Jihadi Generations-Part III

Female and family roles **

Girls are prized as “Pearls of the Caliphate”. They are either born into these violent extremist groups, sold, or given over by their families. Some were abandoned and end up in orphanages controlled by these VEGs (violent extremist groups). Some are purposely kidnapped or taken as “spoils of war” - sabaya or slaves are permitted in Islam.

All girls must convert to Islam. The alternative is to be used as a sex slave, slave labor, or be killed. Muslim girls are reared in strict sharia law observance, given instructions on how to care for and tend jihad fighters according to their own codes.

Hamas first ever training camp for girls in Jenin, West Bank - photo from Al Monitor, Ibraheem Abu Mustafa-Reuters

According to an article by Robbie Grammer in ‘The Cable’ Foreign Policy Journal, 02/16/2017, ”The Islamic State has its own Common Core” — with a macabre twist…mobile apps- using IT tools for pathological pedagogy, propaganda and recruitment lures. These tools have developed over time and extended past the geographical borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

“Children of both sexes are required to attend school from the age of five. Girls are given a domestic education, learning how to take care of husbands, raise children and maintain households while adhering to strict ISIS ideology. To provide for their family’s needs, girls are expected to be able to cook, to sew and knit, as this is their contribution to the state, along with producing sons to send out to battle. These girls will never receive a proper education, and are expected to marry as young as the age of nine .”

When girls become mothers, they are encouraged to offer their children up to the Islamic state for whatever purposes are needed, including as suicide bombers. The English translation of the publication “Dabiq” [propaganda magazine of the Islamic State published on the deep web/dark web] promotes sacrifice with the words: “As for you, O mother of lion cubs. ... And what will make you know what the mother of lion cubs is? She is the teacher of generations and the producer of men, men who will sacrifice all for the Islamic State, for the will of Allah".

“Pearls of the Caliphate” special girls selected for training. Photo from Islamic State (ISIS) Photo released on the anonymous file sharing website “JustPaste.it

“Mothers”(al umu-mother in Arabic) and older girls keep the younger girls in line and often dole out harsh punishments for non-compliance and disobedience. Those selected for further training as fighters and suicide cells are given special privileges and even monetary rewards and praise. If their families are sympathizers and supporters, they are also “rewarded” and rise in social status.

“These female suicide cells were established by and remain under the command of Qari Zia Rahman, the dual-hatted Taliban and alQaeda commander who operates on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. He is the Taliban's top regional commander as well as a member of al Qaeda.”

Girls and women have been used as suicide bombers, recruiters for other children, lures, spies and enforcers. They are placed as workers in guest houses, ministry offices, schools, media, shops, clinics, as sex slaves and bomb makers.

In Pakistan, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – also known as the Pakistani Taliban -- they established a women’s suicide squad called Jannati Khawateen (Women of Paradise).

TTP is an umbrella group of various Islamist militant groups intent on resisting the Pakistani state, enforcing their interpretation of Shari’ah law, and operating against the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan. Its female suicide squad consists of 12-16 members per squad. The female suicide squad members are trained to operate like commandos using machine-guns and hand grenades for carrying out terrorist attacks to accomplish their mission. These suicide squads were specifically established to attack difficult or high value targets. They start their training before they reach puberty.

Female fighters from Islamic State (ISIS) Photo released on the anonymous file sharing website “JustPaste.it

Perhaps you have read of the “Black Widows”?

“Chechnya’s notorious “Black Widows” have been active since June 7, 2000 when the first Chechen female suicide bombers drove a truck filled with explosives into the temporary headquarters of an elite OMON (Russian Special Forces) detachment in the village of Alkhan Yurt in Chechnya. This attack resulted in two dead and five wounded. Since then Chechen female terrorists have been involved in twenty-two of the twenty-seven suicide attacks (81 percent of the total number) attributed to Chechen rebels. There were a total of 110 bombers in the period reviewed, forty-seven of whom were women.”

