Authors: Mia Bloom
These factors may apply equally to men, although men's opportunities to achieve recognition in life are more numerous. Men can aspire to go to university and become doctors and engineers. Even those who reside in conflict areas are freer to pursue their dreams abroad than women, who are expected to stay close to home with whatever limits exist under an occupation or oppressive state. The desire to win the respect of their peers can lure women into violence and instill in them a sense of purpose. More often than not, some or all of these motives coexist simultaneously.
We can add another R to our list: R for
rape.
There has been an increase in the sexual exploitation of women in conflicts worldwide. This is especially evident in Iraq and Chechnya, where rape has been used to coerce women to participate in combat. Rape as a source of motivation bears some similarity to redemption. However, while women who have done something of their own free will of which they are ashamed might seek redemption, women who have been raped are essentially involuntary recruits. What is most shocking is that women have actually assisted in setting up
attacks on other women. Either these women are unaware of who is ultimately to blame or they are suffering from such a deep sense of traumatic shock that they are willing to work for the organization that has victimized them. These women are victims of the conflict, victims of their attackers, and victims of the situation in which they find themselves. We cannot help but sympathize with women in this situation and yet they kill and maim hundreds of innocents.
TERRORISM AND OPPRESSION
Often there is something else at work that explains what propels women (and men) to violence. The structural conditions vary significantly between regions such as Northern Ireland, Chechnya, and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. In most areas, the people who join terrorist organizations are not necessarily the poorest or the least educated members of their society. In fact, among certain groups, the operatives are better educated and better off financially than the average person in their community. What is striking is how many people (including women) with university degrees and presumably a promising future become mobilized. In such cases, sending more money or resources or encouraging education and alleviating poverty may not lessen the violence.
The structural conditions, for example, of an occupation by a foreign military force certainly play a part in radicalizing the population, yet many women and men are engaged in terrorism in the absence of foreign troops. In essence, for there to be terrorism, both motive and opportunity are necessary. Though the presence of foreign troops provides opportunities (i.e., targets) that insurgents might not ordinarily have, the individual's motives remain complex. Occupation alone provides only a part of the story.
That said, if foreign troops are present in a conflict zone, it is crucial that they understand how their presence can alter the dynamic between men and women in that society. It is of the
utmost importance that the soldiers do not target the women of the other side in sexualized ways. Abusing the population's women might have the desired effect of demoralizing the men in the short term, but in the long run, it will only increase the number of women joining the terrorist movement. Abusive behavior is also guaranteed to alienate huge swaths of the civilian population. To paraphrase the American general David Petraeus, in every conflict the population is the prize. Winning over any population is the best way to separate it from the terrorists embedded in its midst.
COUNTERING THE THREAT
In order to curtail women's involvement in terrorism, counterterrorism authorities need to understand the relationship between their own agencies (police, intelligence services, the military) and the female half of the civilian population. It is important to comprehend the long-term ramifications of subjecting the local womenâwhether they are bystanders or prisoners who have been taken into custodyâto humiliating treatment. The key is to offer the women some options other than joining the militants. Abusive or disrespectful treatment by government authorities or foreign forces provides a recruitment tool to the terrorists, allowing them to issue propaganda to the effect that the government or foreign occupiers are raping their wives, sisters, and daughters.
Sexual atrocities committed against women during wars and military occupations are increasingly common. These crimes take different forms and have various consequences. Often, women are raped during ethnic conflicts as a way to dilute the racial integrity of future generations of the opposing community. Women have been targeted for decades as part of ethnic cleansing campaigns; the violence in such cases is intended to force movement of a group from one desirable area to another less desirable one, or across borders. In counter-terror operations, women have been targeted
to extract information, create collaborators, or as a form of torture against the men who might be forced to witness the abuse.
Some of the cases described in this book demonstrate that abusing women to demoralize men is a tactic that can come back and haunt the abusers. Kurdish, Chechen, and Tamil women, all of whom have been vulnerable to predation and sexual exploitation by enemy soldiers, transition easily into terrorist organizations as frontline operatives. Even when the other side stops engaging in sexual atrocities, the fact that they once did so remains a powerful motivator and source of propaganda for insurgent groups. Such abuse resonates with the target population as part of the terrorists' information and propaganda campaigns. Iraq provides a perfect example of this. Although the actual number of Iraqi women exploited by U.S. or British soldiers is small compared to most wartime situations, the mere fact that such abuses have occurred has whipped up jihadi sentiment in places far from the battlefield. In all events, respect and restraint on the part of the government or occupying forces is clearly essential if women are to be discouraged from throwing in their lot with the terrorists.
Another often-recommended approach to curtailing violence by women (and men) is the introduction of democracy. One of the justifications offered for the invasion of Iraq was to bring democracy to the region. Some authorities assume that this form of government is a panacea, the implication being that only people without a legitimate outlet to express grievances turn to violence. This is not the case. In fact, democratization has resulted in some fairly perverse unintended outcomes. In most instances when elections have been held in the Middle East, the first parties to be voted in were the very same Islamic fundamentalists who opposed a democratic system to begin with. This was the case, for example, in both Algeria and the Palestinian Territories. When people who have suffered for years under authoritarians finally get the vote,
they don't necessarily vote for the good guys! And the victorious fundamentalists are rarely the strongest supporters of women's rights. The status of women in Iraq is worse now, by almost any measure, than it was under the authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein. The imposition of democracy from above in Iraq led to voting that has congealed sectarian divides and made the emergence of a vibrant democracy unlikely in the future.
