printReally farcical is the Atlantic writer’s complaint that Belgium’s “longstanding ethnic fractures”; “divisions between “French- and Flemish-speaking citizens,” and “distrust among different law-enforcement authorities,” “create barriers to effective policing” and “impede communication, investigation, and apprehension of suspected terrorists.”
Yes, let’s add to extant divisions in European countries by bringing into countries already divided more unassimilable Maghrebi Muslims.
Then there’s the alienation blame game:
… Belgium has a sizable Muslim population—roughly on par with that of other Northern European countries—but by some tallies has sent more fighters to join ISIS per capita than any other country in Europe. In Brussels’s Molenbeek neighborhood, the epicenter of Belgian jihadism, there’s high unemployment, an isolated Muslim population, poor education, and a lack of government services. …
… police agencies in different European countries do not cooperate effectively among each other. This creates special challenges, not only because terrorism is transnational but because Europe’s Schengen system makes it possible for people—including attackers—to cross borders with ease. Belgian officials had questioned some of the men involved in the Paris attacks prior to last November, but that information was never shared with French authorities. Since those attacks, European officials have been working to improve communication. …
… Finally, … there’s so much information reaching counterterrorism officials that it’s nearly impossible to sort through it all. [Try working in the private sector; government can never do anything right, b/c the incentives are inverted; the worse they do; the more funding they get.] “You talk about chatter, there’s just too much of it now, so you have all these officials across the world that are trying to neutralize these persistent threats,” he said.