September 16, 2007
Serbs See Rift With West if Kosovo Gains Independence

By NICHOLAS WOOD
BELGRADE, Serbia — Eight years after it was hit by NATO airstrikes, the former Yugoslav Defense Ministry still lies in ruins on Knez Milos Street, a reminder of what the Serbs consider unwarranted aggression by the West in the war over the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Their anger is flaring again as Western governments, particularly the United States, speak of recognizing Kosovo this year as an independent state. The governments say that in the absence of reconciliation, doing so would help stabilize the region by officially separating the Albanian-dominated province from the rest of Serbia.

Serbian politicians, even pro-Western ones, worry that a recognition of Kosovo would introduce a new era of Serbian isolation and hostility toward the West, leaving Europe with little sway here.

Since the war ended, in 1999, Europe has tried to integrate Serbia into NATO and the European Union. As a regional power, Serbia expected an easy path into Europe, especially since many of its neighbors have joined the union.

But Europe has also demanded that Serbs make a fresh start by chasing down important war crimes suspects wanted at the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Serbia has complied only fitfully.

If Western countries recognize Kosovo, then “we do not need the European Union,” Velimir Ilic, Serbia’s minister of infrastructure and an important political ally of the Serbian prime minister, said in an interview. “It means they are not our friends.”

He added, “It is a tough choice, but Serbia has its pride and its integrity.”

Mr. Ilic, who has a reputation as a populist politician, is the only senior government official to issue such a statement. But others agree that a nationalist reaction would chill relations with the West.

A widespread recognition of Kosovo “could lead to a chain of events with unforeseen consequences, including the loss of Serbia’s European perspective,” Leon Koen, the former leader of Serbia’s negotiating team on Kosovo, wrote in the daily newspaper Dnevnik.

Serbia’s senior diplomat for European integration predicted that whatever support there was among Serbs for arresting war crime suspects and sending them to The Hague would vanish if Kosovo were recognized.

“I can’t see how anybody would be ready to support cooperation” with the tribunal, said Milica Delevic, a reformist who is Serbia’s assistant foreign minister responsible for relations with the European Union. “We will be in trouble.”

Western governments are determined to resolve Kosovo’s future to stabilize the province and calm the ethnic Albanians, who make up more than 90 percent of the population and clamor for independence. The United States has spoken openly of recognizing Kosovo and is pushing the Europeans to settle on a policy.

But the Europeans have painted themselves into a corner, having pushed for a deal at the United Nations Security Council that Russia has blocked. That leaves Europe divided just as it is trying to display a strong foreign policy.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, after a NATO bombing campaign there to oust Serbian forces that had committed widespread atrocities against ethnic Albanians.

The wartime Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was defeated in elections in 2000 and turned over to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where he died while his trial was under way. Yugoslavia continued its dissolution, with Montenegro claiming independence from Serbia in May 2006.

Meanwhile, Serbia has made faltering progress toward membership in the European Union and NATO. It hopes to complete formal agreements on closer ties with Europe this year, and last year, Serbia became a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace program, one step short of full membership in the alliance.

Senior members of the pro-Western Democratic Party — including the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, and the foreign minister, Vuk Jeremic — have reassured Western allies that Serbia remains committed to membership in European-Atlantic institutions regardless of what happens in Kosovo.

But signs of a break with the West are emerging, and officials close to the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, are advocating a closer relationship with Russia, the ally that has forestalled attempts in the Security Council to grant Kosovo independence.

Political analysts say that conservative newspapers and state-owned news media have promoted more favorable views of Russia, and of President Vladimir V. Putin in particular.

At the same time conservatives within Mr. Kostunica’s circle are questioning the value of ties with NATO.

“We want cooperation, but not full membership,” said Dusan Prorokovic, Serbia’s state secretary for Kosovo, and a senior member of Mr. Kostunica’s Serbian Democratic Party. Mr. Prorokovic added that most Serbs had not forgiven the alliance for its entry into the war and the 78-day bombing campaign. “Personally, I cannot forget that,” he said.

Two senior government ministers have accused NATO of trying to make Kosovo a state for its own purposes.

