By Theophilus Ilevbare
On January 27, 2002, Palestinian
anti-Israeli occupation activist, Wafa Idriss, became the first female suicide
bomber of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
when she boldly walked into a shopping district on
Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road and blew herself up in the heart of the city.
The bomb killed Idris, an Israeli citizen, and wounded approximately
ninety people. Since then, Martyrs Brigade in Palestine has
conducted series of successful bombing martyrdom operations with young females
against Israel.
Though the first case
of female suicide bombing dates back to the 1980s, and since then female martyrs
have taken the initiative from the male folk, they have successfully executed suicide
bombings in Turkey, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Russia, Belgium, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Sudan among others.
Female predatory
martyrs can be daring: they have assassinated an ex-prime minister of India,
ripped apart markets in Jerusalem and brought Moscow to its knees. They have sunk
many, across the globe, beneath a tidal wave of grief.
Islamic
Jihadists in Nigeria have joined the global terror trend. It
is an increasingly disquieting and disturbing twist to the war against terror. Boko Haram has adopted the Palestinian model of Jihadism in its recruitment of
teenagers and little girls as suicide bombers in crowded places.
According
to the information gleaned from the media, the latest move by the extremist
sect to rain terror on Nigeria prompted the leaders of Boko Haram to recruit
and train teenage girls for suicide missions in parts of northern Nigeria. This
in itself will prove to be another tough battle for the Nigerian security
operatives –
one that’s much more difficult to combat.
These girls have drifted from the naiveté and
demureness of their age group to the savagery of rebels. The perplexing rise of
homicide-bombers is attributable
to a culture of the glorification of martyrdoms in terrorist groups. Radical
mothers are encouraged to compel their children to
enlist in the struggle against the enemies of the nation of Islam and die as martyrs for the name of Allah. But
it appears they are definitely not the leaders in their organisations, but
serve as mere pawns and sacrificial lambs.
These terrorist organisations
use girls (adult and children alike) because they are quite easier to work with
in terms of planning and low cost. In relation to their low social status in
some societies, they are considered expendable, willing casualty of the latest
Jihadi trend. More so, women are emotional and easier to indoctrinate.
When a human bomb
mission is accomplished, it attracts higher shock value and more media coverage
if it involves a female martyr. They have earned the dubious distinction of
appearing more newsworthy than their male counterparts. Buttressing these
unique capabilities, women make up to 65 percent of all assassinations among
groups that use female suicide terrorists. As a motivating factor, suicide-homicide
is perceived as a way to achieve equal social status with men.
Nigerian security
agents should be on top of their game – not just the clichéd on top of the
situation – as this gender of suicide bombers sometimes disguise with faux pregnancies
and breast implants, fitted with explosive devices which are nearly impossible
to detect at security checkpoints since traditional female garb, such as the hijab,
are used to conceal them.
The threat female
suicide bombers pose is another dimension to the evolving tactics of terrorist
groups, the most daunting yet for our security operatives. The dexterity and knack
of the sect has proved challenging and light years ahead of security
operative’s effort to stop them.
The arrest of a
10-year-old female suicide bomber in Katsina State by security forces and
recent suicide bombings by teenage girls has heightened fears that the abducted
Chibok girls are being indoctrinated and conscripted to carry out terrorist
attacks. Some years down the road, we will have a much bigger problem on our
hands with the radicalisation of these children. The recruitment of little
girls as suicide bombers raises the all-important question of parenting, such
as: Who are their parents? How were they conscripted into terrorism? Were they
fully aware that they were going to be martyrs in the process of killing others?
There is the
apprehension also that if the abducted Chibok girls could be forcibly converted
to Islam by Abubakar Shekau as explicitly revealed in his video, there’s
nothing stopping him from using them as pawns to detonate bombs in public
places. Some analysts believe there is a nexus between the new trend of deploying
female teens as suicide bombers by Boko Haram and the over 200 abducted Chibok
schoolgirls from Borno State.
It is only a matter
of time before the lid blows open. Recent intelligence reports reveal that some of these bombers who had carried out terrorist
attacks might have been unaware that they were being strapped with deadly
explosives. This writer will not pander to the conjecture that the bombers
were beggars who were banished to the outskirts of Kano when the state
government rid the state of street beggars.
Such insinuation
wrapped up in propaganda as ‘intelligence report’ might just be another ploy by
the PDP led government at the centre to indict and witch-hunt the APC Kano
government. The possibility that the female
suicide bombers might be the indoctrinated and brainwashed wives and children
of slain or arrested members of the Islamic sect who intend to take revenge on
behalf of their husbands (or loved ones) is a probable presumption. We can’t rule
out the possibility as well, that some of these martyrs may be entirely new
recruits from neighbouring countries.
We aren’t worried
just because females have taken to the front lines in the festering Boko Haram
insurgency but it is the use of teens and little girls that makes the trend disturbing.
The 10-year-old girl
strapped with explosives in Katsina but fortunately intercepted by eagle-eyed security
operatives, barely knew how lethal the explosives she was wearing below her
hijab were. The narrative might be the same for the others who have become
Jihad’s cheapest weapon.
Please
follow the writer on twitter, @tilevbare.
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