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| A female suicide attacker and a separate handcart bomb targeted the police on August 11 in the Lahori Gate area of Peshawar |
By Amir Mir
The tactic of the
Pakistan Taliban to use veil-clad female suicide
bombers to effectively strike their targets without
being intercepted has set alarm bells ringing for the
security agencies which are already finding it hard to
nip al-Qaeda and Taliban-sponsored terrorism in the
bud.
A female suicide
attacker and a separate handcart bomb targeted the
police on August 11 in the Lahori Gate area of
Peshawar, killing seven people in the first deadly
suicide attack during the holy month of Ramazan.
The target of the
female bomber, who was believed to be 17 years old,
was a police check post that was completely destroyed
in the attack.
The girl first threw a
hand grenade on the check post, 20 metres from the
site of the first blast, which had already killed
seven people including five policemen, and then blew
herself up. The bomber's vest failed to explode fully,
resulting in one death only, that of an elderly woman.
Tehrik-e-Taliban
Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban - TTP) claimed
responsibility for the attack, with TTP spokesman Azam
Tariq telling the media that the group has a large
number of women suicide bombers ready to be used in
future attacks against the security forces to avenge
the Pakistani military for operations in the tribal
belt.
TTP head in Mohmand
Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA), Commander Omar Khalid, threatened further
suicide attacks until Pakistani military offensives,
which he said were being waged to appease the United
States, come to an end.
"The suicide attacks
were in reaction to the current military operation in
the tribal areas," Khalid told Agence France-Presse by
telephone from an undisclosed location. The TTP leader
said that the use of female bombers was part of a new
strategy.
Khalid has been active
in the TTP's propaganda machine since the death of
Osama bin Laden, and has been vocal in his support of
al-Qaeda. He had vowed revenge on Pakistani and
American security forces for the al-Qaeda founder's
death, saying: "We will take revenge for Osama's
killing from the Pakistan government, its security
forces, the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence], the CIA
[Central Intelligence Agency] and the Americans. They
are now on our hit list."
The Peshawar suicide
bombing was the third suicide attack carried out by a
female in Pakistan since December 2010. Interior
Minister Rehman Malik has condemned TTP for using
women as human bombs, saying that it is a sign of
their desperation in the wake of strict security
measures that have made it difficult to strike targets
at will. He agreed that the new ploy of using females
to create havoc could complicate the government
agencies' efforts to stem a growing insurgency by
extremists given the fact that women in Pakistani
culture, especially in a conservative society like
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are rarely frisked or searched in
security checks.
According to the
security agencies responsible for dealing with suicide
bombings, the emerging phenomenon of female bombers
poses a bigger challenge to the law enforcement
agencies in Pakistan since women in their
all-enveloping burqas (veils) can easily breach
security. They added that a veil is perfect for the
concealment of explosive devices as well as suicide
jackets.
Well-informed circles
in the security agencies say both the TTP and al-Qaeda
have established female suicide bombing cells in
remote areas of north western Pakistan and north
eastern Afghanistan. The existence of these cells was
confirmed by a 12-year-old Pakistani girl, Meena Gul,
who confessed in June 2010 to having been trained to
be a human bomb. Meena Gul said she was brainwashed to
kill Pakistani troops in one of several such training
camps. She was detained by the police in the Munda
area in Dir district of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to Meena,
female suicide bombers from Pakistan and Afghanistan
are being trained in small cells on both sides of the
border, to be eventually dispatched to their missions.
Meena said her cell was led by Zainab, her
sister-in-law, who used to dress as a man and fought
alongside the Taliban against Pakistani troops. Prior
to the two suicide attacks in 2010 by female bombers
in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there was no recorded
instance of any women bombers engaging in this deadly
activity in either country.
Sources in the
security agencies say the TTP training cells on both
sides of border are working under the command of Qari
Zia Rahman, the dual-hatted Taliban and al-Qaeda
leader. Qari Zia is not only a top regional commander
of Tehrik-e-Taliban but also an al-Qaeda member who
operates in the Kunar and Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan as well
as across the border in the Bajaur Agency in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
Qari Zia's private
army has fighters from
Pakistan, Chechnya, Uzbekistan,
Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and various Arab countries.
He commands a brigade in al-Qaeda's paramilitary
Shadow Army, which is called the Lashkar-e-Zil (LeZ),
previously led by Ilyas Commander Kashmiri, who was
reportedly killed in a US drone strike in July 2011.