“The debate is being steered in a direction that makes strategy toward NATO membership and the European Union very difficult,” said Ms. Delevic, the assistant foreign minister.

European Union officials insist that a compromise between ethnic Albanians and Serbs is possible.

Whatever the outcome, officials in Brussels contend that Serbia’s long-term interests lie with the West. “I don’t think Serbs want to be part of the Russian Federation,” said Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for Javier Solana, the European Union’s chief foreign policy representative. “They see their future in the European Union.”

But as the decision time for Kosovo looms, regional analysts say that the nationalists who dominate Serbia’s Parliament control events in Serbia.

“People in Brussels presume that every country in Europe is dying to get into the European Union,” said James Lyon, Belgrade director of the International Crisis Group, a policy research organization with offices throughout the Balkans. But if Kosovo splits off, Europe’s leverage over Serbia will evaporate, with its ability to promote change, he said in a telephone interview.

“What do you do with a country that doesn’t want E.U. membership?” he said.

September 16, 2007
The World
No Blowing Smoke: Poppies Fade in Southeast Asia

By THOMAS FULLER
THE enduring image of Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle is of brightly colored poppy fields, opium-smoking hill tribes and heroin labs hidden in the jungle.

But the reality is that after years of producing the lion’s share of the world’s opium, the Golden Triangle is now only a bit player in the global heroin trade.

“The mystique may remain, and the geography will be celebrated in the future by novelists,” said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “But from our vantage point, we see a region that is rapidly moving toward an opium-free status.”

The decline of the Golden Triangle is a major, if little noticed, milestone in the war on drugs. The question now is whether that success can be sustained.

Three decades ago, the northernmost reaches of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar produced more than 70 percent of all the opium sold worldwide, most of which was refined into heroin. Today the area produces about 5 percent of the world total, says Mr. Costa’s agency.

What happened?

Economic pressure from China, crackdowns on opium farmers , and a switch by criminal syndicates to methamphetamine production, appear to have had the biggest impact. At the same time, some insurgent groups that once were financed with drug money now say they are urging farmers to eradicate their poppy fields.

As a result, the Golden Triangle has been eclipsed by the Golden Crescent — the poppy-growing area in and around Afghanistan that is now the source of an estimated 92 percent of the world’s opium, according to the United Nations.

Much of the growth in opium production there is in areas controlled by the Taliban, which United States officials say uses revenue from opium and heroin to finance itself. This shift to Afghanistan has had major consequences for the global heroin market: a near doubling of opium production worldwide in less than two decades. Poppies grown in the fertile valleys of southern Afghanistan yield on average four times more opium than those grown in upland Southeast Asia.

A striking aspect of the decline of the Golden Triangle is the role China has played in pressing opium-growing regions to eradicate poppy crops. A major market for Golden Triangle heroin, China has seen a spike in addicts and H.I.V. infections from contaminated needles.

The area of Myanmar along the Chinese border, which once produced about 30 percent of the country’s opium, was declared opium-free last year by the United Nations. Local authorities, who are from the Wa tribe and are autonomous from Myanmar’s central government, have banned poppy cultivation and welcomed Chinese investment in rubber, sugar cane and tea plantations, casinos and other businesses.

“China has had an underestimated role,” said Martin Jelsma, a Dutch researcher who has written extensively on the illicit drug trade in Asia.

“Their main leverage is economic: These border areas of Burma are by now economically much more connected to China than the rest of Burma,” he said, using the former name for Myanmar. “For local authorities it’s quite clear that, for any investments they want to attract, cooperation with China is a necessity.”

Myanmar remains the world’s second-leading source of opium but is a distant second; its production declined by 80 percent over the last decade.

Insurgents have long used opium to help finance civil wars in the Golden Triangle. But some are now working to destroy the crop. At least one faction of the Shan State Army, a group that long had ties to the heroin business, says it is leading eradication efforts.

Kon Jern, a military commander for the group, which is based along Myanmar’s border with northern Thailand, says he is cracking down because government militias and corrupt officials profit from opium. “They sell the drugs, they buy weapons, and they use those weapons to attack us,” he said.

