist attacks in France killed 17 people, but the incidents were not directly related.
About 300 Muslim Belgians, the vast majority young men, have traveled to fight on the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields, and about a third of them have returned, according to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College in London.
"Belgium is experiencing the same types of problem that you see in France," said Ian Lesser, senior director for foreign and security policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. "In many cases, the society in Belgium is more transnational, more connected to North Africa and Syria and Iraq."
Belgium is more of a transit hub than France, Lesser said. It's highly cosmopolitan and has large numbers of non-Belgians in its cities. There are no border controls between Belgium and France, and the immigration problems seen elsewhere in Europe are more concentrated because its small territory is highly urbanized, he said.
Though Belgium does not have Europe's largest concentration of Muslim immigrants — that designation belongs to France — it has not integrated them into Belgian society well and has no concrete plan to do so, said Stevie Weinberg, director of operations at the International Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
Some of Belgium's most radical immigrants do not want to integrate, "but rather prefer to separate themselves, maintaining their cultural and religious identities," Weinberg said. That's led to a clash of cultures, resulting in alienation for some second-generation immigrants from Muslim countries, a mood radical preachers have used to spread their ideology.
Recruiting network Sharia4Belgium wants to convert Belgium — whose capital of Brussels is also the capital of the European Union — into an Islamic State. The group is one of the most prolific recruiters of European fighters for al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, but many European analysts have a hard time explaining why, said Thomas Hegghammer, director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.
"We don't know why Sharia4Belgium has been more successful than its sister organizations in other European countries," Hegghammer said.
European leaders have long tolerated citizens traveling to Middle Eastern war zones to fight with foreign armies and terrorists because so few of them returned to commit jihad at home, he said. That appears to be changing, but policymakers are not sure how to respond.
Jailing every European who's traveled to fight alongside terrorists is impractical because it would require incarcerating potentially thousands of people, Hegghammer said. It could discourage informants and parents who report their children missing and result in pushing even more people into the arms of radicals.
More than 2,500 people from the European Union are suspected of fighting alongside militants in Syria and Iraq, according to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization.
Threats show the Islamic State has set its sights on Belgium, Weinberg said. A recent video by the militants called for attacks in Belgium, France, Germany and Switzerland.
Lucas Van Hessche, a young Belgian in Syria, posted a Facebook message warning Belgium and other enemies of the Islamic State: "We are not a small army, like you describe. We are a state that is developing and that soon will arrive to Belgium — whether you want it not."
The post received dozens of likes on social media.
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