Belgium’s cowardice is preventing it from tackling its terror threat

Last year, a French broadcaster asked if Belgium was in danger of becoming a narco state. The question was posed in light of the news of the cocaine flooding into the country and the growing influence of Belgium’s drug cartels.  

Others believe that Belgium most closely resembles an Islamic state. The former Belgian senator Alain Destexhe accused his country this week of living in denial and allowing Belgium to become ‘a laboratory of Islamism’. 

Belgian has undergone a radical demographic change this century, particularly in the capital. Of Brussels’s 1.2 million residents, 61 per cent were born outside Europe and Moroccans make up the largest number of this figure. 

This has consequences. A report earlier this year by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) drew attention to the influence of the ‘Mocro Maffia’ drug cartel, an organisation that originated in the 1970s when Holland liberalised the use of cannabis.