Dropping the baby to embrace a bomb

bristol | peace | opinion/analysis Wednesday August 20, 2008 10:50 by Iqbal Tamimi - NUJ member in Bristol iqbasl at yahoo dot com Bristol NUJ Branch 07947650061

Women suicide bombers in Iraq: Have they been manipulated or are they just protesting

Convincing a woman to drop her baby to embrace a belt of explosives is something that needs urgent academic study.
This study is written by a female Muslim researcher and journalist worked 15 years in the Media in the Middle East. Now NUJ member at Bristol branch,and creator of Palestinian Mothers Network to promote peace throught Motherhood between Palestinian and Israeli mothers.
This study is a deep look byoned the titles and the headlines. A psycological and sociological look inside the Iraqi women society.

Dropping the baby to embrace a bomb
Women suicide bombers in Iraq: Have they been manipulated or are they just protesting

By Iqbal Tamimi

In 1991 a female Sri Lankan separatist killed herself and former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi. Since then similar bombings have occurred in Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, Uzbekistan, Russia and Iraq.
A female suicide bomber killed eight people and wounded 20 after she detonated her explosives-filled vest in Baquba, the capital of Diyala in Iraq.
Another woman, who had five sons killed by the Iraqi police, blew herself up in the Magdadiya district close to a group of police recruits looking to join up.
17 years-old in Iraq, opened her dress and blew herself up, killing three and wounding two. Almost all bombers had very traumatic personal stories and issues. Those things, combined with the horrors of living under occupation, could have provoked them to act.
These are only some examples of women blowing themselves up. According to US army sources 19 women executed terrorists attacks since April 2003, the shocking thing is 6 of them happened in 3 months this year, this points to a clear increase in women radicalization.
But September 2005 witnessed the first Iraqi women suicide attack. The identity of the woman was never discovered, she has killed herself in the middle of a number of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers at Tal Afar area near Almousel.
One used not to imagine that women are capable of executing a terrorist attack. Women as we used to know them are mothers, or motherhood projects. Mothers do not dare to expose themselves to dangers, not because they are cowards, but because they care about their loved ones, and what might happen to them should they abandoned their roles as the backbone of the family. Besides it is part of women’s nature to envisage other women’s losses, mothers or otherwise. Women in the Middle East are the dynamo that keeps the family intact, takes care of everybody and shower their loved ones with mercy and compassion regardless of the fact that such image is not portrayed enough in the media. That’s why women suicide bombers are a phenomenon that shocks every balanced human being.
Convincing a woman to drop her baby to embrace a belt of explosives is something that needs urgent academic study. But the first point to be highlighted here is the fact that, those women targeted Iraqi’s and not USA or UK forces. Most operations were executed in crowded areas of Iraqi population. These attacks give this phenomenon another dimension. It’s not about frightening the foreign forces and driving them out as some might think. In most press accounts, women choose suicide terrorism to avenge the loss of their nation, family members, or individual honor
There are two possibilities regarding what compelled those women to participate in such violent acts. The first suggests that those women have been manipulated, and the other is that they were willing to blow themselves up with their full will. Both possibilities are alarming.
The perception in the West portrays that these women are religious fanatics who don't care about life. Such theory was found not to be true. Some weren’t overly pious. Although they were very upset and distraught over occupation, they were normal girls.
Some of the most lethal exponents of suicide bombing have been non Muslim.
Women involved in a series of attacks and attempted attacks - including in Jordan and Indian-administered Kashmir - are beginning to undermine this stereotype.
Women bombers were widely used by Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka, most dramatically in the 1991 assassination of the former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
Young women, with no dependents, are said to be among those most commonly chosen for suicide missions by the Tigers.
Women bombers have also been used by Kurdish guerrilla groups operating in Turkey.
Like the Tamil Tigers, the Kurdish groups are motivated more by a secular, nationalistic cause than a religious one.
Since I am focussing here on Iraq, and should women have been manipulated, it is worth finding out who brainwashed those women to blow themselves up? There must be a category of women vulnerable enough to be targeted. How the contacts were initiated? Who is funding all that? Or is it just a cry of total despair when a woman loses everything she was living for?

