France will maintain beefed up security at several “sensitive” sites, especially Jewish schools that may be the target of any self-radicalized terrorists out there – whether they be copycats or hatching fresh schemes.  Thousands of troops and police officers are deployed throughout the country.

By the time Tuesday evening rolls around to Paris, French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says that 10,000 soldiers would be deployed in what he called “the first mobilization on this scale on our territory”. Security is particularly heightened in Paris’ main Jewish neighborhood, the Marais. 

Security officials will have to address the failures in national security that allowed the brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi to attack the offices of Charlie Hebdo, killing twelve people, and saw their apparent associate Amedy Coulibaly killa policewoman before storming a Kosher supermarket and killing four people.  All three suspects are dead.

But France and the West must untangle the confusion regarding their loyalties.  The Kouachis claimed they were backed by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known by its acronym AQAP.  Coulibaly said in a video that he was loyal to Islamic State (IS).  Both groups hate the West – but they hate each other as well.  Al Qaeda and IS members have fought and killed each other on the chaotic battlefields of Syria and Iraq. 

Meanwhile, the final suspect in the French attacks has been caught on camera at an airport in Istanbul.  26-year old Hayat Boumeddiene is seen passing through passport control in the company of a man on 2 January.  She’s now believed to be in Syria, in an area controlled by Islamic State.  Although Boumeddiene was not in Paris at the time of the attacks, she is described as gunman Amedy Coulibaly’s girlfriend or common-law wife.  French prosecutors say Hayat Boumeddiene had exchanged more than 500 phone calls with the wife of Cherif Kouachi in 2014.