(Female) Suicide Bombers

Last week four more Iraqi suicide bombers struck, leaving the mainstream media dumbfounded. Anchors from Atlanta to New York asked pundits: "What do you make of this?" "What could the motivation be?" "Who put them up to it?"

After five years of a war filled with attacks of this nature, you wouldn't expect the media to be so shocked and awed, but there was one critical factor that had the anchors stumbling: all four suicide bombers were female.

Female suicide bombers are, in fact, not a new phenomenon. According to Debra D. Zedalis, author of Female Suicide Bombers, the first known attack by a woman is traced back to 1985, when 16-year-old Khyadali Sana drove a truck into an Israeli Defense Force Convoy, killing two soldiers. Since then women from Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Palestine, Turkey, and Israel (among others) have participated in suicide bombings. In fact, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka use women between 30 and 40 percent of the time when carrying out such attacks.

Starting in 2003, Iraq has experienced over 50 suicide bombings carried out by women, 20 of them just in the last year. It is no longer justifiable for the media to act aghast when another woman turns up with blood on her hands.

How could a woman do this? As doctoral student Lindesy O'Rourke argued in her New York Times op-ed last weekend, women appear to have the same motivations as their male counterparts -- as O'Rourke puts it, "a deep loyalty to their communities combined with a variety of personal grievances against enemy forces." Women, like men, have the capacity for ideological extremism and retaliatory violence.

A more important question is, what conditions make suicide bombing a viable option for human beings -- be they men or women? And, further, what is our role, as Americans, in perpetuating these conditions?

The majority of suicide attackers, of either gender, are young. CNN reports that the U.S. military has a 14-year-old would be suicide bomber in custody, indeed a woman. Averagely, they are in their early 20s, an age known for exploration and ideation.

These young people get pulled into nationalistic or ethnically-based organizations (no woman, to date, has been involved in an independent suicide attack) that promise them a way to make their lives meaningful. Many, though not all, of them come from economically depressed families, towns and cities ravaged by long and bloody war, and relationships that have left them psychologically vulnerable.

In one of the best investigations of female suicide bombers to date, journalist Jan Goodwin secured an interview with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) failed suicide bomber Menake, currently awaiting sentencing in Sri Lankan prison. Menake's alcoholic, abusive father killed her mother when she was just three years old and brutally raped her at the age of seven. An excerpt from that interview, which appeared in Marie Claire magazine:
Menake wrote to the LTTE secretariat. "I'm willing to become a Black Tiger," she wrote. "It would be an honor. Please let me have your permission to join."

"Do you understand you will become a human bomb?" Menake was asked by the Black Tiger leaders in her interview.

"I told them that I did," she says. "I felt I had no other choice." The LTTE calls its suicide missions thatkodai, Tamil for "gift of self." It made her feel, Menake says, that her life still had a purpose.

For kids from Iraq, Sri Lanka, and so many other countries with broken education systems and few opportunities to create lasting meaning, being a martyr is a prefab identity, a way out of the daily squalor and emotional turmoil, most simply, a way to feel some agency.

Most often, the media paints female suicide bombers as coerced, as if they couldn't possibly choose this route; for example, early speculation that two female suicide bombers who struck last February had Down's Syndrome were proven false. Other media has focused entirely on the misogynistic culture that these women suffer in, rarely looking at the oppression brought on by America's occupation.

As an anonymous blogger at Feminist Philosophers writes:

"To see her as entirely coerced, then, seems to make invisible the quite significant agency that she must have exercised to undertake a terror bombing attack. Perhaps it's simply easier not to acknowledge that women might strongly hold extremist beliefs, and be willing to engage in terrorist action..."

It is easier not to acknowledge women's agency, because then we would have to acknowledge the depth of desperation that both women and men feel in these war ravaged countries, and by extension, our own role in contributing to that desperation. When men are violent, we chalk it up to human nature and soon forget, but when women strike blows, it shakes us awake. Suddenly the extent of destruction, the intensity of desperation, the absence of hope, is unmistakable. We are forced to reckon with the blood-thirsty opposition that we have just made thirstier through our misguided democracy projects.

O'Rourke reports that "95 percent of female suicide attacks occurred within the context of a military campaign against foreign occupying forces." Our media, the public at large, is so uncomfortable with the idea of female suicide bombers because it awakens some sense of responsibility within ourselves. When those we have stereotyped as tender, introspective, sensitive resort to reckless violence and destruction, we are forced to put a face on the violence. Suddenly, dead Iraqis lying in the street are not just casualties, their murderers are not just terrorists, but flesh-and-blood women -- your little sister, your niece, your daughter.

And of course once these desperate men and women have been humanized, the next logical question is one we're afraid to face: what is our responsibility in all of this?

Comments

[Avigdor]

Either it never occurred to this author that there could actually be a phenomenon for which America is not responsible - or she just hasn't been paying attention. A January 2004 AP article - "Palestinians Hail Female Bomber as Hero" - quoted HAMAS leader Mahmoud Zahar's explanation of a 22-year-old mom bomb who murdered four Israeli security guards.

“She is not going to be the last (attacker) because the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe.”

This is not a bedtime story. This is The Plan. And the sooner you take these people at their word, the safer we'll all be.

[Sparhawk]

Most will never get it. It's more palatable to berate American than face the fact that there are people out there who want to spread their brand of religion at the cost of ours.

