NYT: Failed Belgian State Accommodated Islamic Terrorists

Via Ann Althouse. I offer this excerpt without comment:

The country of just 11.2 million people faces widening derision as being the world’s wealthiest failed state — a worrying mix of deeply rooted terrorist networks, a government weakened by divisions among French, Dutch and German speakers, and an overwhelmed intelligence service in seemingly chronic disarray….

“This shows the limits of the actions you can undertake in a state of emergency,” said Philippe Hayez, a former official with the D.G.S.E., the French external intelligence service…. But unless you occupy it militarily, you don’t hold a town just by circulating police cars. We’re talking about guerrilla terrorism. And there’s a population that’s complicit.”…

“…Belgium has become a hub. So that when you arrest someone” — he referred to the arrest Friday of Mr. Abdeslam — “there will be a reaction… All of this is to say that the implantation of the network is more firm than we thought… The police were efficient — and yet this happened. So, there is a very strong implantation in Belgium”….

“The Belgian police are excellent,” said another former D.G.S.E. official, Alain Chouet. “The problems are political. They let develop violent Islamist currents. They were not disrupted because they didn’t want problems with the Muslim community.”