August 9, 2021 • 32 mins
Imagine a terrorist. What do you see? It probably isn’t a woman. But – you’d be surprised. This time we discover just how many roles women play in terrorist activities. Plus, we hear why, until women are included in the solution, we’re going to keep struggling to solve the problem of violent extremism.
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Episode Transcript
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Adnan Sarwar (00:00):
Before we begin, this is a podcast about terrorism, which
means we do talk about acts of terror and extreme
violence sometimes in quite a lot of detail. So you
might find some of the following material upsetting. Hello, I'm
Adnan Sarwar. This is Taking Apart Terror, and you might
recognize at least one on of these voices.
Nadia Murad (00:23):
We cannot find a safe place to live. Please do something.
Donald Trump (00:27):
We're going to look into it very strongly.
Nadia Murad (00:28):
Thank you so much.
Donald Trump (00:28):
Thank you. And you had the Nobel Prize.
Nadia Murad (00:32):
Yeah.
Donald Trump (00:33):
That's incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?
Adnan Sarwar (00:38):
In fact, the citation was for efforts to end the
use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and
armed conflict. And the Nobel Laureate, and the other voice
you heard, was Nadia Murad, the young Yazidi woman standing
in the Oval Office asking President Trump for help. Her
family was slaughtered by Daesh, and she was sold as
a sex slave before she managed to escape. She has
(01:01):
continued to work tirelessly to raise awareness both of the
plight of the Yazidi people and of all of those
who suffer violent abuse during times of war. Women as
victims of atrocities is a product of terrorism we're probably
quite familiar with. But what about women as supporters of
the men who commit those atrocities? Or women as fighters?
(01:21):
Or counterterrorists? Or policy makers? Or resistance forces? Or as
we've called this edition, does terrorism have agenda? To most
of us, the answer is probably yeah, and it's obviously
male. But women also have a role in Daesh activities
and in terrorism generally, as well as encountering those activities
(01:43):
or in raising awareness of their consequences, like Nadia Murad
is doing. To explore and explain the rules of women
on both sides of the conflict, I'm joined by three
experts. Firstly, two of our regular panelists. Dr. Joana Cook
is Associate Professor of Terrorism and Political Violence at the
University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Her book, A Woman's
(02:05):
Place, looks at the role of women in U. S.
counterterrorism over the past 20 years. Hello, Joana.
Joana Cook (02:11):
Hi. Nice to meet you.
Adnan Sarwar (02:12):
And we have Naureen Chowdhury Fink. She's the Director of
The Soufan Center in New York. And her research has
also looked at the role of women both as fighters
and opponents of terrorism. Hi, Naureen. Thank you for joining us.
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (02:25):
Hi, Adnan. Great to be here.
Adnan Sarwar (02:26):
And we have Devorah Margolin. She's the Director of Strategic
Initiatives for the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
And she's written extensively on the role of women within
Daesh. Hello, Devorah.
Devorah Margolin (02:38):
Hi, thanks for having me.
Adnan Sarwar (02:40):
So Naureen, if I start with you, I think most people
have got an impression of how women are treated in
a society run by Daesh, that they are the victims and
they've got no status. Is that an oversimplification?
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (02:53):
No, I think that's fairly spot on until recently, the
image of women, both in terms of operational actors, in
terms of law enforcement, security policy makers and the general
public more broadly, I think has been that women are
passive actors in this space of terrorism. And this is
despite women having been active in several terrorist and armed
(03:17):
groups in history. And I think the portrait everyone had
of a terrorist was a young angry male. And so
I think that has had serious operational consequences in terms
of how people think about a threat. And also, certainly
in terms of the policy and operational responses where gender
has really been, and to be frank, still is, very
(03:40):
much a new phenomenon.
Adnan Sarwar (03:42):
Devorah, from the outside, it looks like Daesh has got
pretty clear roles for men and women. Is that right?
Devorah Margolin (03:48):
I think when we talk about women's roles in the
Islamic State, I divide it into three different thought processes.
First is how do groups conceptualize women's roles? And then
how do women conceptualize women's roles? And then what are
the reality of women's roles under the Islamic State? And
I think there's a big difference between also women who
live under the Islamic State and women who support the Islamic
(04:09):
State from abroad. So if we're talking about how do
groups conceptualize women's roles, we can look at leadership statements
or propaganda, and we know that the group conceptualizes women's
roles as in the private. We hear wives, mothers, but
also educators of the future generation. If you're ever going
into public life, it's supposed to be very modest. It's
supposed to be devote. And if you're doing something in
(04:31):
public life, it's supposed to be supporting the group. When
you talk about women's conceptualization of themselves, you can look
at women's rhetoric online, you can look at videos, you
can look at their arrest statements or what they've been
arrested for. And we see this as much more complex.
Women, just like all individuals, men, women, we have different
motivations and women see their roles differently in groups. Some
(04:51):
see their roles as wives and mothers and some see their
roles as fighters. But when we talk about the reality
of women's lives under the Islamic State, you need to understand
tying of the ideology to its governance. And so we
can look at descriptions of victim testimonies are extremely important
for understanding this, but also details of the Islamic State's bureaucracy.
Adnan Sarwar (05:11):
Joana, Daesh were trying to create a particular society, weren't
they? And this is all women's part of that process.
Joana Cook (05:18):
ISIS really was a state building project. And you think
about the roles that any state would have, healthcare, education, law
enforcement, their ideology meant that that was gender segregated. So
you would have women engaging with women for things like
healthcare, women engaging with women and children for education. And
then for things like law enforcement, particularly you would have,
(05:40):
again, like the hisbah, or the Female Morality Police that they go
around and police other women. And so while women did
generally have some of these broader rules, the primary role
that was emphasized for women under Islamic State was in
the domestic sphere. So really being the wives of jihadist
husbands, raising the next generation of so- called Cubs. And
(06:01):
I think when you only focus on who are often
the men on the front lines holding the guns, you
really miss the bigger picture. You miss the support networks,
you miss the ideology and how the ideology travels, you
miss how intergenerationally things like recruitment and mobilization of these
ideas and these actors really comes into play.
Adnan Sarwar (06:23):
So only thinking about the men involved here is a
mistake if we're trying to understand what's actually going on.
But Naureen, as far as the women are concerned, do
they want to be there? And is it good for them?
