BRUSSELS — In the United States, the Sept 11 attacks unleashed an outpouring of patriotism. After the attacks in and around Paris on Nov 13, the tricolour of the French flag was ubiquitous as the country channelled its grief.

Not so in Belgium. In this wounded nation, politically fragmented and divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, displays of the black, yellow and red of the Belgian flag have been relatively restrained, even as the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building lit up in its colours.

“We Belgians do not wrap ourselves in the flag — it is not our way,” said Mr Nicolas Gallet, 19, who was among thousands on Thursday who thronged Place de la Bourse, a square in central Brussels filled with flowers and candles, and memorial messages chalked on asphalt. Instead, in a decidedly Belgian gesture, an image of the cartoon character Tintin and his dog Snowy crying was widely shared on social media by Belgians and foreigners.

Like their counterparts around the world, Belgians reacted to the terror attacks that killed 31 people at an airport and subway station on Tuesday morning with the all-too-familiar rituals of public mourning and with grief, anger, shock and defiance. But perhaps befitting a country with three Parliaments, which once went without a government for 541 days, the understated displays of solidarity were tinged with simmering frustration as the blame game began.

Some Belgians lashed out at a flailing security apparatus and chronically dysfunctional government for abetting the tragedy.

How, some critics here and abroad asked, could a country that in the past had been barely able to form a government — and a city that until recently had 19 police forces — effectively hunt for terrorists?

“You have local level and you have federal level, and there is no collaboration,” said Ms Francoise Schepmans, the Mayor of Molenbeek, the district where the sole surviving suspect from the Paris attacks was arrested last week after evading the authorities for 125 days. “They don’t have to talk to me about their investigation,” she said in an interview with CNN.

Belgium, a tiny country of 11 million people, has long had an identity crisis. It lives in the shadow of its larger and more powerful cousin, France. Brussels, the capital, doubles as the capital of the European Union (EU) and headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, giving it global heft but also subsuming its already fragile and fragmented persona to plodding bureaucratic institutions.

The city centre has been eerily quiet since Tuesday’s attacks, with the usually bustling streets near the Grand Place, a handsome square graced by imposing buildings, mainly from the 17th century, largely deserted. Soldiers in military fatigues patrol the chic Place du Grand Sablon, an incongruous sight on a square where truffle emporiums, luxury shops and bourgeois residents walking their dogs are more common.

Some residents said they were too scared to take the subway.

Reflecting on the attacks, Mr Gallet, the 19-year-old student, said many Belgians were resigned and angry. He argued that the country’s fractious identity politics were at least partly to blame for distracting successive governments from improving the integration of immigrants and preventing terrorism. But his friend Antoine Staru disagreed.

“I am sorry, but this is not Belgium’s fault,” said Mr Staru, 20. “These are crazy people. These are people born here, and yet they are attacking this country.”

A handwritten note on the makeshift memorial next to him said, “In the end, when you see what can be done in the name of God, it makes you wonder what is left for the devil.”

Since the Brussels attacks, far-right parties, from France to Italy to the Netherlands, have assailed the EU’s lax immigration policies and porous borders. In Belgium, the nationalist Vlaams Belang party, which agitates for an independent Flanders, urged Prime Minister Charles Michel to seal the borders.

“We can’t stop terrorism if they remain open!” wrote the party on Twitter.

There were also calls for unity. Le Soir editor Christophe Berti urged readers to undertake a historical reckoning of the last 40 years, including the conditions that had led to lapses of security and social cohesion.

“That is the best homage we can pay to the victims,” he wrote.

But Mr Brian Carroll, a communications consultant from Washington who escaped from the Maelbeek subway station through a cloud of smoke and rubble on Tuesday, suggested that given its role in hosting critical international institutions, Brussels should be policed by a pan-European force.

As calls for accountability gathered force, the human cost of the attacks has become ever more real, with names and photographs of the dead and missing filling Belgian newspapers. The victims, including some 300 wounded, came from more than 40 countries, including the US, Britain, Morocco, Spain and Hungary.

Identification of victims has been painfully slow, said the police, with many bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Among the few confirmed so far are Leopold Hecht, a 20-year-old Belgian law student; Olivier Delespesse, a Belgian civil servant; and Adelma Marina Tapia, a Peruvian mother of young twin girls.

At a large military hospital in Neder-over-Heembeek in northern Brussels, where many of the victims were taken, officials said late this week that they expected that most of the dead there would be identified soon. Of the nearly 100 admitted with injuries, 15 remained.

Amid the gloom, there was also heroism. Mr Alphonse Youla, a Belgian of African origin who wrapped luggage at the airport, was credited with spiriting several people to safety, according to Belgian news agencies, which reported that he carried people whose legs had been shattered from the ruined terminal, even as the ceiling was caving in.

Some Belgians expressed outrage at remarks by US Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, who had called Brussels a “hell hole” and, after the attacks Tuesday, reiterated his criticism of Muslim communities.

They were similarly upset by the comments of Mr Eric Zemmour, a French writer who, after the Paris attacks, said the French government should bomb Molenbeek — the Brussels district where the Paris attackers lived — rather than Islamic State’s self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria.

In Molenbeek, as residents bartered in Arabic at a vegetable and fruit market, Mr Leiven Soete, 73, one of the relatively few native-born Belgians shopping there, said he had come to show that he would not be cowed. He said his neighbour, an older Moroccan man, had been inconsolable since the attacks.

“There is a shadow over Molenbeek. But we can’t solve this by making our neighbours the enemy,” he said.

Muslims in Molenbeek said they felt under siege. Ms Samia, 32, who is of Moroccan origin and has three children, but declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals, said she felt sick about what had happened, and feared a backlash against Muslims.

“I am Belgian, too, I was raised here, and now my five-year-old son asks me to close the blinds because he is afraid of being shot by terrorists,” said Ms Samia.

She said the looks of suspicion in recent days on the streets of Brussels had been difficult to bear.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

“If Donald Trump calls us a hell hole, I feel proud.”

as two friends wearing Islamic headscarves nodded sombrely