The horrific attack on Nov. 13, 2015, against the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, killing 131 civilians, remains ingrained in the French collective consciousness. Yet the concert venue was not the only cultural event and soft target attacked by Islamic State operatives on Nov. 13, with two suicide bombers detonating their explosives outside the Stade de France during a soccer game between France and Germany—the hosts of this summer’s European Football Championship and Olympics, respectively.
French authorities recognize that, with just days to go before the opening ceremony of the Summer Games, all eyes are on Paris. In preparation, France will deploy 45,000 security personnel and an additional 40,000 police officers and gendarmes to protect the estimated 15 million tourists set to descend on the City of Light over the next several weeks.
In the ensuing nine years since the Bataclan attack, France has been the leading victim of jihadi terrorism in the West. The country has witnessed more than 40 militant Islamist attacks, including large, complex attacks carried out by well-trained operatives. At least 26 of these attacks have been linked to the Islamic State, according to a database compiled by one of the authors. Over this same period, there have been more than 20 known foiled plots in France. Moreover, France has a vibrant domestic extremist milieu and a high number of returnees from Syria and Iraq. Perhaps most worrisome, however, is the large number of extremists based in Turkey with fighting experience and a “French connection.”
Over recent months, too, policymakers and terrorism professionals across the Western world have been sounding the alarm about the rise of terrorist threats again, with some even comparing the situation to the buildup of warnings before 9/11.
The choice of sporting events as targets follows the logic of terrorism itself. After all, as longtime terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins famously declared, “Terrorism is theater.” Targeting the most prominent sporting event, the Olympic Games, is an act that terrorists know would have the ability both to at once raise their profile and deal a lasting psychological blow to France.
Sporting events—and the Olympics specifically—have been targeted over the years by groups and individuals motivated by a range of diverse ideologies. This famously includes the Black September massacre in Munich in 1972, when Palestinian militants killed two members of Israel’s Olympic team. In 1996, a terrorist named Eric Robert Rudolph, motivated by anti-abortion beliefs and a mixture of far-right views, including Christian Identity extremism, bombed the Atlanta Summer Olympics, directly killing one and injuring more than 100 others.
Terrorists and violent extremists have also plotted and threatened attacks against other sporting events in recent years. This includes the 2018 Men’s World Cup in Russia; the 2021 European Championship; and most recently, this year’s Cricket World Cup, which was partly held in Long Island, New York. One of the reasons that high-profile sporting events are attractive targets is because they are considered easy targets to strike, which militants themselves have also previously noted.
Prior to one of this summer’s other major sporting events, the aforementioned men’s soccer European Championship held in Germany, that country’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution assessed the threat of an imminent terrorist attack to be much higher than in recent years. This determination was likely based on hard intelligence indicating concrete attack planning.
In the months leading up to the European Championship, Germany had seen a number of foiled plots linked to the Islamic State and, specifically, the branch of the group located in Afghanistan and Pakistan, known as the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-K). And just a week before the European Championship kicked off, a 23-year-old man of German and Moroccan nationality was arrested at the Cologne airport, with German police alleging that he intended to strike against the sporting event. The man had previously transferred money to the Islamic State, and before his arrest, he had applied to work as a security guard outside one of the stadiums.
Despite the general decline in jihadi-inspired terrorism in the West between 2019 and 2022, our data now shows the Islamic State—and particularly IS-K—is once again a major terrorism threat. The group’s official media outlet, al-Azaim, has issued several threats against sporting events in the West, including the Olympics.
Both the Islamic State and IS-K specifically have been active in attempting to strike France in recent months. On Nov. 18, 2022, seven linked operatives were arrested in Strasbourg for planning an attack; between April and June this year, three plots were foiled. It remains unknown if their planned target was related to the Olympics, but at least one of the suspects, a 16-year-old, had mentioned on social media that he wanted to attack the sporting event.
In March, French authorities raised the terrorism threat to the highest level based on intelligence of an imminent attack. And after a decade of regular terrorist attempts and attacks, French authorities and law enforcement have accordingly implemented a massive security posture with assistance from other countries and the introduction of advanced technology, including counter-drone systems and sophisticated air defenses, to mitigate the threat to this year’s Summer Games.
More recently, French intelligence announced on July 6, less than three weeks before the Olympics are set to begin, that several suspected IS-K suicide bombers had been arrested and that they planned to strike against the Olympics. Then, on July 13, reports emerged that four minors and an adult had been arrested and indicted in regions throughout the country for planning a terrorist attack.
A recent report by the security company Recorded Future assessed that the most critical threat to the Olympics comes from jihadis, saying that “[s]upporters of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Europe almost certainly intend to target the Olympics with terrorist attacks.”
Yet, the terrorism threat matrix in France leading up to the Olympics is complex. Militants sympathizing with al Qaeda or individuals with no organizational links who are motivated primarily by the war in Gaza are also a very real threat. And that’s in addition to violent extremists from the far left; the far right; and potential state-sponsored actions, whether those consist of Iranian plotting or Russian interference, including concerns over influence operations or a potential cyberattack on French critical infrastructure.
In recent years, militant Islamists have primarily relied on a simple modus operandi when carrying out attacks in Western countries. These have included stabbings and small arms attacks. While such rudimentary tactics often result in low casualties, there is a much higher chance of success in carrying out the plan. The worst-case scenario, meanwhile, is that militants attempt a more complex attack scheme, with a group of trained individuals executing several simultaneous attacks. The potential use of advanced technology only aggravates the threat, with a number of manuals circulating online instructing supporters on how to adapt commercial drones to attack during the Olympics.
While the most terrifying and thus effective attack would be targeting gatherings, events, or facilities related to the Games due to the large number of individuals likely to be present, these kinds of attacks are also the most difficult to pull off. We should thus assume that less high-profile targets could be chosen because they are considered easier targets.
Is France prepared for this?
France will need elite counterterrorism forces, intelligence assistance from Western partners, and maybe some old-fashioned luck to get through these Olympics without incident. The French know the threat vectors better than anyone, but help from friendly intelligence services—particularly from countries such as United States, with world-class signals intelligence capabilities—will be crucial to preventing attacks from succeeding.
The operational tempo and increasing frequency of terror plots in the lead-up to the Olympics is not encouraging. It demonstrates a determined adversary, and one that can rely upon a range of potential attack options: inspired, directed, or virtual entrepreneurs that the Islamic State and IS-K can seek to manipulate through encrypted channels to do the groups’ bidding.
Protecting large crowds and gatherings will be especially difficult, and reducing the vulnerability of vehicle attacks and other mass casualty incidents will be paramount. If France can keep the Olympic Games safe, it will be no small feat, and its strategy will be studied closely for best practices and lessons learned for any other countries that will soon be hosting major sporting events.