Author Name:   rajahanuman

Terrorism is the act of unlawful violence done by a group of people to achieve certain goals, or to create terror of themselves or a party amongst the people.

Women in Terrorism

Terrorism is the act of unlawful violence done by a group of people to achieve certain goals, or to create terror of themselves or a party amongst the people. The goals can be social, political, religious or ideological. The world has been experiencing terrorism for a long time and the affected people have faced major hardships. Some of the major terrorist attacks that shook the world to the core include:
The 9/11 attacks in New York, U.S.: The attack of 9/11 on the World Trade Center is proclaimed to be the worst terrorist attack of the history with the estimated number of deaths to be around 3000.

Yazidi Community bombings: Yazidi bombings included four suicide bombers and lead to the death of more than 500 people.

The attacks of 26/11 in Mumbai: Terrorist attack of 26/11 included bombing, shooting and making the people hostages in the whole Mumbai.

The attacks of Peshawar, Pakistan: The attacks were carried out by the Taliban. This was a school massacre where the terrorists made the children hostages and killed more than 150 of them.

Apart from spreading horror and dismay all around the world, terrorism has also contributed to many more vile things. It has stretched its reach to women, and hence, not only the men area getting indulged in terrorism, but women are also getting groped by the hands of terrorism. Some misleading developments have been noticed in the women of this changing era. Although women are considered the one with hearts and are usually expected to counter terrorism and violence, yet many women are seen to be joining the terrorist powers or seen spying for them. It is a highly evocative and painful sight to watch the women be the reason for all the havoc in the world. Everyone’s reaction is “How can a woman do this?” when they hear of a woman involved in any kind of crime, let alone be terrorism. In recent years, it has been found that many women are being complicit in the terrorist activities around the world.

The world has seen a rise in female suicide bombers. Brown elucidated 2 major reasons that explain why women are used in the terrorist activities.

First, women get at impetus to be a part of terrorism to attain glory or for the forgiveness of their own sins or maybe in a desire to achieve the ultimate paradise. The sins which women try to atone for by blowing themselves up are usually sexual in nature, which is not the case with men.

Second, terrorism helps the women financially. The suicide bombers, let them be men or women, are assured a financial support. Their children are often taken care of later on by terrorist organizations and are taught to be proud of their mothers because they gave their lives for the greater cause. Thus, the financial impetus being the driving factor here turns the women into terrorism. For the terrorist organizations, it is quite strategically advantageous to use women rather than men for their activities as women can easily dodge the detection and security and they can be really delusional about their appearances. Their deaths secure eight times as much media coverage as that of their male counterparts. The epic opening scene of the movie “The Battle of Algiers” of 1966 depicts women terrorism as the women dressed in a western attire moves around, passes through the security and plants detonators in multiple sites.

According to some reports, thirty-four percent of terrorist attacks since 1985 have been carried out by women and more than thirty percent of international terrorists are thought to be female (Nacos  2005,  436). In 2002, for example, on four separate occasions, Palestinian women, starting with Wafa Idris, committed suicide bombings against Israeli targets.  In October 2003, a law student from Jenin named Hanadi Jaradat detonated herself in a seaside restaurant in Haifa, killing at least nineteen people. Women have been indulging in many crimes other than terrorism, like molestation, torture, bank robberies and what not. Other major examples of groups of terrorists that include women are the “Black Widows” of Chechnya and the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam” of Sri Lanka where 40% of the terrorist attacks are attributed to women.

Talking about LTTE terrorist group; the Tamils originally belonged to Sri Lanka who wanted independence from the Sri Lankan (Eelam) government. Women’s role in the LTTE conforms to the gender norms of terrorist organizations. The existing canon on women in terrorism, and specifically the  LTTE, requires a critical  review and comprehensive analysis to understand women’s role in political violence. Women in this group have startled the world by their powers and fighting skills against the Sri-Lankan government. They have tended to overcome men in a negative manner. The LTTE group stands for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which is a Sri Lankan Tamil community. Women were recruited in the terrorist group for their own strategic purposes. The cloak of invisibility around women lets them pass through all the security systems, and hence, this is how they get their work done. The Tamil women are expected to live their lives traditionally by doing the household work, spending most of their time in the kitchen, devoting their time to their family, wearing saree, bindi and jewelry, reflecting the cultural identities and mannerisms and what not. However, on the other hand, LTTE women fighters do not stand up to the expectations of the society of living their lives traditionally. In the place of saree, their attire is shirt and T-shirts similar to men. They carry cyanide capsules as their jewelry and heavy guns and weapons in their hand. LTTE Tamil women dribbled down the stereotype of women being biologically weak and fight in the wars equally to men.