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (06:34):
One big important thing to remember is that these are very
diverse roles and very diverse impacts. I mean most of
the policy documents I've seen from international actors still talk
about the role of women as if there is a
singular group of women that moves as one. We have
to remember, these are individuals with motivations. The motivations will
(06:56):
in some times look exactly the same as young men's,
just it may materialize differently. But it's the same dynamic
that it's affecting them whether it's empowerment, whether it's religious
ideology, whether it is kinship network or the coolness factor,
whatever it is. Is it good for them? I mean
to my mind, no. But that's me and I'm not
(07:19):
there. I think there will be some women who say
they wish that the utopian caliphate had worked out more
and had it worked out better, it would've been good
for them. I think if you're a young Yazidi girl,
it's not so good for you. And I think we have to
constantly remember that there are different women and different impacts
(07:39):
and different motivations. I also just wanted to add that
we've talked quite a bit about gender as if it's
just about women, even though ISIS certainly surpassed Al- Qaeda
in reaching out to women and creating a space where
they were mobilized. When ISIS tells young men, " Come out
there, be a real man, it's cool to come out
and fight, fulfill manly duties, if you're a better fighter,
(08:01):
if you're a Western fighter, you'll get this many sex
slaves," they're appealing to very gendered notions of what it
means to be a man.
Adnan Sarwar (08:08):
So a lot of women will be homemaking and child
rearing, but some of them will be fighting. Does Daesha
approve of that?
Devorah Margolin (08:15):
The rhetoric and the propaganda that the group is spouting
is very gendered. And the articles that are aimed to
women are much more about homemaking and they're not necessarily
emphasizing fighting. That being said, there is a doctrine which
the Islamic State follows, which basically comes from a man
named Abdullah Azzam, which basically says when Muslim land is
(08:38):
under attack, it becomes an individual duty for all, a
child without the permission of their parents and a wife
without the permission of her husband. And so there's this
concept of offensive and defensive jihad. When you control Muslim
lands and those Muslim lands are under attack, it becomes
defensive jihad. And so the Islamic State in its predecessors
(08:58):
argued that they were in a state of defensive jihad.
And so we saw, for example, the Islamic State predecessor, Al-
Qaeda in Iraq, using female suicide bombers. The declaration of
the caliphate changed everything for the Islamic State. Defensive jihad
no longer existed. And all of a sudden, the group
was claiming they were doing offensive jihad. They weren't just
a state, they were a caliphate. And so women were
pushed back into private roles specifically in combat. But as
(09:20):
we get towards 2016, coalition forces are bombarding the Islamic
State, the state's becoming weaker, that the rhetoric really starts
to change. And we see this emphasis on maybe that
defensive jihad is coming. And this is a big actual
academic debate that we have. The debate hasn't fully been
solved, but we do know that there was several women
who took part in the last stand of (inaudible) .
(09:41):
And so this is something that we continue to track
and it's important to understand this rhetoric, because we want
to know if the Islamic State or other groups claim
that defensive jihad is there. That means that we will
see women participate.
Adnan Sarwar (09:53):
And we know there were women from all over the
world who responded to the Daesh call to action. How were they seen?
Devorah Margolin (10:00):
I think when we talk about women who want to
be there, women who are motivated who have perhaps traveled
from abroad to join the group, many of these women
are motivated by the ideology of the group, but don't
necessarily live under its control. And so we see women
such as the three women in Kenya who carried out
a suicide bombing in 2016, or Tashfeen Malik who carried
(10:23):
out an attack in San Bernardino in 2015, who carry
out these attacks in the name of the Islamic State.
The Islamic State will never condemn these women. They'll praise
them. They'll say, " Look, these women fought even when they
didn't have to." But it's not mandatory on women at
that time.
Joana Cook (10:39):
What is important to highlight as well is that not
only do you see women who are inspired by the
organization, you've got individuals like Safa Bular in the UK
who was charged with terrorism offenses. We've had a number
of female attacks conducted by women in places like Indonesia
as well. And so we do see individuals who are
either individually inspired by the organization and act independent of
(11:01):
them. We have seen some of these attacks perpetrated where
some of the perpetrators have had a link to somebody
in Iraq and Syria. And then we've seen those in
Iraq and Syria who have actually lived under Daesh. And so
for example, in 2017, when forces were taking back the
city of Mosul, we saw ISIS deploy dozens of female
(11:23):
suicide bombers as well.
Adnan Sarwar (11:24):
And Joana, I know there's something called the Peshmerga, the
Peshmerga forces, they're mainly Kurdish militia who are trying to
battle Daesh. Are women active in those as well?
Joana Cook (11:33):
Since Daesh has established itself in Iraq and Syria, there
have been local forces that have been fighting against it.
And the Kurds have been at the forefront of this.
And what we have seen with Kurdish forces as well
is that we have female Peshmerga forces as well. So
we've seen women on the frontline battling Daesh. And the
(11:54):
battle to recapture Mosul and also really encapsulated the diversity of
roles that women were playing in this. We saw women on
the frontlines on both sides, both being deployed as suicide
bombers, but also really battling to reclaim this territory.
Adnan Sarwar (12:10):
Resistance against the invasion and occupation came in many forms,
including from ordinary civilians, risking their lives to try and
stop the reign of terror. And because Daesh didn't see
women as any credible threat, they often went under the
radar. In 2014, Daesh slaughtered its way through Saddam Hussein's
hometown of Tikrit, murdering over 1, 700 Iraqi army recruits. The
(12:37):
survivors ran, but found themselves cut off, trapped on the
banks of a river across from the town of al-
Alam. Bravely, the people of the town got rowing boats and
ferried the soldiers across, while their comrades provided cover from
the bushes. One of those who helped in the rescue
(12:58):
and then a huge personal risk to herself and her
family sheltered many of the soldiers in her home was
Alia Khalaf al- Jabouri, now better known as Um Qusay.
Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Daesh
two years earlier and she was living in al- Alam
with her remaining children. A poor widow, mother and grandmother
(13:19):
who seemed very ordinary, but was about to show how
extraordinary she is.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
(Arabic) . They would bring to me, for example, seven
or 10 people depending on the circumstances. They would change
their clothes, eat and drink. And in the afternoon, I
would take them to Kirkuk by car with my daughters
because at first, Daesh did not stop vehicles transporting niqab
(13:47):
wearing women. Finally, seven of the men were left in
the village of Hojāj which is 40 kilometers away from
us. One of them was a friend of my son,
Khalid. He phoned my son and told him that Daesh
had started entering homes, slaughtering every one they found there.
He said that they had gone down to the riverbank
(14:09):
and for three days, they were eating grass with no
food or water. Khalid came to me and said, " Mom,
this is what is happening." So I told him, " Take
your sister and go, your sister is not better than
the young people whom you will bring back. Take her
and go." (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (14:34):
Um Qusay sent two of her sons, Khalid and Rafid, and her daughter
to fetch the men. While they were gone, she got
a message saying that her two sons had been killed.
But thankfully, it turned out not to be the case.
And finally, they returned safely bringing the soldiers.
