Black Widows and Internet Videos: Employing Women in Islamist Insurgencies

Revised 14 March 2012

Christopher J. Sims Department of War Studies King’s College, London

Conference Paper Gender and War Newcastle University 12 March 2011

‘Though it previously seemed highly unlikely because of the existing notions of women as victims of war rather than as perpetrators, women are now taking a leading role in conflicts by becoming suicide bombers – using their bodies as human detonators for the explosive material strapped around their waists. To complicate the notions of femininity and motherhood, the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) is often disguised under the women’s clothing to make her appear as if she is pregnant and thus beyond suspicion or reproach. The advent of women suicide bombers has transformed the revolutionary womb into an exploding one’ -- Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terrorism

Abstract1 Tracing a historical trajectory through the Islamic world, this paper outlines the mutable role of women in the tradition of jihad from the time of the prophet to al Qaeda in the present day. Examining groups such as the North Caucasus Black Widows, it is argued that the development of the suicide bomber and Mumbai-style assault suicide as valuable asymmetric weapons in insurgencies and terrorism increased the ability of the female to contribute in an operational capacity by orders of magnitude. Arguments against the deployment of women – rape, transgender relations, perceived physical inferiority and normative taboos – become moot in martyrdom operations.

This recruitment process requires a dynamic between ideology and grievance – combining religious narratives with personal motivations arising from disenfranchisement. Examining the role of the Internet as a novel medium that obfuscates gender and affords a fluid medium for propaganda and procurement, it is stressed that as a gender-neutral realm where women can join forums and interact with greater ease and safety than in strict societal settings, the Internet uniquely enables and enhances women’s roles within the jihad. This female revolution from supporter and nurturer to operator – from mujahidat to mujaribat – is less about ‘personnel shortfalls in combat operations’, rather more about an inexorable progression towards full mobilisation enabled by social media.

Finally, this paper asserts that doctrinal contradictions on the employment of females in martyrdom operations affords the opportunity to marry secular Western norms with moderate Islamic scholarship in the generation of moral opprobrium, presenting a united front against radicalism which is itself struggling with a war of rhetoric to

1 I am grateful to Mia Bloom for her valuable comments and criticisms regarding revisions to this paper. I also thank Nina Musgrave for her insightful suggestions and additional information on Hamas and Jerome Devitt for his important contextual observations and historical notes. All remaining errors of fact or judgement are my own. 1

provide greater equality for women. Analysing the writings of prominent Islamists including Ayman al Zawahiri; Umayma al Zawahiri; Ibrahim al Banna; Abdallah Azzam; Yusuf al-Ayyiri and Zachary Chesser highlights the fungible nature of ideology when alloyed to the necessities of strategic development.

Introduction

‘Artists are tricky fellows, sir, forever reshaping the world according to some design of their own.’ -- Jonathan Strange, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

One of the main drivers for the recent growth of studies involving suicide terrorism has been the actions of al-Qa‘ida and the focus on this entity by the ‘terrorism industry’2. Keen to paint suicide terrorism as Oriental cowardice and part of a larger clash of civilizations, John Keegan wrote emotively in the aftermath the terrorist atrocities of 11 September 2001, that ‘Orientals…shrink from pitched battle, which they often deride as a sort of game, preferring ambush, surprise, treachery and deceit as the best way to overcome an enemy’3. Basking in the shadow of this idea, a body of academic literature has attempted to paint suicide terrorism as being part of the wider clash of civilizations4. This belief in an immutable confrontation between two permanently opposed constructs – East fighting West – has informed policy for the past decade. Recent scholarship has, however, noted the fluid nature of culture, sacred history and religion when presented with strategic necessities5.

Examining the dynamic between grievance, social structure and ideology that motivates female suicide bombers, the paper is split into four sections. Firstly, exploring the role of women in early Islamic military history, their participation is observed to be either as ‘enablers’, affording males the opportunity to join the struggle or in less common instances as ‘prosecutors’ – joining the battle. The majority of participation in battle occurs during the nascent years of Islam, when it faced an existential threat that necessitated the mobilisation of all followers. Secondly, the paper investigates current jihadi ideology concerning the role of women’s participation in the struggle: it observes a stark division between those who see women solely as enablers and those who would bring them to the frontline. Thirdly, the paper examines the nature of suicide bombing, then specifically female martyrdom operations, analysing the ongoing ‘feminist Orientalism’ debate that has

2 See Herman, E. and O’Sullivan (1990) The Terrorism Industry: The Experts and Institutions that Shape our View of Terror (New York: Random House). Since 9.11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, this industry has burgeoned. 3 Keegan, John (2001) ‘In this War of Civilisations, the West will Prevail’, Daily Telegraph, October 8 4 Kim, T. (2002) ‘Islamic Terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations’, Korean Journal of Defence Analysis, 14(1) pp.97-117. Raphael Israeli focuses specifically on Islamic culture, calling the phenomenon, ‘Islamikaze’ – in Israeli, R. (1997) ‘Islamikaze and their Significance’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 9(3), pp.96-121. For a nuanced handling of this debate see Atran, S. (2004) ‘Mishandling Suicide Terrorism’, Washington Quarterly, 27(3), p.75. In an indication of how widely the phenomenon has shaped scholarship, biological theories have also been posited for the Islamic suicide terrorism, see for example a critique in Bloom, Mia (2010/11) ‘Life Sciences and Islamic Suicide Terrorism’, Correspondence, International Organization, 35(3), pp.185-192 5 For example, Porter, P. (2009) Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes (London: Hurst)

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come to characterise the discipline. Lastly, the paper examines the role of the Internet in disintegrating traditional patriarchal social structures, thus affording women the opportunity to become respected ‘partners in jihad’ in the new, flattened structure which has come to characterise the struggle.

Two notes on definition are required here: firstly, a growing body of recent scholarship has focused on the departure of Jihadism from Islamism6, the latter being defined as ‘the modern religo-political current that seeks to integrate Islamic teaching to various aspects of the socio-political sphere’7. Whilst at a base level Islamism and Jihadism share a common premise, that Islam and politics are one and the same, the Islamists work on social programmes and communal organisation: a tripartite relationship between the community, the state and God. Jihadists, by contrast, see a bipartite relationship between the individual and God that necessarily bypasses state structures8. Though jihadis present themselves as responding to an unjust political situation, they have internalised the problem as a purely religious individual struggle, attempting to solve perceived political injustice through purely religious, militant means.

Secondly, the development of jihad in Islamic revelation and history has proceeded differently in Shi’a and Sunni thought. For an offensive jihad Shi’a scholars see the necessity for a divinely appointed leader – an Imam – before such an engagement could begin. Sunni jurists by contrast argue that any de facto Muslim leader carries the necessary authority to lead this action. Since in Shi’a tradition, the Imam and any specifically designated deputy has been absent since the tenth century, the obligation to engage in offensive jihad lapses. On questions of defensive jihad however, a moral requirement explicit in Qu’ranic passages (2:190-91), there is no requirement for an Imam and the Shi’a position echoes the Sunni position of fard’ayn – an individual duty between that person and God, dissolving any previous personal or social obligations9.

