Daily Times

Most terrorist suicides are solitary but none so far has been the result of a pact between married couples to die together. Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook, a young couple, died in a gunfight with police accomplishing what looks like a suicide pact after carrying out an act of terrorism in San Bernardino that killed 14 people. It is the first case of a married couple among terrorist suicides. This sort of terrorism is an unusual event. Tashfeen Malik, 27, pledged allegiance to the militant group Islamic State (IS) and its leader under an alias account on Facebook just moments before she and her husband, Syed Farook, opened fire on a holiday banquet for his co-workers. It is suspected that wife Tashfeen Malik may have been the initiator and her husband Syed Farook may have been the dependent. The initiator usually plans the act and stimulates the other party. Whether the decision was evenly shared by both partners and initiative came from one of the two or it was the result of two independent decisions remains open for analysis. Married couple terrorism thus becomes alarming from the terrorist profile evaluation perspective to counter terrorism forces. They would need to review the strategic, social and psychological analysis of changing tactics hidden behind the married face of suicide terrorism.

The use of married couple bombings by terrorists is evidence of eroding constraints among terrorists to use chemical, biological and radiological or nuclear weapons. Besides a possibly more reckless approach to violence resulting from the weakened instinct of self-preservation, it is clear that such delivery of suicide terrorism will have great tactical advantages over other forms of delivery. Terrorist tactics tend to favour attacks that avoid effective countermeasures and exploit vulnerabilities.

The first characteristic of this form of terrorism is that the main weapon used is guns rather than bombs. This is partly because assault weapons are relatively easy to obtain. Bomb making, on the other hand, requires either access to explosives or the ability to make explosives from commonly available materials, which itself is a dangerous and difficult job. Moreover, once explosives have been acquired or made, a skilled bomb-maker is needed to assemble them into a device that will reliably detonate. Both tasks are complicated and require training. Guns can be used after minimal training and are frighteningly efficient at killing large numbers of unarmed civilians, particularly if they are in a confined place. A second characteristic of this style of attack is that the perpetrators have little or any expectation of coming out alive. The advent of suicidal attackers armed with guns is forcing hostage rescue teams to throw away their old manuals.

Terrorist profiling and behaviour analysis are among the most discussed in suicide terrorism studies. The experiences and roles of married couples have rarely been of interest. In the last few years, the situation in academic debate has little changed despite the growing understanding that without consideration of every possible situation, security is an empty concept. In other words, marriage could be a meaningful category of analysis only if it is defined inclusively so as not to remain synonymous only with terrorism. While being a contextual, socially constructed means of assigning roles and norms to given married couples not only is it related to personal and social identity and the ways people live their lives but also matters in distributing power, privileges and prestige. Married roles’ systems and relations impact all aspects of human existence, including those that have to do with violence and its extreme form of terrorism.

The news that both the terrorists cornered in San Bernardino were apparently a normal and unexceptional married couple has shocked. However, Tashfeen is far from being the first female suicide bomber. Hasna Aitboulahcen, who earned the dubious distinction of becoming Europe’s first female suicide bomber killed in the siege in Saint-Denis, was thought to be with her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the Paris attacks which left 129 dead. There have been female terrorist suicide attackers for decades.

They were dispatched by secular, leftist organisations in the 1980s in Lebanon and by ethno-separatist groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka in the 1990s. A Tamil female suicide bomber assassinated the Indian Prime Minister (PM) Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. In 2000, Chechen suicide bomber, a so-called ‘black widow’, Hawa Barayev, killed 27 Russian special forces’ soldiers. Between 2002 and 2005, women also took part in a wave of suicide attacks launched by Palestinian militant groups against Israeli targets. The central command of al Qaeda avoided the use of women as suicide attackers on its high-profile operations. However, IS has deployed them. The advantage of using couple suicide bombers for terrorist organisations can be simply tactical. They can avoid suspicion more easily by posing as one half of a couple.

Terrorists thrive to spin out media coverage for as long as possible. They know now that after the initial attack will come a hunt and then, probably, a last stand. Their training all along is to shock, awe, terrorise and to get a reaction. Using couples is one very effective way of achieving all these objectives. While realist notions of the utility of female suicide bombers, single or married, as a military tactic provides a valuable threat, the tactic’s emergence outlines the ‘necessity’ of female martyrdom and points towards the systemic factor driving the organisational imperatives of terrorism.

Although counterterrorism agencies can change the way in which they respond to these sorts of attacks, they cannot prevent them entirely. Until recently, much of the counter-terrorism work has focused on preventing bomb attacks. Most embassies, five star hotels and VIP residences have barriers to prevent car bombs from coming too close and bulletproof cars to reduce the number of casualties if a blast does occur. But guarding against armed, unknown attackers would require additional analysis and defences that can counteract the rapidly changing profile of the deadly terrorist.

The writer is a professor of Psychiatry and consultant Forensic Psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com