On Monday, something extremely dreadful happened. A 7-year-old was strapped with explosive device(s) and sent to a worship centre within the University of Maiduguri, in the recovering city of Borno. The attack that happened as a result of this left four people dead in its wake and at least 15 others have been confirmed injured.

Two of those who died in the explosion were suicide bombers -probably backup bombers sent by the Boko Haram, that has now claimed responsibility for that attack. Shortly after the attack, villagers in the Muna Garage area of the University alerted security operatives to the presence of another bomber, a 12-year old girl, strapped with explosive devices, trying to make away most likely. The soldiers shot and killed her before safely deactivating the bomb she was wearing.

Here, we reported each event as it happened, quietly, but not out of shock or disbelief. Attacks of this nature in Maiduguri were not uncommon. Sadly, up until this third female bomber was killed, the events that unfolded Monday morning were mostly unremarkable. In fact, it was still unremarkable for the present writer whose response was a stoic: “Well”.

But a 12-year old female suicide bomber killed by security operatives should never be met with stoicism. Admittedly, none of this craziness should be met with any emotion short of outrage but this especially. We live at a time when young girls the world over have started to come to understand that they occupy more than a delicate role in society. That they are just as important as any other pillar in the process of nation building. That they do not ‘deserve’… rather, they have an obligation to make their voices heard as this new world is being built so we do not repeat the mistakes of all the generations past. Women and girls are experiencing what can only be considered a universal rapprochement. And these terrorists know it too, unfortunately.

The stoicism that slipped along with that singular “well” here on Monday morning was fortunately countered and immediately corrected. In the process, we stumbled upon the ugly realisation that the 12-year-old-girl-bomber was no isolated case. That it is now a commonplace and an almost signatory feature of Boko Haram attacks. The terrorists have incorporated female suicide bombings in their modus. Naturally, we are compelled to wonder why.

Beyond the obvious reason these female suicide bombers may possess a special ability to move unnoticed and attract less attention than their male counterparts so much that even the male disguise as female, it turns out there’s an actual politics to the employment of female suicide bombers by insurgents and terror groups around the world.

Lindsey O’Rourke in trying to answer her own question: “what’s special about female suicide terrorism?” found the number of female suicide attackers has risen from eight during the 1980s to well over one hundred since 2000 (using a select sample of Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Uzbekistan).

She posits that women, even when the terrrorism has persisted in the State long enough for the authorities to put defensive measures in place, still execute “effective” and deadlier attacks than the male attackers. According to her, one reason that can account for this is that these women do not conform to the stereotype of terrorist attackers in the countries where attacks happen and so they arouse less suspicion. The fact that male Boko Haram terrorists have disguised themselves as women in order to carry out attacks in crowded cities supports this claim. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security failed to include women in its official profile of potential terrorists used to screen visa applicants after September 11th, 2001.

In Maiduguri and the other towns in the North East, the loose-fitting outfits that women traditionally wear help the female suicide bombing preference since the bombs they are strapped with will be scarcely visible.

To prove her theory about the effectiveness of female suicide bombers, O’Rourke submits that women are used by many of the terrorist groups at the later stages of their crusades when the execution of their attacks are much more difficult. It is unclear whether Boko Haram was included in her select sample but we can attest that this is true of this insurgent group too. The first attack by a female terrorist for the Boko Haram was recorded on the 8th June of 2014, approximately 5 years after the first began their attacks when a middle-aged woman on a motorcycle rode into a military barrack in Gombe, detonating a bomb that killed her and a policeman.

The outrage that this incident sparked was not powered by the sheer act of wickedness. Nigerians were mostly shocked and angry that a woman, expected to be compassionate (and in a Nigerian society, even wiser than the male folks), would carry out such a heinous crime. Ironically, the theories posited by scholars is that this is what the terrorists want. That in employing women, viewed largely through that lens of compassion, the outrage that happens in the aftermath of a female suicide attack draws more attention to a group that may be losing ground in terms of media coverage around the world.

This, of course, brings to mind the continued detention of the Chibok girls. It also offers an alternative theory in addition to the two that already exist. Apart from the fact that the girls may have been abducted to execute effective suicide attacks on behalf of the group, many people have opined that the girls were abducted to cater to the insurgent men’s sexual and domestic desires.

It may just be that Boko Haram has tactically held on to the girls in order to continuously generate media attention. The world has certainly not stopped talking about the group since April 2014. For the sake of the girls, the Federal Government has even considered granting amnesty to the rogues.

Roqeebah

Creative mind. Enthusiast. Learner. Multipotentialite. And here, an assistant editor.