The interior minister
had claimed in March 2010 that Qari Zia had been
killed in an airstrike, but Qari Zia later spoke to
the media and mocked Rehman Malik for wrongly
reporting his killing. Similarly, the CIA, which
offers a $350,000 bounty for information leading to
his death or capture, has targeted him in multiple
drone attacks in Kunar province since January 2010,
but failed to hunt him down despite repeated attempts.
The phenomenon of
female bombers
Female suicide bombers
are relatively new in South Asia. The first known
suicide bombing by a female anywhere in the world came
in 1985 when a 16-year- old girl, Khyadali Sana, drove
an explosive-laden truck into an Israeli Defense Force
convoy and killed two soldiers.
Since then, women have
driven bomb-laden vehicles, carried bomber bags, and
strapped huge explosives and metal implements on their
bodies in Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Israel,
Turkey, Somalia and last but not least, in Pakistan.
Organisations worldwide which have publicised their
use of female bombers include the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Syrian Socialist National
Party (SSNP), the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
Chechen rebels, Al Aqsa Martyrs, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad (PIJ), and, most recently, Hamas.
While the SSNP has the
distinction of deploying the first ever female suicide
bomber, the LTTE became the world's foremost suicide
bombers and proved the tactic to be so unnerving and
effective that their methods and killing innovations
were studied and copied, most notably in the Middle
East. The LTTE has committed the most attacks, close
to 200, using female bombers in 40 percent of cases.
The largest number killed (170) was in Moscow in
October 2002 when Chechen rebels, including a high
proportion of women, held hostages in a theatre,
eventually leading to a futile rescue operation in
which 129 captives and 41 rebels were killed.
Palestinian suicide bombers have carried out the
largest number of attacks in the recent years.
The youngest female
bomber so far is 16-year old Khyadali Sana (who
detonated herself in 1985), followed by 17-year old
Laila Kaplan, (who had blew herself up in 1996). The
oldest female suicide bomber was 37-year old Shagir
Karima Mahmud in 1987. The first LTTE female suicide
bomber was Dhanu, who killed Indian Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. The only pregnant female
suicide bomber was from the Kurdistan Workers Party,
killing six Turkish soldiers in June 1996. Her name
remains unknown. The first Russian "Black Widow" was
Hawa Barayev, who acted on behalf of the Chechen
rebels in June 2000 and killed 27 Russian Special
Forces soldiers by exploding her suicide vest.
The first female
bomber in Israel, representing the al-Aqsa Martyrs'
Brigade, was Wafa Idris, a paramedic who exploded
herself in January 2002, killing an 81-year-old man
and injuring over 100. The first female bomber who
acted on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jehad was a
19-year-old student, Hiba Daraghmeh, who detonated
herself in a shopping mall, killing three people. The
first female Hamas bomber was 22-year-old Reem al-Reyashi,
who blew herself up and killed four Israeli soldiers
at an army checkpoint on January 14, 2004.
Reem was a mother who
left behind a husband, a three-year-old son and
one-year-old daughter. On June 11, 2011, a veiled
female bomber detonated herself at the official
residence of the country's Interior Minister Abdi
Shakur Sheikh Hassan in Mogadishu, killing him on the
spot. It is believed that the suicide attack could
have been a retaliatory act by al-Shabaab insurgents
in the wake of a sustained government push against
them.
The first incident of
suicide bombing carried out by a female in Afghanistan
happened on June 21, 2010 in Kunar province, killing
two American soldiers. The first suicide attack by a
female bomber in Pakistan was carried out on December
24, 2010 at an aid distribution center of the United
Nations World Food Programme in Khar area of Bajaur
Agency, killing 47 people.
The second attack was
carried out on June 25, 2011 when a husband and wife
team, said to be Uzbeks, attacked a police station in
the Dera Ismail Khan
City, killing seven policemen
and a tea boy. The TTP had claimed responsibility for
the attack, saying it was carried out to avenge the
May 2, 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden.
The use of female
suicide bombers by Taliban has prompted the Pakistan
media to demand that all suspected veil-clad women
should be searched without exception. Daily Times
stated in its August 13 editorial:
“The piety of holy
warriors has shown its true colors - the sanctity of
the holy month of Ramadan seems irrelevant to them as
evidenced by the Peshawar suicide hit carried out by a
female bomber.
Pakistan has witnessed a string
of terror attacks following the
May 2, 2011 killing of Bin Laden
in Abbottabad. It seems that the very culture that the
terrorists claim to uphold - of keeping a woman
untouched by male hands and covered in a veil as well
- is exactly what these monsters are using against us.
If women are the new lethal weapons against the
citizens and the state then counter steps must be
drawn up to face this threat. Women, especially those
in the baggy burqa, should be searched without
exception”.
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