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Belgium Has Become the Hub of Terror in Europe
(Washington Post) Greg Miller and Joby Warrick - The carnage in Brussels has exposed the extent to which Belgium has become the Western hub of the Islamic State terrorist threat that has spread across the Middle East and deep into Europe. Belgium has seen a larger share of its Muslim population leave to fight in Syria than has any other Western country. The Molenbeek district of Brussels is a particularly fertile breeding ground for militants, including several involved in the Paris attacks last year. "It's kind of astonishing how hard it is for bureaucracies to be galvanized without direct experience of a major terror attack," said Daniel Benjamin, a former top counterterrorism official at the State Department. "The tragedy is that country after country has had to learn this the hard way," he said, describing the Islamic State's support network in Belgium as "probably the most fully developed [terror] infrastructure in Europe." Belgium's relatively small security force is widely regarded as among the least effective in Europe. Because of Europe's open borders, Belgium's terrorism problem now threatens all its neighbors, said Bruce Hoffman, director of Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies.