The Security Challenge at the 2024 Paris Olympics

The Olympics are always an immense security challenge for host nations. The Paris games, which are expected to attract more than ten million visitors, including dozens of world leaders, are no exception. The events come as two major wars are raging—in Ukraine and in the Gaza Strip—and as France endures a period of political uncertainty.

What are French authorities most concerned about?

Security officials in France say that the self-proclaimed Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) is the main threat to the Paris games. German authorities issued similar warnings in June during the 2024 European Football Championship. ISIS-K’s most high-profile violence in recent months was its attack on a Moscow theater in March, where a handful of the group’s gunmen killed 139 concert goers. In January, it claimed responsibility for twin bombings in Iran that killed dozens of people.

Formed in 2015, ISIS-K is an Afghanistan-based offshoot of the Islamic State, the Sunni Islamist terrorist group that operated across war-ravaged Iraq and Syria in the mid-2010s. U.S. analysts say ISIS-K is comprised of 2000–5000 people recruited from various countries in Central Asia. One of the group’s primary targets is the Taliban government, which reassumed power in Afghanistan after the U.S. military’s withdrawal in 2021. It has also reportedly conducted attacks on sites in neighboring Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Paris is also preparing for potential cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns emanating from Russia or its affiliates. Olympics authorities have banned Russia and Belarus from sending national teams to compete in Paris because of their aggression against Ukraine, although some individual athletes will participate under a neutral flag.

Meanwhile, the French government is frozen in a state of political uncertainty, as the results from recent snap elections failed to deliver a clear majority for any party or alliance. President Emmanuel Macron has pushed to have the current placeholder government remain until the games are complete, but many politicians and groups are unhappy with this arrangement, and some have warned of mass protests during the events.

How has France prepared?

From an intelligence standpoint, French security agencies have focused on building contacts and insight into the country’s Central Asian migrant communities, given the concerns over ISIS-K. In May, French authorities arrested a Chechen man they say was plotting a terrorist attack outside a soccer stadium in the town of Saint-Étienne. French police have detained hundreds of people on security watch lists, including purported Islamist extremists.

France has some of the toughest and most far-reaching counterterrorism policies in the developed world. After bombings in 1995, Paris passed a broadly worded law criminalizing a range of preparatory acts related to terrorism. Under the statute, French authorities may arrest terrorism suspects even if the alleged offense is not associated with a particular plot. France, like the rest of continental Europe, has an inquisitorial criminal justice system, where judges with extensive powers lead investigations hand-in-hand with police and intelligence agencies.

We have “looked particularly at all the people who revolve around the ten nationalities of the former Soviet Union,” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on July 23. Central Asians form a relatively small portion of France’s immigrant population, which is about seven million people, or ten percent of the total. Most immigrants are from Africa or Europe, with large groups from former French colonies Algeria and Morocco. France recruited thousands of Muslims from its former colonies, particularly from North Africa, to help rebuild the country after World War II, but the country has struggled for decades to integrate these immigrants.

In terms of physical security, Paris is said to have assembled a force of some seventy-five thousand police officers, soldiers, and private security guards. It has also invited some U.S. law enforcement personnel, including from New York, Los Angeles, and Virginia. The opening ceremony along a four-mile stretch of the Seine river in Paris presents a particularly difficult security challenge, experts say. It’s reportedly the first in Olympic history to be held outside a stadium and will feature athletes on dozens of boats floating by hundreds of thousands of spectators. The Seine will also play host to swimming and other Olympic events. 

What is the recent history of terrorism in France?

Islamist extremist terrorism first emerged in France during the 1990s with the Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA). These Algerian militants were behind a wave of deadly bombings in Paris in 1995 and 1996. Islamists extremists did not commit another major attack in the country until 2012, when Mohammed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, shot and killed seven people in and around the city of Toulouse.

The pace and intensity of Islamist-inspired attacks soared in the mid-2010s. In January 2015, Cherif and Said Kouachi, also of Algerian ancestry, killed twelve people and wounded eleven more in a raid on the offices of French magazine Charie Hebdo. In a related assault days later, Amedy Coulibaly, a Frenchman of Malian descent, killed four Jewish hostages and a policeman in the suburbs of Paris.

The violence peaked in November 2015 when Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people and injured hundreds more in coordinated shootings and bombings around Paris—the deadliest-ever terrorist attack on French soil. Months later, in July 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian national, drove a truck through a crowded Bastille Day celebration in Nice, killing eighty-six people and wounding hundreds more. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, but French authorities did not definitively link Bouhlel to a terrorist group. Later that month, two Islamic State loyalists, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, stormed a church near the city of Rouen and brutally murdered a Catholic priest.

The Islamic State and other Islamist extremist groups have historically recruited Muslim youth from France. More than two thousand reportedly traveled to fight in Iraq and Syria in the mid-2010s, more than from any other European country. Several returned home to commit acts of terrorism.

Many Islamist extremist recruits have come from the northern banlieus, or suburbs, where large immigrant communities have lived for generations. Many of these neighborhoods are marked by industrial decay, poverty, unemployment, social marginalization, and violence, particularly in the Arab and African enclaves. French leaders, indeed, have aimed to use the Olympics to redevelop some of these blighted areas, such as Seine-Saint Denis, which will host the Olympic Village. 

Will Merrow created the graphic for this article.