布魯塞爾恐襲留下的教訓 The lessons from the Brussels terror attacks

On Sunday morning, I was in Brussels at a conference organised by the German Marshall Fund. The city was tense, following the arrest a couple of days earlier of Salah Abdeslam, a leading suspect in the Paris bombings in November, although nobody could foresee that, two days later, Brussels itself would come under attack.

最近，我在布魯塞爾參加德國馬歇爾基金會(German Marshall Fund)組織的一場會議。就在會議的幾天前，去年11月巴黎爆炸案的主要嫌疑人之一薩拉赫•阿卜杜勒-薩拉姆(Salah Abdeslam)在此落網，整個城市都處在緊張氛圍中，但當時沒人能預見到，兩天後布魯塞爾自身也將成爲襲擊目標。

In retrospect, the Sunday morning session at the GMF conference was focused on issues that now seem even more urgent. One of the speakers was Yves Goldstein, who runs the office of the president of the Brussels regional government.

現在看來，那次會議所聚焦的問題如今顯得更加緊迫了。會上的發言者包括伊夫•戈德斯坦(Yves Goldstein)，他是布魯塞爾首都大區政府主席辦公室的負責人。

Mr Goldstein pointed out that the population of Brussels is 25 per cent Muslim. He insisted, with evident sincerity, that the mixed nature of the city, which has French, Flemish and EU quarters, was a source of cultural richness. But he also argued that Brussels faces its most serious security problem since the second world war since, as he explained, a substantial proportion of the young Muslim population of Brussels, regarded Isis terrorists as “heroes”.

戈德斯坦指出，布魯塞爾25%的人口是穆斯林。他由衷地表示，這座城市（有法語區、佛蘭芒語區及歐盟區）多元混合的性質是其文化繁榮的根源之一。但他也承認，布魯塞爾面臨着二戰以來最嚴重的安全問題，因爲布魯塞爾有相當比例的年輕穆斯林人口將“伊斯蘭國”(ISIS)恐怖分子視爲“英雄”。

As Mr Goldstein pointed out, the fact that Salah Abdeslam had been able to hide in Brussels undetected for four months after the Paris attacks shows that there is a substantial network of people prepared to help terrorist suspects.

正如戈德斯坦所指出的，薩拉赫能夠在巴黎恐襲發生後在布魯塞爾藏匿4個月而未被發現的事實表明，這裏有一個巨大的人員網絡爲恐怖分子疑犯提供幫助。

These facts should provide some insight into the lessons that can be learned from the Brussels attacks. The two most important things that need to be improved are long term in nature — integration and intelligence.

這些事實應該可以讓我們進一步理解布魯塞爾恐襲帶來的教訓。我們需要改善的兩大方面——社羣融合和情報——都是長期性的。

At the moment, there is considerable focus on the specific intelligence failures that led the Belgians to fail to roll up a large jihadist network that seems to have been behind the Paris and Brussels attacks. But building up effective intelligence networks is long-term work that requires years of effort.

目前，人們大都專注於一些具體的情報短板，情報工作不力導致比利時人未能發現一個大型聖戰分子網絡，巴黎和布魯塞爾恐襲似乎就是該網絡成員製造的。但建立有效的情報網絡是一項需要多年努力的長期工作。

In this respect, the Belgians might be able to learn from the kind of work the British intelligence services did after the London bombings of 2005. The UK’s security agencies have worked on building up networks of intelligence assistants in the Muslim community, particularly among young people and those who attend mosques that host radical preachers.

在這方面，比利時人可以借鑑英國情報部門在2005年倫敦爆炸案後的做法。英國安全機構已經致力於在穆斯林社區——尤其是在年輕人以及那些到由激進阿訇主持的清真寺做禮拜的穆斯林中間——建立情報人員網絡。

The hope is that those intelligence operatives can usually pick up information about fugitive jihadis or radical networks before they strike. The British feel that, as a result, they are now most vulnerable to “lone wolf” attackers, who are not part of a network. The Belgians, by contrast, have obviously not been able to penetrate jihadi networks in the ways that are urgently required.

這麼做是希望那些情報人員能在逃亡的聖戰分子或激進組織發動襲擊前截獲相關情報。因此，英國人認爲自己現在最容易遭受的襲擊是由不屬於恐怖網絡的“獨狼”發動的襲擊。相比之下，比利時人顯然還未能以迫切需要的方式滲透進聖戰分子網絡。

The intelligence task is closely related to the second issue — integration. It is much easier to recruit informants if a substantial part of the community feels attached to the wider society as a whole. The more isolated the Muslim community is, the more likely it is that radical ideologies can take root.

情報工作與社羣融合密切相關。如果一個社區的大多數人都感覺能與整個社會融爲一體，那招募線人就會容易得多。穆斯林社區越孤立，激進思想就越有可能紮根。

The problem is only partly economic. Over the weekend, I visited Molenbeek, the now notorious Brussels neighbourhood, in which Mr Abdeslam was arrested. Although unemployment rates are said to be high there, it is not an obviously poverty-stricken area. There are plenty of small businesses and cafés and people bustling around on the streets. But although the district is a 10-minute drive from the European quarter and the museum district in Brussels, culturally it feels distant. Making Molenbeek and the rest of Muslim Brussels feel much more closely connected to the rest of Belgian society will be the work of many years.

經濟問題只是部分原因。那個週末，我去了布魯塞爾如今臭名昭著的莫倫貝克(Molenbeek)區，薩拉赫就是在這裏被捕的。雖然據說這裏失業率很高，但顯然並非一貧如洗。這裏有很多小商店、咖啡館，街道上人羣熙熙攘攘。儘管該區距布魯塞爾的歐洲區和博物館區僅有10分鐘車程，但文化上感覺差異很大。讓莫倫貝克區及布魯塞爾的其他穆斯林社區與整個比利時社會更緊密地聯繫在一起，將需要許多年的努力。