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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TERROR AND THE LOGIC OF OPPRESSION

The only position for women in the [movement] is prone.—Stokely Carmichael, Black Panther leader, 19641

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more. —Ulrike Meinhof, female leader of the German Red Army Faction, May 1968²

ASSASSINS,. THEN AND NOW

There is a long history of using violence to inspire terror. Historically, all the major religions—Muslim (Shi'a and Sunni), Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish—have employed terrorist violence, in many regions of the world. As far back as the Old Testament, Samson brought down the temple of the Philistines, killing those inside and himself in the process. Members of various early Christian, Muslim, and Jewish heretical sects were willing to sacrifice their lives for their beliefs, and occasionally sacrificed the lives of others as well. These groups used violence to frighten their enemies and to instill terror among the population with varying degrees of efficacy. The early groups, although inspired by religious fervor, were differentiated by their fundamental goals. Some hoped to expel a foreign occupier; others engaged in violence to celebrate their dedication to a cause, an idea, or a particular leader. The (Hindu) Thugs, (Muslim) Assassins, and (Jewish) Zealots all used terror and were principally motivated by religion.³

Much of what inspires religious terrorism today is reflected in the history of these early organizations. The early terrorists' desire for publicity, their indoctrination of children, their targeting of foreign occupiers, and attacks against collaborators are all surprisingly similar to the tactics used today in Israel, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis has written about the activities of the twelfth-century Nizari, an Ismaili Islamic sect more commonly known as the Assassins. The word assassin, which is still used today to describe a politically motivated murderer, can be traced to the Arabic word hashishiyyin, because the Nizari reputedly smoked hashish before engaging in acts of terror. Their primary goal was to purify Islam. They inflicted relatively few casualties, although in their heyday they posed a serious threat to the governments of the Seljuk Empire in Persia and the Levant. The account written by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century describes what many present-day Islamic suicide bombers think will be their ultimate heavenly reward. Speaking of the Assassin chief, Polo wrote,

The King had caused a certain valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and had turned it into a garden, the largest and most beautiful that ever was seen flowing freely with wine and milk and honey and water; and numbers of ladies and of the most beautiful damsels in the world, who could play on all manner of instruments and sung most sweetly, and danced in a manner that it was charming to behold. For the Old Man desired to make his people believe that this was actually Paradise…So when the Old Man would have any Prince slain, he would say to such a youth: “Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest, my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And should'st thou die nevertheless even so, I will send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.” And in this manner the Old One got his people to murder any one whom he desired to get rid of.⁴

From 1090 to 1256 AD, the Assassins terrorized all who opposed them, killing grand viziers, ministers, and kings, and even attacking the Muslim hero Salah ad-Din. They battled the forces of Genghis Khan during the Mongol invasions of the Middle East. To spread their notoriety, they attacked prominent victims at venerated holy sites and at the royal court. They struck on Muslim holy days when crowds were present to maximize the publicity. Lewis explains that their weapon was “always a dagger, never poison, never a missile…and the Assassin usually made no attempt to escape; there was even a suggestion that to survive the mission was shameful.”⁵

The Assassins' goal was to return the Islamic community of believers (umma) into a single community, as had been the case under the first four rightfully guided caliphs, the successors to the Prophet, in the seventh century. By the twelfth century there were several centers of Islamic thought and devotion, which had been split apart by war and successive invasions. These splinters gave rise to different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and different interpretations of the faith, which pitted Muslims against other Muslims. The Assassins rebelled against the existing political order and sought to establish their own, one that would consist of a series of mountain fortresses and city states. To facilitate cooperation among the states, they established a network of supporting cells in sympathetic neighboring urban centers.

We can draw many parallels between the Assassins and contemporary Islamic fundamentalist groups that employ terror. Like the Assassins, many of the current movements indoctrinate their followers at an early age and rely upon adherents' dedication to charismatic leaders. Like the Assassins, Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri call for a restoration of the Muslim caliphate and unification of Islam against the non-believers. Like the Assassins, Al Qaeda and its offshoot organizations allege that Islam is surrounded by hostile neighbors and under attack and thus they must use any means necessary to fend off the apostates who would undermine their goal of a united community of believers.

Although there are many early examples of using violence to terrorize a population, the first modern suicide bombers, as far as we know, were the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II. Beginning in November 1944, young university-educated men used their bodies and their planes to attack the American fleet in the Pacific, especially targeting aircraft carriers and battleships.

