Each woman's story is unique, but their journeys to jihad do have commonalities. Many have lost close male relatives. Baida and Ranya lost both fathers and brothers. Many of the women live in isolated communities dominated by extremists, where radical understandings of Islam are the norm. In such places, women are often powerless to control much about their lives; they cannot choose whom they marry, how many children to have or whether they can go to school beyond the primary years. Becoming a suicide bomber is a choice of sorts that gives some women a sense of being special, with a distinguished destiny. But Major Hosham urged me not to generalize: "All the cases are different. Some are old; some are young; some are just criminals; some are believers. They have different reasons."

One thing stood out: The appearance in Diyala of suicide bombers who were women was entwined with the appearance of the Islamic State of Iraq - the local face of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the umbrella name used in Iraq for homegrown Sunni extremist groups that have some foreign leadership. While many insurgent groups operate in Iraq, those with links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are associated with suicide bombings. In Diyala, the Islamic State of Iraq was particularly strong. It was also brutal and organized. It orchestrated mass kidnappings, mass executions, beheadings and ambushes. No one was spared: women or children; Sunnis, Shiites or Kurds. Whole villages were forced to flee; others fell under extremist control. Many of the women who became bombers were from families immersed in jihadist culture.

Rubin's piece paints a bleak scene for women in Iraq, in an area that has seen a sharp rise in female suicide bombers from 2007-2008. More and more women, disillusioned with their lives and under the influence of twisted religious rhetoric, have come to believe that the best way out of their miserable existence is to sacrifice themselves - and to take others with them. Women, Rubin explains, were actually a good choice for bombers - the coverage of the abaya allows for greater concealment, and until recently, women were spared searches, even at heavily guarded check points.

Last September, the Iraqi government completed training for 27 policewomen in Diyala. The effort came too late to save at least 130 people and probably more who have died in the province in suicide bombings carried out by women.

When Rubin arrives at the prison where Baida is detained, she sits with rapt attention, taking notes on her story, looking for the answer to the persistent question: why? Why would someone do this?

She began in a soft voice: "My name is Baida Abdul Karim al-Shammari, and I am from New Baquba near the general hospital. I am one of eight children; five were killed. The police raided our home. It was a half-hour before dawn during Ramadan. The Americans were with them."

She added with a touch of pride: "My brothers were mujahideen. They made I.E.D.'s." The word "mujahideen" means holy fighters and, in the context of Iraq, they are fighters against the infidels, the Americans. I.E.D.'s are improvised explosive devices.

She told me she helped make such devices, going to the market to buy wire and other bomb parts and working at putting bombs together. Men are routinely paid for such work; women are generally paid too, but less. Baida was proud to be a volunteer. "I knew we were fighting against the Americans and they are the occupation," she told me. "We are doing it for God's sake. We are doing it as jihad."

While Baida credits her leanings to her family, she also admits she is motivated by revenge:

Later it would be revenge for the deaths of her father and four brothers in what she said was a joint American-Iraqi raid on their home, but at first it was more general. She told me she watched the Americans shoot a neighbor in 2005, and she replayed the image over and over in her mind: "I saw him running toward them, and then they shot him in the neck. I still see him. I still remember how he fell when the Americans shot him and I saw him clawing on the ground in the dust before his soul left his body. After that I began to help with making the improvised explosive devices."

However, Rubin cagily illustrates other reasons why Baida may have been so ready to check out of this existence with hope of a better one in the next:

Baida grew up shuttling between Baquba, which is the provincial capital of Diyala, and Husayba, a town on the Syrian border. She went to school through eighth grade, she told me, and had ideas of becoming an architect, but her mother wanted her to stay home. When Baida was 17, her mother died, and a few months later, at her father's behest, Baida married. Almost immediately she knew she had made a mistake. A week after her wedding, according to Baida, her husband threw a cup of cream at her head; soon, beatings became regular. She smiled sweetly and shrugged: "His hand got used to beating me."

However, Baida seems completely disconnected from these events, as well as her husband:

She appeared to have let go of most earthly ties. A mother of two boys and a girl, all under 8, she had not seen them since her arrest last year. When I asked if they missed her, she said, almost airily, "Allah will take care of them." She spoke as if much of her life was already in the past. When she mentioned her husband, whom she actively hated, she used the past tense. She was living for that moment that some might see as an ending but for her would be a moment of transformation.

"As soon as I get out I will explode myself against the invaders," she told me.

As the interview continues, Rubin starts noticing an interesting deployment of logic Baida uses to fell okay about the murders she is about to commit. In a complicated discussion of what is haram and what is not, Baida explains how she reconcile the deaths of some, but not others:

It was certainly important to Baida, who felt she controlled little in her life, to feel in control of her death. Her goal was to take revenge on her brothers' killers - American soldiers. When I brought up the reality that the vast majority of suicide bombings in Iraq kill ordinary Iraqis, she would only say that she thought killing Iraqis was haram, or forbidden.

