On Paris terrorist's turf, fears of more in the pipeline

[webfact]

On Paris terrorist's turf, fears of more in the pipeline
By JOHN LEICESTER

GRIGNY, France (AP) — The housing project that was home to Amedy Coulibaly is a concrete labyrinth so scary that doctors refuse to make house calls and mail workers won't deliver parcels. Drug dealers and teenage thugs hold sway over the blighted neighborhood.

Even the police venture only with caution into the Grande Borne, especially after dark. The project's maze of serpentine, run-down buildings housing 11,000 people gives gangs plenty of cover to mount ambushes against officers with pump-action shotguns and gasoline bombs.

It would be simplistic to argue that Coulibaly — a partner of the Charlie Hebdo attackers, killer of a policewoman and four hostages at a kosher store — became a terrorist because he grew up in this enclave of high unemployment and crime where the authority of the French state is weak. Many others from the Grande Borne and his generation turned out just fine. One of Coulibaly's sisters is making her name as a dancer. A former classmate is a financial comptroller, another helps manage the career of 2005 hurdles world champion Ladji Doucoure.

"Our towns are not terrorist factories," Philippe Rio, the mayor who also grew up in the Grande Borne, insisted in an interview with The Associated Press.

But it was here in what the mayor calls one of France's "abandoned, difficult territories" that Coulibaly started to veer off the rails as a teenager, graduating from petty crime to armed robberies that set him on a trajectory of multiple spells in prison. Behind bars, he met Cherif Kouachi, one of the Charlie Hebdo assassins, and others with whom he became radicalized.

Built in the 1960s as affordable working-class housing, the Grande Borne now looks like a giant social and architectural mistake. Its lack of roads were intended to make it child-friendly but ended up making it difficult to police. The three, four and five-story blocks with fetid stairwells and dead-ends also make perfect crime hideouts and stashes for drugs.

Poorly served by public transport and cut off by a motorway — as well as its turbulent reputation — the estate was one of the hotspots in a nationwide wave of riots in 2005 that exposed the deep wells of anger in France's depressed "banlieues," the suburbs where France built grim projects to house workers from former colonies who provided muscle for France's postwar growth miracle.

Their children and grandchildren now languish there — with, some say, few ways out.

Monique Vareillaud, Coulibaly's primary school teacher when he was 8, remembers a kid "just like all the others" but also "the little king" of his large family — the only boy among nine sisters. In a school photo from the following year, Coulibaly is the only pupil leaning forward on his chair, chin resting pensively on the back of his hand, like Auguste Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker."

In his teens, the authority of school and parents began to lose grip on Coulibaly, and crime sank in its claws. His Islamic faith also "was starting to take shape," said Grande Borne social worker De-Charles Claude Aka. Coulibaly became more dedicated than other neighborhood kids in attending daily prayers and, on a trip to Disneyland, kept himself apart from the girls, Aka recalled in an AP interview.

Aka lost sight of Coulibaly in 1999. Then suddenly last year, his former charge reappeared in his office, seemingly with something important to say. Whatever it was, Aka failed to tease it out of him. He is now haunted by the idea that Coulibaly may already have been plotting last week's killing spree, and perhaps could have been reasoned with. Instead, they made small talk.

"To be honest, I kicked myself," Aka said. "I started to run the film in my head of his visit. He had bulked up so much, become a big boy."

By then, Coulibaly had done long spells of prison time, with six separate convictions for robbery, armed robbery and drug trafficking and another on terrorism-related charges.

In 2000, when Coulibaly was 18, police shot and killed one of his teenage friends when they were stealing motorbikes together, neighborhood police say. In a later drama, his lawyer Damien Brossier recounted, Coulibaly's getaway car plunged off a bridge after he robbed a sports clothing store at gunpoint. Coulibaly coolly carried on as if nothing had happened.

Brossier also defended Coulibaly after he and a friend drove more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) by motorbike to rob a bank and then two cafes. "Quite a hothead," Brossier said in an AP interview.

Out of prison, Coulibaly became increasingly radicalized, regularly visiting and seeking advice from Djamel Beghal, a convicted terrorist living under surveillance in rural central France. In an Islamic religious ceremony in 2009 not recognized by French law, Coulibaly wed Hayat Boumeddiene, a Frenchwoman of North African origin who, unusually for France, wore an Islamic veil even though doing so cost her job as a cashier. Boumeddiene traveled to Turkey before the Charlie Hebdo attacks and Turkish officials confirm she crossed over into Syria.

