On a balmy evening roughly a decade after the brutal terrorist attack that killed his wife, Mohamed El Bachiri sat in a cafe overlooking the Brussels neighborhood where he still lives.<\/p>\n
Molenbeek, a densely populated and diverse community separated from Brussels\u2019s city center by a canal, was bathed in golden light and bustling with shoppers and commuters. Beneath that quotidian surface, though, is a community that has spent much of the past 10 years reeling from the aftereffects of the attack.<\/p>\n
On the morning of March 22, 2016, two men set off explosives in the departure hall of Brussels Airport, and a third detonated a bomb on a metro train at a stop in the city. It was just months after a string of attacks in Paris had killed 130 people.<\/p>\n
The two campaigns were carried out by the same terrorist cell \u2014 and seven of the more than 30 people involved in planning and executing them grew up or lived in Molenbeek.<\/p>\n
Soon the neighborhood \u2014 and especially its large Muslim community \u2014 found itself cast in the shadow of deep stigmatization. International journalists descended on Molenbeek, writing stories with headlines calling it \u201cEurope\u2019s jihadi central<\/a>.\u201d When President Trump called Brussels a \u201chellhole\u201d in 2016, many assumed<\/a> it was Molenbeek to which he referred.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was young, being Moroccan in Molenbeek was synonymous with being a criminal,\u201d Mr. El Bachiri said. \u201cBut people weren\u2019t calling us terrorists yet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then came 2016,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n After the attacks, Mr. El Bachiri contended with profound personal loss: Loubna Lafquiri, Mr. El Bachiri\u2019s wife, was on that metro; she had been on her way to work when she was killed. He was left to grieve, and to raise their three children on his own.<\/p>\n He, like others in Molenbeek, has tried to move on and move forward. The community has grappled with why extremism took root there in the first place, attempting to address factors like poverty and isolation that once made the neighborhood fertile ground for recruitment. It has made slow but real signs of progress, slightly improving residents\u2019 standards of living and ushering in vibrant art spaces and beloved parks.<\/p>\n Still, Molenbeek remains dogged by serious difficulties \u2014 though this is a new era, and the challenges have taken on new forms.<\/p>\n Issues rooted in poverty<\/p>\n Thomas Renard, the director of The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, a think tank based in The Hague, said Molenbeek, with about 100,000 residents, was not unique: It was one of several areas in Belgium that became \u201chubs\u201d for radicalization. Often, a single recruiter or more would work through friends and family networks to pull people to their ideology, creating a snowball effect.<\/p>\n After the fall of the Islamic State caliphate in 2017, instances of terrorism declined across Europe and the number of fatalities from such attacks dropped sharply. In Molenbeek, worries about radicalization began to fade.<\/p>\n Yet there is a link between the factors that made Molenbeek a fertile place for radical recruitment in 2016 and the challenges the community faces today, said Mattias De Backer, a researcher at the department of criminology at Free University of Brussels, or VUB<\/a>.<\/p>\n Molenbeek remains one of the poorest parts of Belgium, with roughly one in three<\/a> residents earning incomes below the national poverty line; the typical household was making just over 21,000 euros annually, or about $25,000. It has struggled with chronically high unemployment<\/a>, especially among young people.<\/p>\n \u201cThey grow up there without opportunities,\u201d Mr. De Backer said. Ten years ago, some turned to radical ideologies. \u201cNow, they\u2019re much more likely to turn to drug violence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As in several parts of Brussels, Molenbeek is contending with a drug crisis that local officials have tied<\/a> to gang activity, and it has seen a rash of related shootings<\/a> over the past year.<\/p>\n Today, the fear that young people will become involved in drug crimes after being recruited by violent gangs worries parents more than radicalization, said Bie Vancraeynest, the coordinator of Toestand, a nonprofit organization. The group sets up temporary meeting spaces in vacant buildings and abandoned lots across Brussels, giving families from the neighborhood, some living in cramped homes, a place to play, meet over coffee and hold barbecues.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a city with so much structural inequality,\u201d said Ms. Vancraeynest.<\/p>\n Pushing toward the future<\/p>\n That fresh set of struggles doesn\u2019t mean that Molenbeek hasn\u2019t progressed.<\/p>\n