Women in Islamic military history In Islamic history women are either enablers allowing men to prosecute jihad or in rarer instances they actively participate in conflict, be it jihad or qital10. Such

6 A large body of scholarship on this departure has evolved at the Center for Countering Terrorism, West Point: see inter alia Brown, V. (2007) Cracks in the Foundation: Leaderships schisms in al- Qa’ida from 1989-2006 (West Point, NY: CTC); Fishman, B. and Moghadam, A. eds. (2010) Self- Inflicted Wounds: Debates and Divisions within al-Qaeda and its Periphery (West Point, NY: CTC). For how this schism may corrupt the group see Brahimi, Alia (2010) ‘Crushed in the Shadows: Why al- Qaeda will Lose the War of Ideas’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 33(2), pp.93-110 7 Lahoud, N. (2010) The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction (New York: Columbia University Press), p.98 8 ibid., p.106. Lahoud sees the West as culpable for the rise of the modern state in Islam and ‘co-opting religion’ (pp.104-5). See also Crone, P. (2004) God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York; Columbia University Press) 9 Sachedina, Abdulaziz A. (1990) ‘The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History’ in Johnson, J. T. and Kelsay, J., Cross, Crescent and Sword: The Justification and Limitations of War in Western and Islamic Tradition (Westpoint, CT.: Greenwood) 10 The Qur’an uses two distinctions for military activity: qital and jihad. The former always connotes ‘fighting’, wheras jihad means ‘struggle’ usually followed by the phrase ‘in the path of God.’ See Sachedina, Abdulaziz A. (1990) ‘The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History’ in Johnson, J. T. and Kelsay, J., Cross, Crescent and Sword: The Justification and Limitations of War in Western and Islamic Tradition (Westpoint, CT.: Greenwood)

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distinction between enabling and prosecuting lies at the heart of the manipulation of history and sacred texts by today’s militant ideologists. Salafi ideology, the basis of contemporary jihadi thought, argues that the untainted original era of Islam, at the time of the Prophet – and subsequent two generations – is the only true basis for modern Islam. Since that period the religion has become corrupted by Takfiris. For women to assist in jihad therefore, the ideologues consistently cite women who have either enabled or prosecuted in this earliest period of Islam. Invoking early history serves a further purpose, since religion is a mutable medium, presenting these early fighters serves the purpose of mobilizing a formerly unaligned segment of society to a male-orientated religious insurgency.

The earliest recorded participation is of Safiyya bint ‘Abd al-Muttalib, the paternal aunt of the Prophet, recorded to have taken part in the Battle of Badr (624). Safiyya was also wounded during the Battle of Uhud (625) when she saved the Prophet’s life by taking a spear that was targeting him. Nusayaba bint K’ab also fought in the battle of Uhud, suffering eleven wounds and losing one arm. Umm ‘Umara is said to have taken part in several military battles alongside the Prophet and was wounded during the Battle of Yamama (632). Aisha, wife of the prophet, led ‘tens of thousands’ in the Battle of the Camel (656); his granddaughter Zaynab bint Al fought in the Battle of Karbala (680). Perhaps the most often invoked example is of Al-Khansaa bint Omar, an elegiac poetess of the pre-Islamic period who converted to Islam during the time of the Prophet and is considered ‘the mother of the Shahids [martyrs]’, ‘sacrificing’ her four children at the battle of al-Qadisiyya (637), inflaming them to fight. In another instance of enabling, the chronicler Ibn al-Athir notes a ‘woman of extreme beauty’ who agreed to marry Ibn Muljan only if he killed the caliph Ali in revenge for losing her father and brother at the battle of Nahrawan11.

In a striking invocation to early sacred history Dr. Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas member of parliament and cleric, gave a television interview in 2007 for al-Rafadein tracing the lineage of female participation in jihad back to the time of the Prophet. Al-Astal emphasises that, ‘when jihad becomes an individual duty [fard’ayn] it is the duty too of women.’ Women should participate, ‘especially if the Islamic army was weakening and the enemy was gaining the upper hand’, again giving emphasis to the desire for full societal mobilisation in confronting an existential threat and thereby subsuming conventional patriarchal structures of society in the face of strategic necessities. The tactical use of women was thus justified by invocations to tradition; a power drawn from the sacred aspect of religious history. The cleric cites early conventional examples: again Safiyya, here noting that she used a pole to kill a Jew in the battle of the Trench and that at the Battle of Hunayn (630), Umm Sulaym had a dagger to use in self defence12.

Al-Astal proceeds to narrate a story in which a woman Umm al-Hasimiya has only one child, a son Ibrahim, and had ten thousand dinars put aside for a wedding for him. All the girls of the neighbourhood wanted to be his wife. One day she attended a sermon by a cleric on jihad, and so moved, gave the cleric the ten thousand dinars so that her son could participate in jihad and marry instead the ‘seventy-two black-eyed

11 Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, vol.3, p.389. Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, vol.3 (i) relates a similar story further noting her name as qatami bint shijna. Cited in Lahoud, N. (2010), p. 67-8 12 The image may be almost comical but the use of the term ‘self-defence’ echoes the individual duty encumbent on all members of the ummah to participate in defensive jihad.

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virgins in paradise’. When her son’s regiment returned from battle she thanked Allah that he had not returned. Since jihad becomes an individual duty it absolves the traditional superiority of the husband in decision making – Al-Astal stresses that the woman may make this decision to martyrdom by herself13. In jihad, it is about the individual and God – traditional societal structures become an irrelevence and only religious instruction can have any bearing on a person’s path.

Women and jihadi ideology Whilst al-Astal’s Islamist invocation is striking, it is not unusual among militants. An emerging body of jihadi literature calls on women to embrace the struggle. Yet the invocation will either be to extol their sons, husbands, brothers to perform jihad or to point to the role of women alongside the Prophet in the battlefield, and deduce that women’s jihad is lawful under certain circumstances, and therefore women ought to be trained militarily.

Umm Azzam, wife of the ideologue Abdallah, extols women to ‘push your loved ones to the battlefield’ to ‘lift the shame and humiliation from thus ummah’14. Her husband in his treatise ‘Join the Caravan’ [‘Ilhaq bi-al-Qafila’] argues too that women’s roles should be limited to nursing, education and assisting refugees but that they must be accompanied by a male ‘guardian’ who is ‘incapable of marriage’. Dr Fadl, in his Risalat al-Umda, suggests that women are to take up military jihad under one condition: only when the enemy invades Muslim territory and also comes into their homes. Since it is possible that the Muslim woman may have to defend herself under such circumstance, Dr Fadl argues that it is incumbent upon her to receive basic military training and learn how to use military equipments so that she can be ready to repel her attackers. It can thus be seen how the conflict in Iraq mobilised the conception of an ummah engaged in defensive jihad.

Others have gone further not just to call on women to take up jihad as a legal duty, but also to use it to shame Muslim men who have not actively embraced the struggle. Perhaps the strongest voice shaming men came from Abu Mu’sab al-Zarqawi until his death in 2006. Zarqawi lamented how ‘men have lost their manhood’ and called on them to move aside and let women take over15. One female jihadi responded to the call on the Internet in a treatise entitled, ‘Women, it is now your turn [to take up jihad] because the men are dormant’16.

Malika el Aroud, a Belgian woman of Moroccan descent whose fundamentalist husband was killed by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan after he assassinated its leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days prior to the 9.11 attacks, is an example of a female actively disseminating jihadi ideology and propaganda. After returning from Afghanistan to live in Switzerland, she published a book Soldiers of Light and runs the militant website, minbar.sos. El Aroud employs examples of atrocities such as

13 Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXjYZU3KDlc The translations are by MEMRI. Accessed 28 January 2011. 14 Umm Azzam, ‘O Women of the Ummah’, available at http://www.alqimmah.net/showthread.php?t=13736 accessed 17 January 2011 15 Zarqawi, ilhaqu bi-al-qafila’ [‘join the caravan’]in Fuad Hussein (2005) zarqawi al-jil at-thani li-al- qaida (Beirut) pp.242-3 16 Muna b.. Salih al-Sharqawi, ‘Ya Nisa dawrukunna fa-qad nama al-rijal’ Minbar al-Taweed, www.almaqdese.net – some of link in arabic. Cited in Lahoud, Nelly (2010) The Jihadis’ Path to Self- Destruction (New York: Columbia University Press)

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Abu Ghraib and the rape and murder of Abir al-Jenabi17 to challenge Muslim men to join the fight to protect Muslim women from abuse.

Attempting to further shame all sections of society into participation, Dr Fadl laments that, ‘Muslims today have grown accustomed to loving life and hating death, and have therefore abandoned jihad’18 but he believes women should only act as enablers: they should receive military training, but their role should be limited: they should be excluded from assuming any leadership role, and more importantly, male jihadis should refrain from confiding in or consulting their wives about military plans or similar critical matters19.