Speaker 7 (14:53):
(Arabic) . They stayed with me for 17 days and
all the time, the fighting was going on around us as I
was sheltering them sitting in the living room of my
house. Even though I couldn't have done anything if Daesh
came to the house, I knew deep down that if
I could not to protect them, I would die before
them. I mean I would rather die than let the
(15:15):
intruders in. Of course, I was not the only one
who hit soldiers. Everyone in al- Alam did. IS began
searching for whoever came from the south and slaughtered them
and their host families. Where should I take them? I
went to a professor named Abdul Haq and said to him, "
(15:35):
I have seven soldiers left and I don't know what
to do. I want you to make fake IDs for
them." He said, " Leave it to me." (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (15:49):
Once she'd secured IDs for the seven soldiers, it was
time to smuggle them out.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
(Arabic) . I rented the (inaudible) and put in
it my murdered sons' two teenage daughters, my own daughters,
my luggage, as well as my sister- in- law. We
all got into the car to conceal them so that
when Daesh stopped us at checkpoints, they would see only
women. I put them in the middle and girls sat
(16:15):
around them on both sides. At every Daesh checkpoint, the
driver and I raised our hands and said, " May you
be victorious with God's blessings," to make them think that
we were supporting them and to let us pass. Then
we reached the Peshmerga road block in Kirkuk. The Peshmerga
fighter took the identification of one of the smuggled soldiers
(16:35):
and asked him about his name. The soldier did not
remember his fake name. The Peshmerga fighter said, " You have
fabricated your papers and you need to get out of
the car." Then I had no choice but to bang
my head against the car door with force so that
my head would split open. Blood flowed and trickled down
my face immediately and the girls started shouting, " Our mother
(16:57):
has died! Our mother has died!" The fighter who was
Kurdish asked, " What is wrong with your mother?" They said, "
She is diabetic and her blood sugar has spiked, and
we have brought her to Kirkuk for this reason. But
you are stopping us from proceeding." He said, " You are
such a liar and you will be caught in Kirkuk."
He threw the identification at us and we passed. (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (17:31):
So Joana, your book A Woman's Place, was the research
you did for that inspired by the fact that women
are overlooked when it comes to this conflict?
Joana Cook (17:38):
Throughout history, women have had roles in terrorist organizations as
leaders, fighters, as fundraisers, recruiters, any role that you can
associate with a terrorist organization, a woman has likely held
that at some point. What was really different with ISIS
in particular though was that women came to the forefront
in ways that were visible as never before. So we
(18:00):
saw women from Canada, from the U.S., from Russia, Kazakhstan, all
over the world going and joining this organization. And so
what my research was really trying to do is look
at not only the roles that women have played within ISIS,
but also on the flip side, women's roles encountering these
organizations. The question was really prompted by the idea of
(18:21):
what is a woman's place in relation to terrorism and
counterterrorism, because it has been such a gap in policy
and practice and we would say in research. But in
fact, we can demonstrate that there has been quite a
bit of focus on it even if that research itself
hasn't gained a lot of attention.
Adnan Sarwar (18:36):
Naureen, are women involved in counterterrorism? And if they're not,
why not? And should they be?
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (18:42):
In many countries, you won't find women in senior military
or operational roles. It's not very diverse when you look
at who is thinking about counterterrorism and who is delivering
counterterrorism. And certainly, when I've talked to whether it's intelligence
agencies, or law enforcement, or border security forces, and I
ask them, " Do you think about gender? Do you think
(19:02):
about the roles of women?" They're not thinking about them
either as a perpetrator to guard against, or as a
victim to protect, or as an ally in prevention. I'll
give you a snapshot. I was sitting in a country
in a room full of intelligence police and military officers.
(19:22):
And I was asking about gender and how they deal
with returnees from the conflict zone. And I said, " Well
what do you do with the women that come back?"
And they looked at me and said, " Well nothing. I
mean they go home to their towns." And I said, "
But do you do any risk analysis? Do you check
(19:42):
up?" Because as we've all talked about, sometimes it could
have been the women themselves that were the prime driver
for radicalization, right? And they looked at me and they said, "
But why would we do that? It's not like women
ever want to go and it's not like when they
come back, they would do anything because women always want
peace and mothers always want peace." In that story, you
(20:06):
can see a very real set of assumptions that were
affecting operational responses. And in fact, of course, they looked
at me like I was crazy for even asking this
question. So I don't know if having more women necessarily
will lead to better counterterrorism. I think all indications are
yes. We certainly would have, I think, a more accurate
(20:31):
picture of what's going on and a greater set of
instruments in the counterterrorism toolkit if we had more women
at the decision making table.
Adnan Sarwar (20:40):
Devorah, do you agree?
Devorah Margolin (20:42):
It is important to have women in the room, but we call it add women
and stir. So don't just have women in the room,
but give them agency to be part of the conversation
is extremely important. If a woman is in the room
and she's not part of the conversation, or engaged in
the conversation, or able to advocate for what counterterrorism should
look like. So there was a lot of criticism for
(21:02):
some countering violent extremism programs that basically were saying, " Mothers,
us mothers should be in charge of ratting out their
children or telling the government if they're worried about their
children," without understanding the implications of that and understanding the
implications of breaking down family boundaries or values. And so
women need to be part of the conversation as both
victims, perpetrators, and those who are caught up in the system.
Adnan Sarwar (21:26):
I wanted to ask about those camps in Northern Syria, there's
talk of women getting together and mobilizing. Joana, is this
something we should be paying more attention to?
Joana Cook (21:34):
When we look at a place like Al Hol camp in Northeast
Syria right now for example, there's about 60,000 residents still
there, of which 10,000 are foreigners, of which 3, 000
are foreign women, and then alongside 7, 000 of their
often very young children who are now facing extremely dangerous
and dire circumstances. They're not charged with any offenses. They
(21:55):
have not been held accountable for their actions. They have
not faced trial. They have not gone through deradicalization programming.
And for those that have been victimized, there has not
been adequate support. The longer these populations stay there, there
is a swath of undesirable options for these populations going
(22:15):
forward. And so whether it's having them escape, whether it
is having some of them potentially radicalize their children. There
have been a number of murders already in Al Hol
camp, for example, this year. And so even facing dangers
within the camp, governments do need to step up, take
care of their populations, repatriate them and really manage them
at home in a way that is controlled by those
governments, and then in the most safe and efficient way
(22:38):
for those societies as well.
Adnan Sarwar (22:40):
Devorah, do you want to jump in on the camps?
Is there a problem coming?
Devorah Margolin (22:47):
So the Syrian democratic forces are a mostly Kurdish militia
group, which work alongside often coalition forces and are running
many of the camps in Syria at the moment. The
SDF arrested two women for being part of the hisbah
or the Morality Police and operating in Al Hol whole
camp, which means that there's still the ideology and the
(23:09):
mechanisms in place to women policing other women, and making
sure that they're adhering to the ideology of the group.