Baida explains:

You could choose whether you wanted to do it. They wanted me to wear the explosive belt against the police, but I refused. I said, ‘I will not do it against Iraqis.' I said: ‘If I do it against the police I will go to hell because the police are Muslims. But if I do it against the Americans then I will go to heaven.' "

A few weeks later, when I [Rubin] met Baida again, she tried to explain to me the line dividing when it is halal (permitted) to kill a person and when it is forbidden. She said she followed the rules of her group, but her cousins had different rules: they would kill anybody. Was there a difference, I wondered, between killing American soldiers and killing American civilians, like reconstruction workers? No, she said: "I am willing to explode them, even civilians, because they are invaders and blasphemers and Jewish. I will explode them first because they are Jewish and because they feel free to take our lands."

My interpreter asked where she stood: Was it halal to kill her?

"We consider you a spy, working with them," Baida said.

Baida did not believe it was halal, however, to kill members of the Iraqi security forces if they were working on their own, only if they were in a convoy with the Americans.

As the Rubin's narrative gets darker and darker, she also illuminates how the idea of a "choice" is one that is difficult to apply in these situations:

Her choice of suicide was not entirely hers to make. The suicide vests the cell gave to participants were outfitted with remote detonators so that someone else could explode the would-be bomber if she somehow failed to do it herself. This was a relatively new aspect of suicide bombing in Iraq. A second person, with a second detonator, would go on the mission to ensure against changes of heart. "One day this woman, Shaima, said, ‘I am ready.' I saw Shaima when they put the vest on her. It was very heavy. With Shaima, they exploded her, she did not explode herself. There were five or six killed."

At some point in the story, Baida is transferred to a mental hospital for evaluation. In the meantime, Rubin travels to other areas with high levels of women bombers. Extreme adherence to even the smallest points of religious dogma creates an environment where it is almost as if the people live in a time warp:

Until 2007, it was too dangerous for the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police to enter the area. When they finally did, they found a strange community. "When we entered Makhisa we didn't find a TV because it's forbidden," Col. Khalid Mohammed al-Ameri, who was in the army under Saddam Hussein and has served all over the country, told me. "And no ice, no cigarettes and no tomatoes and cucumbers mixed together at the same shop."

The strictest Sunni extremists believe that people should not have anything that did not exist in the early days of Islam. Since there was no electricity in the seventh century, there could be neither refrigeration nor ice and no television. The aversion to mixing tomatoes and cucumbers is because cucumbers are viewed as a male vegetable and tomatoes are female, and mixing them in a box is seen as lascivious, Colonel Khalid said, shaking his head.

When Rubin returns, she finds that Baida has been calling, looking for her. Under advisement from military and local police that Baida may possibly be plotting to murder her as well, Rubin elects to keep future meetings short. The author's nervousness is palpable here - we have previously been informed that Baida had access to a cell phone while in prison and the mental hospital, and she stays in close contact with the members of her group. In addition, military operatives had warned that other journalists had died in similar ways, around the time when Baida began pressing for exact time and locations of Rubin's visits.

When we did finally go, we met with Baida alone, sitting together on a bed in the nurse's office because there were no chairs. I asked her gently, and as nonjudgmentally as I could, whether she wanted to kill me because I was a foreigner.

"Frankly, yes." Then she added, to soften it, "Not specifically you, because I know you."

Would she tell her extremist cousins or her friends about me? Would she give them my description and tell them enough that they could find me?

"I won't sacrifice my friendship," she said. A moment later she reversed herself. "But, if they insisted, yes, I would, yes. As a foreigner it is halal to kill you."

She continued: "If they kill Americans they will do a big huge banquet for dinner."

She smiled beatifically. As Major Hosham had said, "She is honest."

Rubin offers no conclusions or further analysis at the end of her piece, instead looking to capture the environment. Perhaps this is because there ultimately is no rhyme or reason for undertaking these horrific acts, that violate most religious principles and moral obligations. Baida's last words confirm this point:

I looked at my watch; I worried we had stayed too long. I got up hurriedly, knocking my notebooks to the floor. I adjusted my veil, thanked her for her time, for teaching me about jihad and for making me understand how dangerous her world was.

Baida was smiling again. "If I had not seen you before and talked to you, I would kill you with my own hands," she said pleasantly. "Do not be deceived by my peaceful face. I have a heart of stone."

How Baida Wanted to Die [New York Times Magazine]

According to her own interview: she did it by helping set up rape squads and then preying on their victims.

