by Mia Bloom
The logic of terror and oppression drives the terrorists to action and shapes the form of their reaction. But the actual motivation of individuals in specific cases is enormously complex. These motivations can be viewed on a continuum ranging from positive to negative. The strongest positive motivation is belief in a cause. In Northern Ireland, the goal was home rule; in Palestine, a separate independent state; in Sri Lanka, an independent Tamil homeland. Those committed to the cause believe in it utterly. These true believers are willing to pay any price to accomplish their goals.
A history—incidents of abuse, injustice, pogroms, all manner of grievances, heroic acts, and so on—feeds into belief in the cause. For Palestinians, the Sabra and Shatilla massacres and the First and Second intifadas form part of a history of grievance at the hands of the Israelis. For the Tamils, the memories of the pogroms in 1983, in which thousands of Tamils died, and, more recently, the 2009 war crimes perpetrated against them, constitute an inspirational record of abuse. For Chechens, the history includes distant memories of Stalin’s purges and expulsions from their homeland during which tens of thousands perished, as well as more recent instances of violent oppression. For the Irish Republicans, the memories of Bloody Sunday and the hunger strikers inspired generations willing to die for the cause.
Terrorists and potential terrorists are often pressured into action by their peers and by shared experiences, including shared humiliation at the hands of their enemies. Many Palestinian men recall the humiliation of their fathers at checkpoints as the precise moment when they decided to join a militant organization. The shared experience of military occupation has increased the degree to which terrorist messages and propaganda resonate with the community. Although not every person under occupation joins the terrorists, the shared humiliation often means that the terrorists enjoy widespread support in their operations against the occupying forces.
Knowledge of and admiration for a pantheon of heroes and martyrs is a factor motivating many recruits to radical political movements. The Tamil Tigers published booklets featuring those who had given their lives as suicide bombers, dying for the vision of liberation and self-rule.25 The Palestinians have produced trading cards with the likenesses of martyrs on them; children trade them like baseball cards in the streets of Jenin. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, the political arm of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, distributed playing cards with photos of well-known Irish martyrs, hunger strikers, and those shot down in cold blood by the British security services. Murals along the Falls Road in Belfast were covered with their images and conveyed the message to never forget those who had sacrificed their lives for others’ sake. In the same spirit, charismatic leaders may provoke and embolden their followers into action. Osama bin Laden is a hero to his Muslim followers in the Middle East. Until his death in May 2009, Velupillai Prabhakaran was a cult-like leader among Tamils. Hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to parliament while he lay starving himself to death in a prison outside Belfast. Across regions and countries, the ability to inspire young people to take their own lives requires charismatic leaders who embody the cause and the fighting qualities of their supporters.
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 Baader-Meinhof 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 that female terrorists must be even more depressed, crazier, more suicidal, or more psychopathic than their male counterparts. This runs contrary to the view of British journalist Eileen MacDonald, who found that women revolutionaries have stronger characters, more power, more energy, and are far more pragmatic than their male counterparts.30
Regardless of their initial motivation, what we know for a fact is that women are now more essential to terrorist organizations than ever before. The “exploding womb” has replaced the “revolutionary womb” that produced and supported young extremists in the past. Leaders of terrorist movements routinely make cost-benefit calculations to select the most effective tactics, targets, and operatives. Their analysis has shown that women are deadly.
THE BLACK WIDOW BOMBERS
And we will take with us the lives of hundreds of sinners. If we die, others will come/follow us—our brothers and sisters who are willing to sacrifice their lives (in God’s way) to liberate their nation … We are more keen on dying than you are on living.
—Chechen videotape delivered to Al Jazeera, October 21, 20021
I guarantee you and guarantee all the Russians who send and support all those special services, which are sent here and commit … atrocities—your bandit groups are on our territory of the Caucasus—this is not the last operation. These operations will continue. They will continue on your territory, insh’Allah.
—Dokku Umarov, in his YouTube video statement after the March 29, 2009, Moscow subway bombings2
THE CHECHEN WARS
Chechnya had always been a desolate backwater in the northern Caucasus, the mountain range that forms the geographical divide between Europe and Asia. The mountains average 10,000 feet above sea level and stretch 650 miles from the Caspian to the Black Sea. This rugged terrain is made all the more formidable by the steepness of the mountains’ craggy slopes. A number of peoples and tribes have populated the region, including the Avars, Tatars, Kabardians, Laks, Khazars, Ossetians, Alans, and the Vainakh. Their relative isolation has insulated them from outside authority and influence.
