Subdued patriotism in a divided Belgium

Politically fragmented between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, displays of the Belgian flag have been

In the United States, the September 11 attacks unleashed an outpouring of patriotism. After the attacks in and around Paris on November 13, the tricolor of the French flag was ubiquitous as the country channeled its grief.

Not so in Belgium. In this wounded nation, politically fragmented and divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, displays of the black, yellow and red of the Belgian flag have been relatively restrained, even as the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building lit up in its colours.

“We Belgians do not wrap ourselves in the flag — it is not our way,” said Nicolas Gallet, 19, who was among thousands on Thursday who thronged Place de La Bourse, a square in central Brussels filled with flowers and candles, and memorial messages chalked on asphalt. Instead, in a decidedly Belgian gesture, an image of the beloved cartoon character Tintin and his dog Snowy crying was widely shared on social media by Belgians and foreigners alike.

Like their counterparts around the world, Belgians reacted to the terror attacks that killed 31 people at an airport and subway station on Tuesday morning with the all-too-familiar rituals of public mourning and with grief, anger, shock and defiance. But perhaps befitting a country with three Parliaments, which once went without a government for 541 days, the understated displays of solidarity were tinged with simmering frustration as a blame game began.

Some Belgians lashed out at a flailing security apparatus and chronically dysfunctional government for abetting the tragedy. How, some critics here and abroad asked, could a country that in the past had been barely able to form a government – and a city that until recently had 19 police forces – effectively hunt for terrorists?

“You have local level and you have federal level, and there is no collaboration,” said Françoise Schepmans, the mayor of Molenbeek, the district where the sole surviving suspect from the Paris attacks was arrested last week after evading the authorities for 125 days. “They don’t have to talk to me about their investigation,” she said in an interview with CNN.

Belgium, a tiny country of 11 million people, has long had an identity crisis. It lives in the shadow of its larger and more powerful cousin, France. Brussels, the capital, doubles as the capital of the European Union and headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, giving it global heft but also subsuming its already fragile and fragmented persona to plodding bureaucratic institutions.

Reflecting on the attacks, Gallet, the student, said many Belgians were resigned and angry. He argued that the country’s fractious identity politics were at least partly to blame for distracting successive governments from improving the integration of immigrants and preventing terrorism. But his friend Antoine Staru disagreed. “I am sorry, but this is not Belgium’s fault,” said Staru, 20. “These are crazy people. These are people born here, and yet they are attacking this country.”

Since the Brussels attacks, far-right parties, from France to Italy to the Netherlands, have assailed the European Union’s lax immigration policies and porous borders. In Belgium, the nationalist Vlaams Belang party, which agitates for an independent Flanders, urged Prime Minister Charles Michel to seal the borders.

“We can’t stop terrorism if they remain open!” the party wrote on Twitter.
There were also calls for unity. Christophe Berti, editor of Le Soir, urged readers to undertake a historical reckoning of the last 40 years, including the conditions that had led to lapses of security and social cohesion. “That is the best homage we can pay to the victims,” he wrote.

But Brian Carroll, a communications consultant from Washington who escaped from the Maelbeek subway station through a cloud of smoke and rubble on Tuesday, suggested that given its role in hosting critical international institutions, Brussels should be policed by a Pan-European force.

As calls for accountability gathered force, the human cost of the attacks has become ever more real, with names and photographs of the dead and missing filling Belgian newspapers. The victims, including some 300 wounded, came from more than 40 countries, including the United States, Britain, Morocco, Spain and Hungary.

Identification of victims has been painfully slow, the police said, with many bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Among the few confirmed so far are Léopold Hecht, 20, a Belgian law student; Olivier Delespesse, a Belgian civil servant; and Adelma Marina Tapia, a Peruvian mother of young twin girls.

On Thursday, at a large military hospital in Neder-over-Heembeek in northern Brussels, where many of the victims were taken, officials said they expected that most of the dead there would be identified soon. Of the nearly 100 admitted with injuries, 15 remained.

Glimpse of heroism

Amid the gloom, there was also heroism. Alphonse Youla, a Belgian of African origin who wrapped luggage at the airport, was credited with spiriting several people to safety, according to Belgian news agencies, which reported that he carried people whose legs had been shattered from the ruined terminal, even as the ceiling was crashing in.

Some Belgians expressed outrage at remarks by the Republican presidential contender Donald J Trump, who had called Brussels a “hell hole” and, after the Tuesday attacks, reiterated his criticism of Muslim communities.

They were similarly upset by the comments of Éric Zemmour, a French writer who after the Paris attacks said the French government should bomb Molenbeek rather than the Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria.

On Thursday in Molenbeek, as residents bartered in Arabic at a vegetable and fruit market, Leiven Soete, 73, one of the relatively few native-born Belgians shopping there, said he had come, as he did every Thursday, to show that he would not be cowed. He said his neighbour, an older Moroccan man, had been inconsolable since the attacks.

“There is a shadow over Molenbeek. But we can’t solve this by making our neighbours the enemy,” he said. “If Donald Trump calls us a hell hole, I feel proud.”

Muslims in Molenbeek said they felt under siege. Samia, 32, who is of Moroccan origin
and has three children but declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals, said she feltsick about what had happened, and feared a backlash against Muslims.

“I am Belgian, too, I was raised here, and now my 5-year-old son asks me to close the blinds because he is afraid of being shot by terrorists,” Samia said as two friends wearing Islamic headscarves nodded somberly. She said the looks of suspicion in recent days on the streets of Brussels had been difficult to bear.