Pakistan Frets Over Femme Fatales

This article first appeared at Asia Times.

The tactic of the Pakistan Taliban to use veil-clad female suicide bombers to effectively strike their targets without being intercepted has set alarm bells ringing for the security agencies which are already finding it hard to nip al-Qaeda and Taliban-sponsored terrorism in the bud. 

A female suicide attacker and a separate handcart bomb targeted the Pakistani police on August 11 in the Lahori Gate area of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing seven people in the first deadly suicide attack during the holy month of Ramadan. 

Peshawar is on the front line of a Taliban-led insurgency and borders the country's largely lawless tribal belt which is described by the United States as the global headquarters of al-Qaeda. The target of the female bomber, who was believed to be 17 years old, was a police check post that was completely destroyed in the attack. 

The girl first threw a hand grenade on the check post, 20 meters from the site of the first blast, which had already killed seven people including five policemen, and then blew herself up. The bomber's vest failed to explode fully, resulting in one death only, that of an elderly woman. Witnesses were reported as saying that before the explosion they had heard the girl scream: "Allah-O-Akbar." (God is great). 

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban - TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack, with TTP spokesman Azam Tariq telling the media that the group has a large number of women suicide bombers ready to be used in future attacks against the security forces to avenge the Pakistani military for operations in the tribal belt. 

TTP head in Mohmand Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Commander Omar Khalid, threatened further suicide attacks until Pakistani military offensives, which he said were being waged to appease the United States, come to an end. 

"The suicide attacks were in reaction to the current military operation in the tribal areas," Khalid told Agence France-Presse by telephone from an undisclosed location. The TTP leader said that the use of female bombers was part of a new strategy. 

Khalid has been active in the TTP's propaganda machine since the death of Osama bin Laden, and has been vocal in his support of al-Qaeda. He had vowed revenge on Pakistani and American security forces for the al-Qaeda founder's death, saying: "We will take revenge for Osama's killing from the Pakistan government, its security forces, the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence], the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and the Americans. They are now on our hit list." 

The Peshawar suicide bombing was the third suicide attack carried out by a female in Pakistan since December 2010. Interior Minister Rehman Malik has condemned TTP for using women as human bombs, saying that it is a sign of their desperation in the wake of strict security measures that have made it difficult to strike targets at will. He agreed that the new ploy of using females to create havoc could complicate the government agencies' efforts to stem a growing insurgency by extremists given the fact that women in Pakistani culture, especially in a conservative society like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are rarely frisked or searched in security checks. 

According to the security agencies responsible for dealing with suicide bombings, the emerging phenomenon of female bombers poses a bigger challenge to the law enforcement agencies in Pakistan since women in their all-enveloping burqas (veils) can easily breach security. They added that a veil is perfect for the concealment of explosive devices as well as suicide jackets.