Qatari armored vehicles, some in urban camouflage livery, made their way through the streets of Paris, passing by the Arc de Triomphe, the Pont de l’Alma and the Eiffel Tower with a national police car escort: On Friday, July 12, the security partnership between France and Qatar for the Olympic Games did not go unnoticed. It is to the great benefit of the emirate which turned it into a communication operation, relayed on social media.

Also filmed and photographed by dozens of passers-by, the procession prompted hundreds of publications and comments – often indignant – online. “Despite its proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood and #Hamas, Qatar, marching through Paris, is supporting our law enforcement for the #JO [Olympics]. Soon China or even Russia?” asked Valérie Boyer, Les Républicains (LR, right) senator, on X.

This photo, and others like it, have raised a few eyebrows among law enforcement officers. “They turn up with 4x4s in urban guerrilla mode when they’re supposed to be doing foot patrols and wandering police dogs around Roissy – it doesn’t make any sense,” said an Interior Ministry hierarch on Friday, recalling that, on paper, the agreement signed on February 28 between France and Qatar on security cooperation for the Olympics covered foot patrols by Qatari police officers and explosives detection missions. “So what’s the point of parading around in war vehicles?” he asked.

Long-standing cooperation

This tour of Paris with sirens wailing is all the more irritating as the public authorities are far less forthcoming about another agreement made discreetly between the emirate’s authorities and the national gendarmerie. According to our information, the French Gendarmerie’s GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, the elite police tactical unit of the Gendarmerie) has made an unusual request to Qatar: to obtain the loan of half a dozen armored vehicles to enable it to carry out its security missions during the Olympic Games.

The gendarmerie is not commenting officially but several sources within the institution point to a necessity due to the “vampirization” of manpower and equipment by the situation in New Caledonia where tension was rekindled after the death of 38-year-old Rock Victorin Wamytan, during an intervention by the GIGN on Wednesday, July 10, in a local context that is still extremely tense. In June, the Qatari government announced its agreement to provide the elite Gendarmerie unit with five to six unmarked and armored 4x4s, as well as an armored vehicle of the small protected vehicle type, “by virtue of the ties that unite the Lekhwiya [Qatar’s internal security force] and the Gendarmerie.”

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