Reactions to the (mis)reported claim that Hasna Aït Boulahcen — who was killed in a police raid in Saint Denis a few days after the Paris attacks that killed 130 — was France’s first female suicide bomber prompted fierce discussion about the role women play in ISIL. Now Sally Jones — a mother of two and widow of a British ISIL fighter — has announced her intention to blow herself up in Syria. Has ISIL joined the long list of jihadi groups using female suicide bombers?
DNA evidence corrected the mistake — Boulahcen was killed when the person standing next to her detonated a suicide vest — and the Zura treatise (which documents the group’s position on female suicide bombers and was circulated by ISIL supporters in the summer) does not yet allow for women to carry out martyrdom operations. Still, it is worth exploring the role women play in terrorism.
Their participation isn’t anything new. Women were already bound up in terrorist schemes in the 19th century as part of the Russian anarchist movement Norodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), and involved in assassination attempts against the Czar. Several women became well-known terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, as members of a variety of groups, ranging from the Baader-Meinhof Group and the Red Brigades to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The idea of women joining a terrorist group captures the public imagination like nothing else — especially if the women are Western and the group is jihadist. Women terrorists, some have argued, “are more fanatical and have a greater capacity for suffering … and cannot be shaken through intellectual argument.” The idea has since been dismantled, but public discourse remains fixated on the irregularity of women’s motivations, expressing the belief that their participation in violent extremist groups is an unusual phenomenon.
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Female suicide bombers became active in Lebanon in 1983 with the SSNP (Syrian Socialist National Party) and in Sri Lanka in 1991 with the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), and the phenomenon metastasized from there. In 2005, the first Al Qaeda affiliate began using female suicide bombers to deadly effect in Iraq, under the leadership of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. The first woman, a Belgian convert named Muriel Degauque detonated her explosive-laden Kia with her husband, killing U.S. servicemen in Iraq.
What remains puzzling is that ISIL — excluding Boko Haram, which has “assimilated” into ISIL as its West Africa province — has refused to do what so many other jihadi groups have done since 1999: use female bombers to attack civilian targets, or penetrate targets too difficult to access. Instead, ISIL maintains a domestic role for women: not as fighters, but as the mothers of the next generation.
ISIL’s ability to lure young women from around the world to make hijrah (the “migration”) to the so-called “caliphate” is baffling — and unparalleled. While these women’s activity on social media provides an important source of insight, if we base our understanding of ISIL’s appeal to women solely on public ruminations of English-speaking female jihadists online, we run the risk of drawing false conclusions. ISIL proactively reaches out to potential female supporters and emphasize women’s role in the organization’s politico-military program with targeted propaganda campaigns.
Much of what ISIL supporters claim on social media is designed to exaggerate, obfuscate and confuse. But ISIL uses a different approach to speak with women in Arabic than it does for Western women who speak English and French.
In Arabic, it would appear that what ISIL presents a more realistic picture of life as a female jihadist in ISIL-held territories. From the al Khansaa Brigade’s manifesto “Women of the Islamic State,” published exclusively in Arabic and translated by Charlie Winter, we learn that while some all-female brigades in Iraq and Syria do exist (and in certain narrowly described circumstances that do not yet exist, women may be called to battle) policing and fighting are in fact very low on the list of responsibilities given to women.
ISIL’s Zura treatise says: “As for carrying out martyrdom operations, this is permissible for women but only after the Amir has permitted it and if it is for the public good.” Instead of militancy, it clearly emphasizes the importance of motherhood and family support. In this misogynistic set-up, ISIL resembles other jihadist groups.
But in English- and French-language propaganda, women are told that they will have an exciting and fulfilling life in the Caliphate. ISIL posts images of women in hijabs with AK-47s splayed across Toyota trucks on social media. The image of the empowered fighting female jihadi is clearly aimed at recruiting Western women.
The media has latched onto the one-dimensional “jihadi bride” moniker — but it resoundingly fails to signal the diversity of radicalization and motivation among women. In reality, when it comes to joining violent extremist causes, women are susceptible to the same incentives as men: They often join out of a combination of political and religious reasons, and are driven by grievances, humiliation, or a desire for personal revenge. The commonly held idea that men are motivated by politics or ideology while women are motivated by personal reasons is inaccurate.
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The only motivation that is unique to women joining a terrorist cause relates to sexuality and physical abuse. Women who have been, in some form, “dishonored” in the eyes of their families may seek involvement in terrorist violence as a way to shed their past and create a completely new identity.
Many female converts drawn to the jihadi movement have been the victims of abuse, come from difficult backgrounds, and have a history of drug and alcohol abuse — women like Robyn (Rabiah) Hutchinson, the Australian ex-pot smoking beach bunny, ex-punk rocker Sally Jones, Coleen LaRose (Jihad Jane) and Jaime Ramirez (Jihad Jaime). Hasna Aït Boulahcen’s troubled childhood and “party girl” lifestyle were widely reported on after her death. These women are easy marks for terrorist recruiters who offer them a new lease on life and a “clean slate.”
Within ISIL, women are a commodity: They are bought, sold and traded. Leaders worry about defection and the loss of troops, and use women as tools to retain their male foreign fighters. The women help create anchors that ensure men will stay with the cause: a job, a house, a wife and a child. ISIL has even instituted a payment system wherein fighters are paid a stipend for every child had in the Islamic State.
ISIL also “ranks” its women, and considers foreign women and converts to be especially “valuable.” According to Anna Erelle’s recent exposé, ISIL foreign fighters actually prefer foreign women and jihadis because they find Syrian women uppity and sexually unaccommodating. ISIL stresses the fact that women’s commitment to jihad can best be proven through marriage and motherhood, and promises these women to the most prized male recruits as rewards. The group is also known to have kidnapped thousands of young Yazidi and Shiite women and distributed them as war booty.
Women are also important disseminators of propaganda to the outside world — especially to young Western women curious about life in the “caliphate.” Mostly in their late teens or early 20s, these women meet through Twitter, Tumblr, Telegram, and Kik, where they exchange verses of the Quran, ISIL propaganda, statements from radical English- and Arabic-speaking preachers, and news of ISIL’s territorial advances. The girls converse using a range of slang and emojis mixed with a handful of Islamic phrases, a reflection of their youth and upbringing. Some of the most ardent among them have gone further than just supporting ISIL online and moved from Europe and North America to find husbands among ISIL soldiers.
The best way to deter women from joining the movement is to make clear that the role ISIL promises women on social media is greatly different to the real goals they more commonly express in Arabic. ISIL sees no value in women beyond boosting recruitment and helping to retain foreign male fighters. These women are routinely abused, both physically and psychologically. Knowing what ISIL actually does to women may be the first step in creating an effective counter-narrative.
Mia Bloom is professor of communication at Georgia State University. Charlie Winter is senior research associate at the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative, Georgia State University.