The United Nations credits Myanmar’s central government with leading the eradication effort in Shan areas. In Laos, where the political situation is more stable, the government began a crackdown in the 1990s to increase its international credibility and because officials realized their own children were at risk, said Leik Boonwaat, the representative in Laos for the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime. Laos finally outlawed opium in 1996.

The government, Mr. Boonwaat said, also saw that opium did little to help poor farmers who grew poppies. “It’s mostly the organized crime syndicates that made most of the profits,” he said.

The amount of land cultivated in Laos for opium has fallen 94 percent since 1998. The country now produces so little opium that it may now be a net importer of the drug, the United Nations says.

Yet experts warn that the reductions may not hold unless farmers develop other ways to make a living.

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, an opium specialist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, says it took Thailand 30 years to wean opium farmers from poppy production, a transition led by the Thai royal family, which encouraged opium-growing hill tribes to use their cooler climate to produce coffee, macadamia nuts and green vegetables.

But, he said, “In Laos and Burma, we’ve had a very quick decrease.” He asked, “Is it going to last?”

Four years ago farmers in Banna Sala, an isolated Laotian hamlet of several hundred ethnic Hmong, grew opium poppies with impunity. No longer. And some farmers are angry.

“They stopped me from growing opium, so I don’t have money to send my children to school,” said one villager, Jeryeh Singya, 34, who has seven children. She once bartered the opium she grew for soap, salt and clothing. “If they let me grow it I would,” she said.

Mr. Kon, the rebel commander in Myanmar, says farmers are finding it difficult to switch crops. “If they change and grow other kinds of plants nobody comes to buy their products — the transportation is not good,” he said.

Experts say that to stay free of opium, isolated villages that depended on it will need assistance and investment for better roads, schools and clinics.

But Myanmar, which is run by a military junta, poses a dilemma for Western countries. The United States has an embargo on trade with Myanmar. The European Union has suspended trade privileges and defense cooperation, limiting its aid to humanitarian assistance.

“This policy of boycott and isolation has, of course, meant that only very little development aid and humanitarian assistance is flowing into the country,” said Mr. Jelsma, the Dutch expert on drugs. “That makes the chances of the sustainability of this decline very questionable.”

September 20, 2007
In Egypt, a Rising Push Against Genital Cutting

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
KAFR Al MANSHI ABOU HAMAR, Egypt — The men in this poor farming community were seething. A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor’s office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor.

The girl died, but that was not the source of the outrage. After her death, the government shut down the clinic, and that got everyone stirred up.

“They will not stop us,” shouted Saad Yehia, a tea shop owner along the main street. “We support circumcision!” he shouted over and over.

“Even if the state doesn’t like it, we will circumcise the girls,” shouted Fahmy Ezzeddin Shaweesh, an elder in the village.

Circumcision, as supporters call it, or female genital mutilation, as opponents refer to it, was suddenly a ferocious focus of debate in Egypt this summer. A nationwide campaign to stop the practice has become one of the most powerful social movements in Egypt in decades, uniting an unlikely alliance of government forces, official religious leaders and street-level activists.

Though Egypt’s Health Ministry ordered an end to the practice in 1996, it allowed exceptions in cases of emergency, a loophole critics describe as so wide that it effectively rendered the ban meaningless. But now the government is trying to force a comprehensive ban.

Not only was it unusual for the government to shut down the clinic, but the health minister has also issued a decree banning health care workers— or anyone — from conducting the procedure for any reason. Beyond that, the Ministry of Religious Affairs also issued a booklet explaining why the practice was not called for in Islam; Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa, declared it haram, or prohibited by Islam; Egypt’s highest religious official, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, called it harmful; television advertisements have been shown on state channels to discourage it; and a national hot line was set up to answer public questions about genital cutting.

But as the men in this village demonstrated, widespread social change in Egypt comes very slowly. This country is conservative, religious and, for many, guided largely by traditions, even when those traditions do not adhere to the tenets of their faith, be it Christianity or Islam.

For centuries Egyptian girls, usually between the ages of 7 and 13, have been taken to have the procedure done, sometimes by a doctor, sometimes by a barber or whoever else in the village would do it. As recently as 2005, a government health survey showed that 96 percent of the thousands of married, divorced or widowed women interviewed said they had undergone the procedure — a figure that astounds even many Egyptians. In the language of the survey, “The practice of female circumcision is virtually universal among women of reproductive age in Egypt.”

