Al-Qaeda's Increased Use of Female Suicide Attackers in Iraq: Quantitative and Qualitative...

8/8/2019 Al-Qaeda's Increased Use of Female Suicide Attackers in Iraq: Quantitative and Qualitative Explanations

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Al-Qaedas Increased Use of Female Suicide Attackers in Iraq: Quantitative and

Qualitative Explanations

Angela Pieyro De Hoyos

MES379HB

Special Honors in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2010

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Faegheh Shirazi

Department of Middle Eastern Studies

Supervising Professor

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sonia Seeman

Department of Middle Eastern Studies

Second Reader


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Abstract

Al-Qaedas Increased Use of Female Suicide Attackers in Iraq: Quantitative and

Qualitative Explanations

Angela Pieyro De Hoyos, Special Honors in Middle Eastern Studies,

The University of Texas at Austin, 2010

Supervisor: Faegheh Shirazi

The modern Salafi ideology used by Al-Qaeda to justify suicide attacks is based

on the reactionary writings of Ibn Taymiyya, a 13th

century scholar. The fall of Baghdadin 1250 was echoed in the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20

thcentury, as well as

the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia

during the Gulf Wars. During each of these times, similar political climates led to the

revival of Ibn Taymiyyas extremely narrow interpretation of Islam. I will explain the

rise in female perpetrated suicide attacks in Iraq examined in the context of the origins of

Al-Qaedas ideology as well as their strategic organizational motivations.

The surge of Multi-National Coalition troops made it difficult for men to

perpetrate suicide attacks, and this directly caused the strategic shift to relying on women

to take their place. By examining suicide attacks in Iraq from 2005-2010, we see that

Salafi-Jihadi organizations responded to immaterial barriers by using female perpetrators

to circumvent these barriers based on social norms exempting them from search by

predominantly male security forces. Captured al-Qaida recruiters support this in their

confessions.

As these groups adapted, they failed to consider the consequences of their actions.

Their increased attacks on soft targets, namely Sunni members of the Awakening

turned their natural constituency against them. Coupled with the contradictory nature of

how Salafis value martyrdom and their low view of women, al-Qaida in Mesopotamia

has alienated its supporters; both the Sunnis who participated to fight Shiia militias and

their true believers. This will have organizational consequences for the group which may

contribute to the eventual end of their operations.


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Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF JIHAD .............................................................. 1

The Role of the Mamluks in the Fall of Baghdad....................................................... 3

Cultural Consequences ................................................................................................. 5

Ibn Taymiyya: The New Jihads Spin Doctor ............................................................ 6

Ideologue on the Move ................................................................................................ 11

Reviving Ibn Taymiyyas Legacy............................................................................... 12

Wahabi Revival ........................................................................................................... 13

Parallel Realities .......................................................................................................... 14

The Wahabi Connection ............................................................................................. 17

The Third Revival ....................................................................................................... 19

The Invasion of Kuwait: Ibn Taymiyyas Second Revival ...................................... 21

Bite the Hand that Feeds You .................................................................................... 22

Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia ........................................................................................... 26

Petraeus Plan.............................................................................................................. 29

Fall of Empire: Redux................................................................................................. 32

METHODOLOGY....................................................................................................................... 34

CHAPTER TWO: FEMALE PERPETRATED ATTACKS IN IRAQ 2005-2010....................... 35

The Surge ..................................................................................................................... 36

Table 1: Iraqi Civilian Deaths iraqbodycount.org Acessed 04/22//2010

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/................................... 37

Digging Deep ................................................................................................................ 37

Figure 1: Number Dead and Injured by Female Suicide Attackers ....................................... 38

Strategic Motivations of Organizations..................................................................... 38

Figure 2: Total and Female Attacks per Year ....................................................................... 41

Figure 3: Breakdown of Female-Perpetrated Suicide Attacks by Target .............................. 42

Female Perpetrator, Female Recruiter ..................................................................... 42


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Figure 4: Location of Female Suicide Attacks ...................................................................... 44

Table 2: Location of Female ................................................................................................. 45

Perpetrated Suicide Attacks .................................................................................................. 45

Unwilling Martyrs ....................................................................................................... 45

Strategic, Not Symbolic Actions ................................................................................. 46

Female Multipliers ...................................................................................................... 49

Table 3: Total Suicide and Car Bombs and Female Perpetrated Suicide Attacks ................. 50

God Knows No Wrath like a Woman Scorned ......................................................... 51

CHAPTER THREE: CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................ 53

Consequences ............................................................................................................... 57

Appendix A: Raw Data ................................................................................................................ 59

Bibliography................................................................................................................................. 62

VITAE .................................................................................................................................. 66


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List of Tables

TABLE 1:IRAQI CIVILIAN DEATHS IRAQBODYCOUNT.ORG.......................................................................... 37

TABLE 2:LOCATION OF FEMALE................................................................................................................ 45

TABLE 3:TOTAL SUICIDE AND CAR BOMBS AND FEMALE PERPETRATED SUICIDE ATTACKS....................... 50


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List of Figures

FIGURE 1:NUMBER DEAD AND INJURED BY FEMALE SUICIDE ATTACKERS....................... 38

FIGURE 2:TOTAL AND FEMALE ATTACKS PER YEAR......................................................... 41

FIGURE 3:BREAKDOWN OF FEMALE-PERPETRATED SUICIDE ATTACKS BY TARGET.......... 42

FIGURE 4:LOCATION OF FEMALE SUICIDE ATTACKS......................................................... 44


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CHAPTER ONE: A POLITICAL

HISTORY OF JIHAD

"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are

not really progress at all, but just terrible things."

Russell Baker

In order to understand al-Qaidas increased use of female suicide attackers in Iraq,

it is crucial to understand the historical factors that led to the current circumstances. The

use of suicide terrorism in the name of Jihad in Islam is a departure from mainstream

ideology, which only began in the 13th

century.

Since the 8th century, the Muslim Empire had relied on Mamluks1 to serve as their

military forces. Over time, many capable Mamluk leaders used their political prowess to

gain control of outlying kingdoms. This weakened the Arab empire due to the fact that

their motivations and background were clearly different from the previous Arab army.

They were more interested in preserving their domains and power than in the greater

good of the kingdom. This led them to create alliances with invaders, which left areas

vulnerable to attack.

1 or plural

(al-mamalik) were the military contractors or converted slave armies of Muslim

Empires in use as early as the 9th

century.


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In the thirteenth century, the Islamic Empire was at its nadir. Converts joined

from different ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, splitting the Muslim umma2

into Arab `araba3

and Arabmustaraba4

. Because of their non-Arab heritage, the

newcomers did not care about Arabs as leaders of the Muslim world which led to the fall

of Baghdad at the hands of Mongol leader Hulagu Khan5

in 1250. After the Mongols

invaded and overwhelmingly conquered the Muslim Empire, they stayed there and

adopted the religion and customs of the land they came to inhabit. Around this time,

many European crusaders did the same. This lead to a sudden dilution of the customs and

language which had united the Muslim Empire since the time of the first Caliph Abu

Bakr who died in 634 CE.

The current ideological justifications for Jihad used by groups such as al-Qaida

are built on revivals of the scholarly work and revolutionary interpretation of Ibn

Taymiyya. He was the first Muslim scholar to expropriate the authority to declare jihad

a power previously reserved for a rightful imam6. Three major attacks on the Muslim

Empire during Ibn Taymiyyas life radicalized his studies and writings: the Tatar Mongol

invasion from the East, the influx of Crusaders from West, and the military betrayal by

Mamluk Caucasians from within. Ibn Taymiyya took the right and responsibility of

declaring Jihad out of the hands of the Imam and gave it to the masses, changing forever

the nature of Islamic warfare.