Umayma Al Zawahiri, wife of the al-Qaeda ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri, published a missive in 2009 entitled ‘Letter to my Muslim Sisters’, reprinted in al-Sha’ab. Umayma suggests the duty of women is to ‘goad their brothers, husbands and sons to defend Muslims’ territories and properties…to assist the [male] jihadis with prayers and money,’ also, ‘she should do so through the Internet where she could write her religious mission, disseminate it and spread the mission of the jihadis.’ Strikingly, she goes further, asserting that there is a duty in, ‘partaking in fighting or even [volunteering to carry out] a martyrdom operation’20. This is indicative of the general complexity of the issue of women in jihad: in context, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is not clear on this question either. When he was asked in his Town Hall meeting in 2008, what is the highest rank occupied by a woman in al-Qa‘ida, he responded that there are no women in al-Qa‘ida, but that, ‘the mujahidat [female jihadis accompanying their husbands] are doing a heroic job watching over their homes and their children’21.

Umm Badr, quoted in the first issue of al-Khansaa, a Jihadist women’s e-zine, echoed a familiar theme: ‘But when Jihad becomes a personal obligation, then the woman is summoned like a man, and need ask permission neither from her husband nor from her guardian, because she is obligated and none need to ask permission in order to carry out a commandment that everyone must carry out’22. Yussuf al-Ayyiri, one of the ideological leaders of the Saudi Arabian branch of Al Qaeda, posted, ‘The role of women in the Jihad against Enemies’23 on a Jihadist message board, encouraging women to take an active, but solely enabling role in Jihad. This role does not involve active ﬁghting but it calls for women to encourage and support men in their active quest to join the struggle24. This conservative, enabling-only approach to Islamist movements has historically frustrated many potential female recruits. Khawla Bint Al

17 Abir has also been used as a victim image in for example the work of Abu Hamza al-Mujahir, the purported War Minister for the Islamic State of Iraq. See Naba’ 18 Dr Fadl, rigabat al-umda fi I’dad al-uchda is-al-jihad fi’ sabil allah, p.21. Further, keen to promote participation, Dr Fadl has reduced the conditions necessary to participate in jihad from nine to four. 19 Lahoud, N. (2010) p.135 20 See http://www.jihadica.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/umayma-al-zawahiri-risala-jan-2010.pdf Accessed 14 January 2011 [Arabic]. Many English-language translations are available on the Internet. 21 The Town Hall meeting involved a Question and Answer session of unusual insight. Questions had been submitted online for al-Zawahiri to answer. It was released in two parts. 22 http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP77904 Accessed 17 January 2011 23 Yusuf al-Ayyiri, ‘Dawr al-nisaﬁ jihad al-ada’, E-Prism, available at http://www.eprism.org/pages/5/ Accessed 4 March 2006. Al-Ayyiri was killed by Saudi security forces in May 2003 24 ‘Document on Jihadist Message Board Calls for Women to Take Active Role in Jihad’, SITE Institute, available at http://siteinstitute.org/bin/printerfriendly/pf.cgi Accessed 16 October 2005

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Azoor complained that they were only permitted to give indirect support. She wrote in Jihad magazine in 1987 in reference tothe struggle with the Soviets that ‘I only wish I could give my life and my spirit as a gift to this pure land as a martyr’25. The flattening of the jihadi structure and its haven on the Internet has given rise to cut-and-paste Imams – everyone can play at being a jihadi ideologist. In 2009, the counter-terrorism expert Jarret Brachman became embroiled in dispute over jihadi ideology with a 20-year old American man, Zachary Chesser, via posts on his website and subsequent emails. According to Brachman, Chesser was, ‘trying to narrow the gap between the rudimentary thinking of American jihadists and the more advanced thinking among Arab jihadists -- a project that threatened to make the al Qaeda's ideology more accessible to more Americans in more compelling ways’26. Chesser had engorged a large amount of jihadi material and views women as frequently employed in supporting jihad, but whose efforts go unrecognised. By calling them ‘the forgotten fifty percent’ he regurgitates Yusuf al-Ayyiri’s views on women as enablers27.

Furthermore, acred texts are also invoked to develop women as prosecutors of jihad. Evidence is brought forth from the Qur’an, which addresses men and women as one (33:35) and also the hadiths: ‘if even one centimetre of Muslim soil is conquered, then all are commanded to take part in a jihad: a child without his father’s permission, a woman without her husband’s permission, and a slave without his owner’s permission’. Jamilla al-Shanti, in charge of recruiting women for Hamas, echoing these sacred texts, has claimed that ‘there is no difference between the martyrdom of the Muslim sisters and that of the Muslim brothers’28.

Religious debate does not severely impede the ideological use of women in jihad, but rather it can be argued persuasively that the absence of women in groups like Al- Qaeda results from social conservatism in Muslim societies, or ‘Arabism’.29 Testimony from the interrogation of two members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula suggests the ongoing utilisation of women but only in assisting in the prosecution of jihad. In Yemen, since 2000, the members began to employ women in an enabling capacity – as guards, for taking phone calls and other general non-military duties30. Controversially, one influential Western commentator has seen the internal debate as a ruse with one observing that: ‘In an excellent move toward denial and deception, while Islamic scholars make way for the possibility of female terrorists, global Islamist leaders may continue to espouse rhetoric hostile to women in an effort

25 Bergen, P. and Paul Cruickshank, P. (2006) ‘Lady Killer: Terrorism is no longer a male-only preserve’, TNR Online, 11 September 26 Brachman, J. (2010), ‘My Pen Pal, the Jihadi’, Foreign Policy, July 29, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/29/my_pen_pal_the_jihadist Accessed on 23 January 2011. Brachman’s website is jarretbrachman.net. Brachman calls al-Shabab an al-Qaeda affiliate, something is disputed by, for example, Leah Farrall. 27 Quoted by Christopher Anzalone in http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=137 Accessed January 29 2011 28 In Schweitzer, Y. ed. (2006) Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?, JCSS, Memorandum 84, p.22 http://www.gees.org/documentos/Documen-01398.pdf Accessed 18 January 2011 29 Cook (2005), p.383 30 Al-Jareeda, Kuwait, http://www.aljareeda.com/aljarida/Article.aspx?id=183175. I thank Leah Farrall for this article which was referenced on her website allthingscounterterrorism.com.

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to reinforce Western cultural assumptions while preparing to take advantage of the lack of Western preparedness for an attack involving women’31.

As of 2005, six fatwas had been identified allowing women to participate in martyrdom operations.32 The first fatwa was issued by the Egyptian Islamic theologian and al-Jazeera personality Yussuf al Qaradawi; three by the faculty at al- Azhar University Egypt, Faysal al-Mawlawi of the European Council for Research and Legal Opinion based in Dublin, and NizarÁbd al-Qadir Riyyam of the Islamic University of Gaza33. Cook has made the bold claim that it is significant that the more conservative Jordanian, Syrian, and Saudi religious leaders are completely absent from this list: ‘One can see that the question of women participating in suicide attacks has become associated with the Egyptian–Palestinian [axis] and consequently more progressive side of the Muslim world’.34 But today we see suicide attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other conservative societies, suggesting that necessity predominates over social norms – such evidence would appear to refute Cook’s thesis.

Frustration over this division among the jihadis appears genuine and the seeming ubiquity of intent to express opinions on the subject of ‘the woman’s role’ has angered many ideologues – after all, it clouds the message and dilutes the call. The message becomes dispersed to a wider audience but the content of the message is scrambled as many voices give differing opinions on the single issue; there is no clarion call. Abu Qatada, the influential Palestinian-Jordanian jihadi argues that ‘there is a distinct weakness today about the rules and the principles’ by which people may issue fatwas or even opinions35.

