Bombshell Read Free Page B

children or coerced women. There is no sacrifice to Allah when there is no choice. If people who truly believed in the Salafi message knew that this was how Al Qaeda–affiliated groups in Iraq operated, Al Qaeda’s popularity would surely plummet further. The fact is that Al Qaeda is increasingly alienated from most Muslims and even from most Islamists, having lost the strategic initiative in Iraq, Indonesia, and elsewhere. 5 This is a trend that we need to encourage.
    TERRORISTS AND THEIR CONSTITUENCIES
    There is no single template that describes women who become involved in terrorism. Some women choose to get involved with terrorist organizations to help their community. Others have no choice. Facing the certainty of death at the hands of their own families, dismemberment by Wahhabites (the Chechen term for jihadis), or being sold to terrorist organizations, those with no choice are in a truly grim situation. The organizations that either attract willing commitment or obtain compliance by force seem to have a different relationship to the civilian population in which they operate. Where the insurgency is inspired by ethnicity or nationalism, the terrorist organizers may make great efforts to inculcate a sense of devotion from their people. They see themselves as the future leaders of the community and strive to protect their “constituents” to the best of their ability. For these groups, all politics islocal and the core public is also local. JI’s rhetorical support for the global movement has been useful for its local struggle. It affords the organization greater prestige as well as access to international financial support. At the end of the day, however, JI’s focus will always be local first, and then maybe regional, rather than global. Similarly, groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas create infrastructure, provide social services, and make a significant effort to improve the lives of men and women in their communities, while also fighting the other side. These groups make an important distinction between their civilians and those who oppose them. And though they certainly do not respect the lives of their enemies, they do seem to care about their own people.
    However, in the globalized terror networks, particularly Al Qaeda, the people doing the fighting often have no connection to the civilians around them. The leadership’s goals extend beyond the parameters of one state or area, and so the local population is just one of several possible constituencies. Also, the people they mobilize may be far removed from the location of the conflict. These outside recruits may have little or no knowledge of the conditions in which the local population lives. This disconnect may lead them to be far more cavalier about the value of life and the extent to which they coerce the local population. This is equally true for both religious and secular terrorist organizations.
    Palestinian terrorist groups know that whatever they do will be observed by the Palestinians upon whose support they rely. In contrast, many of the Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq do not care what happens to ordinary Iraqis. Both their goal and their audience lie outside the Iraqi state (jihadis do not even recognize Iraq as a state because it was “created” by the British during the colonial period). The Sunni insurgents have only a superficial connection to the local population. It follows that they have no qualms about subjecting Iraqi women to heinous treatment. In Chechnya, thesituation is complicated by a culture in which kidnapping and rape have been institutionalized as a form of courtship. Selling one’s daughter or sexually exploiting a woman to get her parents’ permission for marriage are—shockingly—almost routine. The terrorists have been able to adapt existing customs for their own purposes.
    Among the Tamils, Irish Republicans, and Palestinians, there has been little need to convince women to join