Admiral Takijiro Onishi had asked the young men to volunteer for a “special attack” (tokkotai) meaning: transcending life and death. Onishi commanded the first squadron, known as Shinpu Tokubetsu Kogekitai. His reasoning was that Japan was nearly defeated, short of resources, and had nothing to lose by sending its young pilots on cost-effective suicide missions in the hope of deterring the enemy. Onishi explained that “if they [the pilots] are on land, they would be bombed down, and if they are in the air, they would be shot down. That's sad…Too sad…To let the young men die beautifully, that's what tokkotai is. To give a beautiful death, that's called sympathy.”⁶

In a letter to his parents, Second Lieutenant Shigeyuki Suzuki explained his reasons for volunteering for a kamikaze mission:

People say that our feeling is one of resignation, but they do not understand at all how we feel, and think of us as a fish about to be cooked. Young blood flows in us. There are persons we love, we think of, and many unforgettable memories. However, with those, we cannot win the war…To let this beautiful Japan keep growing, to be released from the wicked hands of the Americans and British, and to build a “free Asia” was our goal from the Gakuto Shutsujin year before last; yet nothing has changed…The great day that we can directly be in contact with the battle is our day of happiness and at the same time, the memorial of our death.⁷

In the Battle of Okinawa, from April to June 1945, more than two thousand kamikaze pilots rammed fully fueled fighter planes into more than three hundred ships, killing five thousand Americans in the most costly naval battle in U.S. history.⁸ Researcher Peter Hill found that only a minority of the kamikazes actually hit their targets. The Allied fleets deployed radar ships to spot the enemy planes, after which they bombarded them with antiaircraft fire. The Allies also enjoyed air superiority.

Not everyone in the Japanese high command believed that kamikaze attacks were a good strategy. First, it was an extremely expensive tactic to use a trained pilot and his aircraft for a single attack. It conflicted with the basic military principle of inflicting maximum damage on the enemy with the minimum loss to one's own resources. Second, plane-crash attacks lacked sufficient penetrative power to strike a mortal blow to the American aircraft carriers. To be effective, the kamikaze had to strike when the decks were fully laden with aircraft. Third, it was enormously difficult to evaluate the success of missions because the pilots never returned and their commanders had every incentive to overestimate the gains achieved by their men's sacrifice.

Although Japanese pilots committed the vast majority of the kamikaze attacks, similar missions were conducted by other countries. In April 1945, Germany used planes to crash into bridges to impede the Soviet armies closing in on Berlin. The pilots were reported to have signed a declaration saying, “I am above all else clear that the mission will end in my death.”⁹ There were at least two incidents of American suicide attacks on Japanese ships, one during the battle of Coral Sea in May 1942, the second at Midway that June. In both cases, the planes were either out of fuel or too badly damaged to return to base.

The most significant factor leading to the kamikaze strategy was the fact that Japan could not win against the American juggernaut using conventional forces. The kamikaze attacks inspired terror throughout the American fleet and helped convince American military leaders to deploy nuclear weapons against this nation whose people were so dedicated and so unafraid of death.

However, an attack by a person in uniform against a military target such as a battleship during a declared state of hostilities does not easily fit the current definition of terrorism. The modern definition assumes that the targets are civilians and the perpetrators are non-state actors: terrorist acts are perpetrated by clandestine organizations or illegal groups that are not directly tied to the institutions of government (although they may have support emanating from other countries). According to the strictest interpretation of the term with its emphasis on civilian casualties, several of the most famous attacks against U.S. targets would not constitute acts of terror. The 1983 attack against the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, the attack in 2000 against the USS Cole in Yemen, and, to a lesser extent, the attack against the Pentagon on 9/11, all targeted military rather than civilian personnel.

Although there were instances of political violence to overthrow governments and assassinate world leaders from the seventeenth century on (for example, Guy Fawkes's attempt to kill King James I and blow up the British parliament in 1605), the concept of terror as a systematic use of violence to attain political ends was first codified by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. Robespierre deemed la terreur to be the “emanation of virtue” that delivered “prompt, severe, and inflexible” justice as “a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs.”¹⁰ The Reign of Terror, a period of violence that lasted for one year between 1793 and 1794, represented the internecine conflicts between two political foes, the Jacobins and the Girondins, and was punctuated by mass executions of so-called enemies of the Revolution. The more extremist Jacobins exterminated thousands of potential enemies, regardless of their sex, age, or condition, in a battle between competing ideologies.

Our understanding of terrorism has shifted since the French Revolution to mean the deliberate targeting of civilians by non-state agents intending to cause fear and panic and so bring about political change. The U.S. State Department acknowledges, however, that there is no single definition of terrorism. It uses the term to mean premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. “International terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than one country. In their definitions, scholars tend to place more emphasis on terrorists' intention to inspire fear among a target audience; the aim of persuasion transcends the harm caused to the immediate victims.¹¹

All of this is to say that, in effect, there is no clear agreement on exactly what terrorism is. Each organization and institution has its own definition, which tends, not surprisingly, to ensure that any attack against it counts as terrorism. The military does not emphasize that the victims have to be civilian, and business definitions do not suggest that an act of terror has to be purely political. By one recent count, there were in excess of 110 different definitions of terrorism and no clear consensus by international legal agencies about which was correct.

