MARSEILLE, France—It is 10 a.m. but the squalid streets beneath the stained tower blocks of the Rosiers neighbourhood are deserted. A few young men armed with Kalashnikovs stand guard near a playground where torn garbage bags and rusted-out shopping carts perch in place of children.
At the edge of the housing project, a dumpster blocks the way in. Beside it, three stern-faced teenagers search vehicles and admit only residents or drug associates. They haul back the dumpster and guide cars past concrete barriers, broken furniture and craters in the pavement toward the next group of sentries deeper in the compound.
Interesting snapshot that unfortunately fails to address the role Islam plays in the No-Go Zones of France.
A mother quoted in the Star piece also turns up in this City-Journal entry citing a Guardian article:
The vacuum of effective policing . . . allowed a twisted cycle of brutality to fester; ferocious violence that Amine knows too well. On 29 December 2020 his brother disappeared. For six days his mother scoured the city until tipped off that the 21-year-old would not be coming home. Brahim Kessaci was found beside another body in the boot [trunk] of a burned-out car on a road heading out of the city. A third body had been sliced into pieces with a chain saw and images sent to his traumatised father.
There was no widespread rioting in response to these horrible crimes.