Martyrdom Operations

‘Cast not yourselves to destruction with your own hands.’ --Qu’ran (2:195)

‘And do not kill yourselves…Whoever does so in enmity and wrong, verily, we shall let him burn in fire.’ --Qu’ran (4:29/30)

Suicide terrorism, or martyrdom operations, can be defined as ‘a diversity of actions that necessitate the death of the terrorist in order to ensure the success of the action’36 and is arguably the most potent of asymmetric weapons in that, ‘true asymmetry [involves] those actions that an adversary can exercise that you either cannot or will not’37. Propagating the power of hyperbole in analyses of the martyr, the suicide

31 Cunningham, Karla (2007) ‘Countering Female Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(2), p.121 32 I loosely define fatwa as a legal opinion or ruling on Islamic matters issued by a cleric. 33 In Cook, D. (2005) ‘Women Fighting Jihad?’, Studies in Conﬂict and Terrorism, 28, p. 380 34 Cook, D. (2005) ‘Women Fighting Jihad?’, Studies in Conﬂict and Terrorism, 28, p.380 35 Cited in Lahoud, N. (2010) The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction (New York: Columbia University Press), pp.19-20 36 Pedahzur, Ari (2005) Suicide Terrorism (Malden, MA: Polity), p.10 37 Barnett, R. (2002) Asymmetric Warfare: Today’s Challenges to U.S. Military Power (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s) p.15. The role of women in concealing explosives has been noted and is indeed not specific to Islamist insurgencies, for instance in the mid-1880s, the London Metropolitan Police suggested tougher resrictions on the sale of dynamite, but to go no further than that; the searching of women for example was not seriously considered. The Pall Mall Gazette in 1885 mused that an

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terrorist has been labelled the, ultimate ‘smart bomb’38 whilst the phenomenon has been perceived as the, ‘defining political act of our age’39.

1983 is seen as the beginning of modern suicide bombing when a truck bomb was detonated in Beirut at an American Marines’ barracks. Opinion as to which group perpetrated the attack is still divided. Speckhard, however, has noted that other tenuous examples preceded this event; that suicide bombers (male and female) were used as a last ditch effort by Muslims resisting foreign occupations in areas of Southeast Asia including the Philippines near the turn of the century. Likewise during the Iraqi/Iranian war of 1980–1988 hundreds of Iranian child martyrs (basiji) marched forward onto landmines separating the enemy lines, exploding the mines as well as themselves, thereby clearing the way for Iranian warriors to charge the Iraqi soldiers who were deeply disturbed by this sight of mass martyrdom taking place before their eyes40.

Suicide terrorism’s unique ability to capture the attention of Islamist and Jihadist organizations stems both from strategic successes that have been attributed in part to such martyrdom operations. Suicide operations have been assessed as instrumental in compelling American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983; Israeli forces to leave Lebanon in 1985; Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995; Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on and the Turkish government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s.41

The Qur’an expressly forbids suicide (2:195, 4:29-30) but successes by secular groups has meant that religion is deemed subservient to strategic import. Thus in order to implement these operations they are labelled as acts of martyrdom rather than suicide42. Today, militant Islamic ideology is seen as the driving force behind martyrdom operations. Audrey Kurth Cronin calculates that the years from 2001-5 account for 78% of all the suicide terrorist incidents perpetrated between 1968-2005 and that the dominant force behind the trend is religion. Of the 35 terrorist organisations employing suicide tactics in 2005, 86% were Islamic. As of 2005, more than 350 suicide attacks had taken place in at least 24 countries43. Between 1985 and apparently pregnant woman could conceal enough dynamite to level an Abbey and in the words of the periodical, ‘How can police vigilance prevent that?’ (see Bernard Porter, Origins of the Vigilant State – The London Metropolitan Police Special Branch before the First World War (Boydell, 1991), p. 32 [referencing the Pall Mall Gazette, 26 January 1885, p. 2]. I thank Jerome Devitt for this observation. 38 Cronin, A. K. (2008) ‘Ending Terrorism: Lessons for defeating al-Qaeda’, Adelphi Paper 394, (London: IISS) p.152 39 Gambetta, D. (2005) Making Sense of Suicide Missions (New York: Oxford University Press USA), introduction, v. 40 Speckhard, Anne (2008) 'The Emergence of Female Suicide Terrorists', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31(11), p.996 41 Cited in Pape. Robert A. (2003) ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’, American Political Science Review, 97(3), pp.344 42 Groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam did not have to subsume religion, but rather built the death cult of suicide operations around the personal power of the group’s leader. Suicide operatives were allowed to have their last meal with the leader. Since there is no afterlife in Hindi religious beliefs, this represented the apogee of the suicide terrorist’s ‘moment’. The PKK, by contrast, offer incentives for the family of the victim and with women, suggest the possibility of women gaining more rights should the bomber perform her task. 43 Cronin, A.K. (2008) p.131

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2006, approximately fifteen percent of all suicide attacks (two hundred and twenty in all) were female44.

One estimate for the cost of a ‘typical’ Palestinian martyrdom operation has been put at US$150 - relatively, a low cost action which further guarantees media coverage45. In an instructive lesson on the controversy that suicide bombing arouses, Robert Pape has argued that the action is a ‘high-cost strategy, one that would only make strategic sense for a group employed in achieving nationalistic goals when high interests are at stake, and, even then, as a last resort’46.

Organizations that sponsor suicide attacks attempt to deliberately orchestrate the circumstances around the death of a suicide attacker to increase further expectations of future attacks. This can be called the ‘art of martyrdom’47. For Robert Pape, suicide terrorism is an extreme form of what Schelling termed, ‘the rationality of irrationality’, in which an act that is irrational for individual attackers is meant to demonstrate credibility to a democratic audience that still more and greater attacks are sure to come. For terrorist groups, suicide attacks are becoming the coercive instrument of choice48. Others argue that martyrdom for the individual is actually a rational choice and that suicide in Western tradition has been corrupted. In Ancient Rome, suicide in certain situations was an act that was looked upon as courageous and dignified – an active rather than a passive process, an act of communication with the living and a privileged moment which has the capacity to reveal the true character of the dying subject.49 Apostate regimes will not be compelled to surrender to suicide bombing strategies – concessions perhaps, but not absolute surrender. Ultimately, alienation from these acts results, as in Iraq where the overwhelming majority of the casualties from these attacks were Muslims.

Female suicide bombers – the Orientalist feminism critique Western audiences are seen as being in a state of absolute denial about the violent and militant capability of women. Except for Israel, many military services do not require female participation and frequently deny them active duty combat roles. The presence of ‘Al Qaeda women’ (recruited women) 50 is hard for most Western observers to comprehend, much less prepare for, because culture is seen to trump operational

44 Schweitzer, Y. ed (2006) ‘Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?’, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, p.8. Schweitzer cites two female martyrdom operations in Pakistan but only one, December 25, 2010 is known. Thus the exact percentage must be subject to some debate. 45 Hassan, N. (2001) ‘Letter from Gaza’, New Yorker, p.38. The highest known cost for a martyrdom operation is variously acknowledged as the 9.11 action, estimated at between US$400 000 and 500 000. 46 Pape. Robert A. (2003) ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’, American Political Science Review, 97(3), p.348 47 Schalk (1997) cited in Pape. Robert A. (2003) ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’, American Political Science Review, 97(3), p.347 48 Pape. Robert A. (2003) ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’, American Political Science Review, 97(3), pp.344. Pape’s work on suicide terrorism, whilst influential, has been ably critiqued by Moghadam who argues for a more nuanced definition of local and global strategies and disputes the statistics and source material. See Moghadam, ‘Suicide Terrorism, Occupation, and the Globalization of Martyrdom: A Critique of Dying to Win’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 29(8), pp.707–729 49 See Edwards, Catherine (2007) Death in Ancient Rome (New Haven: CT: Yale University Press) 50 Cunningham, Karla (2007) ‘Countering Female Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(2), p.121. Ayman al Zawahiri in 2008 explicitly stated however that there were no women in al-Qaeda (in Town Hall meeting, part 2) although presumably he meant ‘al-Qaeda Central’

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considerations51 when the reverse is in fact true. Wrestling with the notion of women on the front line is not the sole preserve of Islam, but an active, ongoing problem in all ‘cultures’52. The United States is currently debating the use of women in military engagements53. More recently on the frontline in the jubilant crowds in Cairo, the CBS reporter, Lara Logan sustained a ‘brutal and sustained sexual assault’ in a story that captivated Western media and reinforced Orientalist notions of the depraved, patriarchal East54.

Women in frontline roles run counter to established norms in military tradition and consequentially gain disproportionate media attention. The rescue of American soldier Jessica Lynch in Operation Iraqi Freedom was headline news (a defenceless woman at the mercy of barbaric Eastern hordes rescued by stoic Western special forces) and turned into a film.55 Arguably, Private Lindsey England at Abu Ghraib, as a female in a male-dominated U.S. army, empowered herself by humiliating and abusing inmates, or ‘the enemy’56. Empowerment sits uneasily in the Western psyche: that women in Iraq can now be trained in the elite Officer Corps led to a New York Times article57. Bruce Hoffman in an interview with CNN summed up the current situation: ‘we still have a problem imagining women as killers rather than as mothers’58.