The rhetoric of the Islamic State organization has said women
are there to help carry on that ideology. And in
fact, we are in such a dire space right now
that that job is more important than ever. And that's
not to say when we're talking about women in Al Hol,
(23:30):
you have a wide variety of women. So you have
many women who are victimized by the Islamic State who
are in these camps with women who perpetrated these crimes.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have many
women who've completely given it up, dressed in Western ways
now, have left and seen the cruelty of the group.
And that doesn't mean that it's not an apology for
the fact that they perhaps chose to join this group,
(23:51):
but we have to understand and disaggregate that there's just
a really wide spectrum of women who are in Al
Hol at the moment.
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (23:57):
I just wanted to comment on one question on accountability as
well, and I think it's one we don't really talk
enough about, and that is crimes perpetrated against women by
Daesh and others are prosecuted less. And I think that
I find is a very, very dangerous signal to send
that crimes against women don't matter as much. For example,
(24:19):
there is a security council mechanism at the UN by
which countries could sanction individuals who have trafficked in human
beings and sold little girls, or boys, to finance terrorism.
And it would be a fairly simple designation mechanism to
put sanctions on an individual. Not a single designation has
(24:43):
been put forward by any security council member in the
last few years. And so I think those are very
important dimensions when we talk about gender, that crimes against
women, crimes involving little girls have somehow been seen as
not as worthy of swift accountability. And I think that
really matters too when we think about what gender roles
(25:06):
are and how people are being held accountable for Daesh's crimes.
Adnan Sarwar (25:13):
Um Qusay had managed to get the Iraqi soldiers to
safety, but things were far from over. As soon as
she had delivered them, she immediately had to think about
saving her own life.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
(Arabic) . Daesh members then came dragging the professor who had forged
the IDs for me down the street. They wanted to
decapitate him. They demanded to know about the woman he
had forged the IDs for so they could slaughter her.
His brother escaped from them, called me and said, " You
have to go, Daesh know you and they will come
(25:48):
for you." We left everything and fled. My family and
I were 25 people, 14 hours running without shoes. We
did not carry anything except the clothes we were wearing
and we did not have even 1, 000 Iraqi dinars in
our pockets. (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (26:11):
During the horrific fighting around al- Alam, Um Qusay sheltered
64 of the 400 Iraqi soldiers saved by the townspeople,
helping them find safe passage out of there. She was
risking her life every step of the way. Um Qusay
and her family escaped to Samara and stayed there for
six months. Um Qusay suffered terrible personal loss at Daesh's
(26:36):
hands. Not only had they killed her husband and son,
some of her other children were badly injured and left
severely disabled. She continues to be a symbol of strength
and resilience in Iraq and has received several honors, including
in 2018 an International Women of Courage Award. One of
the things that makes Um Qusay's actions so inspiring is
(26:58):
that she and most of al- Alam are Sunni Muslims
and the souls that they were saving were Shias. She
didn't hesitate to risk her life and her children's lives
for strangers from another sect. It was a message of
unity she continued to send.
Speaker 7 (27:14):
(Arabic) . I visited every area in Iraq. I visited
all provinces. I feel like God turned me into a
cloud and I reigned over sectarianism to put its fire
out. I kept assisting security forces until security spread, and
(27:39):
we eliminated Daesh. Thank God the situation has returned to
normal and it is now even better. As for women,
my perspective towards them has changed compared to the past.
They used to say that women make up half of
society. Now, I only say one thing, women do not
comprise half of society, they are all of it. Women
(28:03):
make up the entirety of society. (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (28:20):
One of the things that's become really obvious from this
discussion is that we need to think more about the
role of women in terrorism and counterterrorism, and you're involved
in gathering information doing the research on this. Joana, can you
give us a final thought on the work that you've
done on this?
Joana Cook (28:36):
In the book, I reviewed over 500 U. S. government
documents between 2000 and 2019. One of the things that I was looking for in there
is what were the justifications used, particularly for counterterrorism programs?
So why should you include women? And so the first
was operation and innovation. So if you're in a police
unit, if you're in a military unit, an intelligence unit
(28:58):
and you have access to female operatives, all of a
sudden, you can go out and talk to women in
the community in areas where that might be less effective
for men or out of bounds for men to do.
The second is one that talks about women's rights. In
many of these countries, a woman has a right to
participate in society equal to any other citizen. Women are
(29:20):
the most impacted by terrorist violence in many cases, so
it's her right to be part of the solution. And
the third justification was just women are half the population.
Again, having those views present at the table, those experiences,
those skills, very similar to other fields in our societies.
The more you have a broader representation of all parts
(29:42):
of that society, the more robust I think those practices
become. And whether you're looking at far left groups, far
right groups, whether you're looking at ethnonationalist terrorist organizations, these
same principles generally still apply.
Adnan Sarwar (29:57):
Devorah, you and Joana are writing something together. Is that right?
Devorah Margolin (29:59):
We're looking at 50 years of women's participation in terrorism
from far left, far right, ethnonationalist and religious terrorism. I think it's going to
be pretty groundbreaking because the last review of women in
terrorism was from about 2012. And they had only looked
at about 60 articles, and we've collected over 600 cases
(30:23):
of academic research articles into this topic. It's been a
huge jump in this field and there's a lot of
individuals, both men and women, who are involved in bringing
attention to the importance of taking a gendered lens to
look at this and not just looking at men.
Adnan Sarwar (30:39):
Naureen, there's one thing that keeps coming into my head
about this, and that's when it comes to women and terrorism,
it is complicated.
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (30:48):
I think if that's the key takeaway from today, that
is a huge victory. If someone adds an S to
the question about the role of women, I think that
is already a lot of headway as Joana and Devorah
has said. There's great research about the different roles of
women, it's just you also need people to ask for
it and look for it because for so long, we've
(31:08):
oversimplified this conversation.
Adnan Sarwar (31:13):
I'd like to thank Joana Cook, Devorah Margolin and Naureen
Chowdhury Fink for bringing so much extra insight into what
was, for me at least, a very two dimensional understanding of
the roles women play in all aspects of terrorism. And
I'd like to thank Um Qusay for sharing her story.
If you'd like to find out more, Joana's book is
called A Woman's Place and is available from Hearst Publishers
(31:37):
and Oxford University Press. Devorah and Joana's paper is called
Five Decades of Research on Women and Terrorism, and it
comes out later in 2021. That's it for this edition of Taking
Apart Terror. Search for us wherever you get your podcasts
and follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode,
including our next one, which is called Is Anyone Doing
(31:59):
Anything About This?, where we'll be looking further at counterterrorism
and what the world's trying to do to stop Daesh and
other groups. Finally, if you're enjoying the series, please do
go and give us a rating and a review. It
really helps other people to find us. And we want
to know what you think. I'm Adnan Sarwar. Until the
next time, goodbye.
