Every time the drug violence in the Antwerp streets reaches a peak, it turns out that things can get even worse. After the death of 11-year-old Firdaous, a new frontier seems to have been crossed. Despite the increasingly repressive war on drugs, small children are now among the victims of the violence. Mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA) also sees this evolution with regret. He suggested on Tuesday to “send the army if necessary to guard the port of Antwerp”.
The question then is what the deployment of the army might mean in the Antwerp drug war. Bringing heavy war equipment seems in any case of little use. For several years now, the Antwerp police have had a few armored weapons at their disposal. But the so-called Bearcats are mainly in the garage.
When they do take to the streets, it mainly has a symbolic, deterrent purpose: to show criminals that the police are not afraid of heavy means. But the same police are usually quick to admit that the Bearcats can’t help, for example, giving chase when two criminals drive around on a scooter to deposit a grenade at a front door.
Further escalation
Should the army patrol the harbor to catch drug criminals in the act? That is not really what the army is for, says criminologist Sofie De Kimpe (VUB). “Moreover: everyone knows that those criminals don’t just walk around between those containers. If that was the problem, you might as well private security firms can engage.”
De Kimpe strongly doubts that the army in Antwerp can bring solace. “The deployment of the army is part of the logic of war. It is often the case that the use of weapons by one party leads to even more use of weapons by the other party.”
The criminologist sees in De Wever’s suggestion mainly the result of an approach that does not work. “It is a reaction from which you might deduce that Bart De Wever no longer knows which wood to make arrows from. The mayor has been pleading for a war on drugs for years and is gradually starting to see that it is not yielding the hoped-for result. And if the police fail to win the battle, in the logic of De Wever you have to resort to heavier means: the army.”
Politically, there also seems to be little enthusiasm for the path that De Wever put forward. Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) dismissed the idea, as did her colleague from Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne (Open Vld) and Minister of Defense Ludivine Dedonder (PS). “The army does not have the same capabilities as the police and cannot carry out investigative acts. We must not turn the tables,” says Dedonder.