Though the practice is common and increasingly contentious throughout sub-Saharan Africa, among Arab states the only other place where this practice is customary is in southern Yemen, experts here said. In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive, cannot vote, cannot hold most jobs, the practice is viewed as abhorrent, a reflection of pre-Islamic traditions.

But now, quite suddenly, forces opposing genital cutting in Egypt are pressing back as never before. More than a century after the first efforts to curb this custom, the movement has broken through one of the main barriers to change: It is no longer considered a taboo to discuss it in public. That shift seems to have coincided with a small but growing acceptance of talking about human sexuality on television and radio.

For the first time, advocates against genital cutting said, television news shows and newspapers have aggressively reported details of botched operations. This summer two young girls died, and it was front-page news in Al Masry al Yom, an independent and popular daily. Activists highlighted the deaths with public demonstrations, which generated even more coverage.

The force behind this unlikely collaboration between government, nongovernment organizations, religious leaders and the news media is a no-nonsense 84-year-old anthropologist named Marie Assaad, who has been fighting against genital cutting since the 1950s.

“I never thought I would live to see this day,” she said, reading about the subject in a widely circulated daily newspaper.

Dr. Nasr el Sayyid, assistant to the minister of health, said there had already been a drop in urban areas, along with an aggressive effort in more than 100 villages, mostly in the south, to curb the practice. “Our plan and program over the next two years is aiming to take it down 20 percent nationwide,” he said.

The challenge, however, rests in persuading people that their grandparents, parents and they themselves have harmed their daughters. Moreover, advocates must convince a skeptical public that men will marry a woman who has not undergone the procedure and that circumcision is not necessary to preserve family honor. It is a challenge to get men to give up some of their control over women.

And it will be a challenge to convince influential people like Osama Mohamed el Moaseri, imam of a mosque in Basyoun, the city near where the 13-year-old girl lived, and died. “This practice has been passed down generation after generation, so it is natural that every person circumcises his daughter,” he said. “When Ali Gomaa says it is haram, he is criticizing the practice of our fathers and forefathers.”

But the movement against genital cutting is increasingly prepared for these arguments. At first, Ms. Assaad and a group of intellectuals who together created a task force simply lectured their neighbors, essentially calling the practice barbaric.

“At the beginning we preached and said this is wrong,” she recalled. “It didn’t work. They said, ‘It was done to our mothers and grandmothers, and they are fine.’ ”

She and her colleagues sounded like out-of-touch urban intellectuals, she said. But they enlisted the aid of Islamic scholars and health care workers, hoping to disperse misconceptions — like the idea that cutting off the clitoris prevents homosexuality — and relate to people’s lives.

“Circumcision is a very old custom and has absolutely no benefits,” Vivian Fouad, who helps staff the national hot line, said to a caller wondering what to do with her own daughter. She continued: “If you want to protect your daughter, then you have to raise her well. How you raise your child is the main factor in everything, not mutilating your daughter.”

Egypt is a patriarchal society, but women can be a powerful force. So Ms. Assaad helped persuade two important women, elite and privileged, who like herself could not believe the practice was as widespread as it was, to join her battle.

The first was Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of President Hosni Mubarak and a political force in her own right. The second was Mosheira Khattab, head of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, a government agency that helps set national health and social policies.

Mrs. Khattab has become a force in pressing the agenda. Her council now has a full-time staff working on the issue and runs the hot line. She toured the Nile Delta region, three cities in one day, promoting the message, blunt and outraged that genital cutting had not stopped.

“The Koran is a newcomer to tradition in this manner,” she said. “As a male society, the men took parts of religion that satisfied men and inflated it. The parts of the Koran that helped women, they ignored.”

It is an unusual swipe at the Islamists who have promoted the practice as in keeping with religion, especially since the government generally tries to avoid taking on conservative religious leaders. It tries to position itself as the guardian of Islamic values, aiming to enhance its own wilted legitimacy and undercut support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned but popular opposition movement.