Before we begin, this is a podcast about terrorism, which
means we do talk about acts of terror and extreme
violence sometimes in quite a lot of detail. So you
might find some of the following material upsetting. Hello, I'm
Adnan Sarwar. This is Taking Apart Terror, and you might
recognize at least one on of these voices.
Nadia Murad (00:23):
We cannot find a safe place to live. Please do something.
Donald Trump (00:27):
We're going to look into it very strongly.
Nadia Murad (00:28):
Thank you so much.
Donald Trump (00:28):
Thank you. And you had the Nobel Prize.
Nadia Murad (00:32):
Yeah.
Donald Trump (00:33):
That's incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?
Adnan Sarwar (00:38):
In fact, the citation was for efforts to end the
use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and
armed conflict. And the Nobel Laureate, and the other voice
you heard, was Nadia Murad, the young Yazidi woman standing
in the Oval Office asking President Trump for help. Her
family was slaughtered by Daesh, and she was sold as
a sex slave before she managed to escape. She has
(01:01):
continued to work tirelessly to raise awareness both of the
plight of the Yazidi people and of all of those
who suffer violent abuse during times of war. Women as
victims of atrocities is a product of terrorism we're probably
quite familiar with. But what about women as supporters of
the men who commit those atrocities? Or women as fighters?
(01:21):
Or counterterrorists? Or policy makers? Or resistance forces? Or as
we've called this edition, does terrorism have agenda? To most
of us, the answer is probably yeah, and it's obviously
male. But women also have a role in Daesh activities
and in terrorism generally, as well as encountering those activities
(01:43):
or in raising awareness of their consequences, like Nadia Murad
is doing. To explore and explain the rules of women
on both sides of the conflict, I'm joined by three
experts. Firstly, two of our regular panelists. Dr. Joana Cook
is Associate Professor of Terrorism and Political Violence at the
University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Her book, A Woman's
(02:05):
Place, looks at the role of women in U. S.
counterterrorism over the past 20 years. Hello, Joana.
Joana Cook (02:11):
Hi. Nice to meet you.
Adnan Sarwar (02:12):
And we have Naureen Chowdhury Fink. She's the Director of
The Soufan Center in New York. And her research has
also looked at the role of women both as fighters
and opponents of terrorism. Hi, Naureen. Thank you for joining us.
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (02:25):
Hi, Adnan. Great to be here.
Adnan Sarwar (02:26):
And we have Devorah Margolin. She's the Director of Strategic
Initiatives for the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
And she's written extensively on the role of women within
Daesh. Hello, Devorah.
Devorah Margolin (02:38):
Hi, thanks for having me.
Adnan Sarwar (02:40):
So Naureen, if I start with you, I think most people
have got an impression of how women are treated in
a society run by Daesh, that they are the victims and
they've got no status. Is that an oversimplification?
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (02:53):
No, I think that's fairly spot on until recently, the
image of women, both in terms of operational actors, in
terms of law enforcement, security policy makers and the general
public more broadly, I think has been that women are
passive actors in this space of terrorism. And this is
despite women having been active in several terrorist and armed
(03:17):
groups in history. And I think the portrait everyone had
of a terrorist was a young angry male. And so
I think that has had serious operational consequences in terms
of how people think about a threat. And also, certainly
in terms of the policy and operational responses where gender
has really been, and to be frank, still is, very
(03:40):
much a new phenomenon.
Adnan Sarwar (03:42):
Devorah, from the outside, it looks like Daesh has got
pretty clear roles for men and women. Is that right?
Devorah Margolin (03:48):
I think when we talk about women's roles in the
Islamic State, I divide it into three different thought processes.
First is how do groups conceptualize women's roles? And then
how do women conceptualize women's roles? And then what are
the reality of women's roles under the Islamic State? And
I think there's a big difference between also women who
live under the Islamic State and women who support the Islamic
(04:09):
State from abroad. So if we're talking about how do
groups conceptualize women's roles, we can look at leadership statements
or propaganda, and we know that the group conceptualizes women's
roles as in the private. We hear wives, mothers, but
also educators of the future generation. If you're ever going
into public life, it's supposed to be very modest. It's
supposed to be devote. And if you're doing something in
(04:31):
public life, it's supposed to be supporting the group. When
you talk about women's conceptualization of themselves, you can look
at women's rhetoric online, you can look at videos, you
can look at their arrest statements or what they've been
arrested for. And we see this as much more complex.
Women, just like all individuals, men, women, we have different
motivations and women see their roles differently in groups. Some
(04:51):
see their roles as wives and mothers and some see their
roles as fighters. But when we talk about the reality
of women's lives under the Islamic State, you need to understand
tying of the ideology to its governance. And so we
can look at descriptions of victim testimonies are extremely important
for understanding this, but also details of the Islamic State's bureaucracy.
Adnan Sarwar (05:11):
Joana, Daesh were trying to create a particular society, weren't
they? And this is all women's part of that process.
Joana Cook (05:18):
ISIS really was a state building project. And you think
about the roles that any state would have, healthcare, education, law
enforcement, their ideology meant that that was gender segregated. So
you would have women engaging with women for things like
healthcare, women engaging with women and children for education. And
then for things like law enforcement, particularly you would have,
(05:40):
again, like the hisbah, or the Female Morality Police that they go
around and police other women. And so while women did
generally have some of these broader rules, the primary role
that was emphasized for women under Islamic State was in
the domestic sphere. So really being the wives of jihadist
husbands, raising the next generation of so- called Cubs. And
(06:01):
I think when you only focus on who are often
the men on the front lines holding the guns, you
really miss the bigger picture. You miss the support networks,
you miss the ideology and how the ideology travels, you
miss how intergenerationally things like recruitment and mobilization of these
ideas and these actors really comes into play.
Adnan Sarwar (06:23):
So only thinking about the men involved here is a
mistake if we're trying to understand what's actually going on.
But Naureen, as far as the women are concerned, do
they want to be there? And is it good for them?
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (06:34):
One big important thing to remember is that these are very
diverse roles and very diverse impacts. I mean most of
the policy documents I've seen from international actors still talk
about the role of women as if there is a
singular group of women that moves as one. We have
to remember, these are individuals with motivations. The motivations will
(06:56):
in some times look exactly the same as young men's,
just it may materialize differently. But it's the same dynamic
that it's affecting them whether it's empowerment, whether it's religious
ideology, whether it is kinship network or the coolness factor,
whatever it is. Is it good for them? I mean
to my mind, no. But that's me and I'm not
(07:19):
there. I think there will be some women who say
they wish that the utopian caliphate had worked out more
and had it worked out better, it would've been good
for them. I think if you're a young Yazidi girl,
it's not so good for you. And I think we have to
constantly remember that there are different women and different impacts
(07:39):
and different motivations. I also just wanted to add that
we've talked quite a bit about gender as if it's
just about women, even though ISIS certainly surpassed Al- Qaeda
in reaching out to women and creating a space where
they were mobilized. When ISIS tells young men, " Come out
there, be a real man, it's cool to come out
and fight, fulfill manly duties, if you're a better fighter,
(08:01):
if you're a Western fighter, you'll get this many sex
slaves," they're appealing to very gendered notions of what it
means to be a man.
