Crime that poses as war
Europeans feel besieged, if not terrified, in the wake of the horrific attacks in Brussels this week that struck at the heart of the European Union, killing 31 innocent people and injuring 270 at the main airport and on the subway. After London, Madrid and Paris, now this. No one feels truly safe.
As King Philippe sadly observed, “Belgium is in mourning and will never be the same.”
Indeed, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls seemed to legitimize the fears of many Europeans after Tuesday’s attacks when he insisted “We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war.” Certainly, it must feel like that. Any democratic, open, diverse society presents soft targets.
But it’s a label Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government rightly shies away from. As Canadians know from our own limited experience with terror — harking back to the days of Front de Libération du Québec bombings half a century ago and stretching into the Air India bombing and the recent attacks on Parliament and soldiers — terrorism is a crime that aspires to look like war.
Rather than magnify Daesh when they venture out of Iraq and Syria to target us, they are best treated as criminals, albeit dangerous and resilient ones. We do not need to stoop to their level to combat them, or succumb to the alarmism and divisiveness they aim to sow. Certainly we should not grant them the state-like legitimacy and “warrior” status they crave.
Yet each attack seems to generate a panicky, or cynical, wave of rhetoric about war, torture and targeting entire communities that plays into the terrorists’ hands. And not just in Europe.
In the American election campaign, Donald Trump rails about getting terror suspects to talk “a lot faster with torture,” while Ted Cruz muses about having police “patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods before they become radicalized.”
Here at home, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose and her party seized on Brussels to question whether Canada is “at war” with Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and to imply that the Liberals are soft on terror.
It’s cynical politics, nothing more. Since the Al Qaeda attacks on American targets in 2001, Liberal and Tory governments alike have invested an extra $100 billion in national security over and above what we otherwise would have spent, to beef up the military, police and spy services. And we don’t face the threat that Europe does, where 5,000 people trained by Daesh have returned, some to hide among closed, alienated communities.
We have also tightened our borders and pooled data for no-fly lists. We’ve passed tough anti-terror laws. And we are swapping information as never before with close allies. Apart from a welcome Liberal pledge to soften draconian aspects of the terror laws, none of this is likely to change.
Basically that’s the costly, bolster-the-security-forces approach Britain and France have taken and that other countries ought to emulate. Belgium has been seen, with some justification, as a weak link. Tight budgets have left the country’s small, fragmented security forces with scant resources to track, infiltrate and disrupt extremist groups. The European Union, too, has been slow to provide Europol, its puny law-enforcement agency, with the budget and mandate it needs to break up terror networks. Europe’s borders are porous by design and monitoring of traffic is lax. The EU still hasn’t got a credible air passenger data list.
Daesh and its ilk are a menace, but not on the apocalyptic scale they would have the world believe. They are exploiting gaps in security. Rather than echo and amplify the jihadists’ rhetoric of war, Europe’s leaders should respond by ensuring that police have the resources they need to tackle the threat.
Daesh and its ilk are a menace, but not on the apocalyptic scale they would have the world believe