But the religious discourse concerning genital cutting has changed, and that is credited to Ms. Assaad’s strategy of reaching up to people like Mrs. Mubarak and out to young women like Fatma Ibrahim, 24. When Ms. Ibrahim was 11 years old, she said, her parents told her she was going for a blood test. The doctor, a relative, put her to sleep and when she woke, she said she could not walk.

The memory haunts her now, and though she says that her parents “will kill” her if they find out, she has become a volunteer in the movement against genital cutting, hoping to spare other women what she endured.

“I am looking to talk to the young, the ones who will be parents in 10 years,” she said. . When I get married, inshallah, I will never, ever circumcise my daughter.”

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.

September 19, 2007 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version

U.S. May Escort Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero
Talks Underway After Iranian Requests a Visit

BY SARAH GARLAND - Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 19, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/63004

In a move that has stunned New York, the Bloomberg administration is in discussions to escort the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to ground zero during his visit to New York next week, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said today.

The Iranian mission to the U.N. made the request to the New York City Police Department and the Secret Service, which will jointly oversee security during the leader's two-day visit. Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive September 24 to speak to the U.N. General Assembly as the Security Council decides whether to increase sanctions against his country for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Kelly said the NYPD and Secret Service were in discussions with the Iranian Mission about the logistics for the possible visit, and whether it will take place at all. He said that for safety reasons related to ongoing construction at ground zero Mr. Ahmadinejad would not be allowed to descend into the pit.

"There has been some interest expressed in his visiting the area," Mr. Kelly said. "It's something that we are prepared to handle if in fact it does happen."

Mr. Kelly said Mr. Ahmadinejad had not indicated why he wants to visit the site of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Several presidential candidates quickly condemned the proposed visit.

"It is an insult to the memories of those who died on 9/11 at the hands of terrorists, and those who have fought terrorism for years, to allow the president of the world's top state sponsor of terrorism to step foot at ground zero," a spokeswoman for Senator Thompson, Karen Hanretty, said. "Iran is responsible for supplying weapons and supporting extremist who are killing U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to this very day."

A Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, called the plan "shockingly audacious."

"It's inconceivable that any consideration would be given to the idea of entertaining the leader of a state sponsor of terror at ground zero," Mr. Romney said in a statement. "This would deeply offend the sensibilities of Americans from all corners of our nation. Instead of entertaining Ahmadinejad, we should be indicting him."

A major American Jewish leader, Malcolm Hoenlein, said a visit by Mr. Ahmadinejad "would violate the sanctity of the sacred place and the memory of those who perished there."

Mr. Hoenlein, the vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is a leading figure in organizing a protest against the Iranian leader Monday in front of the U.N.

He told The New York Sun that the Iranian president should be restricted to the immediate vicinity of the U.N. and should not be permitted to travel the full extent of the 25-mile radius that is normally allowed for foreign dignitaries attending meetings at the world body.

Iran has been called the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism" by the U.S. State Department.

September 19, 2007 Edition > Section: New York > Printer-Friendly Version

On the Cusp: The Next Wave of Female Suicide Bombers?
September 19, 2007 1756 GMT

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Two recent incidents have called attention to one of the possible repercussions of military operations waged against large groups of Islamist militants.

The first incident occurred Sept. 2, when the Lebanese army took complete control of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Tripoli, overrunning the last remaining Fatah al-Islam militants who had been holed up in the camp since May. Shortly before this final offensive was launched, the Lebanese army allowed the last of the militants' wives and children to evacuate the camp. The women allegedly were subjected to "gruesome" interrogations by Lebanese intelligence officers who were attempting to gather crucial information on the remaining militants in the camp prior to their assault. The women also were reportedly subjected to invasive searches by female military personnel. Most of the haggard-looking women who left the Nahr el-Bared camp are in their early 20s.

In the second incident, which occurred Sept. 13, a suicide bomber detonated in the mess hall of a military facility belonging to the Pakistani army's elite Special Services Group in the town of Tarbela Ghazi, Pakistan, killing 20 people and injuring 42. The attack was the latest in a wave of suicide bombings that have wracked Pakistan since the Pakistani army's assault in July 2006 against militants barricaded inside the Red Mosque -- an assault led by commandos of the Special Services Group. A report in the Indian media suggests the suicide bomber was a Pakistani military officer who had lost his younger sister in the Red Mosque operation. This report likely is not true, but nevertheless it raises the issue of the hundreds of women who were involved with the militants in the Red Mosque, many of whom were young students at Jamia Hafsa, the female madrassah affiliated with the Red Mosque.

