CUTA and the Expansion of the Belgian Counter-terrorism Field: A Critical Stance on Fusion Centres
(2023) European Workshops in International Studies — Location: Amsterdam (12.July.2023)
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- Abstract
- Since 2006, Belgium’s Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA) is responsible for the assessment of the terrorist threat. Notably, this implies the determination of a threat level regarding extremism and terrorism on a 1-to-4 scale. As other so-called fusion centres in Europe, CUTA aims at “connecting the dots” by processing all available information. In this regard, CUTA is a direct answer to the key political lesson learned from the 9/11 attacks in the United States: security services need to strengthen their cooperation and share information to be able to prevent political violence. As such, CUTA appears as an institutional embodiment of the European counter-terrorism (CT) doxa. Consistent with the preventive turn of European CT, CUTA also coordinates the federal counter-terrorism and -extremism strategy. The narrative on the importance of countering extremism to anticipate and prevent political violence lies at the heart of Belgium’s action plan. Among its tasks, the fusion centre chairs information exchange platforms that bring together various actors from security professionals to local administrations and include social workers. Based on interviews with security professionals from my PhD fieldwork and my recent experience as staff member of the Belgian intelligence services oversight committee, I argue CUTA’s promotion of a whole-of-government approach blurs the borders of the CT field. Drawing on critical security approaches, the paper examines how fusion centres, relatively new actors in European CT, play a key role in the expansion of the counter-terrorism field and in the social and political construction of dangers.
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Thomas, C. (2023). CUTA and the Expansion of the Belgian Counter-terrorism Field: A Critical Stance on Fusion Centres. European Workshops in International Studies, Amsterdam. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/23819