In a prison interview with the Associated Press — with interrogators nearby — she said that she helped to organise the rapes of young women and then stepped in to persuade the victims to become suicide bombers as their only escape from the shame.

Her taped confession, which has been broadcast throughout Iraq is reportedly bad PR for al Qaeda, if that's any consolation, though the rape squad reports have yet to be independently verified.

Last year, some questioned whether media obsession with the personal motivations of the female suicide bombers involved in the uptick in female suicide bombers in Iraq — especially among the very young and disabled — was sexist. Jassim's story seems to indicate that her organization was specifically targeting emotionally vulnerable women, rather than politically-motivated women — and that if her group couldn't find the former, it would create them.

She also appeared to confirm what many military and intelligence officials had asserted: that insurgents prey on women in dire social and economic situations who are often suffering from emotional or psychological problems, or abuse.

An apparently typical story from Jassim's confession runs like this:

“Another woman was Amal,” she said, recounting another attack, this one a suicide bombing in December 2007 that killed 15 at a meeting of the Sunni Awakening movement in Diyala. Amal was a teacher, she said.

“I met her, and for more than two weeks I tried to convince her,” she said. “She was living in difficult conditions. Her husband and his family were having problems with her brothers. She was in bad psychological shape.”

Amal later blew herself up. Jassim has similar stories of an elderly woman that she made great effort to recruit — elderly women can have great difficulties surviving in Iraq these days — as well as a woman that seemed somewhat mentally disturbed before her suicide:

“When I was talking to her, she was not answering or looking at me,” Ms. Jassim said. “She was mumbling verses of the Koran.”

“I got her to the bank and left her there,” she went on, unemotionally. “She detonated herself at a police station in Muqdadiya.”

Jassim may have taken the nickname "the mother of the believers," but it doesn't sound much like she got anyone to believe in a particular political or religious ideology: she just got a group of women to believe that they were better off dead, and better off taking a few innocent souls with them.

Iraq Arrests Woman Tied to Bombings [New York Times]
'Female Suicide Bomb Recruiter' Samira Ahmed Jassim Captured [Times of London]
Al-Qaeda Damaged By Arrest Of 'Rape And Suicide Bomb' Woman [Times of London]

Earlier: Women's Lives Becoming Increasingly Expendable In War Zones
The New Enemy
Hard Times
Is It Sexist To Wonder Why Women Would Become Suicide Bombers?
Widowed Grandmothers of Baghdad

Generally speaking, if I commit (or try to commit) suicide in this country (generally done for personal reasons), that's considered a criminal act so that they can lock me up and get my the psychiatric help I need. When a person of either gender straps explosives to their body and kills him or herself and as many other people as possible — is that a rational act? Can it be a rational act? Is it any less of a sign — regardless of gender — that the person in question is in need of a mental health intervention?

By now, male suicide bombers are de rigueur in the Middle East (if not in other countries where suicide bombings are common). The stories are played out, the irrationality of the situation accepted, the coercion and indoctrination involved go without saying. And so the question for the Western media, tired of "yet another" suicide bomber story is — why women now and why not all along?

Obviously, the recruiting and coercion is different, given that much recruiting of men is reportedly done in sex-segregated religious settings. The personal reasonings are probably also different — given that men and women have significantly different and entrenched roles in those societies, and what they lose by making an early exit from them is going to be different. The rationale of the clothing provides a stepping-off point to understand why a male-dominated terrorist organization would think of recruiting women (or more women than ever before) when they come from a supposed religious ideology and secular background in which women are not normally allowed in combat situations.

On Sunday, Lindsey O'Rourke argued in her New York Times OpEd that the media is sexist in the way it reports female suicide bombings because the political context in which men and women choose to become suicide bombers is the same, while admitting that recruiting tactics for men and women remain significantly different. If men and women are recruited differently, then doesn't it stand to reason that the differing recruitment works because men and women have different person motivations that they are more likely to share with others in their gender? The external motivating factors — or, if one accepts the premise that suicidal impulses are inherently irrational, the rationale given for an inherently irrational act — might be similar but, at the end of the day, the personal reasons for getting involved in a situation are going to be different and in a society in which gender plays a huge role on your place in that society, it's probably going to be gendered, at least in part.

While there is no shortage of other string of female suicide bombers — particularly in a secular context — through which we can contextualize the recent spate of Iraqi suicide bombings committed by women, the fact remains that such bombings are an anomaly in that country at this time. There is obviously something driving the increase, and understanding why Chechnyan women or Tamil women agreed to participate in suicide bombings in their respective countries doesn't really get us that much closer to understanding why Iraqi women are doing it now — or how to stop it. And that, really, is what the media and our governments are trying to understand — why women, why now, why there, and how do we stop it.

If, as Faith suggests, the sexism comes from the world is wondering what is making women irrational enough to start becoming suicide bombers, what they're actually proposing is that women have been more rational all along. And that might be sexist, but it might also be aimed at men.

