Women as terrorists.

A short analysis
Poganescu Diana-Lucia

When we usually think about terrorists or terrorist groups, our first thought goes directly to men. Of course, during the history terrorist groups were not a subject of analysis frome the gender perspective. I would like to start this paper by saying that the motivation for choosing this theme came after reading a little more about terrorism. There are a few studies about terrorist women and also few strategies against terrorism that underline the gender factor and also the growing number of women involved in such acts. What fascinated me about the subject are the factors that make women engage in such acts. I will start my paper by exposing a general idea about what being a terrorist women means, continuing then with their motivation to become parts of terrorist groups and then exposing their role in this and how the media sees it all. As we know, terrorism started since mankind started, in different ways. As we still cant find a certain definition to terrorism, we relate it to violence, politics, ethnic conflicts, religion and many more. But when did women start to become terrorists? As far as I read, a study done by the Centre of Policy Studies shows that between 1969-2005 women have participated in 46 terrorist attacks, and we must see that during the time 34 percent of the attacks were organized by women. What makes them involve in such acts? Women always had an important role in the society, no matter of their culture. They have important social status, being a wife, a mother, and most important, giving life. They can influence many things just by these roles that they have in the society, but in

many cases this influence results to be bad. We must first look at some external factors, or why women choose to become terrorists. Here are some motivations or reasons: respect, relationships, rape and to change their image as in some cultures women are marginalized, humiliated and considered to be more like objects than human beings with power. I will detail this by starting with a strong example related to what the head of Hezbollah said, that women can participate as suicide bombers, but they cant run for election. What we see now is the growing number of terrorist women, not as leaders but as objects influenced by the organizations in order to fulfill their purposes. The reasons why they engage in terrorism are the same as for men, and this is seen as an opportunity by the leaders of the terrorist groups because of the impact of it. For a women, by becoming a member of a terrorist organization and the to extend her status for being a martyr, is a change of how people will see and think about her, a positive change, no matter what she did in the past. Terrorist organizations take advantage of this, and they are supporting even more the idea of becoming a martyr. In fact, they use women for suicide attacks more and more, because of its impact. There are more types of women used for such actions, comparing to the public opinion that only arab non educated women are subject of terrorist facts. The first type that I would like to underline is that of marginalized women. This is more obvious with Muslim women that have to follow a certain cultural and behavioural pattern. Another type of women that get involved in terrorism are the educated ones. Even if it is hard for many of us to believe, educated women become part of this because they want to feel that they really to something meaningful. They have faced a trauma or a disappointment, and no matter how much they struggle, they can never be satisfied with the life they have untill they become part of the terrorist group which implements in their mind the idea that they have an enemy that is responsible for their trauma and this is why they have

to fight. An important thing to be taken into consideration is the sexual side of all of this as a large number of women are being used in sexual acts, rapes etc. Having a general idea of the types of women involved in terrorism and their motivations, I would like to continue by saying that terrorist groups don t use them just to complete an attack or suicide, but for the impact that it has in the Media too. An important tool, they saw the major impact that a sucide act commited by a terrorist women has over the public. Also, they are an important tool, getting more attention when they are used for propaganda, being harder to detect when trying to commit an attack and many others. No matter if we look to terrorist women as person or in general, they all search the same thing: any kind of freedom. Even if counterterrorism strategies are really well implemented all around the world, they really tend to ignore the gender factor and by giving a relevant example, I think that it will be easy for all of us to understand that this is not an issue to be neglected. Lets take a look at this terrorist organizations first, The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE) of Sri Lanka. What I found about about this organization is that it is the most prolific terrorist group that has women as leaders. So why to ignore this aspect anymore when we have a relevant situation to keep an eye on it? I would like to present this organization as it follows : The women in the Tamil Tigers are trained in military tactics and martial arts and serve in all units, including the army, the naval forces (Sea Tigers) and the elite suicide squad (Black Tigers). About the Black Tigers, we should know one important thing: it is the organisation that has reported the largest number of suicide attacks with women. It is relevant here to try to remember about the most relevant action of a terrorist women from this organisation, as in 1991 she

