Are women the most effective killers?
| 09:13 UK time, Tuesday, 30 March 2010
If there is one aspect of yesterday's Moscow attacks that few have failed to mention, it's the fact that the attackers were female. For many Russians, their fear of the female suicide bomber has been revived. calls it a 'lurid obsession.'
This morning's takes a closer look at the Black Widows suspected of being behind the bombs and adds that what happened yesterday is nothing new.
'...unlike in the Palestinian territories and Sri Lanka, where terrorists began deploying women as living bombs after security services made it all but impossible for male attackers to get to their targets, the North Caucasus rebels have used women from the start of their suicide strategy in 2001, which suggests that they placed their bets on women from the very beginning.'
So why are female suicide bombers so effective? believes it's because they challenge our ideas of the physical and psychological characteristics of terrorists.
And believes the media's extensive coverage of such events only makes the attack an even more effective recruitment tool for terrorists. She adds that cultural barriers also make it difficult to search women.
Lindsey O'Rourke has spent years researching cases of female terrorists. Here that what drives female suicide attackers is very similar to what drives men; it's not coercion or vulnerability, its revenge and protest against foreign occupation.
So why do we treat female suicide bombers like an oddity? And does our fascination wtih them just make them more effective killers?
