France Triggers To Prevent ISIS-K Threats At Paris Olympics

ILLUSTRATION/PHOTO via Instagram @olympics

JAKARTA - Tajik journalist Temur Varki received a disturbing call from Paris police in late March, days after ISIS militants from his country of birth allegedly carried out a massacre in Moscow.

The two officers questioned him about a small French immigrant community from Tajikistan, a former poor Soviet republic in Central Asia.

"Who do you know? How many? Where?" Varki recalled the officers asking, one of them speaks Russian, a language commonly spoken in Central Asia.

Varki, a political refugee in France who has worked for various media including the BBC, told police he knew a handful of Tajik people in the country, mostly fellow emigrants and dissidents.

"But I don't know a single jihadist," he told the officer.

As reported by Reuters on Friday, July 19, ahead of the Paris Olympics which began on July 26, France's security services have been racing to address intelligence weaknesses and establish closer ties with Tajikistanans and other Central Asians in the country, according to more than a dozen people who know this.

They include intelligence officials and former officials, police, diplomats, and Middle Asian migrants who have been contacted by the authorities.

The affordment effort, which has never been reported before, comes after two major attacks this year that authorities say were carried out by members of ISIS-K from Tajik, an ISIS revival wing named after the historic Khorasan region covering parts of the region. Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

A double suicide bombing in Iran on January 3 killed about 100 people at a ceremony to commemorate the death of Qassem Revolutionary Guard commander Soleimani, while Moscow's tragedy on March 22 witnessed gunmen firing at concert spectators at the Crocus City Hall, killing more than 130 people.

French authorities say they have thwarted an Islamic attack on the Olympics, with arrests in late May of an 18-year-old Chechen man suspected of planning a suicide mission on behalf of ISIS at the Saint-Etienne football stadium, where France, the United States, and Ukraine will play.

With its complicated colonial past, existing anti-Muslim sentiment, and historic involvement in the war in the Middle East and Africa, France has long been the target of attacks by Islamic groups. Last month, Parisian police chief Laurent Nunez said "Islamic terrorism is still our main concern" at the Olympics, although authorities said there was no direct threat to the Olympics.

Tajikistan, which was hit by civil war in the 1990s, is the poorest country among the former Soviet republic. The country relies on remittances from migrants, especially in Russia for nearly half of its economic output.

Poor and isolated young men among the Tajik diaspora have proven to be an attractive recruitment group for ISIS-K, according to many security experts.

But French intelligence has few assets in Central Asia, an intelligence source told Reuters, and the small and close community in the region is difficult to penetrate. According to the French Tajik Association, there are about 30 Tajik families living in the country.

Intelligence sources, who asked not to be named when discussing security issues, said ISIS-K represents a relatively new threat, with overseas-based recruiters and handlers capable of radicalizing and activating Central Asians in France to carry out attacks on French soil.

As evidence, the source points to the case of a Tajik man who was arrested in 2022 for planning an attack on Strasbourg.

The source said the man acted based on instructions from the foreign-based ISIS-K handler.

A second security source said France had identified a dozen ISIS-K controllers, based in countries around Afghanistan that have a strong online presence and are trying to convince youths in European countries interested in joining the group abroad to carry out domestic attacks.

The officers then linked the recruits with people who could provide false identities and weapons in the field in the countries involved, according to the source, in a process that could take just a few weeks.

When contacted by Reuters, two police officers who spoke to Varki declined to comment. Paris police referred the question to the French Interior Ministry, but declined to comment.

Tajikistan's foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.