These two operations were led by national armies in two totally different regions of the world, but their respective targets, concentration of militant Islamists and bloody and violent outcomes -- which, in both cases, were provoked and precipitated by the militants -- were very similar. The operations also were analogous in that they directly affected hundreds of radicalized young women who survived the operations. The factors raise the possibility that at least some of these women could go on to form the next wave of female suicide bombers.

History

Female suicide bombers are not a new phenomenon. They have been around for more than 20 years and have arrived in several waves. The first wave occurred in Lebanon in the mid-1980s. Though Lebanon is where Hezbollah pioneered modern militant suicide bombers, the women in the first wave were not fundamentalist Muslims; they were secular members of the communist Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party who conducted suicide car bomb attacks against the Israeli military and the Israeli-supported South Lebanon Army from 1985 to 1987.

The second wave of female suicide operatives began on May 21, 1991, when a female member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi after placing a garland around his neck at a political rally. Since the Gandhi assassination, the Tigers have used more female suicide bombers than any other militant group, reportedly deploying at least 46 women on suicide missions since 1991.

From 1996 to 1999, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) carried out a series of attacks against Turkish military and police targets using female suicide bombers. Several of the PKK operatives strapped their explosive devices to their stomachs to give the appearance that they were pregnant.

From 2000 to 2004, female Chechen militants, often referred to as "Black Widows," were involved in several suicide attacks against Russian military targets in Chechnya, civilian targets in Russia -- such as subways, rock concerts and airliners -- and an assassination attempt against the Chechen president. The bulk of the attacks in this wave occurred in 2003 and 2004. Female militants also played visible roles in the dramatic Chechen hostage operations, such as the October 2002 seizure of a Moscow theater and the September 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan.

The Chechen group was the first radical Islamist or jihadist organization to employ women as suicide bombers. Though the jihadist theology is very chauvinistic and the concept of martyrdom it dwells upon is largely focused on men, the concept of women martyrs is supported in the Koran. Indeed, Islam's first martyr was a woman named Somaiya. Therefore, it is not surprising to see such groups apply the arguments they use to justify men's martyrdom via suicide bombing to women as well. In addition to the anger and revenge motives frequently seen in other female suicide bombers, the Muslim concept of martyrdom involves the forgiveness of all sins and immediate entrance into paradise, so suicide bombing often is seen as an avenue to atone for the shame and sins of an extramarital affair or out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

With the beginning of the second or "al-Aqsa" Intifada in September 2000, suicide bombers became a commonly used weapon for Palestinian militant groups. However, when Israeli security responded to the rash of suicide bombings by instituting security measures that prevented most of the male suicide bombers from reaching their targets, the Palestinians countered those measures by employing female bombers. The Palestinian militant groups began using female suicide bombers in 2002, when a 28-year-old woman affiliated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade detonated in Jerusalem, killing one other person and wounding 100. Following the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade's lead, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas also have deployed female suicide bombers in attacks against Israel. The wave of Palestinian suicide bombers -- and particularly female Palestinian suicide bombers -- has waned dramatically since its peak in 2002-2003; there have been no reports of female Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel since 2005 (though there were two female suicide bomb attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza in November 2006).

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq got into the female suicide bomber business in late 2005, and Iraq is currently where female suicide operatives are used most frequently. Perhaps al Qaeda in Iraq's most highly publicized use of such an operative was in the Nov. 9, 2005, bombing attack against three Western hotels in Amman, Jordan. The female operative involved in the attack against a wedding reception in the Radisson SAS hotel attempted to detonate her suicide belt at the same time as her husband, but her device failed and her videotaped confession was widely covered by the world media. The publicity surrounding the Amman bombings eclipsed another interesting case that happened that same day in Baghdad, when a Belgian-born convert to Islam attacked a U.S. motorcade and became the first European female suicide bomber.

