A "no-go area" or "no-go zone" is a term used in several distinct contexts to describe a geographic area considered off-limits or too dangerous to enter.
In its original military and political sense, the term refers to an area where state authorities have lost effective control, either because of official exclusion, such as a government-declared border zone or military exclusion zone, or because a violent non-state actor such as an insurgent group, terrorist organization, or criminal syndicate has established de facto control.Chaudhry, Rajeev. Violent Non-State Actors: Contours, Challenges and Consequences. CLAWS Journal - Winter 2013. . In some cases, these areas have been held by insurgent organizations attempting to topple the government, such as Free Derry, an area in Northern Ireland that was held by the Irish Republican Army from 1969 to 1972. In other cases, the areas simply coexist alongside the state; an example is Kowloon Walled City, an area in Hong Kong essentially ruled by triad organizations from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Since the early 21st century, the term has also been used in political and media discourse to describe urban neighborhoods in Western countries that police or emergency services consider dangerous or difficult to operate in without backup. Government officials and journalists from various European countries, including France and Germany, have used the term to describe neighborhoods within their own countries. This usage is contested, generating significant debate over which areas, if any, are truly off-limits to police.
A further usage, promoted by some right-wing commentators and politicians, falsely claims that certain Western neighborhoods operate under sharia law and exclude non-Muslims. This claim has been widely debunked and retracted by major news outlets.
Historical no-go areas Hong Kong With no government enforcement from the British colonial government aside from a few raids by the Hong Kong Police, the Kowloon Walled City became a haven for crime and drugs. It was only during a 1959 trial for a murder that occurred within the Walled City that the Hong Kong government was ruled to have jurisdiction there. By this time, however, the Walled City was virtually ruled by the organised crime syndicates known as Triads. Beginning in the 1950s, Triad groups such as the 14K and Sun Yee On gained a stranglehold on the Walled City's countless brothels, gambling parlors, and opium dens. The Walled City had become such a haven for criminals that police would venture into it only in large groups.
Mexico
Mozambique During the Mozambican War of Independence, the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) set up and defended no-go "liberated zones" in the north of the country.
Northern Ireland
During the Troubles, the term was applied to urban areas in Northern Ireland where the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British Army could not operate openly.Gillespie, Gordon. (2009) The A to Z of the Northern Ireland Conflict. Scarecrow Press pp.177-178 Between 1969 and 1972, Irish nationalist/republican neighborhoods in Belfast and Derry were sealed off with barricades by residents. The areas were policed by vigilantes and both Official and Provisional factions of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) operated openly.David McKittrick et al, Lost Lives (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2008) p. 176 The most notable no-go area was called Free Derry.
The areas' existence was a challenge to the authority of the British government. On 31 July 1972, the British Army demolished the barricades and re-established control in Operation Motorman. It was the biggest British military operation since the Suez Crisis.Chronology of the Conflict: 1972. Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Although the areas were no longer barricaded, they remained areas where the British security forces found it difficult to operate and were regularly attacked. As a result, they entered only in armored convoys and in certain circumstances, such as to launch house raids. Barricaded no-go areas across several settlements in the region were set up once again by nationalist and republican rioters when violence, supported by republican paramilitaries, erupted after the Drumcree Orange Order parade in July 1997, just days before the second and final Provisional IRA ceasefire. The RUC and the British Army were forced to withdraw under fire from several Belfast neighbourhoods. Police presence in these areas remained contentious into the 2000s as the main republican political party, Sinn Féin, refused to support the police. In 2007, however, the party voted to support the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). In July 2007, the British Ministry of Defence published Operation Banner: An analysis of military operations in Northern Ireland, which assesses the Army's role in the Northern Ireland conflict; the paper acknowledges that, as late as 2006, there were still "areas of Northern Ireland out of bounds to soldiers".Operation Banner, Chapter II, pg 16.
Pakistan The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were in actuality no-go areas for the Pakistani authorities, where the Pakistani police could not enter. The situation was changed temporarily with the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when the Pakistani government was supported by U.S. military forces. Currently FATA are no longer a "no-go area" as they have been merged with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Rhodesia The term "no-go area" has a military origin and was first used in the context of the Bush War in Rhodesia. The war was fought in the 1960s and 1970s between the army of the predominantly white minority Rhodesian government and black nationalist groups.