Adnan Sarwar (08:08):
So a lot of women will be homemaking and child
rearing, but some of them will be fighting. Does Daesha
approve of that?
Devorah Margolin (08:15):
The rhetoric and the propaganda that the group is spouting
is very gendered. And the articles that are aimed to
women are much more about homemaking and they're not necessarily
emphasizing fighting. That being said, there is a doctrine which
the Islamic State follows, which basically comes from a man
named Abdullah Azzam, which basically says when Muslim land is
(08:38):
under attack, it becomes an individual duty for all, a
child without the permission of their parents and a wife
without the permission of her husband. And so there's this
concept of offensive and defensive jihad. When you control Muslim
lands and those Muslim lands are under attack, it becomes
defensive jihad. And so the Islamic State in its predecessors
(08:58):
argued that they were in a state of defensive jihad.
And so we saw, for example, the Islamic State predecessor, Al-
Qaeda in Iraq, using female suicide bombers. The declaration of
the caliphate changed everything for the Islamic State. Defensive jihad
no longer existed. And all of a sudden, the group
was claiming they were doing offensive jihad. They weren't just
a state, they were a caliphate. And so women were
pushed back into private roles specifically in combat. But as
(09:20):
we get towards 2016, coalition forces are bombarding the Islamic
State, the state's becoming weaker, that the rhetoric really starts
to change. And we see this emphasis on maybe that
defensive jihad is coming. And this is a big actual
academic debate that we have. The debate hasn't fully been
solved, but we do know that there was several women
who took part in the last stand of (inaudible) .
(09:41):
And so this is something that we continue to track
and it's important to understand this rhetoric, because we want
to know if the Islamic State or other groups claim
that defensive jihad is there. That means that we will
see women participate.
Adnan Sarwar (09:53):
And we know there were women from all over the
world who responded to the Daesh call to action. How were they seen?
Devorah Margolin (10:00):
I think when we talk about women who want to
be there, women who are motivated who have perhaps traveled
from abroad to join the group, many of these women
are motivated by the ideology of the group, but don't
necessarily live under its control. And so we see women
such as the three women in Kenya who carried out
a suicide bombing in 2016, or Tashfeen Malik who carried
(10:23):
out an attack in San Bernardino in 2015, who carry
out these attacks in the name of the Islamic State.
The Islamic State will never condemn these women. They'll praise
them. They'll say, " Look, these women fought even when they
didn't have to." But it's not mandatory on women at
that time.
Joana Cook (10:39):
What is important to highlight as well is that not
only do you see women who are inspired by the
organization, you've got individuals like Safa Bular in the UK
who was charged with terrorism offenses. We've had a number
of female attacks conducted by women in places like Indonesia
as well. And so we do see individuals who are
either individually inspired by the organization and act independent of
(11:01):
them. We have seen some of these attacks perpetrated where
some of the perpetrators have had a link to somebody
in Iraq and Syria. And then we've seen those in
Iraq and Syria who have actually lived under Daesh. And so
for example, in 2017, when forces were taking back the
city of Mosul, we saw ISIS deploy dozens of female
(11:23):
suicide bombers as well.
Adnan Sarwar (11:24):
And Joana, I know there's something called the Peshmerga, the
Peshmerga forces, they're mainly Kurdish militia who are trying to
battle Daesh. Are women active in those as well?
Joana Cook (11:33):
Since Daesh has established itself in Iraq and Syria, there
have been local forces that have been fighting against it.
And the Kurds have been at the forefront of this.
And what we have seen with Kurdish forces as well
is that we have female Peshmerga forces as well. So
we've seen women on the frontline battling Daesh. And the
(11:54):
battle to recapture Mosul and also really encapsulated the diversity of
roles that women were playing in this. We saw women on
the frontlines on both sides, both being deployed as suicide
bombers, but also really battling to reclaim this territory.
Adnan Sarwar (12:10):
Resistance against the invasion and occupation came in many forms,
including from ordinary civilians, risking their lives to try and
stop the reign of terror. And because Daesh didn't see
women as any credible threat, they often went under the
radar. In 2014, Daesh slaughtered its way through Saddam Hussein's
hometown of Tikrit, murdering over 1, 700 Iraqi army recruits. The
(12:37):
survivors ran, but found themselves cut off, trapped on the
banks of a river across from the town of al-
Alam. Bravely, the people of the town got rowing boats and
ferried the soldiers across, while their comrades provided cover from
the bushes. One of those who helped in the rescue
(12:58):
and then a huge personal risk to herself and her
family sheltered many of the soldiers in her home was
Alia Khalaf al- Jabouri, now better known as Um Qusay.
Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Daesh
two years earlier and she was living in al- Alam
with her remaining children. A poor widow, mother and grandmother
(13:19):
who seemed very ordinary, but was about to show how
extraordinary she is.
Speaker 7 (13:25):
(Arabic) . They would bring to me, for example, seven
or 10 people depending on the circumstances. They would change
their clothes, eat and drink. And in the afternoon, I
would take them to Kirkuk by car with my daughters
because at first, Daesh did not stop vehicles transporting niqab
(13:47):
wearing women. Finally, seven of the men were left in
the village of Hojāj which is 40 kilometers away from
us. One of them was a friend of my son,
Khalid. He phoned my son and told him that Daesh
had started entering homes, slaughtering every one they found there.
He said that they had gone down to the riverbank
(14:09):
and for three days, they were eating grass with no
food or water. Khalid came to me and said, " Mom,
this is what is happening." So I told him, " Take
your sister and go, your sister is not better than
the young people whom you will bring back. Take her
and go." (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (14:34):
Um Qusay sent two of her sons, Khalid and Rafid, and her daughter
to fetch the men. While they were gone, she got
a message saying that her two sons had been killed.
But thankfully, it turned out not to be the case.
And finally, they returned safely bringing the soldiers.
