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best way to separate it from the terrorists embedded in its midst.
    COUNTERING THE THREAT
    In order to curtail women’s involvement in terrorism, counterterrorism authorities need to understand the relationship between their own agencies (police, intelligence services, the military) and the female half of the civilian population. It is important to comprehend the long-term ramifications of subjecting the local women—whether they are bystanders or prisoners who have been taken into custody—to humiliating treatment. The key is to offer the women some options other than joining the militants. Abusive or disrespectful treatment by government authorities or foreign forces provides a recruitment tool to the terrorists, allowing them to issue propaganda to the effect that the government or foreign occupiers are raping their wives, sisters, and daughters.
    Sexual atrocities committed against women during wars and military occupations are increasingly common. These crimes take different forms and have various consequences. Often, women are raped during ethnic conflicts as a way to dilute the racial integrity of future generations of the opposing community. Women have been targeted for decades as part of ethnic cleansing campaigns; the violence in such cases is intended to force movement of a group from one desirable area to another less desirable one, or across borders. In counter-terror operations, women have been targetedto extract information, create collaborators, or as a form of torture against the men who might be forced to witness the abuse.
    Some of the cases described in this book demonstrate that abusing women to demoralize men is a tactic that can come back and haunt the abusers. Kurdish, Chechen, and Tamil women, all of whom have been vulnerable to predation and sexual exploitation by enemy soldiers, transition easily into terrorist organizations as frontline operatives. Even when the other side stops engaging in sexual atrocities, the fact that they once did so remains a powerful motivator and source of propaganda for insurgent groups. Such abuse resonates with the target population as part of the terrorists’ information and propaganda campaigns. Iraq provides a perfect example of this. Although the actual number of Iraqi women exploited by U.S. or British soldiers is small compared to most wartime situations, the mere fact that such abuses have occurred has whipped up jihadi sentiment in places far from the battlefield. In all events, respect and restraint on the part of the government or occupying forces is clearly essential if women are to be discouraged from throwing in their lot with the terrorists.
    Another often-recommended approach to curtailing violence by women (and men) is the introduction of democracy. One of the justifications offered for the invasion of Iraq was to bring democracy to the region. Some authorities assume that this form of government is a panacea, the implication being that only people without a legitimate outlet to express grievances turn to violence. This is not the case. In fact, democratization has resulted in some fairly perverse unintended outcomes. In most instances when elections have been held in the Middle East, the first parties to be voted in were the very same Islamic fundamentalists who opposed a democratic system to begin with. This was the case, for example, in both Algeria and the Palestinian Territories. When people who have suffered for years under authoritarians finally get the vote,they don’t necessarily vote for the good guys! And the victorious fundamentalists are rarely the strongest supporters of women’s rights. The status of women in Iraq is worse now, by almost any measure, than it was under the authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein. The imposition of democracy from above in Iraq led to voting that has congealed sectarian divides and made the emergence of a vibrant democracy unlikely in the future.
    Almost anything Westerners do has the