PBS NewsHour Weekend : KQED : November 21, 2015 5:30pm-6:01pm PST

Get down with Motown 25 tonight at 8. On this edition for Saturday, November 21st, the Belgian capital of Brussels is on lockdown after officials warn of a possible terrorist attack. Can potential ISIS operatives be effectively tracked in the United States? And the new realities of being young, French, and Muslim. You know, I'm French, I feel French, more than ever. Next on PBS NewsHour Weekend. PBS NewsHour Weekend is made possible by Louis B. and Louise Hirschfield Coleman, Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Judy and Josh Weston, the Cheryl and Phil Milstein family. The City Foundation, supporting innovation and enabling urban progress. Soon Edgar Wackenheim III. Corporate funding is provided by Mutual of America, designing customized, individual, and group retirement products.

That's why we're your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. On the Tisch, W-N-E-T Studios at Lincoln Center in New York, Meghan Thompson. Good evening, and thanks for joining us. Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the headquarters of the European Union, is on a high security alert. Without disclosing specifically why the Belgian government today announced the threat of a terrorist attack there was, quote, serious and imminent. The Belgian alert comes eight days after France saw 130 people killed by gunmen and suicide bombers who attacked a stadium, restaurants, and a concert hall in Paris. The news hours Hari Srinivasan is in Paris and joins us now with more. Good evening, Meghan. The police sirens continue to blare at times across the streets of Paris. Next door in Belgium, officials have put the city of Brussels, a city of million people, on lockdown.

Heavily armed police and soldiers patrolled the streets of Brussels and guarded shops that were open. Metro was closed, Belgians largely heated the government's warning to not gather in crowds. After Prime Minister Charles Michelle announced the intelligence pointed to the possibility of a Paris-style attack there. Our analysis has led us to identify more precisely events attended by a lot of people, shopping streets and shopping centers, protests or any events with a large crowd. The government is asking the population to be prudent and alert. We also ask for people to avoid any kind of panic. The U.S. Embassy in Belgium urged Americans in the country to shelter in place and remain at home. The Belgian federal prosecutors office said today, investigators found weapons during a search of a home of one of three people detained in connection with the Paris attacks. Brussels is the last known residents of Abd al-Hamed Abu, the suspected ringleader of the attacks for the Islamic State Group or ISIS. A manhunt is still underway for one other suspect in the Paris attacks, Belgian Salah

Abdislam, who is believed to have crossed back into the country one week ago, his brother having blown himself up during the Paris attacks. Today, Turkey detained two Syrian men and one Belgian suspected of aiding and abetting the Islamic State, and Turkish media reports say the Belgian may have scouted locations for the Paris attacks. In Paris, Parisians and tourists continue to pay tribute to the 130 people killed, leaving flowers and lighting candles near the concert hall, and the cafes where so many died while simply trying to enjoy a Friday night out. Here in Paris, the prosecutor's office said today, police have released seven of the eight people taken into custody following the raid Wednesday on the residence where police killed Abd al-Hamed Abu, the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks. One person arrested remains in custody. In the United States FBI Director James Comey says he is not aware of any credible threats of what he calls Paris-type attacks or of any U.S. connections among the Paris attackers. At the same time, Comey says the FBI currently has 900 open inquiries into Islamic extremists

in the homeland, and federal charges have been brought against 69 people for allegedly supporting ISIS. Joining me now to discuss the challenges of preventing an ISIS attack in the U.S.'s New York Times reporter, Madipuzov. That earlier this week in Europe, the head of Europol, said that they have a watch list of almost 10,000 people that 2,000 Europeans have flown back and forth to Syria in Iraq over the last few years. Now the number is much smaller in the U.S. and those itineraries, those travel itineraries are like red flags, does that make it harder for U.S. authorities to figure out who to target? Sure. In the United States, the problem that ISIS poses here is actually very different from what's going on in Europe. The real struggle for American law enforcement and American counterterrorism officials is from guys that they call HVE's homegrown violent extremists. These are people who, you know, they haven't gone to training, they haven't flown out to Syria.

They're just disinfected angry people who are looking to glom onto something, and ISIS is out there with a very slick propaganda machine. They're really speaking to the school shooter crowd. They're speaking to guys who, you know, maybe in a previous generation might have joined a gang or done something other, you know, anti-social behavior. That seems like a different social media strategy than perhaps in other parts of Europe where they're trying to recruit people to go down to Syria. This is a little different in the U.S. to try to get them to commit horrible acts inside the United States after they're already there. Yeah, that's absolutely right. The strategy has changed for ISIS. I mean, I think there's a recognition that it's much harder to get people onto a plane from the United States and get them to Syria, you know, the sort of wave of people of maybe nine a month for the past year has kind of slowed to a trickle. ISIS seems much more focused on trying to inspire people here to take up arms. And if you don't have a gun, use a knife.

