Iraqi female suicide bombers - no longer shocking
Posted: Monday, October 13, 2008 1:37 PM
Filed Under:
Baghdad, Iraq
By Carla Marcus, NBC News Producer
BAGHDAD – Attacks carried out by female suicide bombers have become as common an occurrence here as roadside bombings, political assassinations and public mourning. No longer do I react with surprise when I hear about an explosion triggered by a woman.
Just last week on Oct. 8, a young woman in Baqouba blew herself up in front of a courthouse – killing 10 people and injuring 17. She was wearing an abaya, a traditional black robe, which allows explosive devices to be easily concealed. According to the doctor who examined the remains of her body, she may have been as young as 14.
 |
| AFP - Getty Images file |
| In this police handout picture, an Iraqi policeman attempts to unwrap an Iraqi woman's suicide vest after she surrendered in Baqouba on Aug.24. |
A day earlier, Iraqi authorities in the same region arrested a 38-year-old woman named Ibtisam Edwan, suspected of recruiting females to become suicide bombers – including a 15-year-old who gave her first name as Rania and turned herself into Iraqi police in August. In extensive video footage released by Iraqi police, she was wearing an explosives-laden vest at the time of her arrest, but denied that she planned to stage a suicide attack.
Although violence in Iraq is down overall, the spate of attacks perpetrated by women is certainly on the rise. By NBC News’ tabulation, the Baqouba courthouse attack last week was the 31 suicide bombing involving a woman to take place this year. By comparison, eight occurred in 2007, and a total of four in 2005 and 2006, according to U.S. military officials.
The majority of suicide attacks by women take place at police and army checkpoints, though headquarters of Awakening Councils (groups of Sunnis, some of them former militants, who have banded together to take on violent Sunni insurgents) are also popular targets.
Why women?
What motivates a woman to carry out a deadly strike? Certainly many of the women are determined to avenge the deaths of loved ones.
Islam Online featured an interview this summer with Um Mustafa, a 41-year-old woman who was training to become a suicide bomber. After her husband and two children were killed in the U.S. offensive in Fallujah in 2004, Mustafa approached members of al-Qaida in Iraq and stated, "I will give my life to God wherever my leader tells me to do so."
However women may also turn to violence as a result of feeling depressed, or lacking a sense of purpose after the loss or detention of a family member. And terror experts also point out that as al-Qaida's network weakens in Iraq, it has turned to recruiting more women to keep its cause alive.
Female suicide bombers have also been responsible for some of the most horrific attacks in Iraq during the last year. Perhaps one of the most tragic was Feb.1 of this year when bombings took place in Baghdad at a pet market, and 20 minutes later, at a bird market. About 100 people were killed, and 145 were injured, many of them young children who went to the markets on their day off from school.
Witnesses said they recognized the two women responsible for the bombings, who had walked into the markets with dynamite and ball bearings strapped to their bodies – their bombs detonated by remote control. The women were mentally handicapped and resided at a local psychiatric hospital.
There's no means of measuring the levels of human depravity that have occurred during the course of this war in Iraq, but sending two unsuspecting women into a crowd where people sought respite and a retreat from the horrific conflict registers pretty low.
