8/9/2019 Moscow Metro Bombings--SAVE Response (Eng)

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The recent bombings in Russia by female suicide bombers should give us all reason to pause: how

is it possible that womenpeople we count on to hold together civil society, to be the voice of

reason against violence and aggression, to continue to be mothers, wives, and daughters, even

when its most difficultwere the perpetrators of such a deadly attack on civilians in the heart of

Moscow? How do we, as a female counterterrorism platform, respond to such brutality?

Women have increasingly become part of militant operations worldwide. Female suicide bombers

are highly effective because they do not fit in with commonly-held ideas about who terrorists are

and what they look like. They easily pass through police checkpoints when others might be

stopped, and even traditional garments from dresses to abayas can help hide the presence of a

discreetly-worn belt of explosives.

What is most striking about these female suicide bombers, which Russian authorities have

presumed to be part of the Black Widows, a long-standing terrorist group from Chechnya, Russia,

is that they claim to act for personal reasons. The Black Widows claim to act in response to the

murder of their husbands, sons, and brothers by ethnic Russians. These women are not driven

primarily by religious affiliation or for political gain, although those factors have certainly played a

crucial role in determining the circumstances under which the Black Widows husbands were

killed. They were driven by a desire for revengea personal action taken to redress a personalgrievance.

Just as the personal emotions of grief, anger, loss, and powerlessness led these women to commit

a senseless act against innocent bystanders, so too can the personal lead us to working towards a

solution. SAVE seeks to reach out to women affected by violent extremism, whether it is women

affected by the loss of a family member or friend to a terrorist attack or women who see the people

in her life becoming radicalized by forces within society, to empower them to respond to these

threats through smart power: constructive deterrence. Our ability to stem the rising tide of violent

extremism lies in our ability to reach women on emotional and cognitive levels and to appeal to

their sense of reason, of hope, of faith in mankind, and to empower these women to respond to

radical forces in non-violent ways.

Radicalization and violent extremism can be born of geopolitical issues, but they can also be born of

personal emotions, including accumulated grief, humiliation, and despair. At SAVE, we also seek to

tap into the personal, but to achieve an emotional breakthrough, not an emotional breakdown.

Strategies like storytelling and relationship-building over cultural, religious, and ethnic divides wed

the emotional and cognitive together. In these and other efforts, we try to bring women to a level at

which they forge an emotional and cognitive attachment to non-violence and learn to express their

anger, fears, and concerns in ways that strengthen families and civil society, rather than tearingthem down.

When Disaster Strikes:

Overcoming Breakdowns, Preparing for Breakthroughs

Published by Women without Borders / SAVE 31 March 2010