Three Women Held In Iraq Suicide Bomb Plots [CNN]
The Vulnerable Robed Women: Coverage Of Women Suicide Bombers [Muslimah Media Watch]
When The Suicide Bomber Is A Woman [Marie cCaire]
Behind The Woman Behind The Bomb [NY Times]

So it's like with injured horses and Jell-O! Anyway, I know suicide bombers don't write notes, maybe because a good carnage photo speaks a thousand words as they say, but here is what I imagine one of them might have written:

Dear Allah,
Go to Hell.
If you existed I would ask to be reincarnated as the lesbian test tube spawn of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Pamela Geller.

Or maybe:

Dear Allah,
And maybe bring back Lynndie England to guard my husband's cell.

Or:

Dear Allah,
I just don't see why the Sunnis and the Shiites can't come together to celebrate all the beliefs they share, such as the one about how women who have sex before marriage need to be killed. Come to think of it, a lot of religions commit "honor killings," right? How come no one ever stops and thinks about how much we all have in common?

Dear Allah,
Because then people would stop killing each other so much and spend all their time fucking. I get it.

Dear Allah,
If you pack our torsos with explosives, do we not bleed?
Rhetorical question.

Love, Blackmail and Rape: How Al Qaeda Grooms Women As "Perfect Weapons" [Times]
Muslim Extremist Women Fight For Right To Join Al Qaeda [CBS 13]
Why Women Become Suicide Bombers [Newsweek]

Photo via Photobucket

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim al-Rubaie in Diyala, Iraq (the site of the most recent female suicide bomber attack this weekend) has seen a significant increase in the number of women suicide bombers, but says: "Most of our women wear black cloaks that can hide anything and we can’t prevent that." Cultural mores prevent male security personnel from frisking women, and recent laws have prevent most Iraqi policewomen from carrying guns. While the U.S. military is attempting to increase he number of female security personnel in order to alleviate the increasing concern that the easiest way for bad people to hide a bomb is on a woman, they face some pretty significant cultural and bureaucratic difficulties in doing so.

In other countries, however, it's much more common to see female suicide bombers. In Sri Lanka, they're often the only ones who will volunteer, even after significant indoctrination. In Tamil Tiger territory, young women and girls are often given to the Tigers for indoctrination when they are orphaned or cannot be cared for by their families. In most cases in the Middle East, however, terrorist groups seem to turn to female suicide bombers when security forces successfully disrupt male attackers. Women are viewed as terrorists of last resort, either because it is feared that they will not complete their attacks or because the religion of the attackers all but forbids it. In some cases, as noted above, women will be fitted with bombs but not given the triggers to prevent them from failing to complete their attacks. Some studies, like the one done by the Army, show that the unwillingness to use female suicide bombers is in direct correlation to the religiousness of the attackers — in other words, the more secular the reason for the terrorism, the more likely the organizations are to employ suicide bombers.

The Mind of a Female Suicide Bomber [Time]
Another Female Suicide Bomber Strikes Iraqi Province, Killing 15 Near Courthouse [NY Times]
Bombing Kills 43 in Shiite Holy City in Iraq [NY Times]
Obey Your Self-Righteous Lies While Your Sisters And Daughters Die, All Decisions Are Final [Attackerman]
When the Suicide Bomber Is a Woman [Marie Claire]
Female Suicide Bombers [Army Strategic Studies Institute]

According to Riyad abu Mohammed, the leader of the Adhamiya chapter of Sons of Iraq, "In our culture, we can't have women standing in public on a checkpoint…It isn't good for us, for her or her family." But Captain Michael Starz, the US officer in charge of the Yusufiyah area of Baghdad, thinks that employing these women is good for them and their families, especially since many of the Daughters of Iraq are widows who desperately need the $300 monthly salary in order to help their children to survive. "It is a critical security issue that we find a way to have women searched at high-traffic areas," Starz told Time magazine last week. "Secondly, this is an employment program. After years of war and sectarian violence, many of the women around here are widows and have no way of supporting themselves."

Not surprisingly, neither the LA Times nor Time really acknowledge that American forces have helped create the discord in the first place. In a series of blog posts featuring the voices of Iraqi women on the New York Times website, one reader asks, "Do you, as an Iraqi women, feel happier or more secure since the American invasion of Iraq?" Hiba Hussain, a 24-year-old Shiite, answered, “I quit school because of the security situation and because I was once kidnapped. So I left my education behind.”

Daughters Of Iraq: Women Take On A Security Role [Los Angeles Times]
A Female Security Force In Iraq [Time]
Answers From Iraqi Women Part I [NY Times]
Answers From Iraqi Women Part II [NY Times]