Female suicide bombers: the hidden weapon of a terrorist group

A woman holding a baby over the weekend detonated a bomb in northern Nigeria, killing two people and at least six others, local authorities said, ending a rare lull in violence that has plagued the region for more than a decade.

She was joined by two other female suicide bombers in Nigeria’s Borno state, who killed at least 32 people and wounded dozens more in a series of bombings, Vice President Kashim Shettima said. The attacks, experts said, showed the complex and deadly role women can play in terrorist insurgencies like Boko Haram.

The attackers struck at three locations: a wedding party, an area near a hospital and a funeral service for victims of the earlier bombing, said Barkindo Saidu, the director-general of Borno state’s emergency management agency. The attacks took place in the town of Gwoza, an area previously controlled by Boko Haram for 15 years.

While no organization has claimed responsibility, the attacks are similar to previous suicide bombings by Boko Haram, an Islamist group responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than two million people in the region. Boko Haram made headlines in 2014 after it kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls.

Women are sentenced to death for ‘not blending in with the crowd’.

According to experts, armed groups often use women as suicide bombers because they consider them less valuable to the organization and more tactically advantageous.

“Women arouse less suspicion and can penetrate deeper into their targets,” said Mia Bloom, a professor of communications at Georgia State University and an expert on female suicide bombers. Professor Bloom said terrorist groups often use women when attacking civilians or civilian infrastructure because they “blend in” and are less likely to be seen as a threat.

Some groups also see women as easier to manipulate, said Professor Bloom, who has interviewed many Boko Haram survivors. Many of the women Boko Haram has turned into suicide bombers were likely sexually abused and traumatized, she said. Some women may be genuinely radicalized, she said, but others believe “they have a better chance of survival as a bomber than by marrying a Boko fighter.”

One group used female suicide bombers in more than half of the cases.

Terrorist organizations such as Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and the Taliban have used female suicide bombers in the past, but Boko Haram has done so more often than other groups.

The group has a history of kidnapping young girls and holding them hostage, forcing them to strap explosives on them and sending them on suicide missions. Boko Haram used girls so frequently in some areas that the Nigerian government launched a counterterrorism campaign featuring images of young children with detonators.

Research An investigation by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point found that the group used women as terrorists in more than half of its operations, including suicide missions from April 2011 to June 2017. Many of the terrorists were girls.

Former Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who was killed in 2021, was known for sending young girls and women on suicide missions, often against their will.

Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based research organization, called Boko Haram’s use of women a “hallmark” of its militancy that is not typical of the West African groups of Mali and Niger, where women are not often placed in operational roles.

Even if Boko Haram does not claim responsibility for the attack, Mr. Hudson said, the women’s involvement shows that terrorism in the region is not just affecting disaffected young men. “Whole communities are involved in this,” he said. “You’re seeing a broad, community-wide uprising.”

The region is plagued by violence.

In the past decade, the Sahel, a vast semi-arid region that stretches across West and Central Africa, has given rise to a number of Islamist organizations bent on insurgency. In addition to Boko Haram, the West African Province of the Islamic State is also active in the region.

Nigeria’s Borno state, which borders neighboring Chad, Cameroon and Niger, has long been plagued by terrorist violence, first by Boko Haram and then by rival and splinter groups fighting for control of the area.

Boko Haram fighters captured Gwoza in 2014 and the group’s then-leader, Mr Shekau, declared a caliphate before the Nigerian military drove the group out in 2015.

Civilian governments in the region, including neighboring Niger, have seen a series of military coups in recent years. But both civilian and military regimes have struggled to deal with the threats of Islamist insurgencies.

Environmental degradation, economic backwardness and extremely weak states have led to patterns of free movement across national borders, including of Islamist militants, experts say.

“Even if one country could make progress, it’s unlikely to have an impact across the wider region,” Mr. Hudson said. “What we’re seeing here is perhaps the beginning of a rebound.”