“Molenbeek is more than Abdeslam”

The official postcard of how much has changed in Molenbeek, the world-famous Brussels neighborhood from which several of the terrorists in the 2015 Paris attacks left, starts on the banks of the canal that crosses the Belgian capital.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
03 December 2022 Saturday 16:30
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“Molenbeek is more than Abdeslam”

The official postcard of how much has changed in Molenbeek, the world-famous Brussels neighborhood from which several of the terrorists in the 2015 Paris attacks left, starts on the banks of the canal that crosses the Belgian capital.

Inaugurated in 1832 to transport coal to the north of the country, this river route is at the origin of its rich past, still visible if one pays close attention to the elegant facades of its main streets and squares, today covered in black dust and somewhat aesthetically pleasing. commercial poster patchwork The decline of industrial activity led in the 70s to an accelerated impoverishment of the neighborhood, the most densely populated in Brussels, with the highest rate of immigrant population in the city.

Today, Molenbeek and the whole of the Brussels canal appear often in the press linked to the word gentrification, the term that defines the process by which the middle or upper classes displace poor residents through selective neighborhood renewal. It is not a rapid or radical change in the case of the Belgian capital, but the new blocks of flats, art centers and fashion venues on the canal's front line, the arrival of young Flemish people in the neighbourhood, attest to this face lift. promoted by the authorities.

The real regeneration of the neighborhood, however, is happening behind closed doors. Not thanks to large public investments but to the efforts of its inhabitants, social workers like Johan Leman or Assetou Elabo, or projects like the Molengeek technological school that, without denying the structural difficulties they face, aggravated by the stigma of terrorism, work to empower their neighbors to get ahead.

The beginning, tomorrow, of the judicial process of those accused of the terrorist attacks in the Brussels metro and airport on March 22, 2016, is observed with indifference in the neighborhood. A hairdresser says he doesn't know if he wants the hearings to start on Monday. Others know it, the media don't talk about anything else, but they care little. “Honestly, I am not going to follow the trial. It's not that it doesn't affect me, it hurts a lot, there are people who have left the world in a horrible way" but "it's not worth putting the light back on certain people who have only done evil", says Yasmine, born 36 years in the neighborhood. “They are nobody. Mediating them and reliving all that again will be very painful for many people. They have already been tried in France and they have not answered any questions, because there are no possible answers.

10 accused are going to be tried, one of them in absentia (believed to have died in Syria), six of whom have already been sentenced in the Paris macro-trial. But Molenbeek wants to look to the future, not the past. “I don't think there has ever been a problem with the neighborhood. It is not the neighborhood that did these things, nor a religion, it was certain people. I think you have to make the distinction, although not everyone knows. The hatred that exists in the world is sad," says the young woman while holding her daughter's hand tightly in front of the old Café des Béguines, the tavern run by Ibrahim Abdeslam, one of the terrorists who blew himself up in Paris on November 13. of 2015.

The place is a good example of the neighborhood's desire for resilience. It had been closed two weeks before the attacks on suspicion of drug trafficking. Actually there was more to it than smoking joints and selling hashish. There they watched videos of the Islamic State and contacted online friends who had gone to Syria to fight. In such a banal scenario, the brothers Ibrahim and Salah Abdeslam, among others, planned the worst terrorist attacks in the history of France.

Since 2018, the old café -today renamed Maison des Béguines- has been home to five associations that offer support classes for primary school students, extracurricular activities, career guidance and French courses for parents. “We were looking for a place to carry out projects that strengthen the capacities of the populations with which we work, lower-middle-class families with specific needs, and we came across Café des Béguines. This corner is well known in the neighborhood due to the attacks and it is very visible, which is what we wanted”, explains Assetou Elabo, director of the NGO Atouts Jeunes.

“We want to give a new look to the neighborhood. It has been highly discriminated against and singled out for what some of its inhabitants did, but Molenbeek is not summed up in the Abdeslam brothers. Neither in its poverty nor in its origins, it is a much more diverse neighborhood than it seems ”, he explains. In 2018 they attended the inauguration of the center from the premier, Charles Michel, to the mayoress of the neighborhood, Françoise Schepmans. A couple of years later, the local financing disappeared – the commune is under financial guardianship – but they found money in other organizations to continue operating.

The problem of fundamentalism has diminished, says Elabo cautiously. As a result of the attacks, “a lot has been invested in countering this discourse, being attentive to social networks and false news. Now the schools give courses on philosophy, citizenship and values”. Suspicious cultural centers have also been closed. But the difficulties (unemployment, lack of training and offer of activities) "are still there", rather they have been aggravated by the covid. "Society has to reflect on what project it wants to offer to young people." The riots on the day of the Morocco-Belgium match at the World Cup "demonstrate, although there was a lot of vandalism there, that there is still a high level of frustration."