By Mitchell Prothero. Mitchell Prothero is a Brussels-based journalist reporting on security, crime and intelligence in Europe. In early January, just hours before Belgian authorities announced a shocking new record they had seized nearly tonnes of cocaine in at the port in Antwerp, surpassing the previous record of 90 tonnes in , tragedy struck in a northern Antwerp suburb.
An year-old girl was dead from five bullet wounds, an innocent bystander killed when unknown gunmen sprayed her home with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. While homicide remains rare in Belgium 1, killings were recorded in among a population of More than 50 bombings and gun attacks on buildings since last summer have been linked to major traffickers, according to the police.
With a weak central government and a political environment and law enforcement system deeply divided between rival French- and Dutch-speaking factions, Belgium offers drug traffickers almost perfect conditions to thrive.
The combination of the European Union single market, a port so physically large that officials estimate only two per cent of incoming containers can be checked, a thriving trade in easily laundered diamonds and gold, and close access to a modern transportation network spanning northern Europe has created an organised crime monster. The targets tend to be apartment building lobbies, shuttered store fronts and restaurants believed to be operated by the families of cartel bosses to launder money.
Last summer, the violence directed at two restaurants β Poke Bowl and Stacks β forced the mayor to shutter both establishments. These cartels exploited the massive amounts of container traffic at the northern ports, making them the main entry point for cocaine into Europe, which replaced the United States as the single largest cocaine market in The links between the Dutch-speaking Moroccan diaspora in both Holland and Belgium is deep, and all the regional ports are used to traffic drugs into Europe, with large-scale busts occurring weekly in ports stretching from Le Havre to Hamburg.
