Bombshell (29 page)

Malika balked at wearing a burqa while at the women's training camp in Afghanistan. In principle, she understands that men are stronger than women, but her resistance and activism are a personal testimony to Allah. Her mantra is: “People resist, people fight, and people should be ready to die … It is better to die than to live in humiliation.”
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It is important that Muslim women participate in the struggle. As is the case with so many other terrorist groups, part of the logic for women's participation is to shame men into joining the struggle. Malika acknowledges that there are men who don't speak out because they are afraid. She speaks out for them. In doing so, she has been at the center of every major attack or terrorist plot in Belgium in the past ten years.

Malika managed to avoid long-term incarceration for so long because she played the European legal systems. She knew the rules and just how far she could go before actually being convicted for
committing a crime. She once told a Swiss court: “I know what I'm doing. I'm Belgian. I know the system.”
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While she hosted Internet chat groups and encouraged European Muslims to go to Iraq, she also claimed unemployment benefits from the Belgian government, which paid her $1,100 a month. For counter-terrorism officials and police, the situation was galling. It was only when she convinced a young French Muslim, Hamza el Alami, to go on jihad to Waziristan, on the Afghan border, and kill NATO troops that Malika made a crucial error. Belgium is a NATO member, so her recruitment of Muslims to fight against NATO troops in Afghanistan was considered an act of treason. Furthermore, el Alami was not completely sure that he wanted to go. Malika pressured him and when he died, she became an accessory after the fact. For the judges, she bore sweeping responsibility for the young man's death.
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Head judge Pierre Hendrix said she had been “trapped in a sickening logic of a conflict that did not concern her in any way” and even wondered whether she was sane.
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THE NEW GLOBAL JIHAD

Malika el Aroud is a representative of the new global jihad. A Muslim expatriate living in Europe, she communicates her messages of resistance over the Internet to a worldwide audience of true believers. Her words inspire men to travel thousands of miles to become suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan. This new Al Qaeda has no return address—it is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Al Qaeda is unlike traditional terrorist groups. Rather than being formally linked, many Al Qaeda terrorists find themselves in a loose network of affiliated groups. For the most part, Al Qaeda is a source of inspiration rather than a formal organization with a hierarchical structure and clearly identified leaders. Its amorphous structure helps to explain why it is so difficult to defeat and why it seems to be spreading throughout the world.

The majority of Al Qaeda's members are men, and its power base is decidedly masculine. At present, there are no women in the core leadership of Al Qaeda al Sulba, the main core of the organization and the heart and soul of the global jihad. Beyond this core is a nebulous movement with loosely connected offshoot organizations in countries all over the world and sympathizers who do not always engage in violence. Women are among its most fervent supporters, and some participate in the affiliated organizations, but it is rare for them to be on the front lines.
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Instead, they form an army of organizers, proselytizers, teachers, translators, and fund-raisers, who either enlist with their husbands or take the place of those who are jailed or killed.

They have found an especially significant outlet for the dissemination of radical ideologies online. The Internet has afforded jihadi women like Malika the opportunity to participate in jihad without affecting their inferior status in society. In Italy, Umm Yahya Aysha (Barbara) Farina directs the website and blog,
Al Muhajidah Magazine
. The October 2001 edition (posted immediately after 9/11) featured an editorial entitled “I Support the Taliban” and featured a picture of President George Bush with the caption “Wanted dead or alive, commander of crusade.”
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Farina regularly posts her blogs to Malika el Aroud's websites. American Colleen Renee LaRose, more commonly known as Jihad Jane, showed how infectious the use of the Internet and YouTube has become. Arrested in October 2009, LaRose was indicted in March 2010 for conspiring to commit murder and providing material support to terrorists. She boasted on the Internet of her readiness to help terrorists, recruit men and women for jihad, and raise money for operations in the United States, Europe, and Asia, according to her indictment.
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LaRose was arrested specifically for encouraging jihadis in Ireland to kill cartoonist Lars Vilks in Sweden after a series of insulting drawings in 2007 made Vilks public enemy number
one in many Islamic circles and Al Qaeda offered $100,000 for his death.
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The arrest and investigation into Jihad Jane (and her accomplice Jihad Jamie) demonstrated that the Internet, combined with women's ability to mobilize new recruits, has become a force to be reckoned with in the globalized jihad.

