were related to one another.
There is no doubt that recruiters routinely target young women who have lost someone during the war, like a close male relative. As a result of the stress from the war, women are highly impressionable and readily convinced to carry out a suicide mission. The organization instills an intense hatred of Russians for causing the death of her loved ones. The outside world is cast in terms of good and evil and an intense religious indoctrination follows.
Not all of the girls are religious. Most of them have grown up in secular environments, wearing miniskirts, listening to rock and roll, and watching American movies. But the recruiters deliberately misinterpret the Qur'an to persuade their recruits to become martyrs. Most of the girls have grown up in large families and are told that as shahidat they are the only hope for the families' future and their actions will save the whole clan. The girls' new comrades promise to make sure that their families will be taken care of financially, and promise the girls' families thousands of dollars for their daughters' sacrifice. The girls are placed in a closed environment in which they know no one. The psychological process involves bolstering the girls' self-image while simultaneously cutting it down. So while the women train to be fighters, they are also made to do the men's laundry and cook for them. Some of the girls think that life in the rebel camp will be full of adventure. No longer mere village girls frightened by life, they will be transformed into fighters and future heroines respected by their comrades and celebrated by their communities.
Although not all of the Chechen female bombers fit this profile, the majority were younger than thirty. While not all had lost relatives in the fighting against Russian troops or in the brutal purges of Chechen civilians by Russian security services, many had suffered during the mopping-up operations. Not all of them were raped, tortured, or humiliated by the Russian military, but all could tell tales of degradation under the occupation.62 Starting with the Second Chechen War, a new culture arose in which the norms of Chechen society and expectations of what women could contribute changed irrevocably. Many girls are convinced that a martyrdom operation is their best option. Recruiters now know that they cannot force the girls to do anything. A coerced bomber is considered “vocationally unsuitable and would blow the operation at any moment.” In the end the girls go to their deaths voluntarily.
TERROR AND COUNTER-TERROR
After the siege at the House of Culture, then Deputy Internal Affairs Minister Vladimir Vasilyev pledged publicly to cleanse not only Moscow, but all of Russia of Chechen “filth.” The hostage-takers' families bore the brunt of Russia's response. The relatives of the women terrorists were persecuted, kidnapped, and killed. The Russian authorities also destroyed the houses of all of the terrorists they could identify from the Dubrovka. In retaliation for the attack against the Ganiyevs' house, the homes of four Russian families in Assinovskaya were burned down three days later. Asya's home, too, was blown up by the Chechen administration and the Russian security services in retaliation for her participation in the siege. That December, the FSB killed Movsar Barayev's brother Adlan.
In April 2009, London's Sunday Times ran a story in which Russian special forces admitted to torturing Chechen women, then shooting them in the head. They disposed of their bodies in a nearby field, placing an artillery shell between their legs and on their chests. The soldiers added 200-gram TNT bricks and blew them to smithereens in a technique called “pulverization.” Another woman, an alleged sniper, was tied to the ground as soldiers rolled a tank over her body.
That same month the Russian government declared the war in Chechnya over. However, the violence by Russian forces against Chechen women only funnels them into suicide bombing operations. Violence from within the Chechen community exacerbates this dynamic. There might be a short hiatus, but the underlying fault-lines of the conflict still exist and a new generation os Chechens is being raised in a culture of martyrdom and hate. This makes the Russian infrastructure especially vulnerable to future attacks, ans the March 2010 Moscow subway bombings demonstrated. The Russians can officially declare the war is over, but until such time as the address the problem of Chechen autonomy and cease and desist from targeting Chechen women, there will always be young girls willing to kill.
3
THE “PREGNANT” BOMBER
We are prepared to fast to the death, if necessary, but our love for justice and our country will live forever. —Mairéad Farrell, Margaret Nugent, and Mary Doyle, hunger strikers, Armagh Prison, December 1, 19801
We are actively involved in the struggle at all levels raising the issues of sexism, violence against women, and discrimination, women must fight for their freedom. —Mairéad Keane, Director, Sinn Féin's Women's Department, July 19902
SIOBHAN
Siobhan3 sat by herself staring out the window of a bus full of tourists and holidaymakers en route to Belfast International Airport. Her rosy cheeks were flushed with both nervousness and excitement. She was wearing denim overalls, the kind that pregnant women often wear, and concealed underneath them fifteen pounds of Semtex explosives strapped to her waist. Her mission: to plant the explosives at the airport and wait for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) to make its warning call to clear the premises. In her mind, she could accomplish this task without any civilians getting killed. However, the economic reverberations of such an attack would be huge: tourism in Northern Ireland would grind to a standstill and make it too expensive for the British government to remain and maintain its presence. By attacking a high-value site like the airport, the PIRA would also show that no target was beyond its reach. Siobhan's mission took the PIRA's use of female bomb smugglers to a new level. In a weekend of heightened bombing activity, with nine bombings and shootings all over the province that very day, in Lisburn, Newry, Derry, and Strabane, Siobhan's ruse—pretending to be an expectant mother—might enable her to successfully carry out her mission without anyone ever suspecting her real identity.4
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