The Chechen people, historically called the Vainakh, have always resisted outsiders, be they from Persia, Saint Petersburg, Constantinople, or, more recently, Moscow. Invasions and attempted invasions by the Romans, Mongols, Ottoman Turks, and Russians were all repulsed. At the same time, the region was subjected to generation after generation of neglect and, on occasion, attempted ethnic cleansing campaigns. Violence has been an integral part of its history.
The Chechens converted from the pagan Vainakh religion to Islam and developed unique Sufi Naqshbandi traditions insulated from both Mother Russia’s Orthodox Christian influence and the urban centers of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Their ancient customary laws (adat), differed from tribe to tribe. Many Chechen traditions violated the basic tenets of Islamic faith. They stored wine jars in their villages (aouls) despite Islam’s prohibition against alcohol, and rarely paid their tithes (zakat) or went on the pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj). It was only in very recent times that the strictest interpretations of Islamic Wahhabi thought and Salafi traditions took hold, as Saudi Arabia poured men and resources into the area.
The region was first subjected to Russian domination by Grozny Ivan (Ivan the Terrible) in 1559. Chechen resistance can be traced to 1732, when Russian colonial forces were defeated in the village of Chechen-aoul by the Noxche tribe. In 1783, Catherine the Great, then seventy, sent her twenty-five-year-old lover, Prince Platon Zubov, to conquer the region as part of a campaign to convert all the Muslims in the Caucasus to the Christian faith. Prince Zubov described the Chechens as having a particular “enthusiasm for brigandage and predatory behavior, a lust for robbery and murder, perfidy, a martial sprit, determination, savageness, fearlessness, and unbridled insolence.”3 Catherine looked on them as a barbaric people whom she could subjugate by controlling Georgia to the south. The region was annexed to the empire in 1859. However, the first great Chechen Islamic leaders, Sheikh Mansour and, later, Imam Shamil, emerged during the Caucasian wars of 1817–64 and united the disparate tribes. Shamil’s conflict with the Russians, remembered as the Jihad of Imam Shamil, set the tone for future waves of Chechen resistance.4 Shamil’s Muslim warriors (murids) preferred death to defeat; no murid was ever taken alive.5 When Chechen women in cliff-top villages perceived that defeat and capture were imminent, they reputedly threw their children over the precipice and jumped after them.6
According to Harvard professor Richard Pipes:
The Chechens … were always, from the Russian point of view, a troublesome element. Unassimilable and warlike, they created so much difficulty for the Russian forces trying to subdue the North Caucasus that, after conquering the area, the government felt compelled to employ Cossack forces to expel them from the valleys and lowlands into the bare mountain regions. There, faced by Cossack settlements on one side, and wild peaks on the other, they lived in abject poverty tending sh
eep and waiting for the day when they could wreak revenge on the newcomers and regain their lost lands.7
During the Russian Revolution, Chechens fought on both the Bolshevik and Menshevik sides and, once Lenin and his gang prevailed, select Chechens were co-opted into the Communist Party. The Chechen autonomous province (oblast) was established in 1922 and Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia were made autonomous Soviet republics in 1936. However, during World War II, German troops occupied Chechnya in 1943 and 1944, and Chechen leaders allegedly collaborated with the Nazis.8
Stalin used the charge of collaboration as justification for dissolving the Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic in 1944 and in what can only be described as ethnic cleansing, three-quarters of the Chechen population (more than a half-million people) were rounded up and physically removed from their homeland—deported in boxcars to Kazakhstan. Nearly half the deported Chechens (between one and two hundred thousand) perished en route; others were killed by Stalin’s firing squads. Many of the survivors ended up as slave labor in the mines of Karaganda in Kazakhstan.9 Survivors were finally allowed to return after Stalin’s death in 1957.
It was against this historical backdrop that intense feelings of nationalism and xenophobia developed among the Chechens, reinforced by traditional tribal and family structures. The Chechen clan (teip) endured and perpetuated Chechen culture even under the direst circumstances. The teip system also bolstered the authority of tribal chiefs, headmen, and, within the family, fathers and husbands. A system of blood feuds (kanli) ensured that even the slightest transgression was never forgotten. No wrong could go unpunished and a vendetta culture developed. “The oral tradition abounds in tales of feuds sparked by the theft of a chicken, culminating in the death of an entire teip.”10 The young were trained rigorously in the art of warfare as honor and strength became highly prized. It was said, “No Chechen girl would consent to marry a man unless he had killed at least one Russian, could jump over a stream twenty-three feet wide, and over a rope held at shoulder-height between two men.”11