2The world-wide community of Muslims

3 The original and ethnically Arab Muslims

4 Literally meaning Arabized Arabs including all converts to the religion after the originalMuslim expansion5

Hulagu Khan6 The FairImam is the supreme religious and political empire of the Muslim umma


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It was this political climate that spurred Ibn Taymiyya to be the first cleric to re-

define Jihad as the religious justification to war that many terrorist organizations use

today. Though long dead, his ideas were revived during periods with political parallels to

the times in which he first popularized his beliefs. As the Ottoman Empire weakened and

fell, Mohammed Ibn `Abd al-Wahab drew on Ibn Taymiyyas work to call for a return to

Islam as it was originally practiced. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the

presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf Wars revived for the second time

the polemic writings of Ibn Taymiyya.

The Role of the Mamluks in the Fall of Baghdad

Around the 8th

century it became common practice for Muslim Emperors to rely

on Mamluk slaves as their military apparatus. While it was common for the military

leaders to fight each other to be near the caliph, they would put their divisions aside in the

face of outside threats, resuming their rivalries once eliminated.

These were not the Mamluks birthright lands and they resented the system which

treated them as second class citizens. Thus, valued their small kingdoms over the larger

Arab empire and made deals with threatening conquerors relinquishing the rule of small

pieces of land in exchange for the right to stay in power. They preferred to be number one

in their smaller kingdoms rather than being part of a greater empire that relegated them to

a second class, leaving them few resources to present a united Arab military front

(Michot 1995).

In comparison to the military of the Mamluks, the patriotic Arabs before them

were willing to fight for the survival of the empire, refusing propositions made by


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conquering forces. The Mamluks held second-class status in the empire overall, but their

successful administration of petty kingdoms gave them local power which they sought to

maintain. After the fall of Baghdad Mamluks became kings, and fled Baghdad and stayed

in Damascus, starting kingdoms in the Levant and in Egypt.

This retreat of the Mamluks from Baghdad meant that the caliph failed to gather

the requisite forces to stop Mongolian invasion. The Mongols were brilliant military

leaders as shown by their vicious conquest of all lands from Central Asia to the shores of

the Mediterranean. However, their slash and burn tactics destroyed civilizations. They

moved from land to land because they were incapable politicians who couldnt rule and

knew only war. When they came to the Middle East it was the first time in history, a

conquering force adopted the culture and religion of the land they conquered

During the Mongol invasion, the intruders realized the power of the Imam and the

importance of destroying him. From their stronghold in Tabriz (present-day Iran), they

sent the Caliph a message calling for his surrender which he refused, saying that the

Imam of Muslims does not surrender to anyone but God. The Caliph Mu`atasim fatally

assumed those three months would be enough to send runners to all Islamic territories

and re-form his army but by then the empire was at its weakest point. Al-Mut`asim, the

last caliph was a spoiled and foolish young man had not maintain the pivotal runner

system which was the nervous system of the empire.

Not only did he overestimate his ability to regroup his army, but he also failed to

realize that Mongols actually prefer winter for their attacks. As soon as summer and


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autumn ended, with the granted time coming to an end, the Caliph began to form an

army. This was too little too late and by this time, Mongol forces pressed at the gates of

Baghdad. When they invaded, one castle stood alone, defenseless and unprepared for the

Mongol siege.

They ruthlessly destroyed everything. Hulagos7

first order of invasion was to kill

every male above the age of 13, a massacre which lasted for two weeks. They killed the

caliph and his 13 sons and his daughters and his wives, destroying every single living

symbol of Arabic Muslim Empire. They showed no mercy or respect to anybody with

ruthlessness unmatched in any war between two empires before (Klein-Franke 2007).

The Mongols had destroyed the core and source of Arab Muslim strength and the

ultimate symbol of its power, forever eliminating the caliphate by killing al-Mua`tasim

and all of his family and heirs. Chapter 1 part two

CulturalConsequences

The Arab Muslims who lived during the time of the fall of the empire saw a

dramatic change in their culture, their religion, and most importantly their mother tongue.

Historically, their language was their biggest source of pride and unity. Arabic as a

language was extremely important to them as shown by the fact that their prophets only

miracle was the unmatched verse of the Quran which he recited.

The reason for this rapid change was that newcomers to Islam brought with them

their languages, traditions and beliefs, mixing these with the existing culture. New faith

7 Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan was the Mongol conqueror who led the sack of Baghdad

(Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 2009) Accessed 4/29/2010

http://ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=

39012518&site=ehost-live
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groups in Islam such as the Sufis8

created during this time exemplify how the new mix of

society and culture departed from traditional Islam.

Patriotic Arab clerics such as Ibn Taymiyya believed that the purity of Islam was

the source of its strength and the force behind all of the past success and the victories of

the Islamic empire. According to these Arab patriots, the only pure Islam was that which

was carried by the original Arab Muslims and their descendents thereafter. They kept

themselves away from the Sufis, whose beliefs were adopted by the Mamluk sultanates.

Scholars like Ibn Taymiyya thought that the new orders had nothing to do with the

original religion which organized every single detail of the political, social, and economic

life of believers, even discussing beliefs surrounding military and war tacticssomething

that had never been found in any religion before

Ibn Taymiyya: The New Jihads Spin Doctor

Ibn Taymiyya was born in what is now Saudi Arabia during the Tatar invasions of

the Muslim empires. He fled with his family and moved to Damascus where he published

his first religious interpretations by the age of 20. His area of study focused particularly

on Jihad and hurub ar-rasool9, the wars of the prophet. His formative years were thus

spent in a political climate of great upheaval and change, reacting to the diversification of

Islam that would bring about the subsequent collapse of the Muslim Empire.

The fall of Baghdad affected Taymiyya deeply. He personally bore witness to the

end of Islams golden age and the empires transition from a super power to small and

8 an adjective describing the practitioners of the mystical sunni sects of Islam9 The wars fought by the Prophet Mohammed against infidels in his lifetime (Imam ShiraziWorld Foundation 2006) accessed 5/1/2010


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scattered kingdoms ruled by non Arab rulers, who, as recent converts to the religion, did

not prize Islamic heritage as deeply as Arab Muslims. This fall from power inspired his

interest and subsequent research and writings concerning Jihad. When the Mongolian

Tatars killed the Caliph10

, there remained no murja`ia11

. The Mongolians had effectively

ended righteous Jihad for good, having killed the caliph and all of his sons, wives, and

blood relatives, making it so no one remained with the religious authority to declare Jihad

as prescribed by Muslim belief.

Ibn Taymiyya was the leading Sunni cleric of the time. His entire philosophy was

based on this idea of pure Islam and its perpetuity through the original believers and their

descendents (as-salaf as-salih12

). One may easily see his radical reaction toward any new

or modern thought in the religion as reactionary to this influx of new practices in Islam,

and this became his weak point. He decided that it was up to him not only to fight new

things being added to Islam during that period, but he also started to fight things which

were established before his time under a fair imam which he had no authority to doubt.

However, the center of his philosophy was that the weakening and collapse of the Islamic

Empire was a result of the influx of other beliefs and practices on Islam which

according to himstarted long before the fall of Baghdad.

He believed it was his duty as a Muslim to fight current events, as well as to fight

the weight of history. Having witnessed the fall of the empire, he saw what the Imam

10Another word for theImam

11 literally meaning reference, here a person holding religious authority to declare jihad as prescribedby Muslim belief12

The Righteous Descendents, those alive during the time of the life of the Prophet Mohammedand of the four Rashidun Caliphs


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could not have seen, and was thus felt endowed with the right to revise the word of the

fair imam.