For members of anarchist political groups in the nineteenth century, being called a terrorist was a badge of honor. In 1901, anarchists assassinated American president William McKinley. His successor, Teddy Roosevelt, vowed to exterminate terrorism everywhere. He proposed deporting all anarchists back to their countries of origin, although many had not committed crimes and were opposed to terror. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson authorized Attorney General Palmer to round up all anarchists and ship them to the Soviet Union.¹²

The 1993 and 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center were certainly not the first (or second) occasions when New York's Financial District was targeted. Another anarchist, Mario Buda, blew up a wagon full of explosives there on September 16, 1920. The dynamite-laden wagon passed by lunchtime crowds and stopped across the street from the headquarters of the J.P. Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street, on the Financial District's busiest corner. Its cargo, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite with 500 pounds (230 kg) of heavy, cast-iron sash weights, exploded in a timer-triggered detonation that sent thousands of slugs tearing through the air.¹³ The horse and wagon were blasted into small fragments.¹⁴ Forty people were killed and two hundred injured. There was immediate panic and a national emergency was declared. Capitalism survived but it was widely assumed that President Wilson's roundup of anarchists was the motivation behind the blast.

According to UCLA professor David C. Rapoport, “The Russian writer Stepniak described the terrorist as ‘noble, terrible, irresistibly fascinating, uniting the two sublimities of human grandeur, the martyr and the hero.' Dynamite, a recent invention, was the weapon of choice for the male terrorist, because it usually killed the person who threw the bomb also, demonstrating that he was not an ordinary criminal.”¹⁵ A successful terrorist had to know how to fight and how to die, and the most admirable death occurred after a court trial where he or she accepted responsibility, and used the occasion to indict the regime. One of the earliest anarchists, the Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich, embraced the term “terrorist.” At her trial she indignantly insisted that she was a terrorist, not a murderer. Such distinctions would be difficult to make today.

According to Rapoport, terrorism has changed significantly over the decades. The groups that have emerged and the goals they espouse have adapted to changing global circumstances and, often, to the changing nature of how states deal with them. Rapoport argues that four waves of terrorism have defined the modern world. The first wave began in the 1880s with the anarchists. The second wave, an anticolonial movement beginning in the 1920s and lasting through the 1960s, pitted many small and new states against their colonial masters to help shake off imperial rule. Some forty years later, the New Left wave married terrorism with communism and was particularly popular in Latin America. Finally, beginning in 1979 with the Iranian revolution, which provided both inspiration and, occasionally, funds, a religious wave fused terror with religious justifications for violence.

The anticolonial wave included a wide variety of groups and organizations that not only directed their attacks against the colonial masters at home but also, when they had the means to do so, took the violence to the countries of the imperialists. This wave was the most diverse in the ways it brought together wildly different organizations, ranging from Palestinian terrorist groups to the Huk rebellion in the Philippines and the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Some of the leaders of terror groups during the anti-colonial wave became legitimate leaders in their own right when that period ended. The transition from terrorist-cell leader to president or prime minister has resulted in confusion over who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter, a distinction that continues to plague our understanding of political violence. This is particularly evident when one considers that more former terrorist leaders than American presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Most terrorist organizations have understood their goals to be revolution, secession, or national self-determination. The principle that a people should govern itself was a legacy of the American and French revolutions; the concepts of self-determination and national identity played key roles in both upheavals. Later, President Wilson's Fourteen Points, his hoped-for outcome of World War I, emphasized the right of all peoples to self-determination and freedom from colonial rule. To this day, the heads of terrorist movements often see themselves as the future leaders of their people. But the terms “people” and “self-determination” can both be ambiguous.¹⁶ The drive for self-determination may prompt leaders of terrorist movements to dream of a future in which they replace the current regime or government and transform the political landscape. However, this process requires that the population as a whole supports what the group does in its name.

Most terrorist organizations begin quite small, as a dedicated group of true believers, existing on the outer edges of society, who use violence to spread their message. They begin by engaging in criminal activity—drug-smuggling, bank-robbery, hostage-taking, and the like—to fill their war chests. Once they obtain the money to acquire more sophisticated weapons, they raise the stakes by challenging the government, their rivals, or the institutions of the state such as the army or the police. With every attack they launch, the organizations hope that the state will reveal its brutality. When governments overreact, this plays right into the terrorists' hands.

Many civilians die as a result of heavy-handed counter-terrorist responses, and those individuals who couldn't decide which side they were on initially begin to migrate toward the terrorist groups. Without the violent overreaction by the government forces, terrorist groups could not possibly hope to replenish the ranks of lost operatives.

