Dying to kill: Women under veil in combat

Iraq war continues to outrage the world community. The worst have not passed yet and that talk of civil war is not overblown. The images are getting more and more disparaging and the changing faces of insurgency are forcing the course to change.

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The insurgency in Iraq, where suicide bombings are a daily occurrence, have supported a view that of the male suicide bomber motivated by a sense of injustice against Islam. However, growing number of women involved in a series of recent attacks are beginning to chip away this stereotype.

What is responsible for the shift in traditional perception of women as life-givers turning into killers?

I think the answer lies in the story of one Um Abdallah, carried by IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

She is having a difficult task ahead of her - she has to learn how to use a gun and begin preparing for a day she believes is going to be one of God's forgiveness and revenge against foreign forces occupying her country.

Um Abdallah said -

I'm going to be a suicide bomber in the name of God, I will be one of the Iraqis who will take revenge for all suffering that US and Iraqi militaries have caused in the past years and force them to leave the blessed land of Iraq. I know I will die but for a good reason. When I die I will be beside my loved ones who were killed without good reason.

Um Abdallah is just one of many thousands of Iraqis who have lost their relatives in the past four years of US occupation of Iraq. Her two boys and one girl were killed during a US military attack in her neighborhood.

It should come as no surprise that we will hear more of it in the future. However, these 'blessed sisters' as Islamist group al-Qaeda call them are arguably boosting the propaganda of 'Jihad', for women suicide bombers generate greater media coverage.

The unanticipated fear lies ahead of the task force trying to combat the toughest challenge on the blood-drenched battlefields of Iraq to intercept a suicide bomber. Not matching the typical profile of a suicide bomber, a woman is less likely to be intercepted before she strikes.

Long accustomed to political life under Saddam Hussein's secular regime, these women enjoyed more rights than most of their Arab counterparts for decades but U.S. invasion four years ago has deteriorated dramatically every measure of daily survival and they are now more ready to engage in political violence.

Coalition forces should take the opposition seriously rather than dismissing it as propaganda, and adjust the political strategy accordingly. The better the U.S. understands their message the better, it will be to understand how to win hearts and minds or else the epidemic of violence that has gripped Iraq under U.S. occupation won't take long to reach its door steps.

Now it is time for experts to draw parallels who remain divided over whether female suicide bombers will be more widely deployed by al-Qaeda, whose conservative philosophy restricts women to any central role in jihad.