THE WORLD - Belgium fracturing along linguistic lines
BRUSSELS — To the uninitiated, the existential crisis splitting Belgium down the middle these days might seem like a (very) civilized war as told by Dr. Seuss, with the French-speaking Walloons on one side and the Dutch-speaking Flemings on the other.
To continue the literary analogy, consider the library at Belgium's Leuven University. Make that two libraries.
German armies had burned down Leuven's library in the two world wars, and it was rebuilt after each. But then in 1970, the last time the Flemings and the Walloons got seriously restive, the million-volume collection was carved into two: Odd-numbered books remained on the original campus in the Dutch-speaking part of the country, while even-numbered books went to a new Francophone school built in a field 17 miles to the south.
Thirty-seven years later, Belgium's national identity is still so elusive, so fragile and so fractured that the little country wedged between the Netherlands and France may be on the verge of breaking apart.
The more prosperous Dutch-speakers in Flanders in the north want to shake off their relatively poor French-speaking neighbors in Wallonia to the south.
After 177 years, Belgium, with its 10.5 million people, would disappear into two nations, with one proposal turning Brussels into a capital district akin to Washington, D.C.
After decades of snubs and bitter grudges, the two halves of Belgium have separate languages, political parties, schools and media. Some claim that even the birds of Flanders and Wallonia sing in different languages.
These divisions have thrown the country into a political limbo that is 5 months old and counting. Since June 10 national elections, warring factions from each region have been unable to form a coalition government, with the main hurdle being Flemish demands for increased autonomy. The last time Belgium was in a similar crisis was in 1988, and it took 148 days to form a government. It's been a week longer than that now, and counting.
For the time being, the outgoing prime minister is sticking around to make sure taxes are collected and bills get paid. And King Albert II has stepped in to appoint a mediator, but nobody believes the 73-year-old monarch, best known for his motorcycle and French villa before he came to power, can hold the country together.