For rebels seeking publicity or hoping to spread their message, terrorism, and suicide terrorism in particular, may succeed when traditional methods of insurgency fail. In a world in which, according to media lore, “if it bleeds it leads,” terrorism bleeds a lot, and suicide terrorism even more so. However, most groups do not begin their campaigns against the state using suicide terrorism. There was no suicide terrorism in the first Chechen war. The first Palestinian intifada did not include suicide terrorism among the many clashes between Palestinians and Israelis. The first World Trade Center attack was a truck bomb, not a suicide mission. Suicide terrorism is frequently the option of last resort when groups are especially weak.

Even as a weapon of the weak, it remains a highly effective tactic for terrorist groups seeking publicity or hoping to cause a high number of casualties on the other side. It is effective because it is extremely difficult to guard against an attack by someone so completely dedicated to a cause that he or she is willing to sacrifice his or her life. The suicide bomber is the ultimate smart bomb, a thinking and breathing missile that can change directions, cross a street, or delay detonation depending on the circumstances. While most terrorist attacks require extensive planning, both for the operation itself and for the safe retreat of the attacker, the suicide attack requires only half as much forethought. The attacker does not expect to survive and, in fact, the success of the attack is defined in part by his or her death. While there is a lively debate about whether terrorists ever really achieve their goals of independence or of putting an end to the presence of foreign troops, part of the goal of terrorist leaders is to terrify large numbers of people by killing only a handful.

In recent years, the goal of killing a few to terrorize many has been replaced by some of the messianic terrorist organizations with a new goal of killing as many people as possible. In the minds of groups that believe in the end of days, the violence they wreak will help expedite the end they look forward to. Groups like the Aum Shinrikyo in Japan and several of the radical Salafi groups advocate huge numbers of casualties for every operation. These groups seek and use weapons of mass destruction. The Salafi groups—which experts say encompass some of the deadliest organizations today, including Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the violent splinter groups from the Muslim Brotherhood (al Ikhwan al Muslimun)—aim to re-create the perfection of the early Islamic period. Salafism is associated with the beliefs of Wahhabism (fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia) and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam throughout the Islamic world. Such groups advocate the use of violence and emphasize the smaller jihad against the nonbeliever over the more important and larger jihad within each individual. Salafism differs from Islamism in that it rejects any Western ideologies or constructs such as constitutions, political parties, and elections, which Islamists support (as long as Islamic parties benefit).

It is also important to distinguish between the defensive and offensive jihad. According to political scientist Nelly Lahoud, the ideological engine that drives jihadis is the belief that they are engaged in defensive, not offensive, jihad; the defensive nature of the battle today makes jihad lawful. More to the point, during defensive jihad it is every (emphasis on “every”) Muslim's individual duty (fard ‘ayn) to participate. Based on the opinions advanced by the classical/medieval Islamic jurists, Palestinian jihadi ‘Abdallah Azzam concluded that the classical defensive doctrine of jihad applies today. Thus he was able first to rally Arabs to volunteer for jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets and then to pave the way for the foundation of Al Qaeda. Azzam argued that when the land of Islam is invaded, jihad is required for every Muslim, and the need “to seek permission” (from parents, husbands, or authorities) becomes void. Accordingly, “a son is permitted to go out to fight without his father's permission, a wife without her husband's, and he who is in debt without his creditor's [italics added for emphasis].”²⁸

WOMEN WHO BLOW THEMSELVES UP

Female suicide bombers are even more effective than men for a variety of reasons. At least until recently, their use as operatives has been completely unexpected. Soldiers and security personnel have been guided by profiles and stereotypes of terrorists as men. Terrorist organizations have deliberately used these preconceptions to their advantage by employing operatives who do not fit the conventional profile. They widened the field in which they look for volunteers, and found them among women and even children. Israel's restrictive checkpoints and closely monitored borders proved fairly effective against Palestinian insurgent organizations inside the Occupied Territories in the past. Since the mid-1990s, it has been almost impossible for unmarried men under the age of forty to get travel permits to cross the border into Israel—even if they are sick, wounded, or riding in an ambulance. However, women don't arouse suspicion the way men do, and blend in more effectively with Israeli citizens. The use of the least likely suspect is the most likely tactical adaptation for a terrorist group under scrutiny.¹⁸

Attacks perpetrated by women have tended to be especially successful where the terrorist planners needed the perpetrator to blend in with the Israeli “street.” These female terrorists Westernize their appearance, adopting modern hairstyles and short skirts.¹⁹ For attacking civilians, the best possible operative is one who resembles the target. Alternatively, when the women are not trying to blend into Israeli society by wearing midriff-baring halter tops and short skirts, the conservative loose, billowing clothing that many women wear in the Middle East and South Asia is perfect for concealing the IED. When women strap the explosives around their midsection, the bulge often gives the impression of late-term pregnancy, lulling security forces into thinking they are harmless expectant mothers. When the military or members of the security forces invasively search women at checkpoints, however, their action outrages the population, who feel that their women are being harassed and abused by foreigners. This feeds the propaganda machine that urges men to step up and help protect their women's honor.