Almost anything Westerners do has the potential to backfire. If Western governments try to encourage the growth of domestic institutions and civil society in the Middle East, assuming that such organizations will provide women with an outlet to contribute with their lives and not their deaths, their footprint necessarily has to be imperceptible. If the indigenous population identifies these institutions with Western or American influence, civil society will be undermined from the get-go. The institutions will appear to be puppets of the imperialists and the people who participate in them will be at risk from terrorist groups for their perceived collaboration.
It has been proven that as women become more educated and have fewer children, their rate of development increases exponentially. Women in positions of leadership serve as role models, causing other women to aspire to something more positive than participating in violence. Women's participation in the political realm does not necessarily require a secular state in the Islamic world. In Indonesia, for example, women's participation is not at odds with Islamic institutions. This means that women are not forced to choose between their religious traditions and modern society when they campaign in elections or run for public office. Having more Islamic women in visible positions of leadership in a traditional context resonates in a way that forcing a Western template on all Muslim women does not. This more culturally sensitive approach to reform requires us to rethink modernity and feminism in a way that allows for the perpetuation of religious
tradition and does not require a separation of religion and state in order to be successful.
RECOMMENDATIIONS FROM THE SIDELINES
It is important that scholars share their findings with policymakers, analysts, and members of the military to ensure that they learn the lessons of the past and do not make the same mistakes over and over again. Tel Aviv University psychologist Ariel Merari is often quoted as saying that the terrorism researcher has the obligation to make terrorism
known
. By this he means it is important that we show terrorism for what it is, and not for what people might imagine it to be. Actual terrorism and counter-terrorism are far removed from their depictions in movies and fiction. Terrorism is mostly dull; there is a lot of waiting around. It is not the thrilling, nonstop roller-coaster ride portrayed in books by writers such as Robert Ludlum or John le Carré or in films featuring imaginary heroes such as James Bond or Jason Bourne. We need to make known, for example, what terrorist organizations are doing to the women of their own community. When terrorists deliberately put women in harm's way, when they capitalize on women's victimization or, even worse, when they abuse women themselves, we have an obligation to advertise their crimes.
More and more examples have emerged of terrorists using coercive techniques to pressure or force operatives to commit heinous acts. We have seen cases of individuals who have been duped and of suicide car bombers (in Iraq, for example) who were unaware that they were on a deadly mission. In several cases, the drivers were told they were taking something, possibly illegal, through checkpoints, only to have the payload detonated from afar with a cell phone or a mobile device. In other cases, people's families have been held at gunpoint and threatened with death and dismemberment unless a family member goes through a checkpoint with a
car bomb. Finally, there has been an increasing number of cases in which the operative could not possibly have made the decision to be a bomber because he or she was either too young or mentally incapacitated.
We need to do a much better job of showing what involvement in terrorism is really like. Even among those individuals who believe that suicide attacks (or martyrdom operations) are an appropriate response to occupation or oppression, few support the use of children or coerced women. There is no sacrifice to Allah when there is no choice. If people who truly believed in the Salafi message knew that this was how Al Qaedaâaffiliated groups in Iraq operated, Al Qaeda's popularity would surely plummet further. The fact is that Al Qaeda is increasingly alienated from most Muslims and even from most Islamists, having lost the strategic initiative in Iraq, Indonesia, and elsewhere.
5
This is a trend that we need to encourage.
TERRORISTS AND THEIR CONSTITUENCIES
There is no single template that describes women who become involved in terrorism. Some women choose to get involved with terrorist organizations to help their community. Others have no choice. Facing the certainty of death at the hands of their own families, dismemberment by Wahhabites (the Chechen term for jihadis), or being sold to terrorist organizations, those with no choice are in a truly grim situation. The organizations that either attract willing commitment or obtain compliance by force seem to have a different relationship to the civilian population in which they operate. Where the insurgency is inspired by ethnicity or nationalism, the terrorist organizers may make great efforts to inculcate a sense of devotion from their people. They see themselves as the future leaders of the community and strive to protect their “constituents” to the best of their ability. For these groups, all politics is
local and the core public is also local. JI's rhetorical support for the global movement has been useful for its local struggle. It affords the organization greater prestige as well as access to international financial support. At the end of the day, however, JI's focus will always be local first, and then maybe regional, rather than global. Similarly, groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas create infrastructure, provide social services, and make a significant effort to improve the lives of men and women in their communities, while also fighting the other side. These groups make an important distinction between
their
civilians and those who oppose them. And though they certainly do not respect the lives of their enemies, they do seem to care about their own people.
However, in the globalized terror networks, particularly Al Qaeda, the people doing the fighting often have no connection to the civilians around them. The leadership's goals extend beyond the parameters of one state or area, and so the local population is just one of several possible constituencies. Also, the people they mobilize may be far removed from the location of the conflict. These outside recruits may have little or no knowledge of the conditions in which the local population lives. This disconnect may lead them to be far more cavalier about the value of life and the extent to which they coerce the local population. This is equally true for both religious and secular terrorist organizations.
Palestinian terrorist groups know that whatever they do will be observed by the Palestinians upon whose support they rely. In contrast, many of the Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq do not care what happens to ordinary Iraqis. Both their goal and their audience lie outside the Iraqi state (jihadis do not even recognize Iraq as a state because it was “created” by the British during the colonial period). The Sunni insurgents have only a superficial connection to the local population. It follows that they have no qualms about subjecting Iraqi women to heinous treatment. In Chechnya, the
situation is complicated by a culture in which kidnapping and rape have been institutionalized as a form of courtship. Selling one's daughter or sexually exploiting a woman to get her parents' permission for marriage areâshockinglyâalmost routine. The terrorists have been able to adapt existing customs for their own purposes.