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Information for accountants and accounting companies: "Standing With Brussels Against Terrorism and Fear"

This time the bombs exploded in Brussels, at the airport and on a metro train, brutally snuffing out at least 30 lives and wounding hundreds. The airport and much of the city were shut down, the police dragnets spread and the anguished questions arose: Why? How did the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility, plan this attack? Was this retaliation for the arrest last week of the last surviving Paris bomber? What have we missed?

With time we will have some answers, but in the end they are details to the central fact: Brussels, Europe, the world must brace for a long struggle against this form of terrorism. That means intensified counterterrorism efforts and a far higher degree of cooperation among threatened nations. That means courage and steadfastness in the face of a threat that will take many years to eliminate. It emphatically does not mean hysterical fearmongering of the sort promptly voiced by politicians like Donald Trump.

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On the most immediate level, security operations in Belgium must be raised to a far higher standard. Brussels is best known as the de facto capital of Europe, but it is also fast becoming the capital of Islamic radicalism in Europe. Compared with other European countries, Belgium is the biggest per capita provider of fighters to Syria; several of the killers in last November’s terrorism attacks in Paris came from the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, and it was there last week that the police finally captured Salah Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French citizen of Moroccan ancestry, thought to be the only surviving perpetrator of those attacks.

Yet Belgium has a notoriously weak counterterrorism apparatus, and the deep divide between the country’s French and Flemish populations has further weakened federal institutions such as the police, the judiciary and intelligence services. The authorities quickly shut down the airport and much of the city after the attack, but the country must seriously bolster its security services, drawing on its European neighbors for experience and help.

With porous internal borders in Europe, security simply cannot be left in the scattered and ill-coordinated condition that exists today. Yet sound preparations and police work can never eliminate the possibility of a murderous zealot with a belt of explosives.
The impulse after a barbaric attack is always to rein in civil liberties and freedoms. In the United States, the Patriot Act hurriedly enacted after the attacks of 9/11 led to abuses of the surveillance powers granted to the government. The French government declared a controversial state of emergency hours after the Paris attacks in November, which has been extended into May. In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Mr. Trump was quick to renew his calls for keeping Muslim refugees out of America and for a revival of torture, while his rival Senator Ted Cruz called for police patrols in Muslim neighborhoods in the United States.

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People in Belgium mourned the victims of Tuesday’s terrorist attack. Credit Martin Meissner/Associated Press

But such measures only serve the terrorists’ end, which is to weaken Western society by spreading fear and panic, turning citizen against citizen, feeding xenophobic sentiments and further alienating and radicalizing Muslim youths. Changes to security, policing and investigative practices are necessary, but they must be made cautiously, after serious debate and with due regard for civil rights and the law.

The Belgian people and their European neighbors have responded to this latest act of murder with solidarity in sorrow and determination to persevere. Authorities must do everything in their power to apprehend the perpetrators and to defend against more such acts. But the response to terrorism must also be a reaffirmation of core democratic values and a rejection of demagogues and xenophobes who would exploit public fears and tears.

NYT/The Opinion Pages