There are also confirmed reports of female suicide bombers who were converts from European, North American and African countries. Women are seduced online through social media, targeted for specific skills and connections through universities and work places in other countries then “courted” for marriage. Once married and transported to Islamic countries, they are radicalized into submission and incorporated into the Jihadist pool of “female fighters and arsenal of human martyrs”.

Muriel Degauque, the Belgian woman who committed a suicide bombing attack against a U.S. Army convoy in Iraq in November 2005, pictured in the lower left. Other “successful” female suicide bombers. (Virginie Lefour/AFP/Getty Images)

The Islamic State’s (ISIS/Daesh) position on whether or not women could participate in combat shifted in the 2000s. While female suicide bombers were used extensively by the Islamic State’s predecessor group, al Qa`ida in Iraq; the Islamic State had previously strictly mandated that women should be wives and mothers rather than fighters or “shahid”= martyrs.

With international pressures on Islamist extremist groups and facing recruitment challenges for their planned, larger attacks - announcements on their sites suggest they lifted their moratorium on women combatants. They’ve stepped up their indoctrination in schools, universities, political groups in the west, and within active channels for recruitment over social media. Changes that could have significant implications for regional and international security.

Female Palestinian women as suicide terrorist bombers

The Middle East continues to be a cauldron for Islamic extremists violence. Female suicide bombers and spies have been used by Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al Nusra, Fatah al Islam, , Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Jaysh al-Islam and other Salafi Jihadi groups which evolve over time continue to spread their hatred of all “infidels” and those who support Israel. Their tactics against their “enemies” grow more barbaric and cruel with each year. Yet, there seems to be only anemic international condemnation.

Here are a few of the Palestinian women suicide bombers from 20 years ago. There are many more - unfortunately. The “education curriculum” in Palestinian schools has for decades promoted hatred and taught “martyrdom as a life goal”.

Reprisals against families and females who will not submit

Girls who are part of families and communities in regions where violent extremist groups are in charge are especially vulnerable to attack, kidnapping and reprisals if they try to attend government or private schools. Or if they try to avoid being part of the extremist groups which control their neighborhoods, communities or countries.

“Night Letters” are/were used to threaten entire communities in the south, south eastern and central provinces of Afghanistan. They warn/threaten entire communities not to send their daughters to school. They call on teachers and government employees to close schools, especially schools for girls. They are cautioned that failure to comply to their demands (VEGs) leads to punishments such as throwing or covering them with acid, launching gas attacks, and/or bio terrorism and assassination.

The Taliban and ISIS/Daesh require only their curriculum must be implemented and only teachers loyal to their cause can be employed to teach.

The Haqqani and Taliban groups in Central Asia have extorted teachers and administrators who receive any aid or materials (including from the US and EU organizations) donated to their communities. They continue to attack those who will not “pay to play” with these violent extremist and criminal networks. These attacks and public displays of violence - particularly against females and educators-continue to the present time.

They have perpetrated these types of attacks in a number of countries since 2000. Here are but a few examples:

Ghazni (Afghanistan) has had two serious “poisoning attacks” on girls schools in Ghazni city at Kak-i-Gariba Girls High School- 50 girls were poisoned, and on June 7, 2017 in the Jaghori district in southern Ghazni province. The Ministry of Education office tweeted that 35 girls had been poisoned. Pajhwok news reporter Saifullah Maftoon reported the incidents.

“The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack at a French cultural centre located on the grounds of Istiqlal high school in the centre of the Afghan capital. According to Kabul’s police chief, Abdul Rahman Rahimi, footage from the theatre hall showed the bomber to be about 16 years old.”

“The Taliban are actively interfering in the education system,” said one educator who has trained teachers in Kunar province. In areas under heavy Taliban influence, he says, “insurgents introduce their own members as teachers, threatening to close government schools if they do not comply”.