Some scholarship sees the prevailing perception of female martyrs as coalescing an Orientalist feminism which has been critiqued and deconstructed into three distinct strands59. Firstly, this orthodox treatment of female martyrs assumes a binary opposition between the West and the Orient: The Occident is progressive and the best place for women, while the Muslim Orient is backward, uncivilized, and the worst place for women. The second characteristic is that it regards Oriental women only as victims and not as agents of social transformation; thus it is blind to the ways in which women in the East resist and empower themselves. Therefore, Muslim women need saviours (their Western sisters), as in the case of Afghan women, who, always being covered, are seen as unable to become agents of their own liberation. President Bush, perhaps seeking to draw attention to the emancipation of the Afghan people , has spoken about the need to save Afghan women60 enforcing a widespread notion that Muslim women are victims of an inherent misogynism in Islamic tradition61. The

51‘It’s a Woman!’ Al-Sha’ab, February 1, 2002, cited in MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis series, no. 84, February 13, 2002 52 Katherine E. Brown has observed for example that in the British armed forces, in 2006 female officers were 11.2% of all officers and represented 8.7% of personnel in other ranks, totalling 9.1% of all members of the armed forces (MOD factsheet). Between 2003 and 2008, seven female members of the armed forces died on operations - five of whom died through enemy action - and many more have been wounded. Women in the British Armed forces, ‘serve in all specialisations, except those where the primary duty is "to close with and kill the enemy’ (MOD factsheet). 53 http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62483 Accessed 12 February 2011 54 http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41607923/ns/today-entertainment/ Accessed 28 February 2011 55 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm Accessed 2 January 2011 56 See for example, Owens, Patricia (2010), ‘Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism’, Third World Quarterly, 31(7), pp.1041-1056 57 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html?_r=1 Accessed 4 February 2011 58 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Aj4ESkATY&NR=1 Accessed 17 January 2011 59 Paydar, Parvin (1995) Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 60 Cited in Bahramitash, Roksana (2005) ‘The War on Terror, Feminist Orientalism and Oriental Feminism: Case Studies of Two American Bestsellers’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 14(2), pp.225 61 ibid., p.224

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third aspect of feminist Orientalism assumes that all societies in the Orient are the same and all Muslim women there live under the same conditions62.

Orientalism perceives a hegemonic discourse that dictates a realm defined by the relation between the East and the West in such a way that the West is located as a ‘positional superior’ to the East. Thus Western researchers may find it easier to accept the claim made by subaltern cultures as well as by certain Western researchers, specifically anthropologists, that in order to observe in an informed way the conduct of the other, even if ‘lacking’ according to their Western judgment, one must relate to the formative surroundings of the individual as a major factor in understanding her conduct. Furthermore they may not find it difficult to agree that if the individual in question were formed by her surrounding culture, it would include what she may consider as her autonomous choice. The ability of Western researchers to observe traditions that are different from their own from within those ‘other’ traditions, while putting aside their own entrenched traditions and logic, may be an important contribution to a better understanding of action and political processes in those cultures63. Grievances arise from myriad developments – they may be personal or form part of a larger wounding of the ummah. The subsidiary role of the female is observed in the 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege. It has been noted that the women were assigned more passive roles—sitting in seats guarding the hostages rather than moving freely about the theatre, given smaller pistols versus large machine guns and having bombs strapped directly to their bodies (likely for the dramatic effect). In contrast, the men for the most part played the more active roles—they rigged the theatre with bombs, gave orders and a small group of men gave orders. The hostages were aware that the female bombers had little authority, one hostage stating, ‘Around 4 p.m. the second day, I realized with whom I can speak. The women couldn’t decide anything. If we asked for the toilet they said ‘ask the men’’64. This fits with the idea of male- dominated organizational structures. Only during the specific moment of martyrdom itself does the individual become empowered – until that time they are under the orders of the organizing structure.

Barbara Victor has argued that feminism – societal empowerment for women – is a motivating issue for suicide bombers. Indeed, it is utilised by groups after the act to explain reasons behind the females’ actions. As a phenomenon, there were no female suicide bombers in the first Intifida, 1992, but many at the height of the second Intifada, 2000. Analysis and interviews suggests that women were subject to a strategic transformation. In the first Intifida they were enablers65, as in the Arab rebellion of 1936-9, when, ‘the woman who rocks the baby’s cradle with one hand, rocks the nation with the other.’66 Yet in the second Intifida they found a feminist discourse as well as a national one, the growing worldwide phenomenon of the

62 For consolidation of this thought, see Owens Patricia (2010), ‘Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism’, Third World Quarterly, 31(7), pp.1041-1056 63 Saba Mahmood endorses this position. 64 Quoted in Speckhard, et al. (2004) 65 Tzoreff, Mira, ‘The Palestinian Shahida: National Patriotism, Islamic Feminism or Social Crisis’ in Schweitzer, Y. ed (2006) ‘Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?’, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, p.13 66 Tzoreff, Mira, ‘The Palestinian Shahida: National Patriotism, Islamic Feminism or Social Crisis’ in Schweitzer, Y. ed (2006) ‘Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?’, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, p.14

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suicide bomber and a differing feminist agenda: ‘an alternative motherhood’. These women didn’t want to lose their sons which led to an ‘empowerment’, during the second intifida so that now they would protect their sons by becoming martyrs67. But as Arin Ahmed, a failed suicide bomber, lucidly observes in an interview, ‘if I wanted to ﬁght for feminism I certainly wouldn’t do it by exploding myself’68. For Speckhard, it is the ideology of martyrs in Islam, fluid, malleable, manipulated, that becomes the psychological first aid.

Reem al-Riyashi a Palestinian mother who martyred herself in 2004, left a videotaped message in which she talked of a love for her children, ‘but my love to meet God is stronger still’.69 Maryam Farhat (‘Umm Nidal’) gave a video interview in 2002 extolling her son, Muhammad, to commit an act of martyrdom against Israel. Later she justified his death in a newspaper interview, saying, ‘It doesn't matter to me whether I have two or three Shahid [sons]. [As far as I'm concerned], let all my sons be Shahids. What matters is doing what Allah wills and waging Jihad for the sake of this homeland’70. Eventually three of her six sons died in suicide operations and she became so popular that she was elected to public office for Hamas in 2006.

Islamic doctrines either prohibit or constrain women from carrying out suicide missions – for instance, by forbidding disguise that involves removing their veils, tomoving around without a chaperone; yet as soon as Palestinian women began participating in suicide missions, influential Muslim clerics issued religious proclamations exempting women in Palestine from these rules and assuring them that could reach paradise through suicide bombing71’. Normative preferences are at best soft constraints. The organizations found utilising women for suicide missions gained greater media attention and provided a better means that young adult males through which to bypass traditional security measures. Giving the women this voice, this narrative of self-empowerment, obfuscates the manipulation of religion by a patriarchal society.

Bombing to Win The question of what motivates a woman in a male-dominated religious-based insurgency to perform martyrdom operations is the pre-eminent question in the discipline. Ideology seems the positive element in a binary relationship with the negative element, grievance. Grievance arises from physical, emotional or social disenfranchisement: personal loss has been the causal factor in motivating Black Widows. Since Islamist ideology promises an afterlife in paradise and the chance to be reunited with family members, the allure of martyrdom can be strong. Larger loss,

67 Articulated in a series of interviews in London-based newspaper, al-Sharq al-Awsat, December 28, 2000 68 Quoted in Speckhard, Anne (2008) 'The Emergence of Female Suicide Terrorists', Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 31(11), p.1011 69 Chris McGreal, ‘Human-bomb mother kills four Israelis at Gaza checkpoint’, The Guardian, 15 January 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jan/15/israel 70 Kul Al-Arab (Israel), February 27, 2004, Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), February 28, 2004 71 Kalvyas, S. and Sánchez-Cuenca, I., ‘Killing Without Dying: The Absence of Suicide Missions’ in Gambetta, D. (2005) Making Sense of Suicide Missions (New York: Oxford University Press USA), p.215

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for instance the persecution of a global ummah has been cited by ‘lone’ bombers ‘recruited’ from the Internet.72

In both personal and global grievances, ideology serves as psychological first aid and frameworks aimed specifically at motivating people to become martyrs have been developed. A martyrdom ideology to specifically motivate female recruits has not yet been developed, however this could be for the following two reasons. Firstly, this could be attributed to the continuing unease with which conservative ideologues view womens’ active participation. Secondly, it is possible that the existing ideological framework is suitable without need for adaptation.73 Given the rising percentage of female bombers, the latter seems the more likely – it offers paradise and the chance to die for something meaningful escaping societal injustice. If Western attitudes to death and dying – as something to be cloistered and hidden, marginalized and conceived of as wholly negative – can be pushed aside, martyrdom acts can be better understood.

