SPORT AND EXTREMISM
When I ask Tom Flachett, founder of the Brussels Boxing Academy, how many of his former students have travelled to Syria to join Isis, he gets a little exasperated.
“They always ask the number,” he says, referring, I assume, to journalists. He picks up a book of pictures of academy alumni and points to someone in a group photo. “This guy is there now, he’s very young, you see?”
The main aim of Flachett’s club, set up in 2003, has always been to reach out to youngsters in some of Brussels’ poorest neighbourhoods, including Molenbeek, a small district in the north of Brussels. Boxing is a popular sport among this demographic, and it’s easy to organise and motivating for people with little else in their lives. Plus, having built up a relationship over years, many students turn to their trainers when they’re in trouble.
Brussels has been in the spotlight as a hotbed for terrorism since the Paris and Brussels attacks in late 2015 and early 2016, which involved terrorists from Molenbeek. At least 47 people have left Molenbeek for Syria since 2011. In September of this year, the Brussels security services announced that it had deemed 57 residents of the district radicalised and put them under surveillance.
Healing rifts
Molenbeek is one of 19 municipalities in a city that has 19 mayors and six different police forces. These factions have a reputation for failing to collaborate. Belgium lacks a national framework for preventing radicalisation, so responsibility falls mostly on local authorities to draw up plans. But the approach of former Molenbeek mayor Philippe Moureaux, who presided over the district for 18 years until 2012, was laissez-faire, to say the least.