Back in 2004 Al Qaeda created a Web-based women's magazine,
Al Khansa'a
—named for the pre-Islamic female poet and convert who wrote lamentations for her brothers killed in battle. When Al Khansa'a received the news of her sons' deaths, she did not grieve, but exclaimed, “Praise be to Allah who honored me with their martyrdom. I pray for Allah to let me join them in heaven.”
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The webzine is published by the Women's Information Office in the Arab Peninsula, and its contents include articles on women's appropriate behavior, exercises for getting physically fit, how to support male jihadi relatives, terrorist training camps, and even the occasional recipe. Its first issue, with a bright pink cover and gold lettering, appeared in August 2004. Its lead article was “Biography of the Female Mujahid.” Though some of its articles discussed military training for women, the magazine's authors did not call on women to take part in combat. However, they did admonish women to watch their weight and advised them to stay physically fit (including the occasional fast) to be ready for jihad. The lead editorial promises, “We will stand up, veiled and in abayas, arms in hand, our children on our laps and the Book of Allah and Sunnah of the Prophet as our guide. The blood of our husbands and the bodies of our children are an offering to God.”
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The use of women in terrorist attacks carried out by Islamist organizations remains rare. It is, however, on the rise. Militant jihadi women have emerged in groups affiliated with Al Qaeda rather than in the core organization, because the core ideologues continue to oppose women's participation. The affiliated groups have been more practical and flexible with respect to this issue.
In instances where women are more likely to succeed than men, conservative ideologies go by the wayside. Hence the increased use of women bombers in Palestine, Chechnya, North Africa, and Somalia, which contradicts traditional Islamic ideology.

Al Qaeda has merged on a number of occasions with other like-minded groups. Bin Laden established the Maktab al Khidmat, commonly known as the Afghan Services Bureau, in 1984. In 1988 he established a new organization called Al Qaeda, and in late 1990, he merged with Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al Takfir Wal Hijra to create a new organization. Different attitudes about women can be an unintended consequence of these mergers.

In 2004, after years of competition and rivalry, bin Laden combined with Abu Musab al Zarqawi's al Tawhid wal Jihad insurgent group to create what later became Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). At the time of the merger, Zarqawi was conferred the title “Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of Two Rivers.” It has been suggested that Zarqawi achieved prominence only because American officials exaggerated his importance. Whether or not this is the case, the brief collaboration between Zarqawi and Al Qaeda allowed the introduction of female suicide bombers into the Iraqi theater of operations—something that neither bin Laden nor Al Zawahiri (Al Qaeda's main ideologue and number-two leader) enthusiastically supported. The merger also expanded al Qaeda's links in Europe: Zarqawi had operatives throughout the continent and in the United Kingdom providing funds and recruits. The alliance ultimately proved fragile because Zarqawi acted independently of directives and irritated the leadership by instigating outrageous acts of violence and focusing on Iraqi Shi'as rather than the forces of occupation.

We know very little about the first female suicide bomber for Al Qaeda in Iraq, except that she was dressed as a man. The attack occurred on September 28, 2005, at a United States military
recruiting center in Talafa, northern Iraq. The bomber took five lives and injured thirty. Her name has never been published and Zarqawi filmed no last-will-and-testament video to mark the attack as his own. In fact, Zarqawi used an alias “ghost group,” the Malik Suicidal Brigades, to claim responsibility. Zarqawi may have been hesitant to claim the operation: never before had any branch of Al Qaeda sent a woman on a suicide mission and no affiliated group had yet dared to break the taboo of using women as frontline fighters. The only acknowledgment of the unnamed woman's sacrifice posted on Zarqawi's website said: “A blessed sister carried out a heroic attack defending her faith … May God accept our sister among the martyrs.”
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The Talafa bomber's loose-fitting clothes concealed the explosives strapped around her waist. Because she was dressed as a man, the fact that she was a woman played no part in her reaching her target. The revelation of her gender secured for the organization a psychological rather than a tactical advantage; it was meant to prompt more Iraqi men to carry out martyrdom operations at a time when there were plenty of foreign fighters but few Iraqis willing to volunteer. Zarqawi found it useful to exploit the image of a desperate Iraqi woman throwing herself into battle because there were not enough brave men to step up.