Male suicide bombers are still the norm rather than the exception – The Chechen Black widows only began in 2000, and until Christmas Day, 2010, there had been no certain cases of female suicide bombers in Pakistan74. However, because female martyrs are so adept at avoiding traditional security measures, receive more media attention and are more dispensable because they are rarely in leadership positions, they are being utilised with greater prominence. Therefore, cultural norms that contravene their employment are remade under pressure. In fact, given the patriarchal nature of these societies, it may be as brutally simplistic as a case of preference in losing a son or daughter – in an interview broadcast by al-Jazeera, Ubeidi proclaimed that, ‘in our society, the death of a son is much more difficult for the parents than the death of a daughter. The grief for the loss of ten daughters will not match the grief of the loss of one boy, because his role in society is much greater’75. Murielle Delaque argued that as a foreign woman carrying out the attack in Iraq, she has shamed men for not being brave enough76. Thus her action has symbolic meaning, targeted at the ‘far enemy’77, the local population and potential recruits78.

Interviews with failed suicide bombers can produce skewed motivations since their reasoning after ‘failure’ may be different to reasoning before the action. However, Berko and Erez believe that although some women became involved in terrorism due to the sense of liberation that it provided, the women largely became more disenfrancised in the aftermath of their offences: rather than receiving praise for their activism as they had expected, they were shunned by others for their violation of

72 For instance the Stockholm Bomber, Taimour Abdub al-Abdaly. One explosives expert labelled his attempt to inflict mass casualties as ‘amateurish’. 73 For a comprehensive overview of the current female suicide terrorist landscape see Mia Bloom (2011) Bombshell: The Many Faces of Women Terrorists (Toronto: Penguin). 74 http://www.newser.com/story/108289/first-female-bomber-kills-43-in-pakistan.html Accessed 7 January 2011. 75 Al-Jazeera, interview with Amjad Ubeidi, August 16, 2005 76CNN Your World Today (2005) ‘Vice President Cheney Makes Case for war in Iraq; Saddam Hussein Trial; The Rise of Women Terrorists’ 6th December (Transcript 120601CN.V 10) 77 The terms ‘Near Enemy’ and ‘Far Enemy’ are defined by Steven Brooke (p.45) in Fishman and Moghadam eds. (2010) ‘Self-Inflicted Wounds: Divisions and Debate within al-Qaeda and its Periphery’ (West Point, NY: CTC) 78 Schweitzer (2006)

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gender expectations, and failure to fulﬁl traditional gender roles79. Their scholarship challenges flies in the face of conventional thought which sees Palestinian Shahidas participation in violence as a source of empowerment, to level the patriarchal society in which they live. Other motives include revenge for personal loss, the desire to redeem the family name, to escape a life of sheltered monotony, or to achieve fame80. Moreover, Berko and Erez confirmed Palestinian women’s secondary role in terrorism and concluded from the interviews that ‘by and large, the women felt they paid a high price for their involvement in terrorism, without receiving the social recognition or gratitude that involvement in ‘military work’ was expected to generate’81. In sum, Palestinian women have been called to ﬁght the occupying forces but at the same time to accept and obey patriarchal hegemony, presenting a paradox for women who respond to the call. But this highlights the difference between Islamist and Jihadist structures: the former engage with state structure, with patriarchal hegemony, but for jihadis, it is about the individual’s duty, a binary relationship between themselves and God.

The difference in gender roles in conservative societies has in certain situations led to men dressing as women to avoid detection, in an indication of just how challenging it can be to identify women in these environments. Mullah Omar is reputed to have fled the Northern Alliance offensive in late 2001 on a motorbike, dressed as a woman and in December 2010, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, police shot dead two male members of al-Qaeda; one was dressed as a woman82. Women have only recently been employed by the Pakistan Taliban for suicide bombings. A Bajaur resident explained to one news agency that any use of females for martyrdom operations would complicate the situation for the security agencies as the traditional burqa was all enveloping and in that dress it would be difficult to differentiate between a bomber and ordinary woman83.

Given the patriarchal and conservative character of these societies facilitating, women can easily become disenfrancised from it. Hence, groups have identified coercive strategies with which to gain leverage over females and facilitate recruitment. A news story run by many organisations in February 2009 was of Samira Ahmed Jassim, a recruiter with a militant Islamic Iraqi insurgent group, Ansar al-Sunnah. She was arrested after having ‘arranged’ the rapes of eighty women in Diyala Province with the intent of turning them into human bombs since they had been shamed and ostracised from society as a result of what had been done to them. Of the eighty women raped, thirty-two had become suicide bombers for Ansar al-Sunnah by the time of Jassim’s arrest84. Such stories perpetuate – a report in Yediot Ahronot listed

79 Berko A. and Erez, E. (2007) ‘Gender, Palestinian Women and Terrorism: Women’s Liberation or Oppression?’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(6), pp.493-519 80Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs ‘The Role of Palestinian Women in Suicide Terrorism’, January 30, 2003, p.143 81 Berko A. and Erez, E. (2007) ‘Gender, Palestinian Women and Terrorism: Women’s Liberation or Oppression?’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(6), pp.510 82 http://en.news.maktoob.com/20090000540520/SaudipolicekillalQaedasuspectinshootout/Article.htm (Accessed 7 January 2011), 83 http://www.dawn.com/2010/12/26/are-taliban-following-in-the-footsteps-of-tamil-tigers.html (accessed 12 February 2011) 84 Scholars debate the veracity of the Iraqi police claims. The story is from here Haynes, Deborah (2009) ‘‘Female Suicide Bomb Recruiter’ Samira Ahmed Jassim Captured’, Times Online, February 3 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5653088.ece and was also run on various

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special units of rapists that were operating on behalf of Tanzim in the Bethlehem area with the express purpose of cultivating female suicide terrorists, though the special rapist units obviously play no direct part in the terrorist attacks. Zerema Muzhikheyova, a failed suicide bomber who had planned to detonate at a Moscow Restaurant in 2003, but who gave herself up before detonating her explosives gave testimony in which she claimed the presence of a woman dubbed ‘Black Fatima’ who was responsible for the entire group of female martyrs with one Chechen group. The reality of Black Fatima is the subject of debate; it has been argued that Black Fatima is a mythical construction of the Russian Secret Police; an attempt to fabricate a powerful Chechen hate-figure rather than admit Russian actions in Chechnya are driving suicide attacks.85 In many conservative societies, women who go through a personal crisis such as a divorce or an unintentional pregnancy suffer strong social condemnation and sanctions.86

An al-Qaeda training manual discovered in Afghanistan implored male members not to use women in the ‘jihad business,’ but a year into the war on terror, it was reported that they were recruiting Afghan and Middle Eastern women to distribute money and messages to its operatives and provide logistical support87. Two Iraqi women, one of them seemingly pregnant, blew themselves up in Northern Baghdad, leaving behind martyrdom videos espousing jihadi ideology88. Patrick Porter has noted the changing attitude of the spiritual leader of Hamas, who initially ‘categorically renounced the use of women as suicide bombers’ in January 2002. Two years later, after Hamas struck with its first female suicide attack, he justified it on grounds of utility. ‘The male fighters face many obstacles, so women can more easily reach the targets…Women are like the reserve army – when there is a necessity, we use them’89.

