lone wolf 902
Medan, Indonesia – When Zakiah Aini, a 25-year-former university dropout, walked into the Indonesian National Police Headquarters in Jakarta brandishing an air gun on the last day of March, information technology was initially widely reported, and perchance assumed, that the perpetrator had been a man.
Merely in contempo years, an increasing number of Indonesian women have become involved in trigger-happy attacks across the archipelago, particularly following the return of people trained under ISIL (ISIS) in Syria and the formation of ISIL-affiliated groups such as Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD).
"ISIS created the permission structure for the inclusion of women in more than front end-line roles," Judith Jacob, a terrorism and security analyst at the London Schoolhouse of Economics, told Al Jazeera. "By encouraging opportunistic attacks and generalised calls for supporters to practise what they tin, it opens the door for women to participate more readily than under previous command and control structures that promote formal hierarchies that ultimately exclude women."
Equally well as Aini's attack on the police headquarters, which ended with her beingness shot dead by police officers at the scene, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, Sulawesi was attacked the week before Easter by two suicide bombers who had been married for just seven months.
In 2018, a church in Surabaya on the island of Java was similarly attacked by a married man and wife too as their four children, and another husband and wife team attacked a cathedral in Jolo in the Philippines in 2019. At least 20 people were killed in that assault and dozens wounded.
All the women involved in the attacks were thought to have been linked to JAD, which is sometimes dubbed the "Southeast Asian ISIL".
According to Jacob, it is of import not to dismiss such attacks or speculate that the women involved were simply post-obit orders from men.
"Obviously there are many dimensions to this, only the first thing to get out of the mode is this awful, sexist notion that these women are lured or coerced into participating," she told Al Jazeera. "These women are agile and willing participants in their own right and accept ever been an integral function of Islamist militancy in Indonesia. The departure is now the shift to more than agile or 'front-line' roles."
Post-obit the attack on the police headquarters, National Police Main Full general Listyo Sigit Prabowo described Aini as a "lone wolf", although in a alphabetic character she wrote to her parents and siblings, she included a short illustrated manifesto in which she raged against perceived "un-Islamic" institutions such every bit free elections, non-Syariah compliant banks and civil servants, including one-time Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, popularly known as Ahok, who was jailed for irreverence in 2017.
She likewise posted an ISIL flag on Instagram before the attack and purchased the weapon she used from a man in Aceh province who was a member of JAD and had been convicted of terrorism.
Noor Huda Ismail, a old fellow member of the hardline group Darul Islam who has since founded the Plant for International Peace Building and runs deradicalisation programmes and workshops across Republic of indonesia, told Al Jazeera that social media had played a part in the women's motility into directly violence.
"Historically in Republic of indonesia, women played a more than supportive role and were not involved straight in terrorism even if they were office of terrorist families," he said.
"There is no single reason why women get involved in terrorism only they are mostly driven by very private and emotional reasons."
These may include issues like revenge, redemption, or relationship factors such as the prospect of finding a partner in the case of travelling to Syria, he added.
"Radicalisation isn't gender-neutral and is experienced differently by men and women. We need to look at gender as a social construct and non in terms of biology. For instance, the notion that men are inherently violent and women are inherently peaceful."
Merely, he cautions, the study of gender within hardline groups is something that remains in its infancy.
"More than enquiry is needed to identify the driving forces for women'southward participation in violence. The regime must work closely with civil order and private sectors to work on both online and offline interventions."
Even within radical groups themselves, there appears to be some contention over the role of women.
Sign of desperation?
A former male member of JAD, speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, said that while in ISIL circles it is seen as permissible for a woman to exist involved in an attack confronting a party considered an enemy "the decision to be involved or not unremarkably depends on the group planning any such attacks".
The JAD group that he was office of "did non want to involve women in front line attacks while the JAD group in Surabaya involved women every bit role of its attack strategy in the 2018 church building bombings".
He adds that in improver to the psychological impact of such attacks on the public, female attackers are also used every bit a propaganda tool.
"The involvement of women in front-line attacks is allowed in ISIS circles and is used to inflame morale," he said. "The idea is to spread the narrative that if even women dare to cede their lives, then what about men?"
However, there may also be more mundane and applied reasons for women'due south more active role.
"We saw the more than explicit telephone call by ISIS for women to appoint in jihad against the enemy back in 2017, which you tin can see every bit less of a feminist quantum for ISIS, but more a necessity given they were on the back foot and needed to mobilise all sectors of the then-called caliphate to survive," Jacob said.
Since the start of the yr, Indonesia's elite counterterrorism unit of measurement, Densus 88, has conducted dozens of raids across Indonesia and arrested more 100 suspects, including Munarman, the former secretary-general of the banned hardline group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), and three other senior FPI officials in April and May respectively.
Local authorities have too tightened security across the archipelago since the March bombing in Makassar and the set on in Jakarta, amidst speculation that Aini gained entry to the National Constabulary Headquarters more than hands because she was a woman.
"The telephone call from ISIS came at a good fourth dimension when in that location was an opening and security forces were boring to pick up on the potential of women to plan and participate in attacks," said Jacob.
"In the Indonesian context, these messages find a receptive audience with those dealing with a fairly decimated network after years of constabulary crackdowns and surveillance."
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/25/why-are-more-women-leading-bomb-attacks-in-indonesia
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