Zarqawi was quick to appreciate the fact that using female operatives provided his organization with a competitive advantage when new insurgent groups were popping up all over the country. He understood that women were effective stealth weapons in an environment where it was indiscreet and inappropriate for a man to talk to a woman without a male relative present, let alone frisk her for weapons at a military checkpoint. Iraqi culture forbids men from searching women or even making eye contact with them. A former U.S. Marine officer who fought in the Battle of Falluja said, “If we are not allowed to look at Iraqi women, then how can we
search for the bomb under the abaya?”
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Women could bypass the checkpoints across the country, which were normally manned by male members of the Coalition forces or Iraqi police. The traditional and modest Islamic robes could easily conceal a vest packed with explosives. If anything, an IED strapped around a woman's waist gave her the appearance of late-term pregnancy and discouraged invasive body searches and frisking even more.

Because of the nature of Al Qaeda's conservative Islamic ideology and bin Laden and Al Zawahiri's vocal opposition to female operatives, American and British troops were not anticipating the introduction of female bombers. Although loath to admit it, they were also hesitant to shoot women, not least because they had been instructed, repeatedly, to avoid civilian casualties.
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They were certainly aware that, if they did frisk women at checkpoints, there would be hell to pay from the locals for humiliating their women.

Iraqi women have a history of protecting their homes and honor in the absence of their husbands or male family members. In Iraq's two previous wars (against Iran and during the first Gulf War), women took up arms to protect their children and communities from danger. It was only a small psychological leap from playing this role to participating in suicide bombings. Less than two months after the attack at Talafa, Zarqawi dispatched two more women as part of a coordinated operation in Iraq and Jordan. One of the women, Muriel Degauque, was the Belgian convert to Islam so admired by Malika el Aroud.

Muriel, code-named Oum Abderrahmane, rammed her explosive-laden Kia car into a U.S. military convoy in Baquba (the capital of Diyala province in Iraq) on November 9, 2005. She was the first Western woman to become a suicide bomber. Her suicide attracted widespread attention. Newspaper stories stressed the worrying notion that Caucasian converts were increasingly
committed to radical Islam. Some of the converts could not distinguish between Islam and Islamism. (For many, Islam is a religion of peace, of complete submission to God, whereas Islamism is a distinct and radical interpretation of the faith.) It has been suggested that many late converts may have an inferiority complex and feel they have to prove themselves by being more radical and extreme than those who are born into the faith. The phenomenon has other implications. European women who marry Muslim men are now the largest source of religious conversions in Europe. As early as May 2003, France's famed antiterrorist judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière, warned that European terrorist networks were trying to recruit white European women to handle terrorist logistics because they would be less likely to raise suspicion.
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Detailed psychological autopsies of Muriel appeared in the news. Pundits, after noting her place of birth, talked to her family and friends and attempted to identify her various influences. Like Malika, as an adolescent, Muriel had dabbled in drugs, smoked cigarettes, drunk alcohol, and run away from home. She was allegedly more interested in boys than school until she converted to Islam. For her parents, her descent into radicalization was reflected in her changing clothing styles. At first when she converted to Islam, she wore the hijab, but soon she switched to the head-to-toe chador. Her radicalization was complete when, after living in Morocco with her husband, Issam Goris, she adopted the all-covering burqa. From Sweden, a Bosnian named Mirsad Bektasevic recruited both Muriel and Issam via the Internet into Abu Musab al Zarqawi's organization. The couple left Belgium and drove across Turkey and Syria into Iraq, determined to kill themselves and as many American soldiers as possible.
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Issam was wearing a bulletproof vest packed with fifteen pounds of explosives. Muriel's mission was successful, but American troops shot Issam and five of his “brothers in arms” the following day before they could detonate their IEDs.