With this philosophy as his starting point, he began to write his books about how

everything in Islam as a practice (muàmilat13

and ìbadat14

): (Arabi and Ibn Taymiyya

1998) has to be exactly the same as what the good descendents in the first generation of

Muslims who actually lived during Mohammads life and during the time of the

Rashidun caliphs did. The Quran says about them No falsehood comes from their hands

and no falsehood can approach them from before or from behind.

15

Basing his ideology

on this term is what made him the first Salafi cleric. Most of the Salafi practices and

beliefs and fatwas go back to his books.

There are several schools of thought: hanbali, shafài, maliki, and hanafi plus the

ideology of Shiis,ja`fari. TheJa farischool of thought followed by Shiis is greatly

disliked by Ibn Taymiyya and Salafis today who consider them infidels for their

reverence of the family of the prophet. According to Shiis the twelfth imam will come

back with Christ at the end of the time to fill the earth with justice and fairness after the

period of evil and injustice. This effectively closed the door in the face of any cleric at

any time wishing to use this dangerous weapon. The other four divisions closed the door

13 The practical components of Islam which dictate human affairs not intended to bring one closer togod.

14 The spiritual components of Islam including but not limited to: belief in the one god, praying,

fasting, alms giving, and pilgrimage

15

[:42]Sura al-Fussilat verse 42 as per my own

translation


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of fatwa16

. Though this was less definitive of an obstacle to jihad, no cleric can make

fatwas without having strong evidence from their book as a reference for his fatwa.

Ibn Taymiyya opposed the centralization of the fatwa process and attributed to it

the weakening of Islam, as well as the outright denial of jihad in Jafari thought. To

circumvent this, he started looking before the time of the division between the five

schools of Islamic ideology. Thus, the perfect time for him was that of the good

descendents. As they are even mentioned in the Quran so no Muslim can argue with

whatever evidence he finds during their time to back up his new school of thought

There are four circumstances in which Muslims are allowed to kill anyone

without direct and explicit permission from a fair imam. These four just reasons for

murder are: in defense of ones money, in defense of honor, or `ard17

and their female

relatives, in defense of blood spilled, and in defense of religion (Swazo 2008). There is

only to be one fair imam in the world and this position was permanently eliminated by

the Mongol slaughter of the Caliph and his family. In consequence, any halal18

taking of

a life by a Muslim must be for one of these four reasons.

Ibn Taymiyya had observed this destruction of the Muslim Empire by the

Mongols and watched as Arabs under the command of Salah ad-Din19

began to stop the

crusaders.. Salah ad-Din, in his defense of Muslim territory against the Crusades,

abstained from declaring Jihad even though there was a fair Imam to validate it, unlike

16 A religious decree17 Arabic word meaning honor18 Something which is permissible, also the opposite of sin, or haram 19

The leader of Muslim forces in defense against the Third Crusade, known as Saladin in Europe


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the Salafi organizations of today. While modern groups say they are fighting crusaders

and, therefore, have the right to declare Jihad, Salah ad-Din instead fought a permissible

war which was never declared as a jihad, even in the presence of a fair imam.

It was around this time as well that the Tatars and Mongolians became Muslim

and, after the peace treaty, some crusaders likewise converted and stayed in the territory,

resulting in an interesting cultural mix of Tatar, Mongolians, and European crusaders.

Many of these new converts lived in Arab lands without speaking proper Arabic,

a fact that grated with conservative elements of Muslim society. These conservatives

believed corruption had infiltrated so deep in their society as to have infiltrated even the

Arabic language, the pride of the Arabs for centuries. Encouraged by the success of the

Arab campaigns against crusaders, they felt well positioned to form a new Arab patriotic

military campaign against all non-Muslims Their aim was to re-form a pure society out

of the corrupt in which they lived.

These factorsthe numerous violent conquests on the Muslim Empire, the killing

of the Caliph, and the perceived corruption of Arab societytogether drove Ibn

Taymiyya to write what were essentially the new rules for Jihad drawing from Kitab20

,

Quran and Sunnah21

. After centuries of the rule of the Arab iron fist around the world,

their enemies had come to realize that the source of their strength was the fair imam. The

holy man who served as the spiritual leader and political of the empire, and supreme

20 Literally meaning book, here referring to the holy books revered in Islam including the Torah andthe Bible21

The traditions, sayings, and habits of the Prophet Mohammed as reported by various sources


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Misguided Ones al-thaleen24

. Using Christians as an example, he said they should be

eliminated because they will never make real peace with Muslims. He said the same thing

about the Shii and theNussariyah25

the other 80% of schools of thought in Islam.

Ibn Taymiyyasfatwas were in thirty seven books by the time he died at the age

of 67 in the prison the Damascus castle (qalatsalah ad-din). His death in the prison

drew much attention. Public opinion was against the authorities back then for being soft

and making treaties with the crusaders. Shortly after his death, his books and his school

of thought had been almost forgotten, partly due to his belief in violent elimination of

groups in Islam, definitely extending to non-Muslims as well.

Reviving Ibn Taymiyyas Legacy

Ibn Taymiyyas most important fatwa was the jihad fatwa entitled Jihadfi Sabil

Allah26

in which he declared that groups dont need a fatwa from a fair imam to fight an

enemy in your land, or anywhere else you can harm him. Changing this ideological

convention was a critical turning point. As part of traditional Islamic belief, declaring a

jihad fatwa to fight the enemies of Islam still requires a fair imam. Here, Ibn Taymiyya

dismissed this obligationin effect handing out the rights for DIY fatwas. He went so far

as to disregard the fatwa which all the Muslims agreed upon which classified the states

between dar al-harb27

and dar al-salm28

: house of war, house of peace, or less literally,

state of war and state of peace. Even if a fairImam has declared jihad has you cannot

24 The misguided ones as referred to in the Quran

25 A group believing that the caliphate should remain in the family of the Prophet and that this cannot

wait until judgment day, but that they must participate in revolution now to make this a reality26 Jihad in the name of/for the sake of God27

The permissible state of war28

The permissible state of peace, during which no war can be fought


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fight your enemy during dar as-silm but according to Ibn Taymiyya the whole world is

dar al-harb until the entire world believes in what he believes: the practice of and rule by

a Salafi Islam

Wahabi Revival

Viewing the world as in a perpetual state ofdar al-harb was adopted by Wahabis

in the 19th

century when they established the first Saudi-Wahabi state in Saudi Arabia.

Ibn Taymiyyas long dormant ideas were revived by the Egyptian Sayyid Qutub29

s

books in the early 20th

century. Wahabis at the time were fighting the hanafi30

Ottoman

Empire. Weakening the Ottoman Empire was a shared interest of the British and the

Wahabis, and with British help they conquered most of the land between Najd and

Hijaz31

, what we know today as Saudi Arabia.

The British also supported the Wahabi movement with weapons and military

advisors and maps, sometimes offering air support as they did in the battle of ad-Diraiyah

in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia where all the oil wealth is now found. Sayyid

Qutub was not viewed favorably by the Wahabis because his intention was to use the

ideology of Ibn Taymiyya to declare jihad against the British occupation of Egypt,

despite their help.

29 The intellectual force behind the Muslim Brotherhood who wrote many famous books advocating

a return to pure Islam, the most famous of which is called Signposts on the Path or 30

Old school of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence

31 Large territory in what is now Saudi Arabia from the coastal strip along the Red Sea to the

central flats of Saudi Arabia


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He failed and died, but one of his students, Hassan al-Banna32

, who established

the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt adopted the same thoughts and beliefs, adding from

Ibn Taymiyyas books to his own ideologyusing the same reasons to declare jihad

against the kings of Egypt and Sudan because they were backed by the west because they

were not Arabs and following the good descendants established path.

Parallel Realities

By comparing the times and political situation that Ibn Taymiyya experienced

after the fall of the Islamic empire and its subsequent occupation, with the time and

political circumstances of the formation of the Wahabi movement and the writing of

Sayyid Qutub, we find striking similarity in the socio- and geo-political conditions of the

fall of the Muslim Caliphate, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire (Nafi 2009).