If you don't have a knife, use your car, you know, to commit these sort of small, one-off acts of violence and do it in ISIS's name. ISIS doesn't care. If you wanted to clear yourself to be part of the movement, they'll take credit for it and they'll send propaganda around on it. You know, you mentioned the school shooter crowd. In your story, there was also kind of an interesting double standard that we have for intelligence agencies of how we perceive whether they capture ISIS or a school shooter. Yeah, that's right, and it's something that really weighs heavily on American law enforcement and it's a double standard that's obvious when you talk to guys who do this for a living. I mean, nobody had an expectation that the FBI should have stopped the Newtown school shooter or the Aurora theater shooter or the Charleston shooter in the black church before they opened fire. There was no expectation that they would, you know, they would detect this and there should have been a trap set. But if those same actions were done by somebody who'd been watching ISIS videos,

then, you know, might have been an intelligence failure and there would be, you know, maybe congressional hearings, or there would be, well, what is the FBI not doing enough or why isn't our counterterrorism trip wires enough? And that's hard. I mean, that really speaks to what we consider terrorizing in the United States. We don't respond in the same way in the United States to a school shooting as we do to somebody who opens fire in a public space and screams al-Hwakbar. And that's a hard thing to balance when you're in the counterterrorism world. Madam Puzov, in New York Times, John Ignis from Washington tonight. Thanks so much. Great to be here. Both Germany and France have close to five million residents of Muslim descent. That's the largest populations in Western Europe. But now that France has been victimized by homegrown Muslim terrorists, many young French Muslim citizens are grappling with how they're perceived. The news our Stephen fee is in Paris and brings us this report. Last Friday, 26-year-old Rohan Hussein was having tea at a Persian cafe in Paris's

10th district when he and his friends heard gunfire. What a man came into the coffee who was injured on his arm by a bullet and he started to say, come on, you have to hide right now. People is getting shot on the day. Paris had stormed this neighborhood, which draws a young, diverse crowd from all over the French capital. This area, this neighborhood is really popular and you can go to the theater to have a lunch, to chill out with friends. The attackers struck under the banner of the Islamic State, an investigator say most were French nationals, reopening the country's long-running debate about what it means to be both French and Muslim. It's a debate that resonates with Hussein. He was raised by a Syrian Muslim father and a French Christian mother. It's a weird feeling because it's like both parts of me are fighting against each other. It's a crazy situation to be how French half-Syrian in November 2015, it's crazy.

I think it's also a chance to be proud of this identity. Man'suria Mokafi is an Algerian-born professor who specializes in the Middle East and North Africa. Many Muslims lost their lives among the victims. We have many Muslims who were there, attending the concert, being sitting at the terraces, being part of the Parisian life. She says last week's terror attacks were a strike against the French, but also against those who've embraced both their French and Muslim identities. They're not targeting specific people. They already just targeted everybody because now they're waging their war against everything that is French. And among the French, they're not going to discriminate particularly between Muslims and non-Muslims.

We met Imam Batu, a 29-year-old French Muslim, at a Paris railway station, as she was about to take a business trip. I play more than three rooms in a man. I'm a very, very moderate Muslim. I don't pray. I don't do a lot of things, but I believe in God, that's it. But that doesn't stop me from living, from getting a drink on a terrace to travel to go out. That's me. That's not my religion. Do you feel that this attack means people look at you differently? I hope not. But I think so. Ribulskui. For Islamic extremist attacks in one year in France, the shootings at Charlie Hebdo magazine in January, a beheading at a French factory in June, a thwarted attack on a Paris bound train in August, and last week's massacre have all changed the way Muslims are perceived here. But has always been reluctant to accept the French from Muslim origin as totally French. But it's fair to say that since Charlie Hebdo, this feeling has widened considerably.

