The innocent always pay the price

THE grimness of what happened in Brussels will have a severe ripple effect on the human convoy of refugees. Added on to the refreshed memories of Paris the attacks and the death toll have sparked anger and this rage will crystallize into a resistance against the flow of refugees. As the blame game heats up the victims again will be ‘victims’ as they pay the price for deeds of a militant group that, ironically, causes more inexplicable grief in the community with its agenda of violence.
Even more liberal leaders will be now hard placed to give the humanitarian concerns the attention they deserve. The Daesh has taken ‘credit’ for this violence but has not realized that this time the response will create a bigger divide and in its vice will be thousands of innocents.
Not only will Muslim communities in Europe be profiled and again marginalized and placed under suspicion, making their movements inside borders and outside a nightmare but cause an impact on the talks in Geneva over Syria that can only be negative in the long run.
That the immediate reason is a revenge for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the supposed mastermind behind the Paris assault, who was captured near Molenbeek, the metro station that was targeted is pretty evident. That the suicide bombing and the blast occurred so soon after the arrest does indicate a well set working pyramid within Belgium because it is not easy to get a plan like this into motion unless there is local back up and the cells are functional.
For Belgium this is going to be a very major issue and one that will necessitate a sea change in its domestic policies. Regrettably the most likely to suffer will be the Muslim youth of which there are a large number in the country. Also the family units will come onto the radar and there will be a heightened level of surveillance.
By the same token the stereotyping element will intensify and it will be difficult to focus the blurred line between security and harassment. With the public outrage making it more tolerant of suspended or compromised personal rights it is going to be an unpleasant period ahead.
Every such attack in the western world only strengthens the sense of fear and suspicion and gives people like Donald Trump exactly the sort of platform to articulate his hostility and fan the flames of religious bigotry. Once again, with Paris still fresh in memory and the caravan of human despair trudging westwards, the average Muslim, simply wishing to live his life in peace and care for his family will have to go through the frequent unfair and hurtful exercise of explaining that he is not a terrorist.
Just a father and a mother, a husband and wife, son and daughter, brother and sister.