Women bombers also tend to be more successful than men. They have higher kill rates and can penetrate the target more deeply than many men, who might get stopped at the entrance of a bus or restaurant. The ability to get deep inside a location increases the effectiveness both of the explosive materials and of the shrapnel packed into the IED. A bomb exploding in a confined space eliminates much of the oxygen, which is consumed as the incendiary device explodes. In essence, the deeper the bomber can get into a room or inside a bus or train, the more violently the enclosure will implode. “Suicide attacks are done for effect, and the more dramatic the effect, the stronger the message; thus a potential interest on the part of some groups in recruiting women.”²⁰ A growing number of insurgent organizations have adopted suicide bombing, not only because of its superiority over traditional guerrilla warfare but also because it garners significant media attention, especially when perpetrated by women and young girls.

Young women who combat Israel by blowing up their bodies generate a powerful symbol that creates publicity throughout the world. The image of women defying tradition to sacrifice their lives for the Palestinian cause has drawn international attention to the despair of the Palestinian people. On average, an attack perpetrated by a woman gets eight times as much press attention as a similar attack by a man. The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades has drawn propaganda mileage from their female bombers. This tactic also makes them appear more dangerous because it has erased the barriers between combatants and noncombatants, terrorists and innocent civilians.

The female suicide bomber is not a recent or new phenomenon. The first terrorist who killed herself while trying to kill others was Dalal Al Maghribi, a female commander of the Palestinian resistance movement Fatah. Dalal hijacked a bus in 1978 and killed herself and thirty-six passengers on the Jerusalem—Tel Aviv road. Her mode of attack was so novel that it was not recognized as a tactic of “suicide terrorism” at the time. Only in retrospect, after suicide bombings became relatively common, was Al Maghribi's martyrdom seen by some to belong in this category. Technically, the tactic was only invented on November 10, 1980, when Hossein Fahmideh, a thirteen-year-old member of the Iranian People's Army (Basiji) used his booby-trapped body to blow up an Iraqi tank.²¹

By most accounts, the first official female suicide bomber was a seventeen-year-old Lebanese girl, Sana'a Mehaydali, who was sent by the Syrian Socialist National Party (the SSNP or PPS), a secular, pro-Syrian Lebanese organization, to blow herself up near an Israeli convoy in Lebanon in April 1985. Women took part in twelve of the suicide attacks conducted by the SSNP during the 1980s. From Lebanon, the phenomenon of female bombers spread to other countries—from Sri Lanka to Turkey, Chechnya, Israel, and, most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.

There has been a significant public-relations payoff and financial benefit to sending, for example, eighteen-year-old Ayat Akras into the Kiryat HaYovel supermarket in Jerusalem to set off a bomb.²² The underlying message conveyed by female bombers is: terrorism is no longer a fringe phenomenon and the insurgents are all around you. Akras's death demonstrated that the Palestinian militant groups were not all composed of religious fanatics who believed that they would be granted entrance to paradise or that God would reward them with seventy-two virgins (houris). Nor are the organizations' leaders gripped by a burning desire to see all women locked behind black veils. This is a political war, not a religious war, and the suicide bombings are being carefully planned and executed as part of a precise political strategy.²³

MAKING SENSE OF SENSELESS ACTS

Even terrorist organizations have a rationally calculated strategy when they plan attacks and campaigns against their enemies. Modern armies have at their disposal arsenals and trained cadres of military recruits. States can call upon stores of weapons and destroy their enemies on the battlefield. Terrorist organizations, however, rarely have access to the same kinds of firepower as states and thus must adapt their strategies to account for this imbalance. The use of terrorism and suicide terrorism can be considered an example of the law of comparative advantage. In modern states where the technology is available, states can take a high-tech approach to war. Most terrorist organizations, however, have few resources besides cheap labor and dedicated individuals willing to die for the cause. In the words of Ahmad Yassin, the founder of Hamas, the militant Islamic organization that has perpetrated hundreds of attacks inside Israel: “Once we have warplanes and missiles, then we can think of changing our means of legitimate self-defense. But right now, we can only tackle the fire with our bare hands and sacrifice ourselves.”²⁴

When conventional military strategies are not available or fail, the rebels resort to guerrilla warfare; when guerrilla war fails, they resort to terror; when traditional methods of terror fail, they resort to suicide terrorism and acts of increasing barbarism against their enemies. In all the cases examined in this book, a group (or groups) is fighting against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and has no choice but to resort to terrorism if it is to continue its struggle. Even so, much of the success of terrorism hinges on whether the larger community that the terrorists say they represent approves of or rejects the use of violence.

