Word: jihadis
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Religion may not have been her motive, but Hasna was an early, willing casualty of the latest jihadi trend: the use of women on the front lines of the holy war. American and Iraqi officials say jihadi groups are deploying female bombers far more frequently to slip past the heavy security cordons that are the backbone of the U.S. military's surge strategy. There have been 21 female suicide attacks so far this year, up from just eight in all of 2007. As sectarian violence has plummeted and a semblance of normality has returned to Iraq, the use of women...
...Religion may not have been her motive, but Hasna was an early, willing casualty of the latest jihadi trend: the use of women on the frontlines of the Holy War. Although fewer than 30 of the nearly 1,000 suicide bombings since the end of the war have been attributed to women, American and Iraqi officials say jihadi groups are deploying female bombers far more frequently to slip past the heavy security cordons that are the backbone of the U.S. military's surge strategy. On Sunday, a female bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 35 in Baquba. Just...
...would bomb Kilometer 5 herself. The group was initially skeptical - they had never worked with a woman, and felt certain she would lose her nerve at the last moment. But Hasna wore them down with her insistence, and they sent her to Syria to be vetted by senior jihadi commanders and fitted for a bomb belt. (Iraqi officials in Ramadi say she made several training visits to Syria...
...scarcely recognize the woman in the recordings. "It is Hasna, but without Thamer," she says. "When he died, she became half of herself, and you can see half a person on the video." It is common for suicide bombers to videotape a wasiyeh or will; many are posted on jihadi websites. In the recordings, the bombers, usually masked, are shown praying from the Koran, extolling the virtues of martyrdom and damning their enemies (typically the U.S.) to hell...
...There's not a single religious or political utterance in the entire monologue, which may explain why it has not been posted on the usual jihadi websites. There's only one passing reference to U.S. presence in Iraq. "When the Americans first came to the village," Hasna says, "my brother made a sketch of their Hummers and gave it to their commander. He was very impressed by how quickly Thamer was able to make such an accurate drawing...