On 1998, January 25th, the LTTE women Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine, Sri Dalada Maligawa, Temple of the Tooth Relic, in Kandy town and ended up killing 16 people. The LTTE women fighters are not just limited to their own country, but have been spreading around the world. The Indian, as well as the Sri Lankan state, was startled when one of the women LTTE members attacked the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. She attempted to kill the PM by suicide bombing within the Indian Territory. It was one of the most remarkable incidents in the history of attacks by LTTE. In 2006, a pregnant suicide bomber belonging to the group attacked the Sri Lankan army chief of staff in one of the high-security places of Sri Lanka.

Not only in LTTE, women have played a major role in ISIS too. Although thousands of men are a support system to the ISIS terrorist group but the women are described as the “glue that holds together the group”. The study ‘Women’s Connectivity in Extreme Networks’ has been published in the journal Science Advances and involved researchers analyzing data from 40,000 suspected terrorists out of which around 24883 are men and 16831 are women. They monitored the Russian social media site Vkontakte which is less strict on removing contested social media use than other social media sites such as Facebook. Though ISIS groups are male-dominated, the important connections and links were carried by women.
Some of the deadliest female terrorists of the history are stated below.

Dzhanet Abdulayeva and Maryam Sharipova, Russia, 38 dead: These two women belonged to the Russian region of Daghestan. They were suicide bombers and detonated themselves on 29th March 2010 in the Moscow underground system. The attacks were claimed by Chechen Islamists. These women are also called “black widows”.

Reem Riyashi, Israel, four dead: Riyashi escaped the security check by claiming to have metal plates embedded in her legs. She triggered her device while being searched by a female Israeli soldier. She bombed herself at the Erez Checkpoint between Gaza and Israel on 14th January 2004.

Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, India, assassination of Rajiv Gandhi: She was a member of the LTTE terrorist group. Rajaratnam was responsible for the assassination of the PM of India, Rajiv Gandhi on 21 May 1991 by suicide bombing.

Fusako Shifenobu: She was one of the first female terrorists and is now the world’s most wanted terrorist. She was the leader of a Japanese organization who were responsible for the attacks on America. Fusako is currently living in Syria.

Dalal El Mughrabo: She kidnapped an Israeli bus in 1978 and was killed during the event.

Ulrike Meinhof: She, along with two of her friends, was the founder of the organization RAF (Rote Armee Fraction) which supported leftist values and hence they were responsible for a series of attacks across Germany.

In order to establish a framework of reference, confirmed incidents of women perpetrating terrorist activities since  1968 were collected into a dataset  (the  Female Terrorist Attack Dataset). The results of this research indicate that there are several other groups or causes – Chechen groups, for example  – that equal or approach the  LTTE  in terms of the level of participation of women.12 The difference between the groups is not statistically significant and does not support that conclusion that women are much more involved in the  LTTE than in other groups,  particularly considering that the dataset is quite solid when it comes to describing LTTE activities, but less so historically.  Another reason to recruit women is that the LTTE experience shortage of terrorists, hence they fill the positions by recruiting women who are incapable of childbirth, or whose family requires monitorial support.

In this patriarchal society, women are being idealized and are always seen from a victim’s perspective. They are considered to be caring, weak and naïve. These kinds of stereotypes degrade the strength of women and hence do not consider women capable of doing anything that is equal to men – in a good sense or a bad sense. The society needs to cease idealizing women and start believing that they too can be indulged in such heart-wrenching activities like terrorism. The symbolism of women as non-violent and peaceful is pretty much delusional and lead us to believe that women shouldn’t be participating in such activities, whereas the truth is that whether it is a man or a woman, everyone should be equally shocked when it comes to terrorism or other criminal activities. By singling out terrorism to only one gender, calling it more of a masculine activity, people fail to understand terrorism itself.

references
http://www.sociologygroup.com/terrorism-definition-examples/

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