Speaker 7 (14:53):
(Arabic) . They stayed with me for 17 days and
all the time, the fighting was going on around us as I
was sheltering them sitting in the living room of my
house. Even though I couldn't have done anything if Daesh
came to the house, I knew deep down that if
I could not to protect them, I would die before
them. I mean I would rather die than let the
(15:15):
intruders in. Of course, I was not the only one
who hit soldiers. Everyone in al- Alam did. IS began
searching for whoever came from the south and slaughtered them
and their host families. Where should I take them? I
went to a professor named Abdul Haq and said to him, "
(15:35):
I have seven soldiers left and I don't know what
to do. I want you to make fake IDs for
them." He said, " Leave it to me." (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (15:49):
Once she'd secured IDs for the seven soldiers, it was
time to smuggle them out.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
(Arabic) . I rented the (inaudible) and put in
it my murdered sons' two teenage daughters, my own daughters,
my luggage, as well as my sister- in- law. We
all got into the car to conceal them so that
when Daesh stopped us at checkpoints, they would see only
women. I put them in the middle and girls sat
(16:15):
around them on both sides. At every Daesh checkpoint, the
driver and I raised our hands and said, " May you
be victorious with God's blessings," to make them think that
we were supporting them and to let us pass. Then
we reached the Peshmerga road block in Kirkuk. The Peshmerga
fighter took the identification of one of the smuggled soldiers
(16:35):
and asked him about his name. The soldier did not
remember his fake name. The Peshmerga fighter said, " You have
fabricated your papers and you need to get out of
the car." Then I had no choice but to bang
my head against the car door with force so that
my head would split open. Blood flowed and trickled down
my face immediately and the girls started shouting, " Our mother
(16:57):
has died! Our mother has died!" The fighter who was
Kurdish asked, " What is wrong with your mother?" They said, "
She is diabetic and her blood sugar has spiked, and
we have brought her to Kirkuk for this reason. But
you are stopping us from proceeding." He said, " You are
such a liar and you will be caught in Kirkuk."
He threw the identification at us and we passed. (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (17:31):
So Joana, your book A Woman's Place, was the research
you did for that inspired by the fact that women
are overlooked when it comes to this conflict?
Joana Cook (17:38):
Throughout history, women have had roles in terrorist organizations as
leaders, fighters, as fundraisers, recruiters, any role that you can
associate with a terrorist organization, a woman has likely held
that at some point. What was really different with ISIS
in particular though was that women came to the forefront
in ways that were visible as never before. So we
(18:00):
saw women from Canada, from the U.S., from Russia, Kazakhstan, all
over the world going and joining this organization. And so
what my research was really trying to do is look
at not only the roles that women have played within ISIS,
but also on the flip side, women's roles encountering these
organizations. The question was really prompted by the idea of
(18:21):
what is a woman's place in relation to terrorism and
counterterrorism, because it has been such a gap in policy
and practice and we would say in research. But in
fact, we can demonstrate that there has been quite a
bit of focus on it even if that research itself
hasn't gained a lot of attention.
Adnan Sarwar (18:36):
Naureen, are women involved in counterterrorism? And if they're not,
why not? And should they be?
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (18:42):
In many countries, you won't find women in senior military
or operational roles. It's not very diverse when you look
at who is thinking about counterterrorism and who is delivering
counterterrorism. And certainly, when I've talked to whether it's intelligence
agencies, or law enforcement, or border security forces, and I
ask them, " Do you think about gender? Do you think
(19:02):
about the roles of women?" They're not thinking about them
either as a perpetrator to guard against, or as a
victim to protect, or as an ally in prevention. I'll
give you a snapshot. I was sitting in a country
in a room full of intelligence police and military officers.
(19:22):
And I was asking about gender and how they deal
with returnees from the conflict zone. And I said, " Well
what do you do with the women that come back?"
And they looked at me and said, " Well nothing. I
mean they go home to their towns." And I said, "
But do you do any risk analysis? Do you check
(19:42):
up?" Because as we've all talked about, sometimes it could
have been the women themselves that were the prime driver
for radicalization, right? And they looked at me and they said, "
But why would we do that? It's not like women
ever want to go and it's not like when they
come back, they would do anything because women always want
peace and mothers always want peace." In that story, you
(20:06):
can see a very real set of assumptions that were
affecting operational responses. And in fact, of course, they looked
at me like I was crazy for even asking this
question. So I don't know if having more women necessarily
will lead to better counterterrorism. I think all indications are
yes. We certainly would have, I think, a more accurate
(20:31):
picture of what's going on and a greater set of
instruments in the counterterrorism toolkit if we had more women
at the decision making table.
Adnan Sarwar (20:40):
Devorah, do you agree?
Devorah Margolin (20:42):
It is important to have women in the room, but we call it add women
and stir. So don't just have women in the room,
but give them agency to be part of the conversation
is extremely important. If a woman is in the room
and she's not part of the conversation, or engaged in
the conversation, or able to advocate for what counterterrorism should
look like. So there was a lot of criticism for
(21:02):
some countering violent extremism programs that basically were saying, " Mothers,
us mothers should be in charge of ratting out their
children or telling the government if they're worried about their
children," without understanding the implications of that and understanding the
implications of breaking down family boundaries or values. And so
women need to be part of the conversation as both
victims, perpetrators, and those who are caught up in the system.
Adnan Sarwar (21:26):
I wanted to ask about those camps in Northern Syria, there's
talk of women getting together and mobilizing. Joana, is this
something we should be paying more attention to?
Joana Cook (21:34):
When we look at a place like Al Hol camp in Northeast
Syria right now for example, there's about 60,000 residents still
there, of which 10,000 are foreigners, of which 3, 000
are foreign women, and then alongside 7, 000 of their
often very young children who are now facing extremely dangerous
and dire circumstances. They're not charged with any offenses. They
(21:55):
have not been held accountable for their actions. They have
not faced trial. They have not gone through deradicalization programming.
And for those that have been victimized, there has not
been adequate support. The longer these populations stay there, there
is a swath of undesirable options for these populations going
(22:15):
forward. And so whether it's having them escape, whether it
is having some of them potentially radicalize their children. There
have been a number of murders already in Al Hol
camp, for example, this year. And so even facing dangers
within the camp, governments do need to step up, take
care of their populations, repatriate them and really manage them
at home in a way that is controlled by those
governments, and then in the most safe and efficient way
(22:38):
for those societies as well.
Adnan Sarwar (22:40):
Devorah, do you want to jump in on the camps?
Is there a problem coming?
Devorah Margolin (22:47):
So the Syrian democratic forces are a mostly Kurdish militia
group, which work alongside often coalition forces and are running
many of the camps in Syria at the moment. The
SDF arrested two women for being part of the hisbah
or the Morality Police and operating in Al Hol whole
camp, which means that there's still the ideology and the
(23:09):
mechanisms in place to women policing other women, and making
sure that they're adhering to the ideology of the group.
