{"id":84234,"date":"2016-03-23T06:05:31","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T05:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/content\/?p=84234"},"modified":"2023-04-27T13:38:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T10:38:05","slug":"five-stories-you-should-read-to-understand-the-brussels-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2016\/03\/23\/five-stories-you-should-read-to-understand-the-brussels-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Five stories you should read to understand the Brussels attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"pb-byline\">By Ryan Carey-Mahoney<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"pb-sig-line hasnt-headshot has-0-headshots hasnt-bio is-not-column\"><span class=\"tweet-authors\"><span class=\"pb-twitter-follow\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"twitter-follow-button twitter-follow-button-rendered\" title=\"Twitter Follow Button\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets\/follow_button.64a917b4a230f163048902c783e1530f.en.html#dnt=false&amp;id=twitter-widget-0&amp;lang=en&amp;screen_name=thegoodcarmah&amp;show_count=false&amp;show_screen_name=true&amp;size=m&amp;time=1458709344244\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-screen-name=\"thegoodcarmah\"><\/iframe><\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n<article>\n<div class=\"inline-content inline-video\">\n<div class=\"wpv-wrap ae0f98f6-f008-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1_wrap\">\n<div class=\"wpv-fixed\">\n<div id=\"player-ae0f98f6-f008-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1-125717\" class=\"posttv-video-embed wpv-player wpv-processed wpv-share-small ooyala-player-processed wpv-sticky\" data-has-been-visible=\"true\" data-loading-screen=\"blackout\" data-auto-play=\"1\" data-auto-init=\"0\" data-aspect-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-category-id=\"segments\" data-duration=\"87000\" data-headline=\"Multiple explosions rock Brussels\" data-is-truth-teller=\"0\" data-max-height=\"-1\" data-max-width=\"-1\" data-object-id=\"56f10336e4b0e836df506ffc\" data-show-endscreen=\"1\" data-show-promo=\"http:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/posttv-thumbnails-prod\/thumbnails\/56f10336e4b0e836df506ffc\/airportcover.jpg\" data-uuid=\"ae0f98f6-f008-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1\" data-youtube-id=\"\">\n<div id=\"player-ae0f98f6-f008-11e5-a2a3-d4e9697917d1-125717-JW-ad-bar\" class=\"ptv-ad-bar-googima\">\n<div class=\"skip-ad-container\">Skip<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"inline-content inline-video\">\n<div class=\"inline-video-caption\"><span class=\"pb-caption\">Brussels&#8217; Zaventem Airport and a metro station near the heart of the E.U. were hit by explosions on March 22, sending the city into high terror alert. (Jenny Starrs\/The Washington Post)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>A\u00a0series of coordinated attacks in Brussels on Tuesday morning killed dozens and injured hundreds.\u00a0The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the devastation \u2014\u00a0an attack that some have been warning for years would be possible.<\/p>\n<p>To really understand all that&#8217;s happening in the Belgian capital, we recommend you read these five stories.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.\u00a0Why is tiny Belgium Europe\u2019s jihad-recruiting hub?,<\/strong> <em><strong>by Michael Birnbaum<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>With 350 citizens in Syria, Belgium has the highest number of foreign fighters per capita of any European country. The influence of those fighters, bitter divisions throughout the country and &#8220;ineffective&#8221; integration of immigration has made Belgium a breeding ground of terror activity.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"citation\"><p>Like other European nations, Belgium is experiencing the consequences of what critics call decades of ineffectiveness in integrating immigrants, including many Muslims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>2.\u00a0Why is Brussels under attack?, <em>by Adam Taylor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In recent years, Brussels has gone from being a cultural center to a city riddled with terror plots. Take, for instance, last week&#8217;s capture of\u00a0Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the last\u00a0surviving architect of the Paris attacks. Its success quickly became overshadowed by the thought of how vast this terror network could be.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"citation\"><p>While the discovery of Abdeslam was touted as a success, it also appeared to show that the number of people involved in the Paris attacks could be far larger than first thought. And worryingly, there were signs that Abdeslam and the network around him had been planning more attacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>3.\u00a0A decade ago, she warned of radical Islam in Belgium\u2019s Molenbeek, by\u00a0Steven Mufson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just over a decade ago, Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi went undercover in Brussels&#8217;s Muslim-heavy district of\u00a0Molenbeek. Her reports revealed a hot-bed of violent extremism bubbling up in the area that she says should have been a wake-up call for Belgium.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"citation\"><p>Now, she says, because Belgian authorities have not done enough to fight extremism, \u201cthere is a whole generation waiting to participate in these actions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>4.\u00a0Attacks in Brussels bypassed a city already on high alert, by Thomas Gibbons-Neff<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The city started preparing for an attack\u00a0after\u00a0the assaults\u00a0in Paris in\u00a0November. But even being on high alert for a \u201cpossible and likely\u201d attack for months wasn&#8217;t enough to prevent them.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"citation\"><p>\u201cYou can\u2019t protect every target, everywhere, all the time,\u201d one security official said.\u00a0\u201cThey\u2019ve been on complete alert, and still all these measures are still insufficient\u00a0against a determined adversary.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>5.\u00a0Turkey\u2019s president warned of terror threat to Brussels just days before it happened, by Ishaan Tharoor<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Turkish President\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a foreboding statement in the wake of his country&#8217;s own terror attack on March 13. In it, he warned that attacks like the one in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, can happen anywhere, specifically citing Brussels as an example.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"citation\"><p>There is no reason for the bomb which exploded in Ankara not to explode in Brussels, where an opportunity to show off in the heart of the city to supporters of the terror organization is presented, or in any city in Europe. Despite this clear reality, European countries are paying no attention, as if they are dancing in a minefield. You can never know when you are stepping on a mine. But it is clear that this is an inevitable end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Read more:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blasts leave dozens\u00a0dead at Brussels airport and metro station<\/p>\n<p>Live updates: Attacks in Brussels<\/p>\n<div class=\"clear\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"post-body-sig-line\">\n<div class=\"post-body-bio has-photo\">Ryan Carey-Mahoney is a producer on The Washington Post&#8217;s social media team.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ryan Carey-Mahoney Skip Brussels&#8217; Zaventem Airport and a metro station near the heart of the E.U. were hit by explosions on March 22, sending the city into high terror alert. (Jenny Starrs\/The Washington Post) A\u00a0series of coordinated attacks in Brussels on Tuesday morning killed dozens and injured hundreds.\u00a0The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":65467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[776],"tags":[9979],"class_list":["post-84234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belgium-eu-members-european-countries-english","tag-brussels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}