Trump's comment about the city inspired quite a backlash on social media, with Brussels denizens using the hashtag #hellhole, to defend their city. A Brussels alderman, Geoffroy Coomans, called him a buffoon on Twitter, and said he'd campaign against him.
Many posted picture-perfect scenes of the city, showing it to be anything but a #hellhole.
Greetings from the #hellhole @realDonaldTrump and please #callbrussels if you're so curious. pic.twitter.com/hmHRFbszKB
— Chiara Bellani (@ChiaraBell89) January 28, 2016
And there were other responses, too.
Proud of our #hellhole We forgive your ignorance&invite @realDonaldTrump to see Brussels is beyond your imagination pic.twitter.com/kAv4ZK9jJo
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-calls-brussels-a-hellhole/
Today, in Le Figaro - unfortunately in French and behind a paywall - professor of modern history of the Maghreb area Pierre Vermeren from Sorbonne university writes:
Pierre Vermeren : «La Belgique, foyer djihadiste et plaque tournante de la drogue»
(A quick machine translation)
"Belgium, home to Jihadists and a hub of the drug trade"
The arrest of Salah Abdeslam and the attacks that took place Tuesday in Brussels invite you to explore the links that exist in Belgium between jihadist terrorism and the trafficking of drugs from the Morocco, argues Professor of history of contemporary Maghreb at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.
LE FIGARO. -Salah Abdeslam was arrested Friday in Molenbeek. How could he hide as long in this district of Brussels which has been in the spotlight?
Pierre VERMEREN. -It is still difficult to know the whole truth to this run, but it is certain that he was able to hide in the area designated since November by Europe as the base camp of the jihadists from Paris. This means that the complicity and local solidarities were many. That said, we can count on the professionalism of these teams of well-trained terrorists so the info ' has not circulated in the population, because it would not have been controllable indefinitely. But examples of steeds in Corsica, Sicily, Kabylie or other areas of endemic banditry in the Mediterranean are legion. Or terrorist groups from Brussels have found place in families and networks riffian (originating in the North and Mediterranean region of the gir, the Morocco), which creates a kinship and obvious parallels with the banditry environments listed above. In these Mediterranean montane companies, let alone in exile, is accustomed to shut up, do not ask, and to be protected by the law of silence.
LE FIGARO: In the aftermath of the attacks of November, you mentioned, the site FigaroVox, riffian clan networks involved in drug trafficking between the gir and the Spain, the France and the Belgium. Is there a link between these traffickers and terrorists?
Pierre VERMEREN. The link is not pre-existing, but it is in the mafia of export networks and distribution of haschischque come naturally nest cells and jihadist networks. Not only these young men have much to be forgiven in the sight of God, because they devote their existence to criminal activities - and we can count on recruiters to remind them-, but they live at the margins of society, and are as predisposed. They are rich of traffic and know the weapons and their suppliers, they are accustomed to stir money and use the hideout, they know to circulate in Europe and across borders, including reels Strait of Gibraltar. They jonglenten constantly between phones, Internet and direct communication, from man to man, where the betrayed floor is worth death - as shown in the film Gibraltar, directed by Julien Leclercq and released in 2013. Car these groups fit into the Tosin context, that of a Berber Mediterranean population which always premuniede the outside, communicates dansune language that Western fonts are unaware of our days and work according to the rules of the environment and the Corsican or Sicilian Mafia : code of honor, rule of blood and clan, bid leaders, given word, secret and silence, omerta and vendetta.
LE FIGARO: Are the channels and networks known to public authorities? Have measures been taken since the attacks of November?
Pierre VERMEREN. Sure police know them. After forty years of trafficking in hashish in Western Europe, the opposite would be unfortunate. Families are identified, because networks are visible in the long term.
On this subject, the Belgians are perhaps less efficient than the French and the Spanish. They know families since the colonial period and always follow Affairs jibala from the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, where transit tourists, merchants, smugglers and traffickers. But the Belgian and Dutch police eventually locate them in turn. Finally, the Moroccan services who work many in France and Spain, know them very well. And consequently the Algerian services, therefore that the connections are established in France. Since the Algerian civil war of the 1990s and the attacks of Casablanca (2003) and Madrid (2004), impossible for the font of the Maghreb to ignore this risk mafia large-scale compatible with jihadism. In France as in Spain, police and intelligence services have fully identified the risks and the situation. In contrast, the French political class, and perhaps Spanish, by ignorance, lack of interest or ideology - we dare not imagine by interest material-, is in denial. This is why things have so little changed since the attacks of 1993 (Marrakech), 1995 (Kelkal), 1996 (the gang of Roubaix), 2003 (Casablanca), 2004 (Madrid), 2012 (Merah) and 2015 (Paris in January and November). In these cases, terrorist circles and Mafia are always interlinked.
LE FIGARO. Governments of European nations close the eyes on the underground economy to buy social peace in their countries?
Pierre VERMEREN. The idea has emerged over the decades in management (from right to left) circles that trade of hashish is a lesser evil. That this traffic is an explosive, Morocco, poverty-stricken region the gir. The stability of the friend Morocco premium on public health of young Europeans, as if this ancient Kingdom was in need of this to go forward. In addition, elites tolerate fact that long deemed drug soft, even though psychiatric hospitals are filled with thousands of young people with decompensated under its effect. They think that the hashish is a way to buy social peace in the youth, by enriching the poor and calming the revolt of other aspirations. The dropout, violence, psychiatric diseases, accidents of the route (...) appear as secondary to the drift of the mafias, which would be even more violent without this traffic. In short, for many, it is urgent to do nothing against the big networks and traffickers, to which it lends virtue to protect the Morocco, but also the suburbs, and to calm the youth... In 2005, the press explained that the cities at big drug trafficking had not moved. It is paradoxical that a portion of public order either as delegate these jibala mafias, and their connections in the different 'environments' in Europe - especially knowing the State of devastation of the gir, even if Mohammed VI tented' remedy. About 3 000 tonnes of hashish exported annually in Europe, tens (or even hundreds) are intercepted each year: it is not enough, but it is also evidence that the fonts work.