Racist social and political factors

These attacks happened with the tribal racist upbringing in mind, encouraged by the ideologies of the racist political parties representing Iraqi’s in the government at present. Such parties are built on racist ideologies glorifying race, religion, and language. Igniting hatred and encouraging superiority claims between different Iraqi groups.
It is common knowledge that the tribal thinking never cared about losing women for death. Women are thought of as a second class human, an appendix or an object that can be replaced easily with another one without second thought. Women’s names are not even mentioned in family trees at all. Tribes are classified upon the number of men, women are not counted for. If there is a fight to happen, and a number of men from the other side should be killed, then it’s best not to sacrifice a man in such confrontation. Men’s numbers are very important when it comes to tribal thinking. Sacrificing a woman’s life is the ideal solution.
The absence of a developed media, a democratic society, and the presence of an authoritarian regime lead to a retarded media that could not have a positive role to eradicate such perceptions. Besides the fact that such failure has been accompanied with killing journalists.
The infiltration of extremists inside and outside the Iraqi government was accompanied by attacks on journalists despite the fact that such acts contradict the laws. Women journalists might have been the best candidates to influence simple minded women not to sacrifice their lives for an illusion; unfortunately those journalists were the first victims of the escalation of this extremism. One of those victims was my colleague Atwar Bahjat killed 22d of February 2005.

Poverty and despair
The political crisis and the weakness of the national reconciliation process defeated women’s political and economic hopes. These factors lead women to evade the miserable reality by adopting desperate measures, one of which is surrendering to death.

Most vulnerable women are those who have witnessed atrocities and injustice, and reached a point of sleep walking towards death; to kill or be killed does not matter from their point of view. They reached a point they felt there is no reason to stay alive for after they have lost everything. And since they are going any way, it is not difficult to convince them that since they are abandoning life any way; why not leave with a big bang. Those women were anonymous while they were alive. It is easy to convince an illiterate woman that fame will follow her name after death for being a heroin, or so they are told.
The majority of women in such societies are used to being manipulated by male relatives. Tampering with the mind of such woman is built on psychological manoeuvring. Convincing them they are going to gain love and respect for sacrificing themselves for an honourable goal. A report from the USA army dated in March mentioned that the leader of Al-Qaida cell north of Khan Bani Saad near Diali was training women for suicide attacks operations; amongst those women was his own wife.