This mosque in Paris's 19th district, one of the city's largest Muslim enclaves, is under construction. The Muslim community here is growing and needs more space. The mosque's president, 53-year-old Ahmed Wali, says young French Muslims, those who feel integrated and those who don't, struggle with questions of identity. In terms of young people, you do have a category who are really asking themselves questions about their identities. The relationship with the country they live in, the country they were born in. The worst error is to be in denial, to not recognize this. Wali believes addressing these identity issues is a key step in stopping radicalism. Those who've already gone over the edge, it's too late. They've already gone over the edge. To get them back, it might be possible. But more importantly, how do we get the ones who are about to go over the edge to make

sure they don't? On that, there's an urgent job to do, to respond to their anxiety and questions. Mokafee believes France must address economic inequality, especially in the poorer venues or suburbs, to make all Muslims feel part of French life. France has to undertake a serious self-examination in order to address its long relationship with the Arab and Muslim world. That relationship is on Rohan Hussein's mind. He still has relatives in Syria trying to flee that country's brutal civil war. France's campaign of airstrikes against ISIS positions in Syria stepped up in the days following the Paris attacks has him worried, as does the talk of closing borders. So it's insane to put blame on the refugees. Still, the backlash doesn't make Hussein feel any less proud of his Syrian French identity. You know, I'm French.

I feel French, more than ever, but I'm so proud of my roots, of my Syrian roots. Because it makes me someone maybe different, maybe special. I'm very proud of my identity. Take a look back at my report from France on the tensions between Christians and Muslims in the city of Marseille. Visit pbs.org slash news hour. Studies in the West African nation of Mali say armed Islamic terrorists killed 19 people and yesterday's attack on a Radisson hotel in the capital city of Bamakha. Among the victims were hotel guests from Russia, China, Belgium, Israel, and one American. 41-year-old Anita Datar, a mother of a seven-year-old boy from Maryland. She was a global health worker who previously volunteered for the Peace Corps. After a seven-hour standoff, Malian soldiers killed both attackers who had been holding

170 people as hostages, a group linked to Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility. Joining me now via Skype to discuss this is Wall Street Journal reporter Drew Hinshaw, who is in Ghana, just south of Mali. Drew, can you tell us what's the latest on the investigation into this attack? Well, two groups that were both aligned with Al-Qaeda but competed amongst themselves have taken credit for it. One is Al-Qaeda and the Islamic Maghreb, which is a sort of a decade-old almost group that based northern Mali. The other is a group that is commanded by Mokatar, Bill Mokatar, who most Americans will remember as the Al-Girian Jihadist who engineered the raid at a gas plant at B.P. gas plant in Algeria in 2013. Those two groups have taken credit for it. It seems credible. A flag from one of the groups has found on the premises. Al-Qaeda leaders in the country have been threatening attacks on France for weeks, if not in months.

So that seems to be legitimate. I know a lot of people kind of right after the fact thought is this related to Paris, but there's an Al-Qaeda war against France that's been going on quite some time and it seems to really stem closer from that. Can you just tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. For roughly a decade, Al-Qaeda made its money in this part of the world by kidnapping European hostages and French were a big part of that. In 2010, Al-Qaeda he headed a French aid worker in a way that kind of foretold ISIS. Nicolas Sarkozy at the time was President France. He lashed out and said that we're at war with Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda responded that we're going to take you to the gates of hell and there was this kind of propaganda back and forth. In 2012, Al-Qaeda conquered the north of Mali, which is a huge vast terrain. In January 2013, France intervened to try to stop that, to try to rescue small

towns like Timbuktu from the control of Al-Qaeda militants. Ever since then, the French had been tracking jihadists and killing quite a lot of them with airstrikes and jihadists have been striking back. A Boko Haram kidnapped a French family in the north of Cameroon, Al-Qaeda struck a French uranium mine in the chair. There's been a lot of kidnappings. There was also a Boko Haram suicide attack in Cameroon today. So what is all of this tell us just about how complex the fight is against Islamic extremism in Africa? So do you sort of an old trope in counterterrorism? There's a bit of whackable here. French troops are in Central African Republic. They're in Niger. They're in Cameroon. They're in Chad. They're still in Ivory Coast. There's a longstanding base in Senegal. They're all over the north of Mali, which is the size of France. The country as a whole is twice the size of France. This is a huge vast distance and it's really hard for me to see how France or even a small number of Western countries can police the world's largest desert.

