{"id":5296,"date":"2018-10-15T11:42:32","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T11:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/?p=5296"},"modified":"2018-10-15T11:42:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T11:42:36","slug":"the-role-of-women-in-west-africas-violent-extremist-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/the-role-of-women-in-west-africas-violent-extremist-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"The role of women in West Africa\u2019s violent extremist groups"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are specific strategic reasons why extremists involve or exclude women and girls from their operations.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women\u2019s involvement in Boko Haram attacks in the Lake\nChad Basin is well known. However their role in the activities of the Group for\nthe Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), operating across the Sahel, appears to\nbe less direct. What makes these groups include or exclude women from their\nranks and operations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since it was formed in March 2017, the JNIM, a\u00a0merger<\/a>\u00a0of four\nterror groups in Mali \u2013 Ansar Dine, Katiba Macina, al-Mourabitoun and al-Qaeda\nin the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) \u2013 has carried out numerous suicide attacks in\nMali, Burkina Faso and Niger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group claimed responsibility for the 14 April 2018\nattack on the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission\nin Mali and the French operation Barkhane in the Timbuktu region. Following the\nattack, then Barkhane commander General Bruno Guibert mentioned the\u00a0involvement<\/a>\u00a0of a woman suicide attacker in the operation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks later JNIM published a\u00a0communiqu\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0to deny the allegation, stating that in its doctrinal approach, women\ndo not participate in operations or in combat. The statement said Muslim\nnations still had enough men willing to take on combat roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Islamic State-West Africa has so far deployed only\nmale suicide bombers, but this could change<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike JNIM, in the neighbouring Lake Chad region\n(Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger and Chad), Boko Haram continues to make headlines for\nenlisting women, often forcefully, into its ranks and its suicide bombing\noperations. Between April 2011 and June 2017, the group carried out at least\n434 suicide\u00a0attacks<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 of which\n244 were undertaken by women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The involvement of women in Boko Haram dates back to\nthe early 2000s. For the group\u2019s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, urging women to join\nthe group served two main purposes: it broadened the group\u2019s membership, and\nenabled women to become wives for male combatants and mothers for the next\ngeneration of fighters. This strategy was also designed to encourage men to\njoin the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau, who took over\nafter Yusuf\u2019s death in 2009, Boko Haram began abducting women and girls. While\nsome women voluntarily joined the group, others were forcibly enlisted. More\nthan 2 000 women and girls were allegedly\u00a0abducted<\/a>\u00a0between\n2014 and 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women played supporting roles like being informants,\nlaundresses and cooks for extremist groups in Mali<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This initially appeared to be in retaliation to the\nNigerian government\u2019s arrest of Boko Haram insurgents\u2019 family members,\nincluding Shekau\u2019s wives in 2012. Abducted girls and women, especially the\nChibok girls, have been used as\u00a0propaganda<\/a>and publicity tools to attract international attention and demand ransom\nand prisoner exchanges from the Nigerian government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite government denial, there is speculation that\nransoms were paid to free the Chibok girls. The same goes for those of Dapchi\nwho were kidnapped on 19 February 2018 by the Boko Haram separatist faction the\nIslamic State-West Africa (ISIS-WA), led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abducted women and girls have also been used to\nattract male recruits by marrying them off to fighters. Boko Haram has also\nused girls and women as suicide bombers because their supposed \u2018non-violent\nnature\u2019 presumably makes them harder to detect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the\u00a0split<\/a>\u00a0of the\ngroup in August 2016, ISIS-WA has so far deployed only male suicide bombers.\nHowever given the evolution of the roles assigned to women by the group from\nwhich it splintered, there could be a shift in women\u2019s involvement in future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some extremist groups refuse to openly use women in\nsuicide attacks in order to retain locals\u2019 support<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike Shekau\u2019s Boko Haram faction, which has been\ncriticised for indiscriminately targeting civilians, JNIM has not openly used\nwomen in suicide attacks. This could be because the group wants to retain the\nsupport of local populations by aligning itself with norms and expectations of\nthe role generally attributed to women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although JNIM has denied using female suicide bombers,\nan Institute for Security Studies\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0found that\nwomen played various active supporting roles such as being informants,\nlaundresses and cooks for violent extremist groups in Mali. In July, a woman\naccused of supplying fertiliser to make explosives for Katiba Macina, an ally\ngroup within JNIM, was\u00a0arrested\u00a0by Mali\u2019s intelligence services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other practical reasons for women\u2019s\ninvolvement.\u00a0AQIM\u00a0has reportedly encouraged its fighters to marry\ninto the local population of northern Mali to establish itself among these\ncommunities and gain their support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mokhtar\u00a0Belmokhtar, an AQIM leader, married four\nwomen from different well-known Tuareg and Arab Berabiche families to expand\nhis\u00a0network<\/a>\u00a0of\ninfluence. This not only allowed the group to embed itself within certain\ncommunities but ensured protection and support from local populations during\nthe occupation of northern Mali in 2012 and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The role of girls and women in violent extremism has\nimportant strategic and operational benefits for the groups involved. The\nfunctions attributed to women and the reasons they are included or excluded\nmust be understood. Only then can appropriate, context-specific strategies to\nprevent and counter the involvement of women in those groups be developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ella\u00a0Jeannine Abatan, Researcher, ISS Dakar<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was first published on the website of the Institute\nfor security studies (ISS)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are specific strategic reasons why extremists involve or exclude women and girls from their operations. Women\u2019s involvement in Boko Haram attacks in the Lake Chad Basin is well known. However their role in the activities of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), operating across the Sahel, appears to be less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opinions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5298,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5296\/revisions\/5298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}