Female suicide bombers: A global trend

Daedalus

Volumn 136, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 94-102

  Bloom, Mia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847055911     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/daed.2007.136.1.94     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. Lucy Frazier, "Abandon Weeping for Weapons: Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers," http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/joe/frazier.html (accessed November 21, 2003).
2. "From Jerusalem to Jakarta and from Bali to Baghdad, the suicide bomber is clearly the weapon of choice for international terrorists." Quoting Don Van Natta, Jr., "Big Bang Theory: The Terror Industry Fields its Ultimate Weapon," New YorkTimes, August 24, 2003, sec. 4, 1.
3. Yoram Schweitzer, ed., Female Suicide Bombers: Dying for Equality ? Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Memorandum 84, August 2006, 8.
4. Emile Sahliyeh and Zixian Deng, "The Determinants of Palestinians' Attitude Toward Peace with Israel," International Studies Quarterly 47 (4) (December 2003): 701.
5. Arjuna Guwardena, "Female Black Tigers: A Different Breed of Cat," in Schweitzer, ed., Female Suicide Bombers, 87.
6. Tamil sources, interview by Mia Bloom, July 2006.
7. In July 1997 three national human rights commissions established in 1994 found that there had been 16,742, disappearances since July 1988.
8. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, interview by Mia Bloom, Colombo, Sri Lanka, October 25, 2002.
9. Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Creating Peace in Sri Lanka: Civil War and Reconciliation (Cambridge, Mass.: World Peace Foundation and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 1999), 9.
10. Rajasingham-Senanayake in ibid., 62.
11. Tamil sources, personal correspondence with the author, November 26, 2003.
12. There is some dispute about whether the Black Widows are in fact widows. Irina Bazarya argues that many are not widows but have been a product of societal forces predisposing and molding them to become militants as an expression of Ayat, traditional Chechen mores (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cincinnati, forthcoming).
13. Anatoly Medetsky, "Court Tries Alleged Tverskaya Bomber," St. Petersburg Times, March 30, 2004.
14. Steven Lee Meyers, "From Dismal Chechnya, Women Turn to Bombs," New York Times, September 10, 2004.
15. Clara Beyler, "Messengers of Death: Female Suicide Bombers," http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=470.
16. Anne Speckhard and Khapta Akhmedova, "Black Widows: The Chechen Female Suicide Terrorists," in Schweitzer, Female Suicide Bombers, 63-90.
17. Ibid.
18. Yoram Schweitzer, "A Fundamental Change in Tactics," Washington Post, October 19, 2003, B03.
19. Giles Foden, "Death and the Maidens," The Guardian, July 18, 2003.
20. Agence France Presse, April 12, 2002.
21. Kul al-Arab (Israel), February 1, 2002.
22. Al-Sha'ab (Egypt), February 1, 2002.
23. Sophie Claudet, "More Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers Could Be On The Way: Analysts," Middle East Times, March 1, 2002.
24. Graham Usher, "At 18, Bomber Became Martyr and Murderer," The Guardian, March 30, 2002.
25. Matti Steinberg, interview by Mia Bloom, September 2002.
26. According to Dr. Samiya Sa'ad Al-Din, Al-Akhbar (Egypt), February 1, 2002.
27. "Bin Laden Has Set Up Female Suicide Squads: Report," Arab News, Dubai, March 13, 2003.
28. Frazier, "Abandon Weeping for Weapons."
29. Farhana Ali, "Muslim Female Fighters: An Emerging Trend," Terrorism Monitor 3 (21) (November 3, 2005).
30. Amrita Basu, "Hindu Women's Activism and the Questions it Raises," in Patricia Jeffrey and Amrita Basu, eds., Appropriating Gender: Women's Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia (London: Routledge, 1998).
31. Dimitri Sudakov, "Shamil Besaev Trains Female Suicide Bombers," Pravda, May 15, 2003.
32. Libby Copeland, "Female Suicide Bombers: The New Factor in Mideast's Deadly Equation," Washington Post, April 27, 2002, C1.
33. Cited by Roman Kupchinsky in '"Smart Bombs' with Souls," Organized Crime and Terrorism Watch 3 (13) (April 17, 2003).
34. Yoni Fighel, "Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Female Suicide Bombers," October 6, 2003, www.ict.org.
35. Scott Atran argues that as a result of Akras's martyrdom, Saudi Arabia sent 100 million dollars to fund the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
36. Claudet, "More Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers Could Be On The Way."
37. Usher, "At 18, Bomber Became Martyr and Murderer."
38. AFP report, cited by De Standaard.
39. The use of women remains a point of contestation among different streams of Salafism in Al Qaeda Central. The recently killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi certainly had no qualms about using women in Iraq or Jordan, but other militants, like Samir Azzouz, have thus far refused. As long as the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq come from the Gulf, the numbers of women will remain low since neither the Saudis nor other more conservative Wahhabis will permit women to go on jihad.
40. Foden, "Death and the Maidens."
41. Ibid.
42. Clara Beyler, "Using Palestinian Women as Bombs," New York Sun, November 15, 2006.