Iraq: The Unconscious Women Bombers

Photo: "Disturbing," said AP International Photo Editor Michael Feldman at this morning's AP global news meeting, as he described a photo of three children in Iraq staging a mock execution. Ongoing violence in the country, he explained, has had a heavy influence over how children play.

• "The use of cellphones facilitates remote activation. It also enables the terrorists to use unconscious human carriers of IEDs, which are activated through a cellphone thereby giving the impression of a conscious suicide attack. Glorified tales of suicide missions are then used by the terrorist organisations in their recruitment drive. It had been reported in 2003 that one of the persons carrying a package in Casablanca at the instance of terrorists was not aware that it contained an IED, which was activated through a cellphone by the terrorists as soon as the carrier reached the vicinity of the intended target. The Chechens were also reported to have used this MO for blowing up two planes last year (2004). There have also been allegations of jihadi terrorists and the Palestinian groups using teen-agers as unconscious human bombs, detonated through cell phones."
  
  Extract from my article dated April 5,2005

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(February 02, Bangalore, Sri Lanka Guardian) More than 70 innocent civilians are reported to have been killed by two bombs in Baghdad, attached to two mentally disabled women and detonated remotely, on February 1,2008. The bombings were the worst to hit Baghdad since three car bombs killed 80 people on August 1,2007.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has quoted Iraqi security forces spokesman Brig Moussawi as saying as follows:: "The operation was carried out by two booby-trapped mentally disabled women. [The bombs] were detonated remotely. Forensic and bomb squad experts as well as the people and traders of al-Shorja area of the carpet market have confirmed that the woman who was blown-up there today was often in the area and was mentally disabled..In the New Baghdad area the shop owners and customers of a pet market confirmed that the woman who was blown-up there was mentally disabled as well."

The use of unconscious bombers by making them carry improvised explosive devices (IEDs) without being aware of it and exploding the IEDs through mobile phones is a well-known modus operandi. Palestinian terrorist groups and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had in the past used conscious women bombers for suicide terrorism because of their belief that women were subject to less intensive physical checks than men. The LTTE used a conscious woman suicide bomber to kill Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian Prime Minister, in Chennai in May,1991. Using mentally handicapped women as unconscious bombers has a double advantage. Being women, security checks of them may not be thorough. Secondly, if they are well known in the targeted areas as mentally handicapped, the chances of physical checks would be even less.

From trhe use of this modus operandi, it would be incorrect to conclude----as some analysts seem to have done---that Al Qaeda must be having difficulty in recruiting men for suicide missions. There is no evidence either from Iraq or elsewhere in the Arab world or from the Pakistani diaspora in the West or from Afghanistan or Pakistan----which constitute the reservoir of jihadi suicide terrorists--- that the flow of male volunteers for suicide terrorism is drying up.

All that the use of these two mentally-handicapped women in Baghdad by Al Qaeda shows is that the tightening of physical security has made it difficult for male suicide bombers to operate as easily as before and they have, therefore, used these women in a very cruel manner.

The blasts have come in the wake of stepped-up propaganda by Al Qaeda since December,2007, refuting US claims that as a result of the growing divide between the Iraqi resistance fighters and Al Qaeda, the latter is losing the momentum of its jihad. The successful blasts of February 1 do not necessarily disprove the US claims. One has to wait and watch.

(B.Raman, Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )