arrests Friday<\/a> of Abdeslam and another suspect.<\/p>\n\u201cWe think there was a bomb maker who survived, someone who had put together the vests in Belgium, and we don\u2019t think it was one of those who died in Paris,\u201d a senior French counterterror official told me before the Brussels attacks. \u201cUsually they don\u2019t want to lose someone with those kinds of skills in an attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is also possible a separate cell carried out the attack in Brussels. A Belgian counterterror official cited intelligence reports that 180 European operatives were trained by the Islamic State and deployed back to their home countries during the past year. Some of those operatives, including at least three of the Paris attackers, used fraudulent passports to pose as Syrians and concealed themselves in the chaotic flow of refugees and migrants across the European Union\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
Officials describe the threat in Belgium as concentric circles: Hundreds of hard-core terrorists intent on striking Europe after express training by the Islamic State in what a captured French suspect described to interrogators last year as a \u201cfactory of terrorists\u201d in Syria. Extremists willing to fight and die without leaving home. Gangsters who drink and gamble, yet support the Islamist cause with guns, cash, cars and documents. And loose networks of petty criminals and associates willing to shelter notorious fugitives like Salah Abdeslam, the suspected Paris attacker arrested last week in his native Molenbeek.<\/p>\n
The size, volatility and street gang-like mentality of that underworld help explain how Abdeslam dodged authorities for four months \u2013 and how bombers eluded security forces on high alert and struck the Brussels airport and a subway stop near the European Union headquarters on Tuesday. The estimated casualty count so far: more than 30 dead and 230 wounded. The convergence of crime and extremism in has reached dangerous levels in Belgium but reflects a larger European security challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have so many people who are adrift, who are involved in common crime and decide terrorism is a shortcut to paradise,\u201d said Dolores Delgado, a chief counterterror prosecutor in Spain. \u201cIt gives them a chance to get revenge on society. It is a virtual army of people who follow a demented ideology whether they go to Syria or remain here. A large number of people who are ready to help an attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
France and Belgium are the top targets because they have sent so many fighters to Syria, where they train with thousands of French-speaking jihadis from Tunisia and Morocco. The Belgian counterterror official said: \u201cWhen the recruits arrive in Syria, they are asked, \u2018Do you want to fight here or go back home to Europe to be a martyr?\u2019 If they want to go back to Europe, they are given express training, a week of arms and explosives, then sent back. It\u2019s as quick as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coordinated attacks on the airport and the subway appear to have been in the making for some time, officials said Tuesday. The timing, however, may have been driven by fears that the arrests last week would expose other militants operating underground in Belgium, especially if Abdeslam and the other suspect cooperated with investigators.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the attack was organized quickly as revenge for (Abdeslam\u2019s) arrest,\u201d said Delgado, the Spanish prosecutor. \u201cThe alert has been at a high level ever since the Paris attacks. It could be that they sped up a plot because they thought Abdeslam might collaborate. But their overall goal is to spread terror and chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fugitive Paris suspects and Tuesday\u2019s bombers benefited from the support of an underworld where crime and extremism increasingly blur together, making the threat even harder to identify. The phenomenon exists also in France, Denmark and other nations with sizeable populations of working-class, alienated children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants. But it has reached dangerous extremes in Belgium. An increasing number of recruits and supporters of the Islamic State are violent criminals who radicalize rapidly, yet don\u2019t necessarily adhere to a fundamentalist lifestyle.<\/p>\n
The Kamikaze Riders are a prime example. Their profile is rare in the world of Islamic extremists: a motorcycle gang with all the trappings of that subculture, yet radicalized and was implicated in a plot for an attack in December.<\/p>\n
In Belgium, gangsters often provide crucial support to terrorist operations without even bothering to maintain a veneer of piety. Police describe robberies of fast food stores and drug dealers that, after further investigation, turn out to be done to finance trips to join the jihad in Syria. Even supposed hardcore Islamists break the rules: In calls caught on a wiretap, investigators listened to a veteran Brussels extremist scold his daughter for wearing a short skirt, then borrow money from friends and arrange for the services of a transvestite prostitute, officials said.<\/p>\n
Referring to some of the Paris plotters, a Belgian counterterror official said:\u201cThese guys are not stereotypical Islamists. They gamble, drink, do drugs. They are lady killers, wear Armani, fashionable haircuts. And they live off crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petty criminals, friends and relatives, mostly of Moroccan descent, helped the clean-cut Abdeslam live underground in the capital despite an aggressive dragnet. They were motivated by family and friendship ties and a deep-seated hostility toward mainstream society that often doesn\u2019t have much to do with religion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you do a raid on a house, in normal areas people talk or help if they think someone was a terrorist,\u201d Van der Sypt said. \u201cPeople are not collaborating in Molenbeek<\/a>. They are throwing stones at the police. It has created a community of people who don\u2019t go to school anymore when they are 11 or 12. They are very good criminals as teenagers. They become kingpins at 18.\u201d<\/p>\nOnce again after Tuesday\u2019s attack, Belgian police were kicking down doors in search of fugitives suspected in the airport bombing. At least one fugitive was said to be on the run, and police found bomb-making equipment and an Islamic State flag during a search.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to develop a new mentality because the profiles have changed so much,\u201d Delgado said. \u201cImmediately people start talking about bombing Syria, about war overseas. But the terrorists live in the West.\u201d<\/p>\n
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