Women as suicide bombers

AT about 11 a.m., Monday, a bomb explosion went off at the popular Dukku Motor Park in Gombe State, killing scores of people at a park that was filled with passengers “who wanted to travel” for the Christmas and Boxing Day holidays. It was not the first time female bombers are taking the centre stage. All over the world, women are respected as custodians of the home, wives and mothers are becoming home wreckers. The “givers of life”, the “keepers of home and family” are now becoming the murderers.

From Nigeria to the Middle East, women are increasingly turning their bodies into bombs, blowing up markets, schools, churches and mosques.

New twist of terrorism

Who are these women and why are they dying to kill? With the increasing spate of terrorism and attacks in a society where hopelessness begets rage, murder fuels martyrdom and women are increasingly dying to kill, one wonders what the world is turning into. For years, Nigeria has been fighting insurgency in the north east region of the country.

Terrorism a new twist introduce by the sect, Boko Haram members appears to have come to stay with the worst aspect of it being the use of female suicide bombers to terrorise the citizens and cause havoc in the country.

A female suicide bomber on Wednesday, November 12, lost her life while her partner in crime sustained serious injuries after unsuccessfully attempting to bomb students in an auditorium at the Federal College of Education, Kontagora, Niger State. Before then, a female suicide bomber detonated a bomb during a morning assembly at Government Comprehensive Senior Science Secondary School Potiskum, Yobe state and killed over 48 students and teachers while inflicting injuries on 79.

The bomber was dressed in a school uniform, and entered the school before carrying out the attack. The dead toll later increased to 58. As it is, the insurgents are already tending towards what obtains in countries where terrorism is a challenge. Many fear that the abducted school girls from Chibok in Borno State could be among those indoctrinated to carry out the dastardly task.

Since the kidnap of Chibok girls by the terrorist early this year, female suicide bombing appears to be trending. Not long ago, 52 female suicide bombers were reportedly let on the loose in Maiduguri, Borno State. The female bombers were said to have been “commissioned to explode bombs at high density areas.”

Women easier to operate with

Since male bombers are becoming easy to identify, the terrorists have devised a new scheme to infiltrate the towns through innocent-looking female suicide bombers. Before now, terrorism was alien to Nigeria but the evil has crept into a hitherto simple society. Two female suicide bombers attacked a market in Maiduguri and killed 35 people.

Shortly after, another pair of female suicide bombers attacked Maiduguri Monday market and killed six people, with 36 injured. The truth remains, however, that the use of female suicide bombers has great implication on security of lives because women are generally known to be helpmate, reliable, soft hearted that rarely hurt.

According to Cecilia Brume, a wife and mother of six, “This is a grave problem. It means nobody is safe. Women are not known for outright violence and when you see them now, especially the Muslim women that cover up, you begin to run away because they will do terror better. Using female suicide bombers is a very dramatic strategy by the terrorists. It makes it easier to penetrate targets because people are less suspicious about women.”

Frank Mba, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, in a recent writeup stated that, “it is also easier for women to be indoctrinated especially when they are intellectually immature, uneducated and perhaps from very poor and deprived backgrounds.”

How they began in Nigeria

The first female suicide bomber emerged in Nigeria on June 8, 2014 when a middle-aged woman arrived on a motorcycle at a military barracks in Gombe, detonating an explosive killing herself and a policeman. Not long after, on July 27, a teenager with an explosive device concealed under her veil blew herself up at a university campus in Kano, injuring five police officers.

The next day, a young woman reportedly joined a kerosene queue at a filling station in Kano before her bomb detonated, killing three people and wounding 16 others. Another teenager thata day injured six people after exploding her device at a shopping centre in Kano.

The present dimension obviously portends ominous signs and analysts are of the opinion that government needs to strategise as the military confronts insurgents in the region. Saidu Kano, a businessman in Yobe said, “It is easier to use women who wear traditional Northern Nigerian dresses and long Muslim headscarves. In the past, it was rare to hear about women terrorists. But recently and in many cities in the world, they have increasingly taken active roles in carrying out suicide bombings, hijacking airplanes, and taking hostages in such places as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and Chechnya.

“Islamist terrorists have long used women as suicide bombers, but now, their combatant role has expanded with al-Qaeda’s formation of an all-female jihadist fighting unit whose primary mission is purportedly to attack coalition targets in Afghanistan.”

Across the world in the last decade, there has been a rise in women’s participation in terrorism. The use of women as human explosives has gained growing admiration among Jihadist circles. This admiration has been evidenced since 2010 by the growing swell of al-Qaeda and Taliban-run suicide training camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border designed to specially train female bombers.

Female bombers

The all-girl military group, dubbed the “Burkha Brigade,” came to light in an online video that showed a bevy of fully covered women firing off a wide selection of heavy weaponry, including machine guns, assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. The women enlistees are believably recruited from Chechnya, the semi-autonomous republic in the Russian Federation and a state which has long provided fertile ground for producing female jihadists.

