Institutions such as schools, camps, and prisons play a role in indoctrinating would-be fighters. The culture of martyrdom plays a causal role in the terrorist groups' ability to “market martyrdom.”26 Instead of posters of Michael Jordan, Ronaldo, or Jim Morrison on their walls, young Palestinian boys place posters of martyrs like Yahya Ayyash or famous suicide bombers like Muhammed Siddique Khan. The young girls cover their walls with photos of Wafa Idris, the first known Palestinian female suicide bomber. Terrorist organizations name parks and streets after the bombers, making those they are named for far more famous in death than they would have been in life. It is a powerful lure for young people who want to make a difference. In this book you will see how at least one young Iraqi girl, Raniya Ibrahim Mutlaq (Mutleg), who wanted to grow up and become a doctor, was convinced by her extended family that she could do far more as a suicide bomber.
Family traditions, family relationships, and marriage ties preserve memories and provide moral comfort to fighters. These family traditions mean that women are often under intense family pressure to participate in clandestine activities. More often than not, women are involved in a variety of capacities, as couriers or recruiters, and occasionally, they become frontline fighters in the war. Family traditions have also meant that women can be manipulated under current codes of conduct to engage in violence.
Willing participation shades into coercion—family and peer pressure exerted with menace or the threat of ostracism. Not all women who participate in terrorism are coerced into it. When families join as a unit, the women can be just as ardent as the men in their lives. However, if the women are specifically targeted for abuse by the security forces or by their own people, they can be shamed into participating in terrorist violence.
In some societies, and in extreme circumstances, there is no question that women are coerced into undertaking suicide missions. When women in traditional societies violate (or are thought to have violated) the rules which govern their sexual behavior, or when they are compromised against their will, becoming a suicide bomber might seem to be a rational choice. Several women involved in terrorism joined because of an illicit love affair gone bad, or because they refused to marry the men chosen for them in an arranged marriage, or because they had cheated on their husbands, or had a child out of wedlock. In one case, a woman's inability to have a child meant that her husband left her and she became a pariah in her community. There are many ways in which women can be seen to bring shame to their families, while there may be only one way to restore pride after they have transgressed—by making the ultimate sacrifice.
In too many cases of women's involvement, the woman has been abused, victimized, or targeted in ways that leave her little choice but to join the terrorists in hope of reclaiming her honor. For the Tamil women raped at government checkpoints, their future marriage options disappear. For Iraqi women raped either by soldiers of the occupation or by members of the Ansar Al Sunnah terrorist group, there is no way to escape death at the hands of their family for violating the honor code. By becoming suicide bombers, they manage to reinvent themselves in one fell swoop. With one act of violence they go from being a source of family shame to a source of family pride.
NOT THE WEAKER SEX
In this book, we look at what has driven women to participate in terrorist activities as members of terrorist organizations. And then we look specifically at what has driven women to participate in suicide missions. In the following chapters I introduce the reader to several women and examine in detail how they came to be terrorists and what motivated them to kill. Some of the women have changed their worldviews while others remain as radicalized as they ever were. The women are members of terrorist organizations around the world. They have been plotters, propagandists, and pawns as well as, in some cases, suicide bombers.
Historically, the Provisional Irish Republican Army was a male-dominated organization. Nevertheless, Irish women played a crucial role in planting bombs and in luring British soldiers to their deaths, and even as hunger strikers. Women have been instrumental in Chechen terrorist organizations, especially the Riyadus Salikheen, the Martyrs' Brigade, which has been responsible for attacks in Moscow and Dagestan. The Chechen Black Widows have often been victimized and coerced into becoming bombers, and only a few have willingly blown themselves up for the cause. The Islamic Revival Movement, Hamas, is a traditional and conservative terrorist organization operating in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. One would not expect a woman to be among its most important operatives and yet this book introduces you to Ahlam at-Tamimi, a Hamas planner responsible for one of the deadliest attacks in Israel's history. Her rise to prominence and ability to influence others shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that women are not the weaker sex or inherently more peaceful than their male counterparts. Among the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, women were some of the most experienced fighting units and even constituted their own suicide squad, the Suthanthirap Paravaikal, or Freedom Birds. Women were involved in more than half of the LTTE suicide attacks and successfully killed presidents and prime ministers.
Finally, the book introduces you to the women of Al Qaeda. While international attention has focused on Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, a new generation of women is emerging to help ensure the group's survival after all the drones and missiles have attacked the current leadership. The women of Al Qaeda, some operating in Europe and the United States, use the Internet to radicalize and recruit scores of male jihadis and send them to their deaths.
Women's participation in terrorism may be a natural progression from their involvement in the radical and revolutionary struggles of the past. The women of the nineteenth-century Russian terror group Narodnaya Volya were considered more willing to die than their male comrades.27 Women in radical organizations have engaged in anticolonial and revolutionary struggles in the Third World for decades. Beginning in 1968, women became involved in all manner of terrorist groups, from Marxist organizations in Europe to nationalist movements in the Middle East. Female terrorists came from all parts of the globe and from all walks of society—they were part of Italy's Red Brigades, Germany's BaaderMeinhof group, the American Black Panthers and Weathermen, and the Japanese Red Army; occasionally they were leaders in their own right. Women also played essential roles in several Middle Eastern conflicts, notably the Algerian Revolution (1958-62), the Iranian Revolution (1979), the First Lebanon War (1982), the First Palestinian Intifada (1987-91), and the Second or Al ‘Aqsa Intifada (since 2000).
Forty years of research on terrorism has revealed little about what motivates men and women to commit acts of terror. The majority of books portray women as the victims of terror,28 and only a handful have examined women as the perpetrators. The books perpetuate the stereotype of women as mere pawns or victims. After an attack by a female operative, terrorism experts, journalists, psychologists, and analysts frequently develop a so-called psychological autopsy, examining where the perpetrator grew up, where she went to school, and what went wrong to make her turn to violence.
The media fetishizes female terrorists. This contributes to the belief that there is something really unique, something just not right about the women who kill. We make assumptions about what these women think, why they do what they do, and what ultimately motivates them. Women involved in terrorist violence are demonized more than male terrorists. One former bomber told me that the enemy was so angry that women were involved in the organization that they would humiliate the female fighters more than their male counterparts just to teach them a lesson.29 For men in certain traditional societies, having women flout their authority, let alone defeat them in battle, is intolerable. After all, perpetrating acts that cause wanton destruction, death, and disorder seems incompatible with the traditional stereotype of what is expected of women—to be nurturing, caring figures who provide stability. The common assumption is