Manipulations using religion
Extremists do not like those who promote the culture of human rights because it helps to spread what they consider as encouraging the ideas of the infidels and atheists, especially those extremists who are trying to control part of the government. They do not like to encourage human rights education as it is in the international conventions, nor they encourage highlighting "Islamic" human rights for women either.
Radicalizing women start by an upbringing that acknowledges that total obedience to some male members of the family like husbands and fathers lead directly to the love of God and an eternal living in heaven. Such ‘guidance’ is something girls learn at school, and told at home. Not many teachers or preachers put enough effort to emphasize that women should not obey their fathers or husbands if such relatives want them to disobey God, and that killing innocent people is something no God will approve.
This is why one is almost certain that male relatives of terrorist women have a great role in their brain washing. Most women been used in acts of violence were not well educated, should they were intelligent enough, they would have asked themselves the very important question, if blowing oneself leads to heaven, how come the man who is instructing me to do that does not want to go to heaven too?
The most striking trend shows that militants are so cruel that they have used a number of mentally retarded women in their operations; it was not bad enough to abuse them as women, but also because they have mental problems. Both ways those women were treated as if they do not have any human rights. It was mentioned few times that the terrorist attacks in Iraq, were executed by dressing mentally retarded women with a belt of explosives, then request of them to stand in the middle of a crowd, then detonate them from a distance by remote control. Such cruel savage people knitted the lie and believed it afterward. They believe that they are God’s guardians on others in earth, and this gives them the right to engineer whatever plans they believe appropriate to suit such plans, regardless of who they abuse, or who are going to be the victims. From their perspective they are sure that they will be forgiven by God for killing few should this lead to their final goal of wiping the infidels from the face of earth.
Tactics and methods
There must be a huge market of propaganda activating this trend of suicide attacks. Women must have seen and heard what ignited their hatred enough to choose death. And I do not mean what they have only experienced after the occupation.
Those women must have been shown children and civilians being killed by USA in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel’s atrocities in Palestine, Muslims of Chechnya being massacred while the international community stood there scratching its head and watching, hundreds of people imprisoned in Guantanamo without being charged, pictures of their naked Iraqi men humiliated in Abu Graib prison. They were told how crippled the UN is, and how biased USA is in its actions for allowing Israel to store atomic bombs and strip other countries of the Middle East from its defences. They saw children of Lebanon showered with cluster bombs made in USA and delivered by Israel. They saw the people dying in Gaza because Israel is enforcing its siege around them. They have seen injustice more than a human can handle. After all that, women become immune against compassion.
Added to all that Sadam Husain’s tails and Al-Qaida men influence. Both gave women the impression that the greatest achievement is to die as a martyr, without caring to explain who deserves such title and why. Both sides made a great effort to make that false connection between religion, and killing oneself by the name of martyrdom. Many illiterate women fell in the trap. Al-Qaeda adopted what seems like a prayer ‘ God, accept our sister amongst martyrs for she was defending her ideology ‘.Such approach adopted by Al-Qaeda is to suck simple minded people towards the vacuum of adopting violence actions under the title of ‘ Jihad’. For the first time women found themselves heroines in a society where women do not count in any success. I do not recall any prayers done for women by Al-Qaeda regarding any other achievement. For the first time women found that someone acknowledged that they have an ‘ideology’, and that they are an active partner and what they think is counted for, since they are ‘defending’ this presumed ideology. I dare say this is the best bait to fish simple minded women with.
Most women bombers were vulnerable, broken, and saw no way out. They saw their lives on Earth too difficult to handle. Killing the enemy was the best opportunity to become a heroine, and to redeem herself and her family's name.
Al-Qaida tactics
Al-Qaieda’s recruitment of women suicide bombers, showed mixed feelings of pride and shame. Inaugurating the use of women in suicide operations by Fatwa came with Al-Zarqawi issuing a statement published on Al-Qaida website mourning and commemorating a woman suicide bomber who detonated herself by a group of Iraqi army volunteers on the Iraqi-Syrian border.
Al-Qaeda used women suicide bombers also as a propaganda tool. By using women, Al-Qaeda was forcing men to experience feelings of shame in a society where fighting is a man’s job. They wanted men to be charged with feelings of rage. In many Al-Qaeda calls for revenge, they have used terms like ‘Women are fighting while men are not there’. Such approach is devastating to the dignity of a man brought up in a society where a man will be offended if he was compared to a woman. It is considered a great shame that women should lead while men are there doing nothing. As a matter of fact if you want to humiliate a man in the Middle East you can just compare him to a woman, or call him one. When a young man is afraid to go for something that needs courage, he would be described as ‘frightened as a woman’.
The first European female suicide bomber Muriel Degauque was Belgium, she killed herself in Iraq in 2005. Alzarqawi message appeared on websites saying ‘Aren’t there any men left that we have to recruit women? Isn’t it embarrassing for the sons of my nation to request from our sisters to execute suicide attacks while men are busy with their own lives?’

Emotionally fragile
Some women are just looking for love and acceptance. Even intelligent educated women might fall as a prey. Women want to be loved, accepted, and acknowledged. Women need reassurance that they are useful and extremely important and not marginalized. Some women want to change the world and make it a safer place, but they get their directions from very evil fingers.
Women bombers have now become relatively common in Iraq because they can disguise explosives under their clothes, and male soldiers find it difficult to search them.
This is an extremely difficult situation. No way will Muslim women change the way they are dressed and they should not. Clothes are a personal choice. It seems that the only way to cure such an illness is by educating women. Such education should be religious education in the first place. They should learn that God has forbidden killing.
Women should learn how to discuss and interact with others and understand things before taking an action; they are supposed to know that only the weak and the cowered that uses a weapon to make his voice heard.
Militants recruit women with a brother, father or son already with the extremist groups' to influence them by getting their blessings.
Financial stability is part of the answer
In most traditional Islamic societies, women without close male relatives are exposed to economic and social problems that make them more vulnerable to recruitment.
After the USA occupation of Iraq, many women became widows and orphans. They lost their financial stability by losing the provider. That’s why poverty and education should be dealt with in deprived areas of the world immediately. Few TV reports showed that even young children are recruited lately to execute suicide attacks in Afghanistan, by promising them that their family’s financial difficulties will be taken care of. And of course that they will be rewarded with women of ‘Hoor Een’ the women of paradise in the afterlife. What more a young man would dream of. Here is a magnificent solution for their sexual deprivations and financial suffering.
Dirty methods and the illusion of marriage

One of Al-Qaieda’s standard techniques, in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia, is leaders and key operatives marry women from prominent tribal families. The strategy works by creating a bond with the community, exploiting kinship-based alliances, and so “embedding” the Al-Qaida network into the society. Over time, this makes Al-Qaeda part of the social landscape, allowing them to manipulate local people and makes it harder for outsiders to pry the network, and use women through the martial bondage.