That disturbing history was most notably on display in 2002 when bomb-strapped Chechen women were among 50 Islamist militants who held over 800 people hostage in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre. In that assault, nearly 130 civilians were killed. Muslim women, dressed as males, have in the past fought alongside Islamist militants. The creation of an all-female fighting force adds a new twist in the escalating use of women combatants by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist terror groups.

Part of their deadly curriculum is instruction on how to wear suicide vests, carry bomber bags, and drive bomb-laden vehicles. Some women have reportedly voluntarily joined the ranks of suicide bombers out of true jihadist fervour, a promise of a heavenly reward, or simply a need to avenge the deaths of their husbands and brothers lost in battle.

But what would compel a woman to strap on a bomb, kill herself, and take the lives of innocent by-standers? It is unquestionable that most female suicide bomb recruits, tragically and unsurprisingly, are unwilling participants, dragged to the terrorists cause through abduction or coercion.

Horrific crimes

And now, Nigeria’s terror group, Boko Haram has embraced female suicide bombers. Were these women forced to commit these horrific crimes? In Russia, the place has recently become a hot bed of terror and the capital of female suicide bombers known as black widows.

The world got its first glimpse of black widows in 2002 when 700 people at a Moscow theatre were taken hostage during a musical. There were 41 terrorists and 18 of them were women. The women wore the bombs.

Looking at the development, Evelyn Johnson, a security expert said: “Women seem to have several advantages over men when it comes to carrying out a suicide attack.Women can also carry more explosives on their person by carrying them around their waists, which can give the appearance of being pregnant. Also, women are generally more likely to evade suspicion or detection compared to men. Because of this, they can pose an even greater danger”.

Nathaniel Sumner, a graduate of international relations said that “ Such women probably are on the lowest end of the socio-economic scale with little or no education or job. They also tended to be unmarried, overtly confident, determined, rebellious and outspoken, characteristics that are often deemed as unusual or unacceptable in their society.

“Female suicide bombers could be motivated by anger, hatred and revenge. The girls could be indoctrinated to hate the society and become martyrs. As we all know, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram has gained worldwide notoriety this year for intensifying carnage in Nigeria that has claimed more than 10,000 lives in just 12 months. This is a fatality rate that is comparable to the Islamic State, or ISIS, insurgency in Iraq. The terrorist group has reportedly deployed over 50 female suicide bombers in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, to kill 100,000 people before the end of the year. Since they started using women, there have been 15 attacks or attempts by Boko Haram female suicide bombers, who have had an increasingly salient role in the violent insurgent movement.

“Recruiting women as suicide bombers is an effective tactic that Boko Haram most likely learned from terrorist groups abroad. Women traditionally are not expected to be in the role of a suicide bomber in Nigeria. They are less likely to be suspected, inspected, or detected.

“This is the trend in terrorism overseas. The Islamic State recruited women into the Sunni millitant group as well. A wanted British woman known as the “White Widow” joined ISIS and started training an all-female brigade of suicide bombers for the group. The group has also established an all-female squad in the Syrian city of Raqqa that is charged with policing other women under ISIS’s interpretation of Sharia law.

“The all-female squad is to “raise awareness among women, and arrest and punish women who do not follow the religion correctly.” Since Boko Haram militants terrorizing Nigeria in 2009, their one goal was to create an Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria. They have declared loyalty to the Islamic State group, which aims to establish an Islamic state cross Sunni areas of Iraq and in Syria.

“The violence has become so bad that people don’t have lives anymore. They cannot go to their farms, they cannot go to their businesses. It dominates people’s lives every single day. They have no help form the army, the people who are supposed to protect them. They are scared, and that fear is real.”

Although President Goodluck Jonathan has pledged to defeat Boko Haram and the JTF claims to be making strides, Nigerian forces have failed to curb the violence and protect civilians from the terrorist group that has killed thousands of civilians this year and with the general elections coming up soon, the fight against insurgency appears to be in the back burner.

Not the Chibok girls

There is fear that Boko Haram may be using some of the abducted Chibok school girls to carry out their recent suicide bombings across northern Nigeria but people from Chibok town have denied such claims saying none of the photographs of the girls involved in the attacks matched any of the missing girls..

A government official from Chibok town, who spoke with a national daily under strict condition of anonymity said most of the photographs shown in both the conventional and social media did not match the faces of any of the 219 abducted girls.

“They can’t be Chibok girls because, the parents are still alive, even some that have died still have other children and relatives who usually see the photographs and judge if any of the suicide bombers resemble the abducted girls; and so far, we have not seen anyone yet.

“Though each time we hear girls being used for bombing attacks, we are very worried, but so far, none of them looked like our girls. As a matter of fact, even the ones arrested in Kano and Maiduguri were not speaking like Chibok girls and some of them claim to have come from the North-western states. This actually gives us the assurance that our girls are still alive and perhaps somewhere, and we hope they would return back home some day”.