Islamic State’s attack on Paris has triggered shifts in great power strategy in the Middle East, but just as significant for Europeans may be change afoot inside an office block near Brussels’ Gare du Nord station.
The Belgian capital was home to some of the Paris attackers and a logistical planning base for the operation. Dubbed by some “Jihad Central,” the city was locked down for days for fear local radicals could strike at home.
Now, stung by international accusations that underfunding and political in-fighting had left its security services the weakest link in Europe’s counter-terrorism defences, Belgium is ploughing resources into an intelligence agency that faces the biggest concentration of Syria-linked militants in the West.
Staffing for the Surete de l’Etat (State Security), of which little is publicly known beyond its address in an anonymous federal government office building near Brussels’ northern rail terminus, could rise by a quarter, according to government budget projections.
And for the first time in memory, Belgium has plans to send its spies abroad, the Justice Ministry confirmed in response to a question.
Belgian security chiefs have repeatedly complained that they cannot handle up to 900 home-grown Islamist militants, among the highest per capita rates in Europe - and certainly not with existing funds.
However, it took a foiled attack, including a shoot-out in the eastern town of Verviers, in January to reverse a planned budget cut and release €200m of security spending. The Paris attacks led to a further €400m package last month.
Quite how many people work in Belgian intelligence is itself a state secret, unlike most western peers, but there is evidence it is under-resourced compared to European counterparts.
Lars Bove, the author of a book on Belgium’s secret service, says it has around 600 staff, with some 500 in intelligence. The budget was set to have been cut this year, but after Verviers, was raised 20% to some €50m.
Neighbouring the Netherlands spends much more, even accounting for its larger size. Its AIVD agency employs some 1,500 people and had €213m to spend this year, including a €25m boost mainly to target some 220 Dutch jihadists believed to have gone to fight in Syria or Iraq.
Some foreign observers have labelled Belgium a failed state, split between Dutch and French speakers and focused on local matters.
The patchwork country of 11m people has six parliaments for its regions and linguistic communities, 193 local police forces and 19 autonomous mayors in Brussels alone.
Anyone looking for proof of how such devolution can affect policies assumed in most of the world to be the domain of national government had only to observe Michel’s discomfort attending last week’s UN. climate summit in Paris. Rare among wealthy nations, Belgium lacked an agreed plan on global warming - because Flemings and Walloons could not agree.
Within hours of the attacks in Paris being traced back, at least in part, to a network of young men from the Moroccan immigrant community in the Brussels borough of Molenbeek, Flemish and French-speaking Belgian politicians were pointing fingers of blame at each other for failing to curb the radicals.
The interior minister, a Flemish nationalist, was criticising the fact Brussels, a city of just 1.2m, has six autonomous police forces. The French-speaking liberal mayor of Molenbeek was complaining of a lack of resources to track 85 suspected militants in her borough alone - and criticising her socialist long-time predecessor for being soft on radical imams.
While there is no hard evidence of intelligence and tip-offs falling between the cracks before the Paris attacks, the limitations of the Surete security service have come to light. One of the suicide bombers, Bilal Hadfi, 20, returned from fighting in Syria and the intelligence services decided to bug his apartment to check his network.
But he failed to show up at the apartment he had been registered at, and so could not be traced.
Proposals to force those returning from Syria to wear electronic tags have also run into problems. A strike by those responsible for fitting the ankle bracelets in Flanders led the regional government to cut back on the programme, to the irritation of federal authorities.
Alain Winants, head of the intelligence service from 2006 until 2014, said politicians had appeared apathetic to his former service until the start of the year. He gave the example of when it planned a presentation about Syria fighters for the previous government - not a single minister showed up.
“It gave us the impression that there was a certain lack of interest,” he said.
The service also had had to rely on publicly available sources and informants and its close ties with Moroccan agents working inside the country until 2010 when it finally was cleared to tap telephones, hack computers or check bank accounts.
Belgium would pump an extra €400m into policing and justice, with a special focus on intelligence, with further recruitment and spending on speech recognition technology or cameras that can recognise vehicle number plates, official sources said.