In Kohistanat district in the northern Sar-e Pul province, (Afghanistan) which has been under insurgent control for 18 months, Taliban officials head the education as well as have controlled the health, religious study, and security departments since 2017.

“Targeted attacks on Ministry of Education staff or students who refuse to comply with the group's orders is the "official policy of the Taliban”. [AAN Feb. 2013, 2]

“Five female employees of the nongovernmental organization ‘Save the Children’ were kidnapped in Uruzgan, March 3, 2015, by the Taliban, raped, tortured and killed when demands for the release of Taliban prisoners were rejected.”

“Malim Abdul Habib was the headmaster of Shaikh Mathi Baba high school,
which is attended by 1,300 boys and girls. Four men stabbed Malim Abdul Habib eight times late Tuesday, before decapitating him in the courtyard of his home in Qalat, said Ali Khail, a spokesman for the provincial government of Zabul, where the attack took place. “The assailants made Habib’s wife, four sons and four daughters watch”, Khail said. His children were between the ages of 2 and 22. Zabul province’s education director, Nabi Khushal, blamed Taliban rebels for the killing.”

According to the Ministry of Education, in Khost, 187 people which included administrators of school, teachers and students were killed, and hundreds of schools were burnt down or otherwise destroyed.

In December 2014, a bomb exploded in a school in Nangarhar province, injuring nine students.”

Female Islamist Suicide bomber in the USA

How quickly some people forget about the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used in the United States and claimed in the cause of Islamic Jihad. One proven female perpetrator in 2015 was Tashfeen Malik. She was born and raised in Pakistan and spent some time in Saudi Arabia. She came to the US to marry her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, who was born in Illinois and raised in California, but held militant Islamist views according to research by the FBI.

“The mastermind of the San Bernardino attack was a female who previously had been reported to be too weak even to carry a weapon. Yet, at the Christmas party, she and her husband carried out a mass the shooting at a community center in San Bernardino, California, that left 14 people dead, The couple also had three pipe-bombs with them but luckily they were poorly constructed and failed to explode. The married couple seem to have been “self-radicalized”. She pledged allegiance to the ISIS leader on Facebook in the midst of the attacks”.

According to Statista.com you can view their crime statistics graph from 2000-2024 of “Gender of jihadist terrorists in the United States from September 11, 2001 to October 2024, by year”. These are caught and convicted terrorists according to US law enforcement reporting from all fifty states, and according to each state’s definition of “terrorism”.

The proliferation of protests carried out in support of “Palestinian causes” which instigate violence against Jews, against Jewish schools, synagogues, Jewish neighborhoods and Jewish businesses in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and other countries is another serious step toward the path of establishing an Islamist caliphate-whether you recognize these efforts as such or not.

Abu Muhammad al Adnani,of Al-Qa’im, Iraq (AQI) directed his followers to strike in the West.

“The best thing you can do is to strive to your best and kill any disbeliever, whether he be French, American, or from any of their allies,” Adnani said in one speech (titled, “Indeed Your Lord Is Ever Watchful”). Adnani continued: “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman, or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.”

He and his successor - both the top spokesmen for the Islamic State - ‘Abu Hasan al Muhair’ (a Saudi national with the legal name of Thaher Salim Mohammad Al-Shahiri) were finally killed by US air strikes in Syria.

The lack of media attention and lack of strong condemnation of the escalating anti-semitic attacks and the anti-Christian attacks in the Middle East, in countries in Europe, Africa and Asia by violent Islamist groups and individuals, is concerning.

Silence or lack of media coverage is a statement in itself. It implies trivialization or even passive acceptance of these heinous attacks.

Once again we are reminded that we need to learn from history, or be doomed to repeat its mistakes and the consequences of inaction.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing “

Edmund Burke -1729-1797. Born in Ireland, died in the United Kingdom

**This is the third in a four part series. The first two articles are linked here with my other posts.

Please read them, and share them. The fourth in this series is linked here.

Thank you.