ANTWERP, Belgium — Ninety-six-year-old Dolf Goossens is caught in the crossfire of the drug war gripping Belgium's main port city. He once even had to shove a Molotov cocktail off the roof of his car with his walking stick.

Last September, his car was damaged by an explosive intended to intimidate one of his drug-dealer neighbors in the poor Antwerp district of Borgerhout where he and his wife have lived for more than 50 years. And that was nothing compared with an incident in 2016 when a hand grenade intended for the house next door set fire to his Opel Corsa.

He takes it all with salty North Sea sangfroid.

"We're not easily scared. Apart from the shooting and the grenades, our street has been relatively quiet the last couple of years," he said at his living room table. "There are no more kids playing loud music or drinking. But if one of these grenades ends up in the basement next time round, the whole house could burn down."

In the past three years there have been more than 60 acts of drug-related violence in Antwerp, the Continent's key port of entry for cocaine, and the turf war has leapt to the top of the political agenda.

"De Wever has made the war on drugs the central part of his policy. I'm pretty sure he regrets that now" — Filip De Winter, Vlaams Belang frontman

Critically, the drug problem exposes Belgium's most influential politician, Bart De Wever, Antwerp's mayor, to being politically outflanked by the far right.

De Wever is the head of the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the biggest party in not only the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders but the country overall. A separatist who wants Flanders to have more legislative powers and in the far future even break off from the rest of the country, De Wever has long styled himself as a strong right-winger who vows to be tough on crime, domestic terror networks and migration.

Yet ironically, the party profiting from De Wever's struggles in the war on drugs in his home base is the far-right nationalist Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party. "De Wever has made the war on drugs the central part of his policy. I'm pretty sure he regrets that now," said Filip De Winter, the frontman in Antwerp for Vlaams Belang.

Drug gangs increasingly choose Antwerp over the port of Rotterdam since checks there have become tougher. Almost one-third of all cocaine intercepted in European ports was in the port of Antwerp, according to Europol's latest EU Drug Markets Report. Belgian customs announced Wednesday that 2019 was a new record year. They intercepted 61 tons of cocaine, which is more than 10 times as much as five years earlier. This upsurge has less to do with increased controls than with growing European consumption, according to narcotics experts.

Port of entry

Securing the port of Antwerp is hard as it is one of the biggest in the world, covering an area the size of 18,000 football fields. Only 1 percent of the containers that port authorities think are relevant in the war on drugs, such as those coming from Central America, are screened. Antwerp is also the largest fruit-handler in Europe, with direct cargo lines from countries such as Colombia and Guatemala. Given that fresh produce has to be processed rapidly through the port, it’s hard for law enforcement officials to check too many containers. Police and customs reckon that the intercepted cocaine is about 10 percent of the total.

Last year "was an exceptional year for the interception of cocaine," said Belgian Finance Minister Alexander De Croo. "By radically choosing technological innovation and deploying artificial intelligence, customs can increase the battle against drug-trafficking in the next couple of years."

Somewhat astonishingly, no one has died in the violence but the omens are not good. People have been targeted in several recent attacks and police have found a “death list” of individuals who have snitched to the authorities.

"Let's be honest: It's just a matter of time before the first fatality," said De Winter. "Then this whole story gets a whole other dimension for De Wever. Safety and security are a very sensitive issue for our common right-wing electorate."

Ninety-six-year-old Goossens is disappointed with De Wever and supports Vlaams Belang. “We use to be able to travel with our door unlocked,” said Goossens. “Now they are literally shooting at each other in our street. I know these things are hard to solve, but at least Vlaams Belang is trying to change something.”

That view of the turf war is a worry for De Wever and the N-VA. In Belgium’s elections last year, his party was still the biggest party in Flanders, with 24.7 percent of the Flemish vote, but Vlaams Belang jumped from 10 to 18 percent, becoming the second biggest.

