Belgian authorities struggle to get a handle on terror threat: 'It's literally an impossible situation'

Belgian authorities have faced ongoing criticism for their missteps in addressing the terrorist threat in the heart of their country — criticisms that will likely only be exacerbated following the March 22 attacks in Brussels that have left at least 26 dead.

"We just don't have the people to watch anything else and, frankly, we don't have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have," a Belgian counter-terrorism official told BuzzFeed last week. "It's literally an impossible situation and, honestly, it's very grave."

One 42-year-old Belgian man told BuzzFeed that the government divisions between the French-speaking south and Dutch-speaking north make the government "fractured and ineffective."

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"This is what happens when you don’t have a real government and a divided bureaucracy,” he said.

An American survivor of the attack in the Maelbeek situation also expressed distress over Brussels' seeming inability to get the situation under control. "There are so many competing language groups. The police don't cooperate well together," Brian Carroll, 31, told The New York Times.