If their own community supports and appreciates the bloodshed, we will see a literal explosion of violence and of groups that use terror to compete for the public's attention and approval. However, if the public rejects violence, or if the terrorists go too far and kill too many civilians or too many members of their own community, the groups will have to switch gears. This has been the case in Spain, where Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA, meaning roughly “Basque Homeland and Freedom”) attacks ended in so many civilian casualties that the organization implemented new operating procedures in which it promised it would give advance warning before detonating a bomb. This was also true of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), which tried unsuccessfully to implement a homicidal car-bomb campaign in the spring of 1990, only to have hundreds of staunch supporters accuse the organization of making them look like those “fanatics” in the Middle East. The PIRA faux suicide-car-bomb campaign began and ended on the same day; when the leadership realized that using such extreme tactics would alienate their base, they went back to using traditional car bombs that allowed the driver to escape with his life.

Inasmuch as the population can demand that even terrorist leaders demonstrate restraint, the population can also be the driving force behind increasing violence against the state and its constituents. Not all civilians will reject civilian casualties on the other side. If during the course of fighting a war on terror, the government demonstrates its sheer disregard for the other side and sacrifices civilian lives in the pursuit of the terrorists, the propaganda by terrorist leaders begins to resonate with the population upon whose support the insurgent group relies. When the government targets enemy civilians in aerial bombardments or uses helicopter gunships or drones, the civilians on the other side become legitimate targets. In interviews for my previous book, Dying to Kill, many Palestinians said, in effect, “If our civilians are not safe from harm, neither will Israel's civilians be safe.” Thus any state or government fighting a war on terror must remember that its actions have consequences and that if its actions are unrestrained, the terrorists' will be too.

Just as terrorists adhere to a logic that grows out of their situation, so too does the state—acting to suppress or destroy the rebel movement—develop a rationale to justify its actions. This rationale may be as simple as a democratic state using legitimate force to eliminate an insurgency. The state may identify the rebel forces as foreign, or as members of a race they want to eliminate, sequester, or assimilate into the population. The relative freedom that the state enjoys in pursuing its policy of oppression varies according to a number of factors, including democratic accountability, sensitivity to international opinion, transparency to scrutiny, and the power of the ideology driving the action.

The case studies that follow tend to show that the ferocity of the oppression provokes a reaction from the terrorists more or less equal in ferocity. For example, in May 2009, the government of Sri Lanka used brutal force to eradicate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The international community alleged that the government had perpetrated massive human rights abuses and that thousands of innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire. The Sri Lankan air force bombarded villages suspected of LTTE support, and thousands of women and children who were not members of the terrorist groups perished in the process. In the aftermath of the violence, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch Asia, and scores of other NGOs called for an international investigation into alleged war crimes. The government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa refused, and limited international access to the region. For the government, this was how to end the scourge of terrorism. The cases in this book argue the opposite: terrorism does not end with the barrel of a gun; rather, this kind of state brutality gives rise to new generations vowing to fight again in the near and distant future.

Modern military technology provides the state with mobility (helicopters, tanks, planes, forward-operating bases); an extraordinary surveillance capability (satellites, unmanned drones, video, night vision); and overwhelming firepower. The state is also likely to control or have considerable influence over the media, therefore determining the level of support the policy of oppression enjoys. The terrorist has a range of options in attempting to counteract the state's advantages. These include attempts to influence public opinion by use, say, of the Internet or other new media (Twitter, Facebook, etc). They also include sniper attacks, acts of sabotage, ambushes, and bombings. In dire conditions, the terrorist may rationally conclude that he or she can strike a blow against the state only by giving up all hope of escape. In this sense, if the terrorist is sufficiently motivated, the suicide mission appears to be a rational choice. More often than not, suicide terrorism is a tactic of last resort. It is rarely the first choice for insurgent organizations; after all, the cost of suicide terrorism may be the loss of the best and the brightest of their supporters. It is also a tactic of weakness. Like the kamikaze attacks of World War II, the tactic appears rational only when all other options have failed. Under such conditions, the organizations create mechanisms and manipulate cultural mores to justify suicide (which might be contrary to their religious beliefs), and use intense propaganda and indoctrination to convince their populations that they have more to offer when dead than alive.

The logic of terror and oppression drives the terrorists to action and shapes the form of their reaction. But the actual motivation of individuals in specific cases is enormously complex. These motivations can be viewed on a continuum ranging from positive to negative. The strongest positive motivation is belief in a cause. In Northern Ireland, the goal was home rule; in Palestine, a separate independent state; in Sri Lanka, an independent Tamil homeland. Those committed to the cause believe in it utterly. These true believers are willing to pay any price to accomplish their goals.

