Social blight plagues Coulibaly's peers

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 will not deliver parcels.

Drug dealers and teenage thugs hold sway over the Grande Borne, where even police venture with caution, especially after dark.

It would be simplistic to argue that Coulibaly-a partner of the Charlie Hebdo attackers, killer of a police-woman 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.