RESEARCH CONCLUDES THAT LIKE
LTTE, TERRORIST GROUPS USE FEMALES WHEN SINGLE TARGET IS ASSASSINATED
By Walter Jayawardhana
A New York Times op-ed piece based on a research on suicide terrorism
said like in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination female suicide bombers are
often used for single target suicide attacks in the world.
The University of Chicago based researcher Lindsey O’Rourke writing
in the New York Times said, “Perhaps the most famous of these was
the 1991 assassination of India 's prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, by
Thenmuli Rajaratnam, a Tamil Tiger.”
Pointing out more women than men are used for such single target assassinations
the writer said , “Although women make up roughly 15 percent of
the suicide bombers within the groups that employ females, they were
responsible for an overwhelming 65 percent of assassinations; one in
every five women who committed a suicide attack did so with the purpose
of assassinating a specific individual, compared with one in every 25
for the male attackers.”
Answering another reason why women are being used the researcher said,
“Paradoxically, the strategic appeal of female attacks stems from
the rules about women's behavior in the societies where these attacks
take place. Given their second-class citizenship in many of these countries,
women generate less suspicion and are better able to conceal explosives.
Moreover, since female attacks are considered especially shocking, they
are more likely to generate significant news media attention for both
domestic and foreign audiences.”
The researcher said , to prevent this better methods of monitoring
women for suicide attacks should be found out.
The researcher also said the reasons that motivate both male and female
suicide bombers are similar and there are no uniquely feminine reasons
that motivate them to do it.
The research based editorial further said, “I have spent the last
few years surveying all known female suicide attacks throughout the
world since 1981 -- incidents in Afghanistan , Israel , Iraq , India
, Lebanon , Pakistan , Russia , Somalia , Sri Lanka , Turkey and Uzbekistan
. In order to determine these women's motives, I compared the data with
a database of all known suicide attacks over that period compiled by
the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism. This research led to a clear
conclusion: the main motives and circumstances that drive female suicide
attackers are quite similar to those that drive men.”
Researcher Lindsey O’Rourke further added, “To begin with,
there is simply no one demographic profile for female attackers. From
the unmarried communists who first adopted suicide terrorism to expel
Israeli troops from Lebanon in the 1980s, to the so-called Black Widows
of Chechnya who commit suicide attacks after the combat deaths of their
husbands, to the longtime adherents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the biographies of female suicide
attackers reveal a wide variety of personal experiences and ideologies.”
The researcher also dispelled the belief that many female suicide bombers
are Muslim fundamentalists and said many instead grew up in traditional
Christian and Hindu families : “Blaming Islamic fundamentalism
is also wrongheaded. More than 85 percent of female suicide terrorists
since 1981 committed their attacks on behalf of secular organizations;
many grew up in Christian and Hindu families. Further, Islamist groups
commonly discourage and only grudgingly accept female suicide attackers.
At the start of the second intifada in 2000, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the
founder of Hamas, claimed: ''A woman martyr is problematic for Muslim
society. A man who recruits a woman is breaking Islamic law.'' Hamas
actually rejected Darin Abu Eisheh, the second Palestinian female attacker,
who carried out her 2002 bombing on behalf of the secular Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade.”
The researcher said religious groups only used the female as suicide
attacker only by following the success of the secular groups: “All
secular organizations that employ suicide bombings have used female
attackers early and often. For instance, 76 percent of attackers from
the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Turkey have been women, as have 66 percent
of those from Chechen separatist groups, 45 percent of the Syrian Socialist
National Party's and a quarter of those from the Tamil Tigers. Religious
groups only came to realize the strategic value of female bombers after
seeing secular groups' success.”
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