Tarek Chatt says he is one of only two Brussels policemen of Moroccan descent who grew up and is working in the same streets as the militants who attacked Paris and Brussels.
Police and security experts say increasing police diversity in communities like the largely Muslim borough of Molenbeek, where a key suspect in the Paris attacks lived and then hid, is crucial for improving intelligence and spotting radicalization.
While Belgian officials want more tip-offs to prevent the kind of militant attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015 and 32 people in the Brussels metro and airport on March 22, 2016 they have struggled to open the police to the country’s Muslim minority.
On the eve of the anniversary of the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Charles Michel told Reuters Belgium was “very determined” to recruit a force that would better mirror the diversity of the population.
Police say they struggle most with surveillance of communities like Molenbeek, where the mostly white force is viewed with suspicion by a largely immigrant population wary of being labelled as potential terrorists.
Belgium does not keep statistics on religion or race, but an estimated 7 percent of the population is Muslim — rising to 45 percent in Molenbeek, independent researchers say.
Officers like Chatt, who joined the force in 1999 as part of an earlier drive to recruit from the country’s large Moroccan minority, find their loyalties questioned by both sides.
“Back then, it was hard. People were negative. They took me for a snitch,” said Chatt, 48, who chose to serve in his home borough. But now they are pleased, he says.
“People are proud to see someone of North African origin in uniform; they see it as fair ... They listen more.”
On patrol of the crowded Sunday market in Molenbeek’s cobbled streets, he exchanged greetings with vendors, many of them the sons of migrants invited to Belgium to work in coal mines and factories in the 1960s and 70s.
He said his shared culture and language help him create a rapport with people in a borough where many only speak Arabic.
Officers familiar with the streets of Brussels — where groups like Daesh have the highest per capita recruitment rate in Europe — have an easier time spotting early signs of radicalization among youths.
At least 422 have left Brussels to fight in Syria and Iraq, according to researcher Pieter Van Ostaeyen. Chatt says he sometimes translates for his partner, who stands out with her short-cropped blond hair.
In a cheeky symbol of resistance to terror, she wears a patch on her uniform that shows Belgium’s Manneken Pis statue peeing on the lit fuse of a bomb — an emblem taken up by many officers after the attacks.
Despite the pride that Chatt says the Molenbeek community feels toward him, there is still stigma attached to working for the police and this is one of the main barriers to recruitment.
In the security clampdown since the attacks, police have carried out hundreds of raids and arrests that have sharpened tensions with police among some Muslims.
“They (the police) are seen as the state and the Muslim community has shut down,” said Vincent Gilles, the head of Belgium’s main police union.

Source: Arab News