blew herself up while standing near to the indian former prime minister Rajiv Ghandi. So why to ignore the gender aspect of the terrorism anymore? Isnt relevant enough that women have the same roles as men when it comes to terrorism? I think that we should look at this as a serious threat that it is and take the strategies and the law inforcement personnel more involved in this. The terrorist organisations have really specific and well planned strategy for the future too. They started to take advantage of the growing number of women that convert to Islam in order to have a connection with the occidental world, they started to use women terrorists as a group when they plan an attack and not as individuals for its shocking impact in the media and in the world, taking this to a dangerous level, the continuous recruitment of women from the internet as many terrorist organisations use the internet to recruit women in order to align them to their ideology and actions. Terrorist leaders are really aware of the rising importance of the women in terrorism and this is why they support women to get involved and make them embrace the groups ideology. For the international relations this is also a turning point, because as women becomes more involved in terrorism, we must improve our strategies and to protect them more if we dont want to see pregnant women blowing themselfs up because of their beliefs. Ideology if one of the motivations to support terrorist actions for most women, even if most of them take part of this because they have a family member that is involved, or they had a personal trauma and in many cases we can talk even about revenge. Comparing to men, women have also other reasons to engage in terrorism and I analysed these from the social, political, religious and cultural point of view. In Islamic countries there is a belief that the men is supposed to support all the family. But what a woman can do when her husband died as in most cases

happen because of the conflicts in their countries. They get involed in terrorist organisations in order to improve their financial and social status. I have read about many cases where mother and daughter commited suicide attacks in order to ensure a better life to the rest of the family. Usually, terrorist organisations pay a big compensation to the family of the dead, and they also can offer them protection. Also, in the Arab countries, being raped for example is also the victims fault. So, in order to wipe their personal shame away, they commit suicide attacks with the belief that doing this they will be martyrs, and everyone will forget about the past in order to see their sacrifice. And in most cases it happens just like these, as people see this as an act of honour and self sacrifice. In a military report done by the US, called The rising importance of women in terrorism and the need to reform counterterrorism strategy I have found a classification of women that become terrorists that interested me. And it is like this: - Sympathizers, Spies, Warriors and Dominant Forces In my opinion, this is a good classification in order to underline the roles that women have in terrorist organisations and also their importance. So, the sympathizers provide basic support to the group, including sex to males in the organisation. Second, spies have an active role, but very limited this is why these two cathegories have few importance for the groups. Third, the warriors and dominant forces play an active role, or even a leadership role. We must underline the fact that independent of their status, women are more interested in getting involved in domestic terrorist organizations than in international ones. Their beliefs are that supported by the idea of certitude, that everyone has to hear about them, and everyone has to see them as martyrs, fact that would be more difficult in the international arena.

Conclusions

The number of women that join terrorist organisations is increasing more and more every year. This is a tremendous challenge for the international authorities because they have to learn to adapt themselfs as it goes. We all must see this as a threat, as it is getting harder to make a profile of a terrorist, and this is actually the purpose of the terrorist organisations, to involve women and children and so to bring a sentiment of fear, as we are aware that anyone could be a terrorist on the streets. Not taking action will lead only to the increasing number of female engaging in terrorism and increase the rate of attacks all around the world. Better political strategies must be implemented, but also it is important to work on some other important factors like education, health, financial support, gender equallity in the countries that face these problems in order to discourage women to get involved in terrorist organisations. Of course, it is easy for us to support this without thinking that all around the world there are huge differences of culture, religion and mentality. First, we must identify the right strategy to implement in each country, and for every reason that a women has to get involved in terrorist organizations to give her two positive points in order to prevent her doing this. It is also important to keep in mind that a good strategy must include the social environment that needs to be changed. Providing food and water in some parts of the world wouldnt solve the problem but it would really hel p. Fighting for political and educational equality in many countries it would also be a good turning point for many women. Each strategy should support aid programmes take work against hunger, violence, inequality and poverty in order to discourage this tendency and to encourage women to involve themselfs in positive actions.

References

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