A history—incidents of abuse, injustice, pogroms, all manner of grievances, heroic acts, and so on—feeds into belief in the cause. For Palestinians, the Sabra and Shatilla massacres and the First and Second intifadas form part of a history of grievance at the hands of the Israelis. For the Tamils, the memories of the pogroms in 1983, in which thousands of Tamils died, and, more recently, the 2009 war crimes perpetrated against them, constitute an inspirational record of abuse. For Chechens, the history includes distant memories of Stalin's purges and expulsions from their homeland during which tens of thousands perished, as well as more recent instances of violent oppression. For the Irish Republicans, the memories of Bloody Sunday and the hunger strikers inspired generations willing to die for the cause.

Terrorists and potential terrorists are often pressured into action by their peers and by shared experiences, including shared humiliation at the hands of their enemies. Many Palestinian men recall the humiliation of their fathers at checkpoints as the precise moment when they decided to join a militant organization. The shared experience of military occupation has increased the degree to which terrorist messages and propaganda resonate with the community. Although not every person under occupation joins the terrorists, the shared humiliation often means that the terrorists enjoy widespread support in their operations against the occupying forces.

Knowledge of and admiration for a pantheon of heroes and martyrs is a factor motivating many recruits to radical political movements. The Tamil Tigers published booklets featuring those who had given their lives as suicide bombers, dying for the vision of liberation and self-rule.²⁵ The Palestinians have produced trading cards with the likenesses of martyrs on them; children trade them like baseball cards in the streets of Jenin. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, the political arm of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, distributed playing cards with photos of well-known Irish martyrs, hunger strikers, and those shot down in cold blood by the British security services. Murals along the Falls Road in Belfast were covered with their images and conveyed the message to never forget those who had sacrificed their lives for others' sake. In the same spirit, charismatic leaders may provoke and embolden their followers into action. Osama bin Laden is a hero to his Muslim followers in the Middle East. Until his death in May 2009, Velupillai Prabhakaran was a cult-like leader among Tamils. Hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to parliament while he lay starving himself to death in a prison outside Belfast. Across regions and countries, the ability to inspire young people to take their own lives requires charismatic leaders who embody the cause and the fighting qualities of their supporters.

Institutions such as schools, camps, and prisons play a role in indoctrinating would-be fighters. The culture of martyrdom plays a causal role in the terrorist groups' ability to “market martyrdom.”²⁶ Instead of posters of Michael Jordan, Ronaldo, or Jim Morrison on their walls, young Palestinian boys place posters of martyrs like Yahya Ayyash or famous suicide bombers like Muhammed Siddique Khan. The young girls cover their walls with photos of Wafa Idris, the first known Palestinian female suicide bomber. Terrorist organizations name parks and streets after the bombers, making those they are named for far more famous in death than they would have been in life. It is a powerful lure for young people who want to make a difference. In this book you will see how at least one young Iraqi girl, Raniya Ibrahim Mutlaq (Mutleg), who wanted to grow up and become a doctor, was convinced by her extended family that she could do far more as a suicide bomber.

Family traditions, family relationships, and marriage ties preserve memories and provide moral comfort to fighters. These family traditions mean that women are often under intense family pressure to participate in clandestine activities. More often than not, women are involved in a variety of capacities, as couriers or recruiters, and occasionally, they become frontline fighters in the war. Family traditions have also meant that women can be manipulated under current codes of conduct to engage in violence.

Willing participation shades into coercion—family and peer pressure exerted with menace or the threat of ostracism. Not all women who participate in terrorism are coerced into it. When families join as a unit, the women can be just as ardent as the men in their lives. However, if the women are specifically targeted for abuse by the security forces or by their own people, they can be shamed into participating in terrorist violence.

In some societies, and in extreme circumstances, there is no question that women are coerced into undertaking suicide missions. When women in traditional societies violate (or are thought to have violated) the rules which govern their sexual behavior, or when they are compromised against their will, becoming a suicide bomber might seem to be a rational choice. Several women involved in terrorism joined because of an illicit love affair gone bad, or because they refused to marry the men chosen for them in an arranged marriage, or because they had cheated on their husbands, or had a child out of wedlock. In one case, a woman's inability to have a child meant that her husband left her and she became a pariah in her community. There are many ways in which women can be seen to bring shame to their families, while there may be only one way to restore pride after they have transgressed—by making the ultimate sacrifice.

In too many cases of women's involvement, the woman has been abused, victimized, or targeted in ways that leave her little choice but to join the terrorists in hope of reclaiming her honor. For the Tamil women raped at government checkpoints, their future marriage options disappear. For Iraqi women raped either by soldiers of the occupation or by members of the Ansar Al Sunnah terrorist group, there is no way to escape death at the hands of their family for violating the honor code. By becoming suicide bombers, they manage to reinvent themselves in one fell swoop. With one act of violence they go from being a source of family shame to a source of family pride.