The initial military strategy of the government was to seal the borders to prevent assistance to the guerrillas from other countries. However, with the end of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique, this became untenable and the white minority government adopted an alternative strategy ("mobile counter offensive"). This involved defending only key economic areas, transport links ("vital asset ground"), and the white civilian population. The government lost control of the rest of the country to the guerrilla forces, but carried out counter-guerrilla operations including "free-fire attacks" in the so-called "no-go areas," note - first printed in South Africa in 1982 by Sygma Books and Collins Vaal where white civilians were advised not to go.
Venezuela
In 2013, the Venezuelan government negotiated with large criminal gangs on how to prevent violence and agreed to set up demilitarized areas as "peace zones". The concept behind the zones was to provide gang members with economic resources and construction materials in exchange for the surrender of the gang's weapons, with the understanding that the resources would be used to repair local infrastructure. The Venezuelan government hoped that through this process, gang members would disarm and become law-abiding and productive members of society. In addition, the then-deputy Minister of the Interior reportedly agreed verbally to avoid police patrols within the zones, should the gangs agree to disarm. The plan backfired as the gang members used the money and resources given to them by the government in exchange for their weapons to acquire more powerful weapons and began committing yet more crimes and violence within the zones. According to InSight Crime, there are over a dozen mega-gangs in Venezuela, with some having up to 300 members.
Alleged contemporary no-go areas
Belgium In the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, the Molenbeek municipality in Brussels was described by Brice De Ruyver, a security adviser to Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, as a "no-go zone", where youths drawn to petty crime end up in conflict with police. Other academics, commentators, journalists and residents have contested the description of Molenbeek as a no-go zone.Robert Chalmers Is Molenbeek really a no-go zone?, GQ Magazine 21 June 2017Hans Vandecandelaere Old Molenbeek: A No-Go Zone? Goethe-Institut Brüssel, September 2016 "Hans Vandecandelaere is a writer and historian. For one of his books, "In Molenbeek" (Epo, 2015), he spent three years interviewing experts along with 200 of Old Molenbeek's residents to present a kaleidoscopic view of this stigmatised suburb."Residents of Europe's 'No-Go Areas' Talk About Life in the Danger Zone, Vice, May 22, 2017
Brazil Some slum areas (known as favelas) in Brazil, most notably in Rio de Janeiro State, are controlled by gangs with automatic weapons. Police and investigative reporters have been tortured and killed there, such as Tim Lopes in 2002. Attempts at clearing up such areas have led to security crises in Rio as well as in the State of São Paulo. These organized crime organizations are known in Brazil as "Factions" (Facções in Portuguese), the two largest are the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) or "First Command of the Capital" in English from São Paulo, and the Comando Vermelho (CV), "Red Command" in English, a faction from Rio de Janeiro.
France
It has been falsely claimed that France has Muslim-only no-go zones that are under sharia law.
An early usage of the term regarding Europe was in a 2002 opinion piece by David Ignatius in The New York Times, where he wrote about France, "Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders." Ignatius said the violence resulting in the no-go zone had come about due to inequality and racism directed towards French people of colour. La Courneuve, a poverty-stricken municipality (commune) in the Paris region whose residents felt the authorities had neglected them due to racism, was described by police as a no-go zone for officers without reinforcements.
In 2010, Raphaël Stainville of French newspaper Le Figaro called certain neighborhoods of the southern city Perpignan "veritable lawless zones", saying they had become too dangerous to travel in at night. He added that the same was true in parts of Béziers and Nîmes. In 2012, , the mayor of the French city Amiens, in the wake of several riots, called the northern part of his city a lawless zone, where one could no longer order a pizza or call for a doctor. The head of a local association said institutional violence had contributed to the tensions resulting in the no-go zone. In 2014, Fabrice Balanche, a scholar of the Middle East, labelled the northern city of Roubaix, as well as parts of Marseille, "mini-Islamic states", saying that the authority of the state is completely absent there. In 2005 France's domestic intelligence network, the Renseignements Generaux, identified 150 "no-go zones" around the country where police would not enter without reinforcements. Christopher Dickey, writing in Newsweek, said the situation had arisen due to racism towards immigrants.Christopher Dickey, Europe's Time Bomb, Newsweek, 2005-11-20