"His new plan is failing and even culminated in a guerre des flics, a war within the police" — Wouter Van Besien, Greens leader in Antwerp

Running for reelection in 2018, De Wever announced a new, comprehensive plan to tackle the drug problem. He created a task force that would bring together the local and federal police. This “Kali-team” was named after the Hindu goddess but also alluded to the Colombian city of Cali, once famous for its eponymous cartel. An evaluation of that plan with a list of recommendations is due later this month.

"It's the first time in Belgium that such a multiagency approach has been tested," said Johan Vermant, De Wever's spokesperson. "We want to see what can be approved."

Vermant rejects the idea that this new approach is failing. "Since 2013, the city of Antwerp has increased its efforts at the local police level to create a safer city. You can only do that by being tough on crime. For example, we have arrested over 1,000 dealers a year. Dealing with organized crime, on the other hand, is not our responsibility [it is a federal government matter], but of course it is a concern. We want to guarantee the safety and welfare of our citizens. The worst-case scenario is that gangs proceed from intimidation to acts of aggression that end lethally."

National fallout

The political fallout from this war on drugs goes well beyond Antwerp.

At the national level, Vlaams Belang is attacking De Wever for not respecting their surge in support in the national elections. De Wever formed a regional government with the Christian Democrats and liberals instead of with Vlaams Belang.

To some extent, the Vlaams Belang assault on De Wever is a matter of perception. Crime numbers in Antwerp have steadily declined. Since De Wever came to power in 2012, the number of crimes has declined by a third (in particular, the number of armed robberies has gone down). But the spectacular nature of some of the attacks overshadows his successes. And after being in power for more than seven years, the mayor is clearly going to be held to account. That's only compounded by the fact that, until the end of 2018, his party was also responsible for the federal police and customs.

The image of Antwerp dominated by drug gangs fits into the anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang rhetoric. This is especially the case since Moroccan organized crime groups (or Mocro Maffia in Dutch) have become more involved in cocaine trafficking and distribution across Europe, according to Europol.

It's not just Vlaams Belang that's attacking De Wever. The Green party also accuses him of "hiding" whenever the city's population asks for more safety measures. "He hardly sets one foot into these neighborhoods," said Wouter Van Besien, leader of the Greens in Antwerp. "His new plan is failing and even culminated in a guerre des flics, a war within the police. When we interrogate him in city council, he's only pointing fingers to the justice department and the federal police. It's just shameful."

Despite the attacks, Vlaams Belang wants to team up with De Wever — both at the local level to stop the war on drugs, and on the national level. The Flemish far right has set its sights on power in 2024 — or earlier, if the country's ongoing government negotiations end up in new elections.

It's no coincidence that Italy's far-right League leader Matteo Salvini was welcomed by Vlaams Belang in Antwerp in December. Salvini, who was treated like a political rock star, congratulated the party’s leader Tom Van Grieken on his success. “If it’s not today, then it will be tomorrow, but Vlaams Belang will come to power in Flanders and the League in Italy. Tom, gear up,” Salvini said.

Such cooperation doesn’t seem likely, though. There was a discussion within the N-VA on whether or not it should govern with Vlaams Belang at the Flemish level. De Wever chose not to. In the past, he has boasted how his party's successes managed to keep Vlaams Belang down. But that’s no longer the case. Vlaams Belang won the elections in 2019, and in a recent poll the party had jumped from 18.2 percent support to 27.3 percent, making it the best supported political party in Flanders.

There are two ways to build a right-wing front in Flanders, De Winter said. One way is to shake hands, be nice and let the ice melt at the top. "Or there's the way of the base: weaken the N-VA in such a way that they have to realize that their only way out is to cooperate with us."

Attacking the party leader over his messy drug war in Antwerp fits into the second strategy.

For Goossens and his wife, enough is enough. They are thinking of moving. Their grandsons, all three of them policemen, avoid visiting because they fear being recognized by neighbors whom they had earlier arrested.

"But how does one move at our blessed age?" Goossens wondered.