布鲁塞尔恐袭留下的教训 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，我在布鲁塞尔参加德国马歇尔基金会(German Marshall Fund)组织的一场会议。就在会议的几天前，去年11月巴黎爆炸案的主要嫌疑人之一萨拉赫•阿卜杜勒-萨拉姆(Salah Abdeslam)在此落网，整个城市都处在紧张氛围中，但当时没人能预见到，两天后布鲁塞尔自身也将成为袭击目标。

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.

现在看来，那次会议所聚焦的问题如今显得更加紧迫了。会上的发言者包括伊夫•戈德斯坦(Yves Goldstein)，他是布鲁塞尔首都大区政府主席办公室的负责人。

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，布鲁塞尔25%的人口是穆斯林。他由衷地表示，这座城市（有法语区、佛兰芒语区及欧盟区）多元混合的性质是其文化繁荣的根源之一。但他也承认，布鲁塞尔面临着二战以来最严重的安全问题，因为布鲁塞尔有相当比例的年轻穆斯林人口将“伊斯兰国”(ISIS)恐怖分子视为“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，萨拉赫能够在巴黎恐袭发生后在布鲁塞尔藏匿4个月而未被发现的事实表明，这里有一个巨大的人员网络为恐怖分子疑犯提供帮助。

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.

这些事实应该可以让我们进一步理解布鲁塞尔恐袭带来的教训。我们需要改善的两大方面——社群融合和情报——都是长期性的。

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，人们大都专注于一些具体的情报短板，情报工作不力导致比利时人未能发现一个大型圣战分子网络，巴黎和布鲁塞尔恐袭似乎就是该网络成员制造的。但建立有效的情报网络是一项需要多年努力的长期工作。

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.

在这方面，比利时人可以借鉴英国情报部门在2005年伦敦爆炸案后的做法。英国安全机构已经致力于在穆斯林社区——尤其是在年轻人以及那些到由激进阿訇主持的清真寺做礼拜的穆斯林中间——建立情报人员网络。

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.

这么做是希望那些情报人员能在逃亡的圣战分子或激进组织发动袭击前截获相关情报。因此，英国人认为自己现在最容易遭受的袭击是由不属于恐怖网络的“独狼”发动的袭击。相比之下，比利时人显然还未能以迫切需要的方式渗透进圣战分子网络。

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.

情报工作与社群融合密切相关。如果一个社区的大多数人都感觉能与整个社会融为一体，那招募线人就会容易得多。穆斯林社区越孤立，激进思想就越有可能扎根。

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.

经济问题只是部分原因。那个周末，我去了布鲁塞尔如今臭名昭著的莫伦贝克(Molenbeek)区，萨拉赫就是在这里被捕的。虽然据说这里失业率很高，但显然并非一贫如洗。这里有很多小商店、咖啡馆，街道上人群熙熙攘攘。尽管该区距布鲁塞尔的欧洲区和博物馆区仅有10分钟车程，但文化上感觉差异很大。让莫伦贝克区及布鲁塞尔的其他穆斯林社区与整个比利时社会更紧密地联系在一起，将需要许多年的努力。