Another appalling tactic is to force women to become terrorist attackers themselves. US intelligence officers’ claim that militants are marrying women, and then allow them to be raped knowing that the subsequent dishonour and rejection will make them easier to groom as bombers. The officers have also noted a strong incidence of women who have had relatives, civilians or militants, killed in the fighting turning to violence much easier than others.

Should there be no instant moves to quarantine poverty and ignorance, I would expect women extremists will become a greater threat in the future. The unthreatening image of women will change forever. Women will abandon their constructive roles and will become a pray for those who will steer them and manipulate them further.
Using Revenge as a fuel
There are women suicide bombers who seek revenge by joining the insurgency according to US forces in Iraq. Such women are motivated by despair and poverty, blaming the USA forces for the death of their loved ones, and the torture of others. Such women are a soft easy target for the militias.
Sajedah Al-Rishawy the Iraqi woman arrested by the Jordanian authorities during a series of bombings targeted Hotels of Amman the capital of Jordan. Sajeda became a suicide attacker after the USA forces killed 3 of her brothers in Iraq. But she failed in her mission and was arrested by the Jordanian authorities.
Iraqi women were not the only women to become suicide attackers, there was a group of Chechnyan women called the black widows who lost their husbands during the struggle against Russia. The black widows executed a number of suicide operations and were praised by the Chechnyan leader Shamil Basayev.
Other Iraqi women used attacks as a mean of protest for the loss of their men, and destruction of their society. But amongst suicide bombers who were said to have been abandoned by their own society, suffered injustice and social oppression and look at death as the salvation path that would lead them to eternal bless and carefree life in paradise.
Not all Iraqi women suicide attackers are exploited and recruited. Some women kill themselves and others with full determination. Especially with the current ciaos in Iraq and lack of implementation of laws that would protect women subjected to physical or mental abuse. The current laws do not offer help or protection for women complaining of any injustice, especially when it comes to being battered.
The general atmosphere of Iraq portrays lack of forgiveness, loss of affinity to life, loss of eagerness to live. Feelings of aggressiveness, hatred, and outrage are. All those negative feelings are the end product of a population of widows and orphans of continuous conflicts and wars. Women suffered a great deal, and many of them live within a society that does not encourage forgiveness. Their society’s ideologies keep igniting their rage leading them towards revenge.
Recruiting women for such savage acts is a cancer that needs to be dealt with before it spreads further, and eat what is left of our humanity.
Iraqi officials attributed 97% of the suicide bombing incidents to women under the influence of drugs. They claim that those women were lured to blow themselves in certain areas. That’s why the Iraqi army has taken strong action in markets frequently visited by women. More than (120) check points for women's inspection and search were created in various parts of Iraq. Iraqi policewomen have been employed to update the authorities of new methods created by Al-Qaeda.
The Observatory of constitutional rights and freedoms in Iraq an NGO, said in its report issued recently that children now are following the footsteps of women.6 children were found to be trained as suicide bombers, aged (14-16).
This is a new wave of terror, since it has been suggested that those children are almost like women driven by revenge, but their revenge is of another kind. Those children are trained because some militias threatened of killing their relatives, and rape their loved ones.
Al Qaeda has completely lost its credibility. It used to present itself as the only defender of Islam against what it used to call the infidels.
But instead it has fuelled the flames of sectarianism and targeted civilians, creating a state of lawlessness and used grieving women through religious and cultural manipulations to achieve its own political targets. Its cruelty did not stop there, but deliberately involved children in its operations.
In Iraq, there are one million Iraqi women, and (5) million orphan child. From Al-Qaeda’s point of view those are walking bombs.

Al-Qaeda used to use slogans talking of protecting Islam and its people from the west. But now Muslims are crying for help to close the doors of hell opened by Al-Qaeda.

References:
National Geographic Chanel
The Arabic centre for information and resources about violence against women
Middle East Times
Alnabaa Net for information
Asharq Alawsat Newspaper
CNN
Alnajaf News
BBC News Channel
Gulf in the Media
October Yemeni newspaper