For a time, after the November bloodbath, there was talk of “no go” zones in major European cities — areas, particularly Arab-dominated — where police have been unable to penetrate routinely, without the kind of massive show of force that preceded the seizure of Abdeslam. The reality is that these zones are less places cops don’t dare go than places where they get few useful results when they do show up. The police, quietly, with sensitivity and understanding, with a deep knowledge of the languages and customs of each such neighborhood, need to be there all the time. And they’re not.
More than 20 years ago, Count Alexandre de Marenches, longtime head of French intelligence, told me that the greatest threat to his nation’s security was “an entire nation living within our country whose language we do not speak, whose customs and religion, whose hopes and fears we do not understand.” He was referring, even then, to the Islamic communities that have only multiplied in recent years and promise to multiply even further with the arrival of thousands of new refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s a question worth posing not only in Francophone Europe but in the United States as well — the danger of the multiplication of communities where little intelligence emerges and few forces of order are truly plugged in.
In the specific case of Abdeslam, there’s the excuse that French-speaking and Flemish-speaking Belgian cops have difficulty communicating, and that neither group has much expertise in Arabic. There are other issues as well — the conflict, particularly in France, between domestic and international intelligence agencies, historically all too often at odds.
All these are issues worth an urgent look in the United States. In the U.S., ISIL sympathizers can’t simply jump in a car as in Iraq or Syria, pass porous frontiers and in a matter of days wind up in sympathetic communities only blocks from the targets of potentially deadly attacks. Even so, America, too, must understand enemies sheltering among us. Complacency in America may be as deadly a sin as ignorance in Europe.
David A. Andelman, a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, is editor emeritus of World Policy Journal and, with the Count Alexandre de Marenches, longtime head of French intelligence, co-author of The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism. Follow Andelman onTwitter: @DavidAndelman