As Hassan al-Bannas Muslim Brotherhood gained popular support, King Fuad33

of Egypt sensed the potential danger of the movement and decided to stop it by

imprisoning some of the followers. This was the height of tension between the

movement and the authorities in Egypt, and after the assassination of the prime minister

who had just disbanded the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna was assassinated in

retaliation. Everybody thought that was the end of al-Bannas movement in Egypt, but

two years later the military revolution occurred in Egypt. The inexperienced government

tried to wear the Islamic robe to lead the Egyptians and to control the southern territory of

Sudan. Public opinion favored the Islamic regime, and the Muslim Brotherhood

established a strong presence early on.

32 Political leader and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood

33 The last king of Egypt to wield any power


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Abdel Nasser34

decided to free the Muslim brothers from prison and to investigate

Hassan al-Bannas assassination. He ordered the capture of two of the top officials of the

royal palace and imprisoned them, accusing them of his assassination. Abdel Nasser gave

the brothers maneuvering space and time to reform their line and re-elect leadership.

Learning from historys mistakes at this time, it became an organization with multi-

headed leadership. This gave the Muslim Brotherhood a sort of hydra effect; so, it

became impossible for anyone to take the whole organization by taking the head off.

This spirit of Ibn Taymiyyas decentralized the religion and allowed anybody to be the

leader and the soldier and the cleric at the same time.

However, the honeymoon between Abdel Nasser and his revolutionary supreme

council and the Muslim Brotherhood did not survive an attempt to assassinate Abdel

Nasser when he was giving a public speech from a balcony in Alexandria on the 26th

of

October in 1954. The authorities blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for this attempt even

though many believe that Abdel Nasser himself faked the attempt in order to re-imprison

the Muslim Brotherhood members who, at the time were the fastest growing threat to

Nassers revolution. Nasser saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to the Arab

nationalist movement of which he wanted to be the supreme leader in order to become

the leader of a united Arab nation.

The Muslim Brotherhood suffered many losses, especially a decline in followers

and supporting clerics after he executed various leaders and launched a campaign to clear

34


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al-Azhar35

from all the clerics who supported the Muslim Brotherhood or believed in Ibn

Taymiyyas fatwas.

During the 1960s Abdel Nasser almost succeeded in eliminating the movement,

but the 1967 war came and destroyed Abdel Nassers biggest source of powerthe

Egyptian armed forces. Egypt suffered crippling damages during that war almost left the

military government crippled and gathered all of its forces east of the Suez canal to

defend Cairo from the Israeli army. During the six-day war in 1960, the Arab nationalist

movements pride suffered irreparable injuries which led Abdel Nasser to go alone to al-

Azhar to pray and ask for the peoples support to free the lost territories. This gesture

came from a leader who fought al-Azhar a few years ago.

Between 1967 and 1970, Abdel Nassers regime stopped harassing the Muslim

Brotherhood acknowledging he needed the mosques authority and influence over the

people. Religious authority will go beyond any government authority in Egypt as there is

a mosque in every village and neighborhood in Egypt. It is clearly far beyond the

governments capabilities to match that influence to recruit people to rebuild the country

and rebuild the armed forces to re-take the Sinai and heal the fatal blows suffered byArab

pride. However, in most of the nations who lost the war, the public opinion shifted

toward god and religion to protect them and help them win the next war.

Abdel Nasser died suddenly in 1970, and General Anwar Sadat, the most

pragmatic Arab leader, succeeded him in office. He shut down all the secret prisons and

35 The Noble Azhar University which has been the leading Sunni institution of literature

and Islamic Jurisprudence since the late 10th

century.


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the internment work camps for political prisoners in which were the majority of the

prisoners were Muslim Brotherhood members and communists. He even revealed the

secret phone-tapping documents of the political leaders of the country and held a meeting

with Muslim Brotherhoods leaders, promising freedom to organize and to do them no

harm in Egypt from now one. This spiked his approval ratings, allowing him to control

the government and the country with more ease. The boost was desperately needed, for in

the beginning the supreme revolutionary council voted for him to be the president

perceiving him as the weakest and least well known of all of them. Without public

support, he would have been the councils puppet. As-Sadat now had the street power

behind him to eliminate the power centers and lobbyists in the regime loyal to Abdul

Nasser above their loyalty to Egypt.

The Wahabi Connection

The Muslim Brotherhood received considerable funding and support from the oil

revenue of the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia; and this oil revenue was beyond any previous

charitable contribution. Saudi Arabia lacked the internal infrastructure on which to spend

their revenue and needed an outside market for their new capital. This brought millions of

dollars to Egypt, to the Brotherhood, and to the government. This is a stark contrast to

Abdel Nassers time when he fought against the Wahabis in Yemen and the Muslim

Brothers in Egypt.

After the 1973 war, Sadat and the Egyptian Army won the war against Israel and

crossed the Suez Canal. This created a new situation in the Middle East that dragged the

superpowers and the international community in to solve the crisis between Israel and


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Egypt before it would become an international crisis, which led to the Camp David

accords between Egypt and Israel. That was a turning point in public opinion and was a

huge disappointment for the Muslim Brotherhood who thought that even Abdel Nasser,

their number one enemy who had imprisoned them and executed their leaders was better

than Anwar Sadat because he didnt shake hands with the Zionists. Organized protests

filled the streets in most of the areas that the Muslim Brotherhood controlled. They took

to the streets of Cairo, protesting against the treaty and calling Anwar Sadat a traitor

while calling for his resignation.

Anwar Sadat decided to strike back, this time in a different way than what the

Muslim Brotherhood was used to. He struck them through the National Assembly by

calling for an emergency meeting to discuss an event that happened in Alexandria

between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Church in Alexandria. The Muslim

Brotherhood claimed that the Coptic Church hosted a play that offended the Prophet

Mohammed and threatened to burn down all of the Coptic churches in Egypt down unless

the Coptic Church apologized. As-Sadat used this incident as an excuse to re-imprison

most of their leaders and attack them publicly on national TV where he used strong

words against their leaders calling them names like filthy dogs primitive

uneducated clerics from the 13th

century. These words were an internal message

for all of the followers of Ibn Taymiyya.


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This incident directly lead to his assassination by Khalid al-Islambooli36

, during a

military parade on the revolution day. Al-Islambooli was part of a secret armed cell

which followed the command of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was executed and general

Husni Mubarak37

became president and declared a state of emergency and banned the

brotherhood from any political or social activity, re-imprisoning many of their followers

and leaders.

The Third Revival

The soviet invasion of Afghanistan was starting to face a small resistance in the

mountains of the southeast border area. During that time, the Wahabi clerics in Saudi

Arabia declared Jihad on the Soviet troops in Afghanistan based to Ibn Taymiyyas

fatwas which gave them the authority to do so, even in the absence of a fair imam. They

started sending money and recruits to Afghanistan through Islamic charities and

organizations in Pakistan run and funded by Saudi Arabia. The United States backed this

movement and sent military equipment and advisors to train the fighters in camps

between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The regime in Egypt found this a golden opportunity

to get rid of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood who were thorns in their side,

specifically the most violent cells, by making a deal with them to send them to the greater

Jihad against the Soviet invaders of Islamic Afghanistan. Of course, the Muslim

Brotherhood swallowed the bait and started sending a flow of people to Afghanistan.

Most of the governments in the Middle East started making it easy for unwanted jihadists

to go to Pakistan where their final destination would be the border American training

36 Egyptian officer largely responsible for assassination of Anwar Sadat37

Anwar Sadats vice president who assumed the presidency upon death of Sadat and hasbeen there ever since.


