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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
153156
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| Summary/Abstract |
“The Belgians just aren’t up to it,” said a French intelligence source anonymously after the 13 November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.1 Robert-Jan Bartunek “Belgium Hits Back at French Criticism Over Lax Intelligence,” Reuters, 17 November 2015, at
http://www.reuters.com/article/france-shooting-belgium-criticism-idUSL8N13C3OV20151117
, accessed 17 November 2015.
Surely frustrated by the connections surfacing between the attackers and Belgium, he or she may have had a point. Throughout the 1980s the Belgian intelligence services were routinely criticized, fairly or unfairly, for just about anything.2 “Every institution experiences difficulties at some time or another. The 1980s was just such a period […]. Now we need to pull ourselves together, overcome our difficulties, and go about restoring people’s confidence. We have learned the lessons of the past.” Nancy Ferroni, interview with SE Administrateur général Bart Van Lijsebeth, “Soulever un coin du voile du secret,” Le Vif/L’Express, 5 March 1999, p. 18.
In the 1990s, those services were thought, as a Belgian intelligence officer put it, to be operating “like something out of the Middle Ages.”3 Nancy Ferroni “Le Spy Blues,” Le Vif/L’Express, 5 March 1999, p. 16. In more recent years, Belgium has been increasingly seen as a hotbed of Islamic radicalization and as a staging ground for terrorist attacks.
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| 2 |
ID:
175721
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| Summary/Abstract |
This essay uses the official reports as well as sources from the intelligence services to provide a clearer picture of the working circumstances of the Belgian intelligence and security services and the pressure they were under to deal with the challenges posed by violent radicalisation and terrorist plots since the emergence of the foreign fighters phenomenon. It will be shown how mounting pressure from the rapidly expanding threat exacerbated the gradual exhaustion of the security services by structural issues of unaddressed organisational difficulties, and budget restrictions faced with increasing workloads. Due to the high number of foreign fighters, belated initiatives taken to assess the threat were impeded by barriers to information exchange, unclear guidance, and data overload. The failure of Belgian intelligence to detect the attack plans was more a symptom of policy failure than the underachievement of the services. A concluding section will reflect upon the inadequacy and lateness of policy responses because of a Belgian tendency to understate security.
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