The people here don’t despair of Belgium’s often impenetrable bureaucracy. Instead, they undermine it with a significant helping of humor and charm. Brussels is a lively village, a place where it is easy to find friends. Not even the so-called jihadist stronghold of Molenbeek, by now notorious the world over, is a ghetto. It is separated only by a canal from the popular nightlife district of Dansaert.
Unfortunately, though, the city is also a good place for people looking to hide or to plan deadly attacks. Some neighborhoods in the city (not just Molenbeek) have become home to radicalized milieus, which makes life easier for criminals and terrorists, as do fragmented political structures and a splintered police apparatus. Describing the situation as Kafkaesque hardly does it justice. It’s not a coincidence that the trail of most large terror attacks in recent years has led back to Brussels: from the train attack in Madrid in 2004 to Charlie Hebdo and the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.
Of course it would be unfair to say that Brussels alone is to be blamed for the fact that violence-prone Islamists have made the city their home. But it would also be incorrect to say that Brussels and its Byzantine structures (19 municipalities and six police departments) are blameless.
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