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camps to fight the Soviet enemy. Organizing these camps was done with the blessing of

the CIA (the Central Intelligence Organization) and the greater U.S. Government.

The Arab fighters in Afghanistan grew in numbers and became what they call the

Arab Afghans38

. They were hard-core fighters who had nothing to lose but their lives,

which they believed is the ultimate sacrifice and would redeem them from whatever sins

theyve committed on Earth, making a clear, wide open path to paradise. Those Arab

Afghan fighters were different than the true Afghan fighters, because they were pure

fighters with no political agendas or local affiliations like Afghan groups fighting the

Soviets. Their attitude gave them the upper hand in battles with the Soviets and in the

entire war over all; not to mention the help of millions of Saudi dollars and the training

by the most lethal trainers in the world, the CIA and the green berets.

The Arab Afghans are the first manifestation of what we know today as al-Qaida.

After the complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the Arab Afghans

appeared on the surface and to the public as holy heroes who brought the lost pride of the

Muslims after centuries of degradation.

However, the collapse of the Soviet Union later on as well as the fall of Warsaw

and the Iron Curtain, busied the west with re-organizing Eastern Europe and preserving

the Soviet heritage during the 1990s. This gave time to the Arab Afghans and their new

leader Osama Bin Ladena prince from the royal family of Saudi Arabia and a member

of one of the wealthiest families in the worldthe time to declare al-Qaida an

38Arab Afghans were the ethnically non-Afghan men organized around Islam to expel the Soviets from

Afghanistan


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international organization, which is what they call qa`dat al-islam39

meaning the base

of Islam.

The Invasion of Kuwait: Ibn Taymiyyas Second Revival

On the morning of August 2nd

, 1990 the world woke up to the news of Saddams

invasion of Kuwait. By night time, Saddam controlled 20% of the worlds oil production.

Fearing that the Republican Guard would march forward to Saudi Arabias eastern oil-

rich fields and gain control of 50% of the worlds oil, the Kingdoms government invited

the western coalition to intervene.

The United States of America launched Operation Desert Shield which flooded

the holy lands of Saudi Arabia with western forces for the first time in Islamic history.

The Saudi government knew that they were playing with fire, but they had no other

choice. Saddam controlling the eastern oil fields jeopardized the entire region and the

world. Nascent Al-Qaida vehemently opposed this and called for the formation of an

Islamic army from Muslim countries to protect the holy land and liberate Kuwait, and

asked the Saudi government to retract their invitation to the foreign forces.

Al-Qaidas demand was not realistic because the oil fields were only a few

hundred miles south of the border with Kuwait, lightly defended by the comparatively

inadequate Saudi army. In the face of the worlds fifth largest army at the time, the Iraqi

army, the Saudis had no choice but to call upon the West and specifically the United

States to protect them.

39 Name of premier world-wide terrorist organization, literally meaning in Arabic The Base


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The Saudi government disregarded Bin Ladens demands and the campaign

escalated until the allied forces launched Operation Desert Storm, using Islams holiest

lands to launch their attack and repel Saddams forces. The operation was a huge success

for the allied forces, who liberated Kuwait within two months. The Iraqi forces suffered

catastrophic damages but Saddam managed to maintain enough military power to control

the country again after the Kurdish and Shii uprisings.

Even though the military campaign destroyed most of the offensive capabilities of

the Iraqi army, Saddam managed to hide a few hundred long-range ballistic missiles and

four thousand tanks and two thousand pieces of artillery with an immense stock-pile of

chemical warheads. Thus he remained a threat if he were to decide to launch any suicide

operations. This is why Kuwait and Saudi Arabia wanted a permanent US presence on

their soil to deter any future incursions.

That decision continues to affect the region and the entire world; this foreign

presence is what al-Qaida used as an excuse to declare jihad against the Saudi

government and the royal family for the first time. The Saudi government found itself

between two difficult choices: fighting yesterdays ally, al -Qaida and Osama bin Laden

whose beliefs enjoy deep popular support; and living at mercy of Saddams whim and

arsenal.

Bite the Hand that Feeds You

Al-Qaidas first attack against Western interests in Saudi Arabia came hard and

fast. In 1992, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the first terrorist attack against two

hotels hosting westerners, mostly Americans in Yemen. The attack was intended to


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eliminate American soldiers on their way to Somalia in support of operation Restore

Hope. The Saudi government banished bin Laden and he moved to Sudan where he

stayed with Hassan at-Turabi, an Islamist theoretician. From Sudan he started re-

grouping the Arab Afghan fighters. In 1993 when Saudi Arabia gave support for the Oslo

Accords which set the path for peace between Israel and Palestine, bin Laden and

Zawahiri opposed this decision as al-Qaidas supreme leaders. Zawahiri was already

wanted by the Egyptian authorities for his affiliation with the assassination attempt on the

life of Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sudqi. The police arrested 280 of al-Jihad40

s

members but he managed to escape and join bin Laden in Sudan.

In 1994, King Fahad41

sent a delegate to Sudan to bring bin Laden back but Sudan

refused because of bin Ladens support of the Islamic groups in the south who were

fighting the Christian separatists and paying millions of dollars to support them. After

the American withdrawal from Somalia, it was declared as a failed state, meaning that

there was no form of government controlling the territory. Al-Qaida found this to be a

golden opportunity to plant its roots in the African horn42

, spreading its cells through the

region in the name of fighting the increased Israeli influence in the region. However, this

led to the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar as-Salam. Here, al-Qaida

came face-to-face with the United States.

40 The Egyptian Islamic Jihad, referred to as al-Jihad seeking to institute Islamic

law in Egypt41

King of Saudi Arabia until 2005

42The Horn of Africa: The part of Eastern Africa literally shaped like a horn


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Sudan found itself surrounded by the international community and facing the

threat of a U.S. military operation on its soil against al-Qaida, like that which happened in

1969 against what the U.S. thought to be al-Qaida training camps and chemical weapons

factories, despite the Sudanese governments insistence that they were just

manufacturing drugs. Seeking to avoid a repeat of this episode, the Sudanese government

told al-Qaida that they had over-stayed their welcome.

Back in Afghanistan, the Taliban who were gaining power and territory welcomed

their old allies back. Al-Qaida returned back to where it had begunAfghanistan, and

started operating from there once again.

In 1998, bin Laden and Zawahiri signed and issued a declaration under the name

of the Organization World Islamic Front called Combat Against the Jews and

Crusaders43

. From that date until September 11th

, 2001, al-Qaida was a big part of the

Taliban regime in Afghanistan and played a key role in Taliban military success in the

Afghan civil war. In 2001, al-Qaida hit the heart of the American empire and the worlds

financial capital fast and hard to send a clear message that they did not fear anyone or any

power ruling the world now. However, the attack brought al-Qaida back to the surface

from Kandahars caves and it became the worlds most dangerous and powerful terrorist

organization. Even the United Statesthe biggest military power in the worldneeded

the support of other countries to fight it. Al-Qaidas strategy behind the attack was to

drag the U.S. into a long conflict on a battlefield they knew well and had already fought

the only military power comparable to the U.S. on it for ten years and won. Al-Qaida

43 "

" (World Islamic Front 1998)


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knew that after the attack the Americans would strike back, and hard, but from a military

perspective thats what they wanted: to choose the battlefield where theywould have the

upper hand. In the mountains of Afghanistan, the technological disparity between their

fighters and the U.S. military became less important a tactic they continue to use

successfully today.

The Talibans regime collapsed after the allied invasion of Kabul and al-Qaida

fled the country, with most of al-Qaidas leaders moving to the tribal area of Waziristan.

Here, they reorganized their lines to start a long guerilla war against the U.S. and their

allies in Afghanistan. After the 2001 war in Afghanistan, al-Qaida changed their tactics.