Some recent Internet reports suggest that the Islamic State of Iraq -- the al Qaeda-led jihadist group alliance -- has announced that it has formed a special all-female suicide bomber brigade and made an appeal for women to join it. However, the jihadists have sporadically employed female suicide bombers in Iraq since 2005 -- some were used as recently as this summer -- so even if this report is true, the formation of such a brigade likely will not make much difference tactically, as the use of female suicide bombers in Iraq is expected to continue. However, the creation of such a unit within the Islamic State of Iraq would seem to be ideologically important, signifying that the concept of female suicide bombers is gaining more widespread acceptance in the jihadist community.

Advantages

The advantages to using suicide bombers are obvious. They allow militant organizations to use "human smart bombs" who can guide ordnance around security measures and place a device in close proximity to a target -- such as a heavily packed crowd in a wedding reception, subway car or hotel lobby. Because of this, militant operational planners can use suicide bombers to cause more damage than would be inflicted by a larger device that detonates farther from its intended target.

Smaller explosive devices also are more economical to make. A large truck bomb might contain several hundred pounds of explosives and can only be used in a single location. With the same quantity of explosives required for one truck bomb, dozens of 10- to 20-pound suicide devices can be made. This allows for multiple simultaneous attacks, such as those witnessed in Amman, or the July 2005 London attacks or October 2005 Bali suicide attacks -- though it also can allow for a prolonged series of attacks.

Women provide a tactical advantage in that they do not fit many law enforcement and security professionals' preconceived profile of a terrorist. Mohammed Atta now personifies that profile, but a slightly built 20-year-old woman does not and will not receive the same scrutiny.

There also are cultural issues associated with searching women -- or even looking at them for that matter. This is especially true of Muslim women and of women in general in many Islamic countries. This means that female operatives are given a free pass at many security checkpoints. These cultural and attitudinal issues are expanded when combined with physical issues such as the burqa and the niqab (face covering) that obscures a woman's face. Such clothing not only makes it very easy to conceal an explosive device or other weapon but also hides many of the nonverbal cues that security forces are taught to look for when identifying possible suicide bombers. These factors sometimes lead male militants in Muslim countries to dress as women to attempt to gain an operational advantage.

Suicide bombers targeting VIPs pose unique challenges to protective details due to the close proximity of unscreened people at public events and the VIPs' desire to shake hands and mingle. The use of female suicide bombers in such a situation can be even more effective, as executive protection personnel are less likely to view them as a threat. This tactic was used not only in the Gandhi assassination but also in the May 2003 attempt on then-Chechen President Akhmed Kadyrov.

Using women as suicide bombers also provides militant organizations with a larger pool of operatives and allows a militant organization to deploy its male operatives for other types of missions. The psychological impact that comes with using female suicide bombers also is dramatic.

A Grim Forecast

In addition to the continuation of the current wave of female suicide bombers in Iraq, there soon could be new waves of female suicide bombers spawned by the recent events in Nahr el-Bared and the Red Mosque.

Before the storming of the Red Mosque, the students at the madrassahs associated with it were involved in a number of high-profile incidents. Following the July 2005 London bombings, Pakistani authorities attempted to raid the mosque to look for evidence tying the institution to the bombings; they were met by baton-wielding women who denied them entry to the facility. Earlier this year, authorities in Islamabad began to demolish part of the mosque that they said infringed on public land. This resulted in a group of female students (some toting Kalashnikovs) occupying an adjacent children's library and barricading themselves inside.

Later this spring, students took two groups of women hostage (including one group of Chinese expatriates) whom they accused of engaging in prostitution. In May, the students abducted four policemen and held them in exchange for some arrested colleagues. In all of these militant activities, the female students from Jamia Hafsa were in the thick of the trouble.

Given the historical trajectory of female suicide bombers and the concept's acceptance in the jihadist community in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, and considering the conditions that have produced female suicide bombers in the past, it is not hard to forecast that some of the young women who survived the bloody attacks against the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp and the Red Mosque will go on to become suicide bombers. In fact, when one considers all the militant activity the women from Jamia Hafsa have been involved in so far, it is amazing they have not yet been involved in a suicide bombing in Pakistan.