NOT THE WEAKER SEX

In this book, we look at what has driven women to participate in terrorist activities as members of terrorist organizations. And then we look specifically at what has driven women to participate in suicide missions. In the following chapters I introduce the reader to several women and examine in detail how they came to be terrorists and what motivated them to kill. Some of the women have changed their worldviews while others remain as radicalized as they ever were. The women are members of terrorist organizations around the world. They have been plotters, propagandists, and pawns as well as, in some cases, suicide bombers.

Historically, the Provisional Irish Republican Army was a male-dominated organization. Nevertheless, Irish women played a crucial role in planting bombs and in luring British soldiers to their deaths, and even as hunger strikers. Women have been instrumental in Chechen terrorist organizations, especially the Riyadus Salikheen, the Martyrs' Brigade, which has been responsible for attacks in Moscow and Dagestan. The Chechen Black Widows have often been victimized and coerced into becoming bombers, and only a few have willingly blown themselves up for the cause. The Islamic Revival Movement, Hamas, is a traditional and conservative terrorist organization operating in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. One would not expect a woman to be among its most important operatives and yet this book introduces you to Ahlam at-Tamimi, a Hamas planner responsible for one of the deadliest attacks in Israel's history. Her rise to prominence and ability to influence others shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that women are not the weaker sex or inherently more peaceful than their male counterparts. Among the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, women were some of the most experienced fighting units and even constituted their own suicide squad, the Suthanthirap Paravaikal, or Freedom Birds. Women were involved in more than half of the LTTE suicide attacks and successfully killed presidents and prime ministers.

Finally, the book introduces you to the women of Al Qaeda. While international attention has focused on Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, a new generation of women is emerging to help ensure the group's survival after all the drones and missiles have attacked the current leadership. The women of Al Qaeda, some operating in Europe and the United States, use the Internet to radicalize and recruit scores of male jihadis and send them to their deaths.

Women's participation in terrorism may be a natural progression from their involvement in the radical and revolutionary struggles of the past. The women of the nineteenth-century Russian terror group Narodnaya Volya were considered more willing to die than their male comrades.²⁷ Women in radical organizations have engaged in anticolonial and revolutionary struggles in the Third World for decades. Beginning in 1968, women became involved in all manner of terrorist groups, from Marxist organizations in Europe to nationalist movements in the Middle East. Female terrorists came from all parts of the globe and from all walks of society—they were part of Italy's Red Brigades, Germany's BaaderMeinhof group, the American Black Panthers and Weathermen, and the Japanese Red Army; occasionally they were leaders in their own right. Women also played essential roles in several Middle Eastern conflicts, notably the Algerian Revolution (1958-62), the Iranian Revolution (1979), the First Lebanon War (1982), the First Palestinian Intifada (1987-91), and the Second or Al ‘Aqsa Intifada (since 2000).

Forty years of research on terrorism has revealed little about what motivates men and women to commit acts of terror. The majority of books portray women as the victims of terror,²⁸ and only a handful have examined women as the perpetrators. The books perpetuate the stereotype of women as mere pawns or victims. After an attack by a female operative, terrorism experts, journalists, psychologists, and analysts frequently develop a so-called psychological autopsy, examining where the perpetrator grew up, where she went to school, and what went wrong to make her turn to violence.

The media fetishizes female terrorists. This contributes to the belief that there is something really unique, something just not right about the women who kill. We make assumptions about what these women think, why they do what they do, and what ultimately motivates them. Women involved in terrorist violence are demonized more than male terrorists. One former bomber told me that the enemy was so angry that women were involved in the organization that they would humiliate the female fighters more than their male counterparts just to teach them a lesson.²⁹ For men in certain traditional societies, having women flout their authority, let alone defeat them in battle, is intolerable. After all, perpetrating acts that cause wanton destruction, death, and disorder seems incompatible with the traditional stereotype of what is expected of women—to be nurturing, caring figures who provide stability. The common assumption is that female terrorists must be even more depressed, crazier, more suicidal, or more psychopathic than their male counterparts. This runs contrary to the view of British journalist Eileen MacDonald, who found that women revolutionaries have stronger characters, more power, more energy, and are far more pragmatic than their male counterparts.³⁰

Regardless of their initial motivation, what we know for a fact is that women are now more essential to terrorist organizations than ever before. The “exploding womb” has replaced the “revolutionary womb” that produced and supported young extremists in the past. Leaders of terrorist movements routinely make cost-benefit calculations to select the most effective tactics, targets, and operatives. Their analysis has shown that women are deadly.