Instead of the traditional, pyramid organization it was, it shifted shape into a line

organization. The line had already been told by Ibn Taymiyya that the whole world was

dar al-harb, giving the impetus to hit the enemy where ever they can, whenever they can,

and as hard as they can. Technically, they no longer needed regular operational

instructions, but rather received instructions through hidden messages in al-Qaida

statements to the media, especially on the al-Jazeera network, and over the Internet to

connect with the groups world-wide. Al-Qaida didnt gain much fame from this phase of

the war against the U.S. in Afghanistan because unlike when they were fighting the

Soviets, they didnt receive any support from any other country, not financial or military

support.

Support came from some radical Wahabi charity organizations in Saudi Arabia

through Afghanistan, and it is suspected that they have some connections in the Pakistani

government that allow them to have access to some sensitive information, useful for their


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attacks. The war in Afghanistan was not very popular in the Islamic world because it

happened a thousand miles away from their immediate interests. But, after the U.S.s

invasion of Iraq, al-Qaida had the golden opportunity to fight its nemesis: the United

States of America, in the Arabian Peninsulathe center and the heart of the Islamic

world where American defeat would be for them the sweetest.

Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia

Al-Qaida started its operations in Iraq a few months after the fall of Saddams

regime. The first attack that al-Qaida claimed was the bombing of the Jordanian embassy

in Baghdad in 2003. However, al-Qaidas presence in Iraq began long before that,

starting in the Kurdish region in the north which was under the UN protection after desert

storm to protect the Kurds from revenge from Saddam. The new form of regional

government in the Kurdish region wasnt powerful enough to control its own territory,

especially with the hard mountainous terrain of the area.

In 1993 the first Islamic group linked directly to al-Qaida called Ansar al-Islam44

started operating in the mountainous area between Iraq and Iran. This area was among the

first targets during Operation Iraqi Freedom to be hit by cruise missiles, remaining a

target of air strikes until the end of the war. Most al-Qaida experts in Iraq think that the

leaders and most of the followers of Ansar al-Islam fled the area and went to Baghdad to

meld in with the chaos the fall of Saddams regime brought with it. They started

contacting other regional extremists like Zarqawi. A Jordanian national who fought in

Afghanistan, and he worked as an advisor for the group during the1990s in the north. He

44 A Kurdish Salafi group


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came to Iraq to lead al-Qaida in Iraq and to establish what they call al-Qaida in

Mesopotamia.

Soon after their attack on the Jordanian embassy, they claimed responsibility for

the devastating suicide attack against the UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed over

400 Iraqi civilians and UN employees including the chief of the mission, Sergio De Milo

leading the UN to withdraw all of its employees from Iraq and close their offices there,

running their operations from their regional office in Amman. Al-Qaida became an

embarrassment to the coalition forces and the newly formed Iraqi transitional government

under the supervision of the coalition provisional authority. It became one of the most

difficult challenges that both of the US government and the Iraqi government would deal

with for years to come.

After several big attacks, al-Qaida made an alliance with the remaining members

of Saddams regime and the Bàthists who fled to Syria, fearing the revenge of the Iraqi

people after the collapse of the regime. The Bàth party45

thought they would use al-

Qaida as their armed wing to achieve political success by embarrassing the US in Iraq

and make the current government weak and non-functional. Al-Qaida realized early that

the Bàthists just wanted to use them to reach a deal with the Americans to have the

chance to rejoin political life in Iraq. Al-Qaida distanced itself from the Bàth party,

calling them slaves of their nationality (al-Jaza'iri 2007).

45 Known as the Arab Socialist Ba`th Party is a secular pan-Arab socialist party

which has ruled both Syria and Iraq at different times


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However, from 2003 to 2007, al-Qaida succeeded in launching catastrophic

attacks all over Iraq against the coalition forces and the Iraqi government and the Iraqi

civilians who were affiliated with the new government and the coalition forces, especially

the Shiia who supported and participated in the new government and the liberation of

Iraq.

The most complicated and dangerous attack took place in Samarra, 170 miles

north of Baghdad when al-Qaida managed to bomb and destroy one of the most sacred

Shiia shrines in the worldThe Golden Dome Mosque (al-askari`ayn shrine)

46

.

This single attack put Iraq on the edge of a civil war. In the hours that proceeded

the attack, over 170 attacks were recorded against Sunni mosques in the capital alone.

The day after protesters walked the streets in most of the Shii neighborhoods and cities

asking for revenge; threatening that if the government couldnt or wouldnt do that give

them revenge, and if the Americans couldnt protect them, they would wipe out the entire

Sunni population of Iraqaround 25% of the Iraqi population. Sectarian violence led to

the area where al-Qaida mostly operated from around Baghdad, known as the Sunni

triangle, to be called by the Iraqis the death triangle.

The new government of Iraq found itself in a difficult position of being incapable

of placating angry masses and of taking the revenge that the angry crowds in the streets

demanded because of their limited military resources. Thus, they needed American

support. Somehow, the Iraqi government, with the help of the Shiia cleric in Iraq (Ali as-

46

is a twelve Shii shrine in Samarra, Iraq that because of its great cultural importance, hasoften been targeted by sunny extremists


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Sistani47

) managed to calm the angry streets. The top US commander, General David

Petraeus, flew to Washington to ask the administration for 30,000 more troops in Iraq in

order to impose order in the streets of Iraq. The administration greed and congress gave

the green light for the increased troop levels and increased war funds.

Petraeus Plan

General Petraeus started the surge in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle to crack

down on al-Qaidas strongholds. General Petraeus truly did something extraordinary. He

bought the loyalty of the Sunni tribal leaders in the Sunni areas and supported them

against al-Qaida attacks directed at the tribe leaders for not paying a protection tax. This

became one of the American top strategies to fight al-Qaida in Iraq and this Sons of Iraq

initiative spread through the Sunni areas forming what was called the Awakening

movement against al-Qaida.

The Sunni Awakening turned the war against al-Qaida in Iraq and was a huge turn

in the overall war where al-Qaida lost their operative areas, recruits, supply routes, and its

social support among the local Sunni populationsthe only area in Iraq where they had

support to begin with. Al-Qaida suffered catastrophic damages to its structure by losing

almost 90% of their leaders by aerial attacks launched by the US, and the rest was lost as

the local fighters who used to work for al-Qaida switched sides to the Awakening after

they saw that al-Qaida was getting them nowhere.

47 Is the highest Shia authority in the world right now


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By the end of 2007, the roads to Baghdad were opened and the death triangle,

became a relatively safe place again, colloquially returning to the Sunni triangle. Iraq

held another election and a national constitutional government was put in place for the

first time in the countrys history, and its armed forces started increasing in numbers and

equipment. A huge military campaign was launched against the Shiia militia who were

attacking the Sunni neighborhoods in the name of fighting al-Qaida. That gave the Shiia

dominated government Sunni support in in fighting al-Qaida which made a tremendous

impact in the battle. Al-Qaida was pushed out of the Sunni Triangle and out of Baghdad

to a mountain area north of Baghdad in the provinces of Ninava, Tikrit, Kirkuk, and

Diyala. This area had no cities or villages or even accessible roadsimportant for the

most rudimentary operational base. The area was surrounded by hundreds of military

checkpoints, run by Iraqi security forces.