The rhetoric of the Islamic State organization has said women
are there to help carry on that ideology. And in
fact, we are in such a dire space right now
that that job is more important than ever. And that's
not to say when we're talking about women in Al Hol,
(23:30):
you have a wide variety of women. So you have
many women who are victimized by the Islamic State who
are in these camps with women who perpetrated these crimes.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have many
women who've completely given it up, dressed in Western ways
now, have left and seen the cruelty of the group.
And that doesn't mean that it's not an apology for
the fact that they perhaps chose to join this group,
(23:51):
but we have to understand and disaggregate that there's just
a really wide spectrum of women who are in Al
Hol at the moment.
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (23:57):
I just wanted to comment on one question on accountability as
well, and I think it's one we don't really talk
enough about, and that is crimes perpetrated against women by
Daesh and others are prosecuted less. And I think that
I find is a very, very dangerous signal to send
that crimes against women don't matter as much. For example,
(24:19):
there is a security council mechanism at the UN by
which countries could sanction individuals who have trafficked in human
beings and sold little girls, or boys, to finance terrorism.
And it would be a fairly simple designation mechanism to
put sanctions on an individual. Not a single designation has
(24:43):
been put forward by any security council member in the
last few years. And so I think those are very
important dimensions when we talk about gender, that crimes against
women, crimes involving little girls have somehow been seen as
not as worthy of swift accountability. And I think that
really matters too when we think about what gender roles
(25:06):
are and how people are being held accountable for Daesh's crimes.
Adnan Sarwar (25:13):
Um Qusay had managed to get the Iraqi soldiers to
safety, but things were far from over. As soon as
she had delivered them, she immediately had to think about
saving her own life.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
(Arabic) . Daesh members then came dragging the professor who had forged
the IDs for me down the street. They wanted to
decapitate him. They demanded to know about the woman he
had forged the IDs for so they could slaughter her.
His brother escaped from them, called me and said, " You
have to go, Daesh know you and they will come
(25:48):
for you." We left everything and fled. My family and
I were 25 people, 14 hours running without shoes. We
did not carry anything except the clothes we were wearing
and we did not have even 1, 000 Iraqi dinars in
our pockets. (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (26:11):
During the horrific fighting around al- Alam, Um Qusay sheltered
64 of the 400 Iraqi soldiers saved by the townspeople,
helping them find safe passage out of there. She was
risking her life every step of the way. Um Qusay
and her family escaped to Samara and stayed there for
six months. Um Qusay suffered terrible personal loss at Daesh's
(26:36):
hands. Not only had they killed her husband and son,
some of her other children were badly injured and left
severely disabled. She continues to be a symbol of strength
and resilience in Iraq and has received several honors, including
in 2018 an International Women of Courage Award. One of
the things that makes Um Qusay's actions so inspiring is
(26:58):
that she and most of al- Alam are Sunni Muslims
and the souls that they were saving were Shias. She
didn't hesitate to risk her life and her children's lives
for strangers from another sect. It was a message of
unity she continued to send.
Speaker 7 (27:14):
(Arabic) . I visited every area in Iraq. I visited
all provinces. I feel like God turned me into a
cloud and I reigned over sectarianism to put its fire
out. I kept assisting security forces until security spread, and
(27:39):
we eliminated Daesh. Thank God the situation has returned to
normal and it is now even better. As for women,
my perspective towards them has changed compared to the past.
They used to say that women make up half of
society. Now, I only say one thing, women do not
comprise half of society, they are all of it. Women
(28:03):
make up the entirety of society. (Arabic) .
Adnan Sarwar (28:20):
One of the things that's become really obvious from this
discussion is that we need to think more about the
role of women in terrorism and counterterrorism, and you're involved
in gathering information doing the research on this. Joana, can you
give us a final thought on the work that you've
done on this?
Joana Cook (28:36):
In the book, I reviewed over 500 U. S. government
documents between 2000 and 2019. One of the things that I was looking for in there
is what were the justifications used, particularly for counterterrorism programs?
So why should you include women? And so the first
was operation and innovation. So if you're in a police
unit, if you're in a military unit, an intelligence unit
(28:58):
and you have access to female operatives, all of a
sudden, you can go out and talk to women in
the community in areas where that might be less effective
for men or out of bounds for men to do.
The second is one that talks about women's rights. In
many of these countries, a woman has a right to
participate in society equal to any other citizen. Women are
(29:20):
the most impacted by terrorist violence in many cases, so
it's her right to be part of the solution. And
the third justification was just women are half the population.
Again, having those views present at the table, those experiences,
those skills, very similar to other fields in our societies.
The more you have a broader representation of all parts
(29:42):
of that society, the more robust I think those practices
become. And whether you're looking at far left groups, far
right groups, whether you're looking at ethnonationalist terrorist organizations, these
same principles generally still apply.
Adnan Sarwar (29:57):
Devorah, you and Joana are writing something together. Is that right?
Devorah Margolin (29:59):
We're looking at 50 years of women's participation in terrorism
from far left, far right, ethnonationalist and religious terrorism. I think it's going to
be pretty groundbreaking because the last review of women in
terrorism was from about 2012. And they had only looked
at about 60 articles, and we've collected over 600 cases
(30:23):
of academic research articles into this topic. It's been a
huge jump in this field and there's a lot of
individuals, both men and women, who are involved in bringing
attention to the importance of taking a gendered lens to
look at this and not just looking at men.
Adnan Sarwar (30:39):
Naureen, there's one thing that keeps coming into my head
about this, and that's when it comes to women and terrorism,
it is complicated.
Naureen Chowdhury Fink (30:48):
I think if that's the key takeaway from today, that
is a huge victory. If someone adds an S to
the question about the role of women, I think that
is already a lot of headway as Joana and Devorah
has said. There's great research about the different roles of
women, it's just you also need people to ask for
it and look for it because for so long, we've
(31:08):
oversimplified this conversation.
Adnan Sarwar (31:13):
I'd like to thank Joana Cook, Devorah Margolin and Naureen
Chowdhury Fink for bringing so much extra insight into what
was, for me at least, a very two dimensional understanding of
the roles women play in all aspects of terrorism. And
I'd like to thank Um Qusay for sharing her story.
If you'd like to find out more, Joana's book is
called A Woman's Place and is available from Hearst Publishers
(31:37):
and Oxford University Press. Devorah and Joana's paper is called
Five Decades of Research on Women and Terrorism, and it
comes out later in 2021. That's it for this edition of Taking
Apart Terror. Search for us wherever you get your podcasts
and follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode,
including our next one, which is called Is Anyone Doing
(31:59):
Anything About This?, where we'll be looking further at counterterrorism
and what the world's trying to do to stop Daesh and
other groups. Finally, if you're enjoying the series, please do
go and give us a rating and a review. It
really helps other people to find us. And we want
to know what you think. I'm Adnan Sarwar. Until the
next time, goodbye.
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