Female Combatants: The Dark Side of Women’s Power

By Jane Mosbacher Morris

This article was originally published by the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University

Does the image of a female terrorist leave you glued to the TV?  Don’t let it—that’s what they want.

Terrorist organizations often use the shock value of a female violent extremist to capture the attention of the international media, tactfully playing upon the public’s bias that those with two-X chromosomes are unwilling or unable to commit an act of terrorism.

Yet, women have a long history of taking hostages, hijacking aircrafts, planting bombs, conducting assassinations, driving explosive-laden vehicles, and committing suicide attacks, not to mention performing the endless back-office tasks required to maintain an extremist organization.

In an evolving security environment, where responding to the latest threat can lead to short-term memory loss, many have forgotten the female-perpetrated, high-profile attacks that have stolen the lives of senior government officials and countless civilians.  To provide a statistical snapshot, women perpetrated an estimated 15% of total suicide attacks between 1980 and 2003 and, in certain organizations, like the PKK and Chechen Separatists, were responsible for the majority.  Given the numbers, why do we continue to be surprised each time a Jihad Jane ends up on the evening news?

Two assumptions likely contribute to our reluctance to acknowledge the dark side of women’s power.

One explanation is the belief that those who would advocate for restrictive roles for women in society would forbid them from carrying out terrorist activities that require both operational and intellectual facility.  These very organizations exploit our assumption, however, and look at women as a tactical advantage.  To the delight of violent extremists, security officers often perceive females as less suspicious and allow them to evade male-dominated checkpoints, particularly in conservative environments. When wearing an abaya, women are able to hide bulky explosives from the eyes of the public, presenting a unique security threat to even the most observant.  Terrorist organizations also strategically leverage women to recruit other men, arguing that if a woman is willing to sacrifice her life or time for the cause, so, too, should a man.

Special efforts are often made to recruit female participants.  Al-Qaida has produced a glossy magazine, Al-Shamikha, specifically designed for women, while others, like Al-Shabaab, purportedly use abduction to bolster enlistment.  Despite this, the vast majority of these women are knowingly volunteering their services.

This dynamic contradicts a second pervasive notion—that women are inherently more peaceful and therefore less likely to choose violence to achieve political ends.  The relative peacefulness of women versus men is not an unfounded argument, but tends to evolve into the mistaken belief that no women are violent.  An honest assessment suggests a more complex reality, in which some women actively lobby against violence; some remain silent on the issue; and others actively propagate its use.

The wife of Al-Qaeda’s new leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, for example, famously called on women to “to raise [their] children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instill in them a love for religion and death”. Open source intelligence also reflects instances of mothers pressuring their husbands and sons to take up arms for the honor of their family, nation, or religion, or to enact revenge on warring tribes.

Given the not uncommon practice of women selling their daughters into prostitution, promoting child marriage, or even running brothels staffed by trafficked girls (a topic for a future blog post), we would be naive to presume that women lack the agency to use their brains and brawn for the advancement of malevolent causes. 

Perhaps we are so busy advocating for the involvement of women in productive security processes that we have discounted when they are destructive.  While the vast majority of women (like men) are constructive citizens, ignoring the bad actors, regardless of their gender, creates very real and dangerous security consequences.  Downplaying the dark side of women’s power has perceptional consequences, as well, as it distracts from the facts that women do impact peace and security, both for good and for bad.  Until we can accept both sides of the coin, our stereotypical responses will continue to endanger the lives of our military, government, and civilian populations. 

Jane Mosbacher Morris is the Director of Humanitarian Action for the newly-formed McCain Institute for International Leadership, where she is developing the Institute’s efforts to fight trafficking in persons, among other issues. Prior to joining the McCain Institute, she spent over five years at the United States Department of State working in the Bureau of Counterterrorism and the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.  While there, she drafted the Department’s first Women and Counterterrorism Strategy. She graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and holds a MBA from Columbia Business School.

Source: Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of SuicideTerrorism, Random House, 2005. P. 208-209.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=52706

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/06/zawahiris-better-half-i-advise-you-to-raise-your-children-in-the-cult-of-jihad-and-martyrdom-and-to.html

US marks 9/11 anniversary, SAVE to launch Women of One Fabric global workshop series in New York

Thousands will gather today in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania to mark the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in a number of low key ceremonies.

The main ceremony will be the ritual reading at New York’s Ground Zero of the names of the 2,983 people who died both on 9/11 and during the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center.

The New York skyline has been lit up with twin lights, filling the hole left after the collapse of the twin towers.

President Obama and his wife Michelle will observe the anniversary with a moment of silence outside the White House.

It has been more than two years since Osama Bin Laden was killed at his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan. Even though the Al Qaeda movement was largely weakened by their leader’s death, terrorist attacks are still occurring every day in Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and many other countries in the name of Al Qaeda and its affiliate organizations. Recent hate crimes, shootings and terrorist attacks in Europe and the US have also shed light on rising sentiments of intolerance towards different cultures and religions in the West.

