Authorities speculate that so-called “baby bombers” may have been involved in the recent transatlantic airplane plot . Authorities interrogated a husband, Abdula Ahmed Ali, and wife, Cossor Ali, who have a six-month old baby boy for their possible intentions of using the baby as a decoy. Abdula Ahmed Ali had recently returned from a spontaneous trip to Pakistan (source). The link has prompted fear in the UK that radicalized mothers of the al-Qaeda persuasion have borne children for dastardly plans of using them to foil security and launch suicide missions against the far enemy: the United States . While security authorities believe that they have detained all of the key players in the plot, they continue to be concerned about “unknown players who may be out there. And that includes mothers who are ready and willing to see their little ones die” (source).
Is this New?
Women as suicide terrorists are certainly not a new phenomena. The first female suicide bomber?the ultimate asymmetric weapon–in the world was in Batar al Shuf Jezzin, in Lebanon, named Sana Muheidaly. She was 17 and drove a truck of explosives into Israeli military convoy in April 9, 1985 , days before her wedding, killing two soldiers. She had been a member of the secular SSNP/PPS (pro-Syrian Lebanese group) for three months. But, suicide bombing was not an Islamic development. Sri Lanka’s LTTE uses female bombers extensively, to include assassinating India’s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 . Similarly, the PKK has used women in 64% of their attacks. And, the Chechen Black Widow phenomena is exclusively female. Islamist clergy have increasingly approved of women martyrs. In August 2001, the High Islamic Council in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa allowing Palestinian women to be suicide bombers. Lebanese clerics said, “the Koran states that jihad can be carried out by women as well as men?” Hamas’ Sheikh Ahmad Yassin also found justification of the use of women in suicide missions, despite religious, tradition, and cultural restrictions. Women have been involved in suicide missions in Jordan and Iraq . Most disturbing, however, was an interview in Al Sharq al-Awsat with Umm Osama (mother of Osama), the leader of the female Mujahidat of Al Qaeda, in March 2003: “[al Qaeda was planning] a new attack which would make the United States forget Sept. 11, and that the idea came from the martyr operations carried out by the Palestinian women.” She said that al-Qaeda training camps for women “are a reality?to prepare Muslim women for the coming stage [of jihad].”
Similarly, the use of children and babies as a weapon of war is also not new. Children have long been recruited into the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army . The IRA , while never sacrificing children, did use baby carriages to transport explosives. So, the possibility that al-Qaeda may call on devout mothers to sacrifice themselves and their children is alarming but should not necessarily be classified as a new development in terrorism.
Security Countermeasures
A woman traveling with her child would likely challenge security protocols by sidestepping terrorist profiling. Rather than relying on profiling, which may net those resembling Richard Reid , security measure must monitor behavior: body language, mannerisms, and facial expressions (source).
This development may explain why women have been required to sample baby formula prior to boarding flights, as the liquid explosive could have been concealed in a baby bottle.
Conclusion
While this scenario may seem too absurd to be true, al-Qaeda revels in the creative use of the seemingly innocuous. The sacrifice of a mother and child is not outrageous to the fundamentalist. Nezar Hindawi was jailed for 45 years for planting three pounds of Semtex in his pregnant girlfriend’s luggage as she flew on El Al from London to Tel Aviv (Terrorist Incident forthcoming). Chechen terrorists targeted the Beslan school , killing dozens of children to further their cause. Using women and children as martyrs would require a religious, cultural, and ideological leap for us, but stalwarts like the Chechens and Palestinians have already undertaken this leap, with grand success.
