The following article is based on my own interpretation of the said events. Any material borrowed from published and unpublished sources has been appropriately referenced. I will bear the sole responsibility for anything that is found to have been copied or misappropriated or misrepresented in the following post.
Piyush Sharma, MBA 2015-17, Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur
—————————————————————————————————————–
The terrorist attacks in Brussels in March not only targeted the administrative heart of the European Union but perhaps also the idea of the EU itself. The attacks came in the wake of the similar events in Paris November last year. Already the nationalist forces in some of the European countries challenging the key principles of the EU namely free movement of labour and visa free travel. These voices are now only expected to get louder. The Brussels attacks are bound to lead to questions about intelligence cooperation within Europe, Border controls, refugee policy and eventually the political and economic project of the integration that the EU represents.
These terrorists are based in Europe and do not belong to a particular ethnicity. These incidents are not example of implanted terrorism but home grown terrorism, which makes it scary for EU. This home grown terrorism problem can be attributed to 3 factors. First of all, traditionally there is a certain arrogance in the west including Europe that terrorism per se was a problem of developing nations and it does not concern them after a certain level. Second factor is difficult in integrating, Muslims who have come in labours largely and this is being manifest in the second generation more than in the first. Thirdly, the western intervention in Africa, Middle East and Western Asia also led to present situation.
An attempt towards making a more comprehensive and more efficient intelligence policy is desperately required because in Brussels itself, as reports have indicated there is a multiplicity of police agencies. They have major problems of coordination and unless there is seamless coordination among different security agencies it is very difficult to monitor the activities of terrorists. Therefore, EU needs to have a good look at the intelligence sharing and corporation. Apart from this, a friendlier environment towards Muslims is needed to integrate them entirely within the society.