As Hizballa’s leading cleric announced, self martyring operations were only permissible if they inflicted enough benefits: ‘if they bring about a political or military change in proportion to the passions that incite a person to make of his body an exploding bomb’90. The legitimacy of the method rose and fell with the degree of urgency (foreign occupation) and utility (whether the method worked). A struggle with national goals stands a better chance of success, especially in times of existential crisis, if all stratas are mobilised to effort. But given the conservative, patriarchal nature of these societies, the depth to which women can contribute is subject to debate, although that debate is arguably marginalized in times of severest threat.

American networks, for example see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qY9VflIPU8 Accessed 11 January 2011 85 In; R. Kim Cragin and Sara A. Daly (2009) Women as Terrorists: Mothers, Recruiters, and Martyrs (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO), p. 44. There have also been issues raised with Zerema Muzhikheyova’s testimony in which she cited Black Fatima, after her failed suicide bombing planned for a Moscow Restaurant; see, for example, Speckhard and Akhmedova (2006) ‘Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists’ in Yoram Schweitzer ed., Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality? (Tel Aviv, Israel: Institute For National Security Studies), p. 79. I thank Mia Bloom for these insights into the scholarly debate on this issue. 86 Pedazhzur, p.138 87 Kelly, J. (2002) ‘Al-Qaeda fragmented, smaller but still deadly’, USA Today, 9 September 88 Norland, Rod (2004) ‘Is Zarqawi Really the Culprit?’ Newsweek, 6 March 89 Regular, Arnon (2004) ‘Mother of Two Becomes First Female Suicide Bomber for Hamas’, Haaretz, 16 January in Porter, P. (2009) 90 Kramer, Martin S. (1992) ‘Sacrifice and Fratricide in Shiite Lebanon’ in Juergensmeyer ed. Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World (London), pp.30-47

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Jihad Electroniyya

‘Remember the global audience. One of the biggest differences between the counterinsurgencies our fathers fought and those we face today is the omnipresence of globalized media. Most houses in Iraq have one or more satellite dishes. Web bloggers, print, radio and television reporters and others are monitoring and commentating on your every move.’ --David Kilcullen, Twenty-Eight Articles

Terrorism and the media are bound together in an ‘inherently symbiotic relationship, each feeding off and exploiting the other for its own purposes’91: unreported terrorist acts would be like the proverbial tree falling in the forest92. Provocatively, Issacharoff has argued that the Israeli media likes female suicide terrorists; it takes a greater interest in female terrorists than male terrorists. The Israeli press admires and flatters female terrorists, demonstrates excessive empathy for their deeds, and hangs on every piquant detail and gossip about these women. It describes them as women with difficult social backgrounds who come from the margins of Palestinian society and have problems at home, mostly relating to their family situation93. Hoffman however argues that media attention is rarely positive but against this idea, so dangerous had media portrayal of suicide bombers become that the United States made vociferous protests to Arabic television channels about their coverage94.

The development of social media and the almost ubiquitous nature of the Internet allows spin to be put on events and marketed to a global audience without cost. Khattab, operating for a base in Chechnya is generally credited as being the first to film attacks on opposition forces for propaganda purposes, one of the first edited volumes to be released was ‘Russian Hell 1’ in 2000. Technology has meant that violence can be recorded and uploaded to the Internet, indeed, the Iraq conflict has emerged as ‘the cynosure of contemporary, cutting-edge terrorist communications’95. Martyrdom videos glorify the ideological commitment or martyrs and expose imperialistic hubris of their enemies, finding a unique home on the Internet. The video of the martyr explaining their motivations glorifies the culture of death. Further, the video being released shortly before the bomber detonates, does not allow the bomber an opportunity to reconsider. Therefore, in this small period of time between the release of the video and the act the bomber becomes al-shahid el-hari – the living martyr.

The visual has powerful and immediate resonance. It is the most powerful propaganda tool and reaches a disparate audience. Palestinian television regularly commemorates martyrs; the female suicide bomber, Dalal al-Mughrabi was honoured at length on the

91 Cronin (2008) p.183 92 Netanyahu, B. ed. (1987) Terrorism: How the West can Win (New York: Avon) p.109 93 Issacharoff, A., ‘The Palestinian and Israeli Media on Female Suicide Terrorists’ in Schweitzer, Y. ed (2006) ‘Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality?’, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, p.13 94 Marquis (2004) ‘US intensifies Protest against Arab T.V. reports’, International Herald Tribune, 30 April, p.6 95 Cronin (2008), p.220

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official Palestinian Authority Television Network96. Reinforcing the notion of coerced grievance, Al-Aqsa television, a Hamas-owned network in the Gaza Strip, broadcast a children’s programme, ‘The Pioneers of Tomorrow’ in which a popular Mickey Mouse look-alike character, Farfour was killed by a Jew, on-screen, who wanted his land to settle in97.

The visual is more immediate and more threatening than the written word. It can spark outrage and is communicated immediately to global audiences without the necessity for translation or sound. Internet videos can be downloaded instantaneously, embedded in other sites, linked or sent to multiple third parties whereas television programmes cannot. The cost of this global transport is zero. Written communication, whilst less immediate and emotive, functions similarly. Anwar Al-Alwaki, one of the leading jihadist ideologues to embrace social media, has observed this acutely:

‘The internet has become a great medium for spreading the call of Jihad and following the news of the mujahideen. Some ways in which the brothers and sisters could be ‘internet mujahideen’ is by contributing in one or more of the following ways: Establishing discussion forums that offer a free, uncensored medium for posting information relating to Jihad. Establishing email lists to share information with interested brothers and sisters. Posting or emailing Jihad literature and news. Setting up websites to cover specific areas of Jihad, such as: mujahideen news, Muslim POWs, and Jihad literature’98.

Television programmes are costly and the networks operate from physical, distinct spaces, within and a part of national boundaries. The Internet however, has comprehensively disconnected ideology from geography: ‘If we were still shackled to print the cost of delivering al-Qaeda propaganda to East London would be prohibitive, the lack of broad demand would make it a hopeless venture’99. This globalisation has enabled jihadism, which calls for a worldwide, single-state ummah but such a goal fails to translate with Islamism, which works for the collapse of apostate regimes, using political means. Islamism is defined within national borders, jihadism, being between the individual and God, is unfettered by borders.

Far from being essentialised, jihad ‘becomes a phenomenon based not on a centralized organization, but rather on specific operations of individually-driven jihad’100. Traditional scholarly work sees suicide terrorism as an organizational rather than individual phenomenon and social support for suicide terrorism as a highly

96 http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2417.htm Accessed 17 January 2011 97 Farfour’s death can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wiBwQ9fiho (accessed 14 January 2011). Farfour was replaced by a bee, Nahoul, who died after falling sick and being denied passage from Gaza to Egypt for medical treatment. The next character, the rabbit Assud, was also killed, this time by an Israeli airstrike. All three deaths happened on the programme from the period June 2007 – January 2009: see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeii225G-HM&NR=1 (accessed 14 January 2011) 98 In Anwar al-Awlaki, ’44 Ways to Support Jihad’, available at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefaawlaki44wayssupportjihad.pdf Accessed 11 January 2011 99 Mohamed, Feisal G. (2007) ‘The Globe of Villages: Digital Media and the Rise of Home-Grown Terrorism,’ Dissent, 54(1), pp. 61–64 100 Lahoud, Nelly (2010) The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction (New York: Columbia University Press), p.18, 119

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calculated, top-down phenomenon101. When the organisation is a diffuse horizontal structure perpetuated by the Internet then the ‘organization’ becomes cyberhandlers. These ﬂatter structures and ‘leaderless resistance’ frameworks have disintegrated traditional patriarchal and hierarchical systems within the jihadi resistance movements102.

The online periodical al-Khansaa is devoted to a jihadist ideology and dedicated to women; it is only one of myriad sites that demonstrate female support. ‘Sonja B.’ a German woman, was arrested after she asked in a famous and well known Internet chat room of the Turkish website mucadele if it will be allowed if she would carry out an attack with her baby in Iraq. She was at this time in contact with members of Ansar al-Islam in South Germany and Austria. An al-Tawheed-aligned website for women calls for supporting the Boycott Israel Campaign with the words: ‘My brothers and sisters let us stand, and fight together without fears…Pick up your rifles and set up your tanks, and with our people together we will fight. This war is for our land and is not a prank, so be ready for war with all your might’.

