Drug wars: is Brussels the new Marseille?

Several shootings, the use of military weapons like Kalashnikovs, one person dead and several seriously injured. In recent weeks, Brussels has been rocked by an upsurge in drug violence. It’s a phenomenon that is not new, but all the more disturbing.

This comparison with Marseille, where a drug war has been raging for many years, does it really stand up? Has Brussels become Marseille on the River Zenne? Here again, the answer is both ‘yes’, and ‘no’.

Yes, there is a link!

There is no getting around it: drug violence in Brussels has escalated in recent months. Just a few weeks ago there was yet another death linked to drug violence, in the Brussels borough of Sint-Gillis, where the victim was killed with a riot gun. It is far from the first death in the drug war. Last year there were a total of seven deaths, and 130 people were injured. Every month - we see from figures - there are about 20 violent crimes in the capital that can be linked to drugs. These include shootings and stabbings, kidnappings and assaults: the list is long and but the police see only the tip of the iceberg.

"Shootings, settlements of accounts, that's the Marseille style," intimates VRT’s France editor Steven Decraene. "People talk about the Marseille Method."

This was exemplified by last year's execution in the centre of the Brussels borough of Anderlecht. A 31-year-old man was stopped in his car and then riddled with no fewer than 17 bullets. The burnt-out getaway car was subsequently found in the notorious borough of Molenbeek. It’s a particularly violent scenario that police in Marseille frequently encounter.

But there is more. We know from our sources that the criminal environments of Brussels and Marseille are thought to be linked.

"What happened in various suburbs is unacceptable. There are clear indications that the Marseille Maffia is trying to infiltrate, from their power base in Peterbos in Anderlecht," Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt (Flemish liberal) noted.

From their power base in Peterbos, they are trying to seize territory from other gangs - Albanian and Moroccan ones!

The indications are clearly there. Late last year Kamel "The Hammer" Nabti, a powerful drug lord from Marseille was arrested in Brussels. He is said to have had a monopoly on cocaine trafficking there between 2015 and 2018. There he fought a vicious turf battle with another drug gang. He then went on the run, but in October was arrested at a house not far from the Brussels South Station. That was no mean feat, given, as in the meantime, he had undergone plastic surgery and had assumed a false identity. From Brussels he continued to run his business in Marseille.

So a link is definitely there, but what the exact nature of this link is, is not entirely clear. That is also what Sébastien Georis, a journalist from the Francophone broadcaster RTBf told VRT: "The police have established that these links exist. What those links are, and the extent of these connections between the two milieus is not entirely clear to me just yet."

Is there genuine infiltration? Or is it also imitation in part?

"Young people probably also see what is happening in Marseille. International crime knows no borders, gangsters identify ways in which they can expand their territory. Marseille is also ahead of us when it comes to the commercialisation of drug distribution," VRT’s Steven Decraene notes.

Either way, both in Marseille and here in Brussels, it's all about one thing: territory. In the north of Marseille, two clans - with the infamous names DZ Mafia and Yoda – fight a bloody turf war. In Brussels, there are smaller, different gangs with links to the Albanians, to the Mocro Mafia and to gangs in Marseille.

They use violence, to try and mark their territory. The deadly shooting in Sint-Gillis, for example, literally involved a chair dealers use to try and peddle their wares. It sounds almost absurd, but the consequences are far-reaching. Open violence often involves the smaller shrimps, often undocumented people or youngsters,  even minors. The big drug bosses keep a much more discrete presence, often not even staying in the country.

"Young people have less to lose. This may sound very cynical; nobody wants to risk their life for 200 euros a day. The younger the workforce, the cheaper the price," Steven Decraene adds.

This is true in Marseille but also in Brussels. "The younger, the more violent too," a Marseille prosecutor notes. Is it due to the gaming culture? A different assessment of risk? Because of toughness? The fact is that 7 minors were killed in Marseille shootings last year. 11 other minors were arrested. And half of all suspects arrested were between 18 and 21."

Young and dangerous

No, in Brussels it's not yet as bad as in Marseille. Only if you look at the figures: those of Brussels are not good, those of Marseille are downright bad. Last year, drug violence killed 49 people in the French city.

4 of them were innocent civilians. 24-year-old Socayna, for example. In early September, she was sitting at her computer when she was hit by a stray bullet from a Kalashnikov drug criminals were using to shoot at each other.

Though there are neighbourhoods in Brussels where you might prefer not to go or where the police have less control, in Marseille there are true no-go zones. "I hope or think it hasn't come to that yet in Brussels," Steven Decraene notes. "We are stepping up the pressure in the Peterbos district," police chief Jurgen De Landsheer says. "There are no no-go zones. We go in, we carry out arrests, we confiscate what is needed. That happens every day. Some areas are similar to the Paris banlieues, but we must not let it go that far."

"In Marseille, the drug environment has almost taken over the entire economy. There’s money laundering that has penetrated to a level that it is almost impossible to control," Decraene says.

This goes hand in hand with drug prices and offers painted on the wall, with roadblocks, with youngsters keeping watch here and there. We also find a version of this in Brussels, where young people on scooters keep an eye on everything, or where in Peterbos they set up blockades here and there. But again: in Marseille it all seems to be a lot worse.

"In the short term, efforts are afoot to try and stop the violence. There are a lot of police, there are special units trained to deal with street violence. Police have been heavily deployed to tackle the dealers. Some of this is succeeding, quite a few have disappeared. According to the home minister, it’s thanks to police work. Others note that orders are now mainly carried out using WhatsApp and Snapchat and that drugs are delivered to your home. Then again, that brings risk, because then the dealers are going right into residential blocks," Decraene says.

"Over the longer term, resources will have to be freed up to do something about the residential blocks. France realises it has gone too far. Certain places in the banlieues in Paris, in Marseille, are at the mercy of the street. The community has retreated into their flats. People have been left to their own devices for too long.  There is unemployment. Buildings are dilapidated." In that climate, of course, crime is easy and rampant.

The message for Brussels is simple, though the solutions are much less so: don't let it get that far!