Brossier says it is wrong to automatically assume that other criminals like Coulibaly also will also graduate to Islamic terrorism. But, in defending them, he also sees how kids from the wrong side of the tracks in places like the Grande Borne copy older delinquents.

Rather than survive on social welfare like their parents, they get lured by the easy money of drug dealing and crime. Often, the next stop is the huge Fleury-Merogis prison next to the Grande Borne where Coulibaly served time. Coulibaly surreptitiously filmed the prison's hellish conditions, which then were subsequently exposed in a TV documentary.

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

Coulibaly's former kickboxing coach in the Grande Borne, Rombo Togbahoun, fears there are more like him in the pipeline.

"Look at those kids out there with their hoodies," he said. "We're only seeing the start of the problem. That was just the first Amedy Coulibaly. There are lots of little Coulibalys."

Has much changed in the Grande Borne and other rotting projects since the government launched action plans for them after the 2005 riots?

"Yes and no," Rio, the mayor, replies.

The Grande Borne now has a new cultural center and new gymnasium — which was quickly targeted in an arson attack last October — and is getting a tram link and other improvements. But 40 percent of residents aged 16-25 have no work. After being robbed four times in one year, the pharmacy shut down. There is just one full-time doctor. Residents and the mayor complain that potential employers turn people away because they are from the Grande Borne.

"The republic must ask itself real questions," Rio said. "For us to feel part of the republic, to love the republic, the republic has to love us back."

Racial discrimination also is an obstacle for France's minorities. The mayor, who is white, acknowledged that his skin color might be part of the reason why his trajectory from the same estate has been so different from that of the black Coulibaly, born in France to parents from Mali.

Minorities have long complained that their names and color can hold them back in work and careers and attract greater police scrutiny and checks. This in a political context where the anti-immigration, extreme-right National Front party has made electoral headway, making some minority French citizens feel even more unwelcome.

"I went through the same school (as Coulibaly), which means we had the same teachers at one time," the mayor said. "That fills me, and many people here of my age, with questions.

"I'm not called Mohammed or Mamadou," he said. "I know that really is an extra difficulty."


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-01-19

[Steely Dan]

So the estate where Ahmedi Coulibaly grew up was a place where doctors wouldn't make house calls and mail services refused to deliver parcels. Sounds like one of those mythical no go zones to me. I just read an article by a British Muslim of Pakistani lineage who puts the blame for Islamic radicalisation squarely in the court of multiculturalism, he argues the host culture should be asserted to aid assimilation. I would agree, but it's a bit late now. To integrate someone who has been spoon fed a hostile alien culture makes non-assimilation a high probability. To integrate someone who is already alienated is also far more difficult than bringing them up in a manner where the alienation is less likely to develop in the first place. The multicultural mindset seems blind to the incompatibility of certain cultures and makes things worse by trying to rationalize their bad behavior as being due to a list of grievances, suggested by many liberal commentators and then latched onto post-hoc by the already alienated.

The sad thing is that the same number of Muslims might have been far less problematic if the influx was slower and each successive generation was assimilated before more came. But the French ignored the issue, as did the rest of Europe and so no go zones formed with foreign money pumped in to radicalize the immigrants, which was done seemingly in broad daylight with little or no response.

Yes there will be more attacks, many more. I can't see any way of avoiding huge problems without reversing demographic changes, as yet I see little will from governments to do this, but it is only a matter of time before parties are elected who will do this, and by popular mandate.

[Ulysses G.]

So the estate where Ahmedi Coulibaly grew up was a place where doctors wouldn't make house calls and mail services refused to deliver parcels. Sounds like one of those mythical no go zones to me.

Hey man. AP is a biased source. There is a Jewish guy working in the mailroom.

[arjunadawn]

So the estate where Ahmedi Coulibaly grew up was a place where doctors wouldn't make house calls and mail services refused to deliver parcels. Sounds like one of those mythical no go zones to me. I just read an article by a British Muslim of Pakistani lineage who puts the blame for Islamic radicalisation squarely in the court of multiculturalism, he argues the host culture should be asserted to aid assimilation. I would agree, but it's a bit late now. To integrate someone who has been spoon fed a hostile alien culture makes non-assimilation a high probability. To integrate someone who is already alienated is also far more difficult than bringing them up in a manner where the alienation is less likely to develop in the first place. The multicultural mindset seems blind to the incompatibility of certain cultures and makes things worse by trying to rationalize their bad behavior as being due to a list of grievances, suggested by many liberal commentators and then latched onto post-hoc by the already alienated.