The greater shift has not been the development of women-only platforms but instead the egalitarian manner in which women are received in the general jihadi forums. Colleen LaRose, an American women who was imprisoned for pledging on jihadi forums to ‘commit murder in the name of jihad’ deeply troubled the American conscious, even though she was not affiliated to any known group and had no expertise in military matters103. Karim al-Mejjatiand his 11-year old son were killed by Saudi security services in 2005. His widow gave an interview to French television after his death and is a regular contributor to online forums and is, according to Leah Farrall, treated with immense respect, in a similar way to Malika el Aroud104.

To what extent the Internet enables physical action is a central question today in counter-terrorism. Crone and Harrow analyse several cases of Islamic terrorism in Denmark, highlighting Internet activity, without being able to reach any definitive conclusions105. Brachman and Levine have recently provided one of the first attempts to definitively evaluate how the Internet enables activism, asking ‘at what point does someone’s avatar catch up with their real life?: the flattening of the organization, whilst creating a spike in interest may ultimately dilute the exclusivity that made al- Qaeda so alluring in the first place106. Highlighting the multidisciplinary approach to framing of the Jihadist situation, Brachman and Levine apply a composite of Hegel’s theory of alienation, Baudrillard’s writings on replication and Butler’s work on the

101 For example, Pedahzur (2005), p.159 102 Sageman has written of this leaderless network in Leaderless Jihad. A stern critique of this work was offered by Bruce Hoffman in ‘The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism: Why Osama bin Laden Still Matters’ (2008) Foreign Affairs, May/June. Online flattening of groups is not confined to jihadis: right wing, U.S. groups such as Stormfront and the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) often include women’s pages. See Cunningham, Karla (2007) ‘Countering Female Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(2), p.115 103 http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0319/Jihad-Jane-case-suggests-rising-threat-from-online- jihobbyists Accessed 12 February 2011. Her online moniker was ‘Jihad Jane’. 104 See Leah Farrall’s post on her blog at http://allthingscounterterrorism.com/2010/02/09/some- observations-from-the-forums/ Accessed 11 January 2011 105 Crone, Manni and Harrow, Martin (2010) ‘Homegrown terrorism in the West, 1989-2008’, DIIS Working Paper, 2010:30 106 See Brachman, J.M. and Levine, A.N. (2011) ‘You Too Can Be Awlaki!’, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 35(1), p.44

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performativity of social roles in their analysis. Evaluation of the ‘Stockholm bomber’, Taimour Abdub al-Abdaly, for instance on jihadica.com, reveals a familiar puzzle. Given Taimour’s relentless embrace of Islamist social media platforms and his travels in the Middle East, which element led to him detonating an explosives belt in Sweden – both or one of them?

Conclusions The prevailing view that, ‘allegiance in war is a matter of ideology, not of opinion’107 and that ‘U.S. officials after 9/11 were discovering that Al Qaeda’s ideology rested on deeper foundations than could be reached through marketing techniques’108 homogenizes an ideology that is at best malleable and at worst disposable. The jihadis have a broad and growing spectrum of enemies: originally they fought the godless communists in Afghanistan and Southern Yemen. Today, since the jihad has proliferated, the opponents have multiplied. With the emphasis on empowering the individual on the basis of religion against political authorities, an underlying theme common to all the ideas jihadi ideologues preach, the list of apostate regimes, groups and peoples, of takfiris, will only grow109.

This paper posits a number of conclusions. Firstly, suicide is explicitly prohibited by the Qu’ran, but as suicide bombing is a ‘cheap’, ‘smart’ weapon that leaves the group itself undamaged and gains media attention, suicide is rebranded as martyrdom; as a prestigious action. Secondly, this ability to mutate doctrine, to shift and abuse it has inevitably led to disagreement among jihadis over women as enablers or prosecutors of military action. Thirdly, employment of women as prosecutors of military actions subverts traditional cultural norms. Indeed, in a possible misreading of Afghani tribal society, David Kilcullen’s influential Twenty-Eight Articles, a counter-insurgency check-list, includes Article 19, ‘Engage the women, beware the children. Most insurgent fighters are men. But in traditional societies, women are highly influential in forming the social networks that insurgents use for support’. Fourth, appeals to early Islamic history, when the adherents to Islam faced an existential threat, and when all society was mobilised, points to the strategic aim and simple mathematical assumption of some jihadis: if you include women, you double the number of your recruits110. Fifth, women are recruited from outside group structures through a combination narrative that weds grievance to ideology. Finally, the Internet has enabled a flattening of the jihad movement, simultaneously exposing and exacerbating divisions among jihadis. Moreover the Internet, with its anonymity and lack of state or social structures, has encouraged a growing number of women to join jihadist forums. Militant Salafist sites have become an open and accepting platform for female supporters of the jihad.

107 Linebarger, P.M.A., ‘The Function of Psychological Warfare’, in Jowett, G.S. and O’Donnell, V. eds. (2005) Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays (London: SAGE), p.197 108 Pape. p.350 109 See, for example, Alia Brahimi (2010) ‘Crushed in the Shadows: How al-Qaeda is Losing the War of Ideas’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. For the reverse view, that al-Qaeda has grown in strength in the past decade see Farrall, Leah (2011) ‘How al Qaeda Works: What the Organization’s Subsidiaries Say About Its Strength’, Foreign Affairs, 90(2), pp.128-138 110 Arguably only one society today – the Israeli society – weds full societal mobilisation to military engagement because of the existential threat it has faced since its ‘independence’ and perceives itself to continue to face.

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Amplifying the natural tendency of violent groups to lose the people’s hearts and minds should be the priority. The Internet is where that battle is being communicated if not fought – images from battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan are beamed globally. Drone attacks in the North Western Frontier Province leave civilian casualties with horrific injuries, video clips of which are uploaded to social media sites and jihadi forums. The ever-increasing horizontal structure of the jihad implies a burgeoning membership, but this flattening also dilutes and confuses the message. Everybody gets to play the Imam – anonymity enables a full societal mobilisation in the virtual caliphate, but translating from jihobbyist111 to jihactivist requires a more hierarchical structure.

The aims of jihad are the felling of apostate regimes and the development of a global ummah. Yet so global, so uncompromising has the idea become, so unattainable and undefined the overall goal, that jihad becomes the end rather the means. There is no jihadi Powell Doctrine: politics is never the end. There is no compromise – the political is tackled by the religious; the square block does not fit the circular hole. Detonating explosives in the marketplace, at checkpoints, in Western capitals may lead to policy changes or influence democratic elections, as in the Madrid bombings, but more ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns are not likely to achieve still greater gains and may well fail completely. Suicide terrorism relies on the threat to cause civilian casualties in the tens or low hundreds which cannot cause modern nation states to surrender significant political goals because the nation-state is willing to countenance high costs for high interests112.

Bibliography

(Selected) al-Awlaki, Anwar, ’44 Ways to Support Jihad’, available at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefaawlaki44way ssupportjihad.pdf

Berko A. and E. Erez, (2007) ‘Gender, Palestinian Women and Terrorism: Women’s Liberation or Oppression?’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(6), pp.493- 519.

Bloom, Mia (2011) Bombshell: The Many Faces of Women Terrorists (Toronto: Penguin).

Brachman, J.M. and A. N. Levine, (2011) ‘You Too Can Be Awlaki!’, Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 35(1), pp. 25-46.

Brahimi, Alia (2010) ‘Crushed in the Shadows: How al-Qaeda will Lose the War of Ideas’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 33(2), pp. 93-110.

111 The term ‘jihobbyist’ is Jarret Brachman’s own. 112 Pape (2003) p.344

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Crone, Manni and Martin Harrow (2010) ‘Homegrown terrorism in the West, 1989- 2008’, DIIS Working Paper, 30.

Cunningham, Karla (2007) ‘Countering Female Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 30(2), pp. 113-129.

Farrall, Leah (2011) ‘How al Qaeda Works: What the Organization’s Subsidiaries Say About Its Strength’, Foreign Affairs, 90(2), pp.128-138.

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Hoffman, Bruce (2008) ‘The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism: Why Osama bin Laden Still Matters,’ Foreign Affairs, 87(3), pp. 133-138.

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