[hoopoe]

the author is not implying that america created the phenomenon of suicide bombers or of female suicide bombers. if you had been paying attention, had an interest in cause and effect, or simply put aside your own prejudices, you might have understood that the point being made here is that this behavior, where and whenever it may occur, is a product of complex social, political and economic factors and, in the case of the US invasion and occupation of iraq, we are responsible for exacerbating those circumstances. we didn't create suicide attacks - they have existed in all cultures through all of history. but we have driven them to a new level.

[MajorKong]

The Klingons may take issue with Hamas trying to raise the Islamic flag "over the whole universe".

[AdamWykle]

Those poor women are more and more cases of Iraqis that lost everything and everyone in their lives and have nothing more to live for. When the United States (or any occupying entity) plants constant fear, hunger and hopelessness to these people and wipes out their lives, what do they expect?

[Americatortures]

I guess under Sadaam Hussein they had a lot to live for???

[MajorKong]

Arguably women had it better under the Baathist regime than under the Islamic republic that has replaced it. Iraq was the most Western country in that part of the world at one time.

[RussellEida]

I am very uncomfortable with the way you seem to forgive these suicide bombers for their actions. These people are murderers. We obviously need to handle ourselves more responsibly when we choose to engage in a conflict such as the one in Iraq, but the idea that these Iraqis bombers had no other choice but to kill Iraqi civilians is a load of crap. They are not attacking these people out of self defense. Surely, if we had never invaded Iraq, there would be fewer (or no) suicide bombings. However, let's not blame ourselves when a Shiite terrorist decides to kill Sunni kids. If you're situation is so bad that you can't stand to live, kill yourself. Don't kill innocent people.

[Sparhawk]

Agree. But they are murderers because of "us" is what they will tell you. They don't want to pick their head up out of the sand to see life as it really is. Terrorists would still spread their hate and religion no matter if we were in Iraq or not. - It's their way of life, their religion

[hoopoe]

i agree, but i think there is a big difference between understanding and excusing.

there is absolutely no excuse for violent attacks on civilians. period. and that includes so called 'collateral damage' from or side. but i don't think the author was excusing or forgiving anything.

understanding that these people cannot be reduced to two-dimensional fundamentalist, brainwashed automatons carrying out some world domination plot dictated by religious doctrine is important.

behaviors that seem so alien and unpredictable DO have a pattern and a purpose to them, and these behaviors, however horrific, are rooted in very real conflicts of humiliation and helplessness, identity and purpose. i think it's important that we understand all of the factors that may cause individuals or groups to resort to this kind of action if we are going to attempt to prevent it.

it's not so much that they want to kill themselves because they can't stand to live, but that they they can't stand to see members of their group suffering. they seem to think that, by sacrificing themselves, they will serve the interests of their community while regaining some sense of dignity and purpose for themselves - to turn their helplessness into control, their weakness into strength, etc.. it is a hard 'logic' for us to swallow. nevertheless, understanding cause and effect could go a long way, particularly if we could admit to - and amend - our role in exacerbating the stresses that drive people to such extremes.

[FreeThinkn1]

Kids in the US turn to drugs, sex, gangs, and other risky behaviors to cope with social inequities and violence, but in a combat zone the response is much more extreme because War is extreme. Our adult soldiers have a hard enough time dealing with the violence that occurs during war and we wonder why children or young adults living in a war zone would resort to violence? The answer is there right in front of our faces.

[mergina]

Just IMAGINE the pain and mental torment of being a WOMAN LIVING IN THE BRUTALLY OPPRESSIVE ISLAMIC COUNTRIES. You have no rights. You are nothing to the men who rule, to the men who you are offered to against your will, to the men who feel they own you. I am surprised more women do not opt for an explosive vest to strap on when they have been BRUTALLY DOMINATED TO THE BREAKING POINT OF SUICIDE. But are they all suicides? Can some of them be choosing to give up their own life to save loved ones who have been threatened if they do not? A bomb is a bomb is a bomb and can be detonated from anywhere.

[WorkingClass]

If "occupying forces" had murdered your family and destroyed your home, what would you be willing to do to strike back? I don't think your answer depends on your gender.

[FreeThinkn1]

True. Hasn't Hollywood made a ton of money with films about heroes avenging the wrongs against the innocent? Clint Eastwood , Bruce Willis, John Wayne, and Arnold are a few actors who come to mind. If you were a teenager or twenty-something without the advantage of perspective that age gives you and you have seen your family, friends, and country destroyed and have no hope of a future---what would you be willing to do?

[S1m0n]

The second last paragraph is the only one which provides useful answers: people--men and women--engage in suicide bombing when they're under foreign occupation, and there are few or no better options for resistance.

The other factors, from parental abuse to poverty, are likely as present among members of the occupying army as they are the resistance.

[bisnan]

Whether by a male or a female, I'm still not convinced that every attack attributed to "suicide bombers" is truly a voluntary act. I suspect the term "suicide bomber" or "suicide attack" is used any time someone has been loaded with explosives that were detonated.

Without some other form of substantiation, I don't believe all explosions of this nature can truly be assumed to be suicide, and consider it irresponsible for the media to report them as such. It is way too easy to detonate a device from a remote location.

[vinny]

and way too easy to put remote control legs on torsos, and walk them into security zones and crowded areas...

[Marlyn]

nit pick