Inside job

Flaws in Belgium’s Counterterrorism Efforts Were Long Known

Short staffing, communications problems, and institutional problems have plagued the country for years—and ISIS is taking advantage

“What we feared has happened. We were hit by blind attacks.”That’s how Belgian Prime Minster Charles Michel described Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels. They point to the paradox at play in the tiny, divided Low Country nation: Ever since the Paris attacks in November 2015, Belgian counterterrorism officials have been on high alert, and yet they correctly worried that deadly violence was inevitable. While the details of the attacks remain to be discovered and reconstructed, there are still some hints of why it was so hard to prevent an attack. Belgium has long been a center for Islamist terrorism, but certain aspects of the state’s structure and relationship with Europe also made it difficult for the government to fight back.