Female suicide bombings in Iraq: Why the recent surge?

Women are believed to be carrying out attacks to avenge the deaths of loved ones, counter depression, or atone for previous actions.

By Huma Yusuf

posted July 08, 2008 at 10:15 am EDT

The number of attacks carried out by female suicide bombers in Iraq has increased sharply in 2008, causing observers to probe more deeply the motivations of the women involved and review policies that might be prompting the surge. Others are trying to determine whether this new tactic signals Al Qaeda's innovation or desperation in its fight against Iraqi and US forces.

A female suicide bomber killed nine people and injured 12 others on Monday at a market near Baquba in Iraq. A BBC report highlights that the attack is the latest in a wave of bombings by women.

The use of women to carry out suicide bombings has become a regular tactic of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The US military says there have been more than 20 suicide bombings by women this year in Iraq.

Just last month, female suicide bombers made headlines by carrying out multiple attacks in Iraq's Diyala Province, where they have been most active. On June 22, a woman carried out the deadliest of four strikes across Diyala that left 15 people dead, The New York Times reported.

Earlier in the month, CNN reported that another female suicide bomber had targeted Iraqis celebrating their national team's victory in a soccer match against China. She killed 29 people in a marketplace in Qara Tappa, a town in Diyala Province.

According to the New York Times report, it remains unclear why recent suicide bombings carried out by women have occurred in the province.

While Diyala is no longer under the almost complete control of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, as it was much of last year, a spate of attacks has prompted concerns about the endurance of recent security gains and the extent to which guerrillas in some areas still operate freely.

Attacks by women earlier in the year sparked some confusion about Al Qaeda's strategy with regards to deploying female suicide bombers. On February 1, two mentally disabled women who had been "wired with explosives that were detonated remotely" killed 73 Iraqis in two popular pet markets in Baghdad. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the deployment of women was a departure from Al Qaeda's usual tactic of car bombings – one that sought to take advantage of less-stringent security protocols for women.

After that bombing, it was believed that women were being coerced by Al Qaeda operatives, or that they were unaware of what they were doing. However, an attack in March dispelled those assumptions. Reuters reported the deliberate manner in which a female suicide bomber killed a Sunni tribal chief who oversaw a neighborhood security unit in Diyala Province.

Police said the woman went to the home of Thaer Saggban al-Karkhi in Kanaan, southeast of the provincial capital Baquba, knocked on the door and told guards she needed to speak to him. When Karkhi came to the door she detonated a vest packed with explosives she was wearing hidden underneath her robes, police said.

Another report in The New York Times emphasizes that this trend of female suicide bombers gained momentum only last year.

Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon in Iraq or elsewhere, but they have been relatively rare. Since 2003, 43 women have carried out suicide bombings in Iraq, a very small percentage of the total, according to the U.S. military. Though the first two cases came in the first year of the war, female suicide attacks did not really become a trend until 2007, when there were eight such bombings in Iraq.

Previously, The Christian Science Monitor compiled a list of suicide bombings carried out by women in Iraq through August 2006.

The reasons why the number of female suicide bombers is on the rise remain hotly debated. A CNN report suggests that the attacks are an extension of ongoing efforts by women to support the Iraqi insurgency. It adds that security lapses with regard to women are facilitating female suicide bombings.

Women and girls always have played a role in the insurgency in Iraq, helping feed militants, hiding them in their homes and helping to sneak weapons around the country.

They have proved to be highly effective in their operations, because women are not searched by men for cultural and religious reasons.

On the other hand, The New York Times argues that most female suicide bombers are women suffering from depression or a lack of purpose in the wake of a male family member's loss, whether that be due to death or detention.

In a particularly painful twist, the phenomenon seems to have arisen at least in part because of successes in detaining and killing local members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a homegrown Sunni insurgent group that U.S. intelligence says is foreign led.

The women who become suicide bombers often have lost a close male relative — a husband, a brother, a son — in fighting, because they became suicide bombers themselves or because they were detained by U.S. or Iraqi security forces.

An article published by Islam Online suggests that women are becoming suicide bombers to avenge the death of their loved ones and cites the example of Um Mustafa, a 41-year-old woman training to become a bomber.

Um Mustafa's husband and her two children were killed during a US blitz in the western city of Fallujah in 2004.

Since then, her desire for revenge has never died down….

Um Mustafa met with members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq group to help her carry out attacks against US forces. "I will give my life to God wherever my leader tells me to do so," she said.

Alternatively, an Associated Press report, published online by MSNBC, suggests that the recruitment of female suicide bombers reveals the weakness of the Al Qaeda infrastructure in Iraq.

Farhana Ali, a terrorism expert with the RAND Corp. who has studied the issue extensively, said al-Qaida's efforts to recruit women reflects its desperation after recent crackdowns.

"Al-Qaida and insurgents are now desperate and want to ensure that their cause (and) organization stays alive," she said. "Women's participation in violence keeps the cause alive for many reasons: Women, like men, also share similar grievances, especially women who have suffered a loss."

Such attempts to consider the broader sociopolitical implications of female suicide bombings are a departure from earlier studies, reported on by Ynetnews, an Israeli English-language news website, that suggested that women carried out attacks to atone for previous sins or wrongdoings by one of their family members.

Women carry out suicide bombings with the aim of "cleansing" themselves and erasing their past, a study published … by Haifa University reveals.

Female suicide bombers are not unique to Iraq. Women have previously carried out deadly attacks in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian, Russian-Chechen, and Sri Lankan-Tamil conflicts, as documented by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.