The sad thing is that the same number of Muslims might have been far less problematic if the influx was slower and each successive generation was assimilated before more came. But the French ignored the issue, as did the rest of Europe and so no go zones formed with foreign money pumped in to radicalize the immigrants, which was done seemingly in broad daylight with little or no response.

Yes there will be more attacks, many more. I can't see any way of avoiding huge problems without reversing demographic changes, as yet I see little will from governments to do this, but it is only a matter of time before parties are elected who will do this, and by popular mandate.

I think this is a very well written and truthful post. You broadly condensed a very complex issue into three excellent and useful paragraphs; thanks.

[Steely Dan]

If you want a more detailed summary of where France is at, here is an excellent article.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5120/jihad-in-france

[RickBradford]

[Noi657]

So the estate where Ahmedi Coulibaly grew up was a place where doctors wouldn't make house calls and mail services refused to deliver parcels. Sounds like one of those mythical no go zones to me. I just read an article by a British Muslim of Pakistani lineage who puts the blame for Islamic radicalisation squarely in the court of multiculturalism, he argues the host culture should be asserted to aid assimilation. I would agree, but it's a bit late now. To integrate someone who has been spoon fed a hostile alien culture makes non-assimilation a high probability. To integrate someone who is already alienated is also far more difficult than bringing them up in a manner where the alienation is less likely to develop in the first place. The multicultural mindset seems blind to the incompatibility of certain cultures and makes things worse by trying to rationalize their bad behavior as being due to a list of grievances, suggested by many liberal commentators and then latched onto post-hoc by the already alienated.

The sad thing is that the same number of Muslims might have been far less problematic if the influx was slower and each successive generation was assimilated before more came. But the French ignored the issue, as did the rest of Europe and so no go zones formed with foreign money pumped in to radicalize the immigrants, which was done seemingly in broad daylight with little or no response.

Yes there will be more attacks, many more. I can't see any way of avoiding huge problems without reversing demographic changes, as yet I see little will from governments to do this, but it is only a matter of time before parties are elected who will do this, and by popular mandate.

Well written, thanks.

Last paragraph though... For me, it will be the people that will do something before any government gets the chance, people have had enough!

[boomerangutang]

It's a picture of some of the problems stemming from overpopulation. People from N. Africa and M.East seek better lives. Just getting a menial job with some food each day would be better. Yet, they find problems with residing in France (or any of the other western European countries). Invariably, they have kids, and the kids are alienated even more than the parents. Plus, the kids don't have the 1st-hand experience of comparing France with the countries their parents immigrated from. So the kids think France should offer them more (even tho they tried burning down their own gymnasium).

My dad used to say, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." In other words, try to make the best of your situation and succeed. Everyone has drawbacks in their upbringing, whether real or imagined. I grew up in a well-off household, but my mother was a tyrant. Should I spend my life angry and destructive, because of my mother's vindictiveness? No, of course not. Each person has to strive to succeed. The people (in the article) who grow up to become criminals and terrorists are losing at life. I have no pity for them, though maybe some pity for their children, who are forced to be brought up by screwed-up parents who teach hate.

Edited January 19, 2015 by boomerangutang

[Scott]

An off-topic post has been removed.

[ABCer]

"The housing project that was home to Amedy Coulibaly is a concrete labyrinth so scary that doctors refuse to make house calls and mail workers won't deliver parcels. Drug dealers and teenage thugs hold sway over the blighted neighborhood."

"Even the police venture only with caution into the Grande Borne, especially after dark. The project's maze of serpentine, run-down buildings housing 11,000 people gives gangs plenty of cover to mount ambushes against officers with pump-action shotguns and gasoline bombs."

"Our towns are not terrorist factories,"

But they are!

The Politically Correct politicians will tell you lies.

They will tell you to put more money into these factories.

Anything, except the truth - they created these factories!

[ABCer]

If you want a more detailed summary of where France is at, here is an excellent article.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5120/jihad-in-france

Thanks, Steely Dan, but anybody with a brain can see where the whole Europe is:

It's a place which is

- dark;

- it stinks;

- nobody likes to look into it;

- it is embarrassing to show to others;

- nothing good is coming out;

- yes, your guess is right!

[DeaconJohn]

So the estate where Ahmedi Coulibaly grew up was a place where doctors wouldn't make house calls and mail services refused to deliver parcels. Sounds like one of those mythical no go zones to me.

Hey man. AP is a biased source. There is a Jewish guy working in the mailroom.

Mailroom?

I think they're in the boardroom running the show.

[Ulysses G.]

Congratulations. You, Stormfront and Oliver Stone all share the same erroneous belief.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Ulysses G.