The No-Go Banlieues of Paris

"The spiral starts progressively. There is a huge waste of potential in these cities."
Damien Brossier, lawyer, France

"Look at those kids out there with their hoodies."
"We're only seeing the start of the problem. That was just the first Amedy Coulibaly. There are lots of little Coulibalys."
Rombo Togbahoun, Coulibaly's former kick-boxing coach, Grande Borne, Paris

Rioters in the troubled banlieue of Aulnay-sous-Bois, November 2005. Photograph: EPA

The mayor of Paris was so incensed at the description of the Muslim ghettoes on the outskirts of Paris being called "no-go zones" that he demanded an apology of CNN. The network was swift to proffer its abject apologies. How insultingly insolent to defame the grand old city of Europe at such a time in its recent history when world attention has focused on its trials and tribulations thanks to the inundation of Islam in a culture of secular freedoms.

The housing project where Amedy Coulibaly was brought up and lived for all of his years is described as a concrete labyrinth whose interior is so freighted with sinister threat that doctors do not make house calls and postal workers will not deliver parcels. Where drug dealers and teen thugs control the blighted neighbourhood.

There are two issues: Muslims are told by their imams to keep themselves aloof from non-Muslims; not to integrate into the culture of the kuffars. The other is that isolation is augmented by suspicion leading to lack of opportunities such as education and employment.

Police tend to venture into the La Grande Borne with exemplary caution, most particularly when dusk falls and darkness enters the neighbourhood. The maze of buildings house 11,000 people and within, gangs of thugs are able to mount ambushes against police, using pump-action shotguns and gasoline bombs to effectively inform them they are unwelcome at any time.

But the enclave of high unemployment and crime where the lawful authority of the state barely reaches out to the inhabitants does not necessarily breed terrorists.  "Our towns are not terrorist factories", said Philippe Rio, mayor, who was raised in the Grande Borne. Yet the area is indeed what the mayor himself calls one of France's "abandoned, difficult territories", and it was there that Coulibaly began his journey into crime and terrorist action.

Beginning as a teenager with petty criminal acts going on to armed robbery, where he spent time behind bars, and where he met up with Cherif Kouachi of Charlie Hebdo infamy. The housing complexes that contain so many of France's Muslim underdog populations were built fifty years ago representing working-class housing. Roads were not included to ensure the area was child-friendly.

The stairwells of the apartment complexes make superb crime hideouts where drugs can be stockpiled. Public transport is sparse, and the area is known as one of many hot spots for riots. The "banlieues" are truly depressed places, the projects grim in appearance, originally housing colonial-era workers. And it was there that Amedy Coulibaly became rigidly devoted to Islam.

His long placements in prison reflecting six convictions for robbery, armed robbery and drug trafficking, and a terrorism-related charge exposed him to the allures of jihad. Once out of prison the radicalization process intensified. His former defence lawyer considers it incorrect to assume that the banlieues will produce more criminals just like Coulibly, but he does see the influence that older delinquents have on the younger ones.

Some, but not all, will end up as Amedy Coulibaly did, targeting French police for murder, planning deadly attacks on French-Jewish enterprises and ultimately reaching their aspired goals; dying as martyrs for the cause of the Islamic caliphate.