NewsLab

In the second day of 2008, a woman blew herself in Baquba, in one of the most violent Iraqi provinces, stronghold of Al Qaeda. She disguised the vest of explosives in her clothes and detonated it near a checkpoint of civil patrol, killing ten people and wounding other 28, Reuters news agency wrote.
Although female suicide bombers are still an exception in Iraq there are indications that the number of women who volunteer for “martyrdom” is growing in areas where extremists are more influent and in the recent weeks several committed suicide bombings, including one who killed 16 people in the beginning of December.
I wonder what motivations led these women to commit such horrendous acts, killing innocent people, including children, assuming an radical view of the world in which there’s no space for tolerance. Is it despair, hate or radicalism that pushed them towards violence? Should we distinguish between male and female suicide bombers? Are women capable of the some cruelty than men?
I really don’t have the answers for these questions, but I found some clues in an amazing book called “Shoot women first”, written by Eileen Macdonald, that I strongly advised to anyone interested in these matters. She investigated the stories of several women involved in terrorist groups, from Northern Ireland to Palestine and North Korea, and discovered some of their motivations and justifications for violence.