Terrorist females used for single targets

Walter Jayawardhana

US: A New York Times op-ed piece based on a research on suicide terrorism said, like in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, female suicide bombers are often used for single target suicide attacks in the world.

The University of Chicago based researcher Lindsey O’Rourke writing in the New York Times said: “Perhaps the most famous of these was the 1991 assassination of India ‘s Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, by Thenmuli Rajaratnam, a Tiger.”

Pointing out more women than men are used for such single target assassinations the writer said,

“Although women make up roughly 15 per cent of the suicide bombers within the groups that employ females, they were responsible for an overwhelming 65 per cent of assassinations; one in every five women who committed a suicide attack did so with the purpose of assassinating a specific individual, compared with one in every 25 for the male attackers.”

Answering another reason why women are being used the researcher said: “Paradoxically, the strategic appeal of female attacks stems from the rules about women’s behavior in the societies where these attacks take place.

Given their second-class citizenship in many of these countries, women generate less suspicion and are better able to conceal explosives. Moreover, since female attacks are considered especially shocking, they are more likely to generate significant news media attention for both domestic and foreign audiences.”

The researcher said, to prevent this, better methods of monitoring women for suicide attacks should be found out.

The researcher also said the reasons that motivate both male and female suicide bombers are similar and there are no uniquely feminine reasons that motivate them to do it.

The research based editorial further said, “I have spent the last few years surveying all known female suicide attacks throughout the world since 1981 — incidents in Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, India, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Uzbekistan. In order to determine these women’s motives, I compared the data with a database of all known suicide attacks over that period compiled by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.

This research led to a clear conclusion: the main motives and circumstances that drive female suicide attackers are quite similar to those that drive men.”

O’Rourke added: “To begin with, there is simply no one demographic profile for female attackers. From the unmarried Communists who first adopted suicide terrorism to expel Israeli troops from Lebanon in the 1980s, to the so-called Black Widows of Chechnya who commit suicide attacks after the combat deaths of their husbands, to the longtime adherents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the biographies of female suicide attackers reveal a wide variety of personal experiences and ideologies.”

The researcher also dispelled the belief that many female suicide bombers are Muslim fundamentalists and said many instead grew up in traditional Christian and Hindu families : “Blaming Islamic fundamentalism is also wrongheaded.

More than 85 per cent of female suicide terrorists since 1981 committed their attacks on behalf of secular organisations; many grew up in Christian and Hindu families.

Further, Islamist groups commonly discourage and only grudgingly accept female suicide attackers. At the start of the second intifada in 2000, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, claimed:

‘’A woman martyr is problematic for Muslim society. A man who recruits a woman is breaking Islamic law.’’ Hamas actually rejected Darin Abu Eisheh, the second Palestinian female attacker, who carried out her 2002 bombing on behalf of the secular Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.”

The researcher said religious groups only used the female as suicide attacker only by following the success of the secular groups:

“All secular organisations that employ suicide bombings have used female attackers early and often. For instance, 76 per cent of attackers from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey have been women, as have 66 per cent of those from Chechen separatist groups, 45 per cent of the Syrian Socialist National Party’s and a quarter of those from the Tigers.

Religious groups only came to realize the strategic value of female bombers after seeing secular groups’ success.”