Al-Qaida lost its last support in Iraq and the Islamic world saw all of the

devastating attacks against Iraqi civilians and the death toll among Muslim Iraqis

hundreds of times higher than the coalition-caused deaths in Iraq. Even the most

extremist groups started questioning the point of this massacre against Muslims in the

name of jihad. Al-Qaida lost the initiative, lost the domestic support, and lost the

international extremist sympathy which decreased the supply of foreign recruits on whom

they depended to carry out their suicide attacks in Iraq. At the end of 2008 a joint

intelligence operation led by the American Special Forces with the Iraqi Special Forces

on a Syrian border town led to the capture of one of al-Qaidas leaders alive. From his

confiscated laptop security forces found all of the information about the international


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recruits and their routes from Europe and North Africa and the Middle East. After the

capture, European security authorities launched a detain campaign against extremist

organizations linked to that leader.

This huge loss impacted the operations of al-Qaidas suicide missions in Iraq.

With al-Qaida left crippled and handcuffed, choking with no international aid, starving

for domestic support, they started thinking about another strategy. For the first time al-

Qaida used female suicide bombers in Iraq. From a western perspective it may seem

inconsequential, but anybody who knows the structure of the society and the traditions

and the beliefs of Muslims, it was a radical change in tactics.

According to all Muslim schools of thought, including Ibn Taymiyya and the

Salafis, there is no jihad for the womenjihad is requisite for all Muslim men and

women are exempt from this responsibility. They can participate if they want but most

likely as a matter of culture, they didnt in Iraq, even in al-Qaida attacks up until then.

The huge security increase in Iraq, and the huge decrease of the amounts of attacks which

went from 200 attacks per day to 17 attacks per day, gave the government the time and

the maneuvering space to distribute its forces and regain the initiative to launch counter

attacks against the insurgency. But, the security forces in Iraq are almost entirely male

and in Iraq, just like any other Muslim country, especially in the Middle East, a male

security officer is not allowed to touch or search any female, and sometimes, not even

allowed to go through her personal belongings such as a purse or a backpack or carry-on,

except in some government buildings and airports.


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Al-Qaida used this hole in security and started recruiting women to launch suicide

attacks because they knew how dangerous this weapon would be and the amount of effort

the government would need to train another army, of female security personnel and

distribute them to all of the important checkpoints and security units, or to order male

security officers to search females which would cause the government indescribably

outcry from the public. Either way, the government would need time to adjust to the

tactic and find the solution to it which would not be easy. That was al-Qaidas reasoning,

to take back the initiative back from out of the hands of the Iraqi government and put the

Iraqi government on the defensive again.

Fall of Empire: Redux

It is said in Arabic that Arabs chew on history meaning that it is an inextricable

part of everyday life. That being said, is it impossible to understand why one human

being would end their life to end the lives of others. Through this comprehensive history,

we examined how Mamluk ambivalence contributed to the fall of the Muslim Empire at

the hands of the Mongols in the 13th

century. The subsequent integration of the Mongols

and that of crusaders who stayed after the battles led to a dilution of Arab Muslim

culture. These incidents deeply impacted Ibn Taymiyya, the jurist who re-defined Jihad

as a right explicitly reserved for a fair Imam to something any Islamic jurist can declare.

At the time of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Wahabis based their ideology

on Ibn Taymiyyas Salafi interpretations, based on a similar sequence of events. After the

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the presence of American troops on holy Muslim land


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during the two Gulf Wars of the 1990s, bin Laden and al-Qaida saw the same threat to

Islam that Ibn Taymiyya saw, leading them to revive his ideology once again.


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METHODOLOGY

I began my search on Lexis-Nexis Academic Resource (Lexis Nexis 2010)and

identified all mentions of Iraq and female and suicide terroris*. I compiled all of

the news with those I collected from the internet cross-listed with incident database

iraqbodycount.org (Iraq Body Count 2010) as well as that of antiwar.com (Anti War.com

2010) and with the Brookings Institution Iraq Index(O' Hanlon and Livingston 2010).

I entered this into a table of raw data as attached in Appendix A.

The highly politicized debate in the U.S. surrounding the effectiveness of

increased troop levels and more generally the Iraq war in general has negative effects on

data collection surrounding incidents of violence. Some websites seek to over-represent

the casualties and other sites to over-represent the effectiveness of the surge. Thus,

military counts of this data would be more accurate though possibly still biased to reflect

the success of their operations in reducing violence or civilian deaths, or to reflect what

organizational goals they have.

The U.S. government has not declassified any documents relating to terrorism

since 1987, and none about Iraq since 2003. However, one can apply for an account to

access government documents through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as

information from opensource.gov. Getting an account is not an expedient procedure but it

is recommended for anyone with long-term involvement in this research. Thus my

research is limited by the widely varying reports of death and injury counts, as well as

inconsistencies in the permanence of digital news sources beyond one or two years.


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CHAPTER TWO: FEMALE

PERPETRATED ATTACKS IN IRAQ

2005-2010

The use of female suicide attackers is in Iraq is a strategic organizational decision.

It was a response to the increase of America and Multi-National Force Coalition troops in

2007 that acted as a barrier to the use of male suicide bombers. The fact that an

overwhelming majority of attacks were perpetrated in Diyala Province shows a strategic

decision to use women. This is especially true when combined with the confessions of a

captured organizer which shows us that 34% of the total of female suicide attackers in

Iraq were directly and strategically organized by this one woman. What makes women

more successful perpetrators of suicide attacks is the fact that they are culturally exempt

from search by the predominantly male security apparatus.

The absence of self-organization also makes the use of women a clearly strategic

decision. Many of these women were coerced to participate as shown by the same

apprehended organizer, and some women were very young or mentally handicapped.

Iraqi female suicide bombers were selected and recruited by an operator, meaning

someone else made the decision to perpetrate this act rather than each individual woman.

In contrast to the infamous and widely circulated propaganda videos and

messages celebrating martyrs, nothing of this sort is made to boast the acts of these

women. Palestinian suicide organizations not only use women, but also include them in


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postmortem. Attacks of this nature are strategic because of the perceived effectiveness of

female bombers, at least in infiltration if not necessarily in number killed.

The Surge

On January 10th

of 2007, President Bush announced his New Way Forward, an

action plan to deploy an additional five U.S. Army Brigades, approximately 20,000

American soldiers to Iraq (Laurent 2009). Also known as the surge, this increase in

troop levels was intended to reinforce and secure Baghdad and the Sunni Anbar province.

This action proved effective at reducing casualty rates in affected areas over the long

term. Table 1 shows the astonishing 62% reduction in Iraqi civilian casualties from 2007

when the surge was announced, to a year later. In the year of 2007 alone, there was a

68% reduction in Iraqi civilian deaths from 2,807 in January of 2007 to 905 Iraqi civilian

deaths in December of 2007.

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Jan 3 571 1046 1439 2807 744 276 258

Feb 2 603 1203 1451 2536 1011 343 296

Mar 3977 957 785 1791 2616 1540 416 311

Apr 3437 1267 1024 1593 2436 1261 484 145

May 544 618 1226 2110 2757 761 327 *

Jun 594 831 1215 2430 2094 671 487 *

Jul 649 781 1444 3165 2575 586 394 *

Aug 792 822 2166 2745 2333 592 585 *

Sep 555 941 1330 2412 1225 534 298 *

Oct 516 946 1201 2926 1187 522 404 *Nov 483 1531 1208 2987 1053 473 205 *

Dec 529 906 996 2683 905 522 426 *

12,081 10,774 14,844 27,732 24,524 9,217 4,645 1,010


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Table 1: Iraqi Civilian Deaths iraqbodycount.org48

Acessed 04/22//2010

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/

The rise in the number of deaths points to the need to address the comprehensive

roots of suicide terrorism as implemented by Salafi jihadist organizations.

Comprehensive literature reviews by authors in the social sciences such as Martha

Crenshaw have shown an opportunity to clearly define the historical background of

differences between the ideological justification used by Shii groups-who see their

actions as defensive-and the offensive nature of Salafi-based jihad groups (such as al-

Qaida) leaves room for a better general understanding of the matter.