Drew Hinchov, the Wall Street Journal, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, too. Refugees from Syria's four and a half years civil war comprise half the estimated 900,000 to a million migrants and refugees who've entered Europe this year. But almost four million Syrian refugees have settled in countries neighboring Syria, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. In Lebanon, in addition to the masses of Syrians coming over the border, there's also been a spill over a violence. And that was the case again this week. The New Zowers of Vet Feliciano has more. Just one day before ISIS militants carried out the Paris attacks, a double suicide bombing by ISIS killed 43 people in a residential neighborhood of Lebanon's capital of Beirut. Remco Anderson, the Middle East correspondent for the Dutch newspaper The Folkskrant, reported from the scene,

I spoke to him by Skype. What we saw were local youth Lebanese youth dragging away, I saw at least three cases of this happening, Syrians who happened to be in the neighborhoods. And when I asked the guy why, they said, well, you know, the people who made their bomb go off far ISIS, and ISIS comes from Syria, so every Syrian is now a target. Anderson says such retaliation and scapegoating is common after bombings inside Lebanon. There have been more than a dozen such attacks in the past two years. There are kinds of things that happen after a bombing like that, and it just shows how tensions and resentment between different groups here are only going to increase. This small country of four and a half million people has the world's largest concentration of Syrian refugees per capita, more than a million refugees, which means one in every four people in Lebanon is from Syria. It's like the equivalent of having 80 million refugees coming to the United States within two years. A mom with a lily, an advisor to Lebanon's former prime minister and now a scholar at the Wilson Center, says the refugee influx has strained a

cash-strapped government that has been unable to pick up garbage regularly or keep the electricity on. They came to an area that already has an infrastructure that cannot handle even its own population. This is a big, big problem for Lebanon because Lebanon is a small country, Lebanon has limited resources. Lebanon doesn't have Syrian refugee camps, so most arriving families live in dilapidated single-room apartments and make shift tent communities. This problem is at the breaking point. Mudil Ali says the anti-refugee rhetoric now coming from Europe and the United States could make the problem worse for Lebanon if international aid dries up and the refugees have no place else to go. This sends a message to the region that, you know, the international community does not want to hold its responsibility and they don't want to help with this problem. And this is a big problem for the region to accept, especially for the people who cannot handle it anymore. Mudil Ali and reporters in Lebanon describe the government as dysfunctional and ill-equipped to handle the refugees. Lebanon hasn't had a president for more than a year or held

parliamentary elections in six years. The Lebanese population has been tolerant of all of this. I think amazingly tolerant considering how many refugees are here. Matthew Fisher, a reporter for Canada's national post, says Lebanon has backed away from its open door policy with Syria, tightening its borders with Syria, and suspending registrations for new refugees. The ones in the Middle East are really poor. They don't have the money to pay smugglers to get to Europe. These really are hard, scrabble folk with no other options. Fisher says he's observed friction between Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees who are willing to work for a quarter of the pay a Lebanese would. He says many refugees say they fled persecution by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He met firemen who said that they had to leave because they refused to fire water cannons full of acid at protesters in Damascus. With a huge backlog of asylum requests in Europe,

the Paris attacks may leave more Syrians in Lebanon in limbo. Every single refugee said to me, this changes the game for us. We're already in a very difficult position and now we're in a worse position. The Lebanese are going to regard us as terrorists and countries that we might get to resettle in in North America and in Europe. We'll now have another reason not to be generous and allow us in. President Barack Obama is calling for compassion for refugees. Continuing his 10-day trip overseas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, today the president visited with children at a refugee center that is taken in Muslim refugees from Myanmar. They're just like our kids, and they deserve love and protection and stability and an education.

The president also defended his administration's plan to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees to resettle in the US after they undergo background checks. And the notion that somehow we would be fearful of them, that our politics would somehow leave us to turn our sights away from their plight, is not represented the best of who we are. The president returns to Washington Monday and hosts French President Francois, a land at the White House Tuesday. Two months after being declared a bowl of free, the West African nation of Liberia has reported three new cases of the deadly disease. The Ebola outbreak that began in West Africa two years ago has killed more than 11,000 people with the most fatalities in Liberia. 17,000 people were infected and survived. United Auto Workers have a new contract with all three of America's biggest automakers.

The UAW narrowly ratified a four-year contract with Ford last night that raises wages and offers signing bonuses for 53,000 workers at 22 plants. The yes vote came just hours after the UAW ratified a similar four-year pact with General Motors. The UAW and Chrysler, now known as Fiat Chrysler, reached a deal last month. Coming up on PBS NewsHour Weekend tomorrow, continuing coverage of events in Europe following last week's terror attacks, and a report on a French magazine helping children understand the Paris attacks through cartoons. I'm Megan Thompson. Thanks for watching. Good night. PBS NewsHour Weekend is made possible by Louis B. and Louise Hirschfield Coleman, Bernard

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