Sisters Against Violent extremism believes that now more than ever, women around the world must take the lead in the fight against violent extremism in their communities. It is true that in times of war and insecurity women often pay the highest price, nonetheless, SAVE strongly believes that women are also driven to protect their families and best-placed to be a creative force for stability in their households, neighborhoods and cities. Women hold key strategic positions as wives, mothers, educators, social workers and community leaders and are therefore better positioned to prevent the spread of violence by advocating for peace, tolerance and non-violence.

SAVE is launching a brand new film entitled Your Mother that addresses the issue of violent extremism and its impact on mothers around the world. Find out more on our website.

On the occasion of the 11th anniversary of 9/11, SAVE will run the very first Women of One Fabric workshop in Irvington, NY, in partnership with Tuesday’s Children. The workshop will be the primary stage of a global solidarity campaign for women dedicated to creating a united front against violent extremism.

Women of One Fabric uses dialogue to highlight the commonalities of loss and tragedy that result from acts of violent extremism, and will help to create understanding for the role that women must play in order to counteract the rhetoric of revenge and terror. The international workshops form the basis of a global campaign that will attract attention to the universal threat of violent extremism and the painful human aftermath of such acts.

The participants of the Women of One Fabric workshop, New York 2012

Hosted by the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute at the Company Headquarters in Irvington, a group of women impacted by 9/11 will include pieces of a personal belonging of their loved one in the creation of beautiful sheets of hand-made paper. After the paper has dried, participants will embellish the paper under the guidance of a local artist to depict their emotions of loss, and hope for a future without violent extremism. During the workshop there will be opportunity to foster conversation, mentorship, and outreach opportunities, and subsequently the exhibit will be displayed in Atlanta, Georgia, Washington D.C., New York, and around the world.

With similar workshops in the US, Indonesia, Nigeria, Somalia, India, Pakistan and Northern Ireland, culminating in an international art exhibition, Women of One Fabric will work to create a new narrative of unity and agency instead of division and victimhood.

Breivik Sentenced to 21 Years in Prison

Anders Behring Breivik, who has spent the last 10 weeks in court defending his massacre of 77 teenagers and government workers last year, is mentally fit to serve a prison sentence, according to a ruling by the Oslo District Court.

Breivik, who smiled as Judge Wenche Arntzen read out the verdict, was sentenced to a 21-year jail term and must serve a minimum of 10 years.

All five judges, two professional and three lay, agreed on the verdict.

Last year’s July 22 attacks, in which Breivik first detonated a bomb outside Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s office, killing eight, before sailing to the island of Utoeya to gun down 69 members of the ruling Labor Party’s youth faction, have thrust Norway into its biggest post-war criminal trial.

Self-confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik arrives in court. Photo: AFP

The ease with which Breivik executed his attacks may in part lie in the vulnerability created by Norway’s prosperity and openness, said Nina Witoszek, an Oslo University professor who moved to Norway in the 1980s and has written books on Norwegian identity including ‘‘The Origins of the Regime of Goodness - Remapping the Cultural History of Norway.’’

‘‘The conviction that we live in the best society in the world makes us certain of our own welfare and immune to concern,’’ she said in an interview.

The authorities’ response to the attacks ‘‘was a combination of stupidity, nonchalance, optimism and decadence,’’ she said.

How to deal with the aftermath of Breivik ‘‘will divide the country,’’ she said.

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

A Call for Unity Against Terrorism

"A teacher comforts a school child as they observe a minute of silence at a Jewish school in Paris to pay tribute to the four victims killed by a gunman at a Jewish school in Toulouse, March 20, 2012." Photo Credit: Reuters.

          By killing seven French citizens, the suspect in the tragic Toulouse murders, Mohamed Merah, has sought—in his own words—to “bring France to its knees.” Merah reportedly joined the Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), whose primary goal is to “protect the honor of Muslim women.” Now that the suspect has been killed, the central point will not be whether Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group claim responsibility for the attack—this is now about our responsibility as global civil society. We, non-Muslims and Muslims across ethnic, religious, and ideological divides, must stand up and speak out against terrorism. We cannot afford to be silent bystanders—a self-styled jihadist cannot be allowed to question our values that create a common bond of humanity. As Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, once said, there are only two categories of people: good and evil. Now is the moment not only to choose where we belong, but also to take action and to defend our values and beliefs. Earlier on Wednesday, President Sarkozy called on his fellow citizens "to unite together to show that terrorism will not be able to fracture our national community." We must extend this call to action beyond national boundaries to all of humanity.

         The question “who was Mohamed Merah,” whom experts describe as a lone wolf and an Al Qaeda jihadi, the nice young next-door-neighbor who turned into an ideologically-driven killing machine, will occupy police and terrorism analysts for many years to come. We at Women without Borders/SAVE believe we have to broaden the analytical spectrum of community and family-based approaches to prevention.