Digging Deep

There is relatively little literature that analyzes the number of female suicide

attackers in Iraq from 2005 through 2010. Yet the reason why I found it so critical to

research this subject, the contemporary nature of the conflict, was also the cause of much

of the difficulty in researching it. While much investigation has been done with regard to

womens participation in secular nationalist struggles, such as their pivotal role in

Algerias FLN (National Liberation Front) and in the infamous LTTE (Liberation Tigers

of Tamil Elam), the reportage of attacks and the associated body counts is a grim and

48According to the Iraq Body Count website the data is based on 22,451 database entries from the

beginning of the war to 26 April 2010. The most recent weeks are always in the process of compilation and

will rise further. The current range contains 4,2434,398 deaths (4.4%4.2%, a portion which may rise or

fall over time) based onsingle-sourced reports. Graphs are based on the higher number in our totals. Gaps

in recording and reporting suggest that even our highest totals to date may be missing many civilian deaths

from violence.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/reference/announcements/3/


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sometimes sporadic business. Subsequently, it has been difficult to find consistent

reliable figures of womens participation in suicide campaigns in Iraq. From the data I

compiled, I synthesized Figure1 below, showing the number dead and wounded by

female suicide attackers. This shows the marked increase from 2007 to 2008 in the

number of people killed and injured by female suicide attackers.

Figure 1: Number Dead and Injured by Female Suicide Attackers

Strategic Motivations of Organizations

According to Robert Papes The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, suicide

attacks are implemented by organizations that follow a strategic logic. He claims that

suicide attacks have increased since the 1980s because of the tactics success in gaining

concessions from the modern liberal democracies they target..


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Papes critical finding is that terrorism is strategic, not random or isolated;

perpetrated by individual fanatics, but in clusters as part of larger campaign. Groups

announce specific goals and stop attacks when those have been achieved. According to

Pape, the strategic logic of suicide terrorism is specifically designed to coerce modern

democracies to make significant concessions to national self-determination especially in

the face of foreign occupation. Pape concludes that groups continue to use suicide attacks

largely because of their success in the 1980s and 1990s.

Thus, the most promising way to contain suicide terrorism is to reduce terrorists

confidence in their ability to carry out such attacks on the target society. Pape argues that,

States that face persistent suicide terrorism should recognize that higher offensive

military action nor concessions alone are likely to do much good and should invest

significant resources in border defense and other means of homeland security. (Pape,

The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism 2003)

While Papes premise that the strategic logic of suicide attacks targets liberal

democracies to earn territorial concessions is validated by his research, my data suggests

that it is not so in Iraq. Of the 72 attacks perpetrated in Iraq by female suicide bombers,

not one targeted the Multi-National Force Coalition or even any non-Iraqi interests.

Every single female perpetrated attack targeted Shii neighborhoods and pilgrims,

Awakening coalition members, Iraqi police, and other local interests such as weddings.

According to Pape, psychological profiles are not one size fits all, and therefore

such evaluations are not very useful. Even if suicide attackers are irrational or fanatical,


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the leadership that directs and recruits them is not. He cites Thomas Schellings, the

rationality of irrationality, in which, an act that is irrational for individual attackers is

meant to demonstrate credibility to a democratic audience that still more and greater

attacks are sure to come. As such, modern suicide terrorism is analogous to instances of

international coercion. Thus terrorism is effectively the coercive instrument of choice of

the weaker group in an asymmetrical conflict.

Strategic Location of Female-Perpetrated Attacks

Of the 72 women who perpetrated suicide attacks in Iraq from 2005 to 2010, 76%

of these attacks were carried out after the beginning of the surge. Figure 1 shows the

dramatic decrease of male-perpetrated attacks after the beginning of the surge in 2007. At

this same time, female-perpetrated attacks reached their all-time high.

In political science, a barrier is defined as any mechanism through which one

group limits the ability of any other group to attack it. Barriers essentially require some

amount of time and effort to be defeated or circumvented, thus increasing the resources

needed to complete an operation against the group that erected the barrier (Jervis,

Allingham & Sandmo, Andreoni et al, as cited by an-Nakhla).

By increasing the planning required on the offending side, barriers slow down

offending groups and give the erectors more time to prepare for their attack. An-Nakhla

says a barrier supported with checkpoint systems and surveillance increases the

possibility of stopping and punishing infiltrators before they reach their targets.

(Nakhala 2009).


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Figure 2: Total and Female Attacks per Year

Erecting barriers is not a tactic that prevents attacks outright, but rather one that

attempts to mitigate their frequency and effectiveness in terms of casualties inflicted. I

contend that the increased use of female suicide bombers by al-Qaida in Mesopotamia49

and other related Sunni terrorist groups was a strategic reaction to the increased

difficulties faced by men in the perpetration of suicide attacks over time.

In her doctoral prospectus, Duaa an-Nakhla claims that, barriers are institutions

of intensified border-policing enabling the state to practice coercion and extraction. These

practices include preventing exit and entry, suppressing contraband, and extracting

revenues from goods and people in the form of customs taxes. (Nakhala 2009). I would

further posit that the surge of troops, the capture of high-level al-Qaida in Mesopotamia

49The part of al-Qaida which operates in Iraq goes by the name al-Qaida in Mesopotamia

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400450

500

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010*

Attacks

Total and Female Suicide Attacks per Year


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operatives, and loss of public support ostensibly served as immaterial barriers. These

three factors meet the criteria of a barrier and have the intention defined above, without

being a physical barrier such as a wall (Gavrillis n.d.).

Figure 3: Breakdown of Female-Perpetrated Suicide Attacks by Target

Female Perpetrator, Female Recruiter

This is supported by the anecdote of the capture of the Iraqi woman by the

operational name of Um al-Mumineen, or mother of the believers. She confessed to

orchestrating the rape of dozens of women in order to later convince them that the only

way to recover their honor was to perpetrate suicide attacks (Haynes 2009). The 51 year-

old woman claims that she was personally responsible for the recruitment of over 80

1%

15%

8%

7%

2%

13%

17%

5%

30%

2%

Targets of Female Attacks

American Patrol

Awakening Members

Checkpoint

Courthouse

Hospital

Market

Police

Shi'a Mosques & Neighborhoods

Shi'a Pilgrims

Wedding Procession


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young women this way, and that 24 of them went on to perpetrate suicide attacks in

Diyala and Baghdad.

According to intelligence officials, al-Mumineen is directly connected to at least

24 female-perpetrated attacks in Baghdad and in the province of Diyala. Based on my

data, it is clear that attacks from Baghdad and Diyalas city of Baquba account for the

majority of attacks, perhaps due in part to the recruitment of vulnerable women by Um

al-Mumineen and her collaborators.

Al-Mumineen (whose real name was Samira Ahmed Jassim) worked for a

network of Sunni extremists that directed her to orchestrate these attacks. They supplied

her with a monthly stipend and living quarters above a store where she sold abayas, the

long flowing black robes in which she concealed her recruits bombs. Though the rapes

have not been independently confirmed, she allegedly manipulated the rape victims to

escape the shame of their life on Earth in the service of God.

Figure 3 shows the location of female-perpetrated suicide attacks. Baquba is a city

in the province of Diyala. This means that 48% of the women who committed suicide

attacks did so in, and were likely from, Diyala. Thus we can conclude that a strong

correlation exists between the political and social climate of that area and female suicide

attacks. Diyala is a province in the Sunni triangle where al-Qaida held their

organizational stronghold before the surge and awakening programs really took hold.

Figure 3 shows that 49% of attacks were perpetrated in this province (with 48% in


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Baquba alone, a city in Diyala). This geographic centralization shows the organizational

nature female-perpetrated attacks.

Figure 4: Location of Female Suicide Attacks

According to the newspaper article, this was called

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