Washington Watch

A series of meetings at the U.N. Security Council this past week took some steps toward building an international consensus on a new resolution on Syria. Diplomats are still discussing different proposals, trying to deal with concerns Russia has about a resolution that might be viewed as leaving the door open to military intervention. Russia opposed an initial draft Morocco introduced calling for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to step down and hand over power to his deputy. As they continue to work out the issues at the United Nations, however, the international community can take steps to end the violence in Syria and provide some measure of protection for innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.

The security environment in the Middle East is already fragile, and a steadily escalating conflict in Syria that could become a proxy war between competing regional and global powers would be disastrous for the region and U.S. national security interests.

Indeed, National Intelligence Director James Clapper recently noted in his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that “[i]n Syria, regime intransigence and societal divisions are prolonging internal struggles and potentially turning domestic upheavals into regional crises.”

Recent conflicts in the region indicate the potentially worrisome impact such violence could have on its future: Over the past 30 years, civil wars in Iraq, Algeria, and Lebanon claimed more than 100,000 lives each, and the ensuing traumas have profoundly affected political and regional dynamics.

The strategic interest of Syria to the United States cannot be understated given the long and complicated history of Syria’s role in the region and its relationship to various terrorist groups that seek to directly attack America and its close allies. But with our core American values of human rights and dignity, the current crisis is an equally important test case for American diplomacy.

Notably, the Obama administration seems to be on the precipice of a new Syria policy, illustrated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to the United Nations early this week. Her attendance signals a new level of diplomatic engagement and a willingness to take a strong, bold stance in support of civilians and their call for a responsive and accountable government—even in the face of tough opposition. Similarly, President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union address articulated unequivocally that there could be “no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change cannot be reversed, and that human dignity cannot be denied.” Instead of calling for political reform on the margins of a difficult bilateral relationship, the administration is now centering its Syria policy on the need for change.

Civilian protection is an increasingly important pillar of President Obama’s foreign policy agenda—as has increasingly been the case in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, and Libya—and the administration is well positioned to lead key countries toward additional protection measures in Syria short of military intervention. We outline these below.

Why military intervention won’t work

External military intervention of the sort we saw in Libya is simply not viable in Syria right now. There are a variety of reasons including the complexity of the conflict; the lack of a safe haven such as the one Libyan rebels had in Benghazi; Syria’s proximity to other flashpoints such as Lebanon, Israel, and Iraq; and the Syrian military’s arsenals of chemical weapons and missiles that could hit these neighboring regions. There also isn’t as wide support for such action as there was for Libya. Another possible complication is the Lebanese terrorist organization and militant political party Hezbollah and how it might respond to direct military intervention.

But the responsibility to protect does not directly translate to military intervention especially when the costs of such an operation would appear to outweigh the benefits, as is the case in Syria. Arming the opposition is not a viable option either because the United States lacks sufficient intelligence on internal opposition dynamics as well as their goals, objectives, and intentions.

One important option, however, would be for the United States to significantly scale up the number of Syria’s recent military defectors and other known dissents by developing a strategy encouraging greater defections. The United States could help galvanize defections by providing communication devices, leaflet drops, and other similar tactics that might incentivize lower-level officers. Working closely with those who have already defected to suggest tangible incentives for others could be an important catalyst that tips the balance. If the Free Syrian Army, the main armed opposition group, and political opposition agreed, senior-level officials considering defection could be promised safe harbor—or a safe environment—at least until a viable transitional government is established.

A nonmilitary approach to help end the conflict

The United States can also take many more steps by working closely with a broad range of actors to stop the violence in Syria especially if the deadlock continues at the U.N. Security Council. A multitiered approach is essential.

First, the Obama administration should lead the establishment of a formal international contact group, or “Friends of Syria,” that would include European allies, Turkey, and selected members of the Arab League. This group can help prepare for the transition in Syria and coordinate a plan with Syrian opposition figures for the post-Assad period. This would ensure the international community is not long on hope and short on planning—a challenge that has plagued far too many political transitions around the globe.

Second, once formed, the contact group can help coordinate diplomacy with key partners and address complicated relationships such as that of Syria-Iraq. The group can also serve as an important new coalition to build support for target sanctions, for critically needed humanitarian access to displaced persons inside Syria, and ultimately for a post-Assad regime plan.

Further, the contact group can devise a plan to help protect Syrians fleeing violence across borders with the guidance of neighboring countries such as Turkey and Jordan. Although information remains hard to come by, the humanitarian situation is clearly volatile and many relief groups remain concerned about their ability to respond, particularly given the divergent information about how many people are actually in need of assistance. U.S. diplomats and development experts can play a key role in shoring up contributions from the international community to mount a robust humanitarian response.

Third, the international community—working with the United Nations and Arab League—should draw a clear line in the sand on issues of accountability. These markers should apply to both the regime and the opposition. Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, recommended in early December that Syria be referred to the International Criminal Court—and the opposition has recently made a similar request for an ICC investigation. An investigation that looks at both sides of the coin would ensure Syrians in both camps are held accountable for any reprehensible activity while signaling the importance of accountability.

Fourth, given the significant weapon flows into Syria, and particularly in light of the potential for any language on arms restrictions to be removed from the U.N. resolution, the Obama administration should encourage the Arab League to support a regional arms embargo while continuing to work the Security Council members as well.

The likelihood of Russia agreeing to an arms embargo is slim, but there’s no reason other relevant members couldn’t agree to uphold one themselves—even without a U.N. resolution. By uniting around their common position, aligned countries would force those who refuse to stop selling weapons to an irresponsible government to stand on their own and face the music. Finally, as Mark Hanis and Andrew Stobo Sniderman wrote in a New York Times opinion piece earlier this week, we need to consider how to use innovative technology that can help us better understand what’s actually going on inside Syria.

Humanitarian drones may be one option, but another one to consider is something similar to the Satellite Sentinel Project, which the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and our colleagues at CAP’s Enough Project use to monitor events along the Sudan border. This project helps build intelligence on human security by using satellite imagery and field analysis to inform and influence public policy. If NGOs are already using such a groundbreaking approach to monitor and report on violence, there’s no reason governments couldn’t do the same, particularly given the lack of access for independent observers throughout Syria.

Taking leadership to protect civilians and prepare for a Syria without Assad

The deliberations at the United Nations this week produced mixed results. The diplomacy there served to underscore the urgency of the crisis in Syria, but it didn’t achieve unified consensus among U.N. Security Council members on enough concrete steps to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Despite these divisions—and until the United Nations can align on action—the Obama administration can continue playing a leadership role to build international unified action on protecting civilians in Syria without turning to direct military intervention.

Sarah Margon is Associate Director for Sustainable Security, and Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

A discussion of the new challenges we face around the world with Benjamin Rhodes, White House Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications.

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• A Discussion on the Obama Administration's National Security Policy

Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey released details of the Pentagon’s plan to reduce projected military spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years. At first glance, nearly half a trillion dollars in reductions might sound like a huge cut. But in reality, if Panetta’s reductions survive Congress, the baseline defense budget will fall by just $6 billion next year and resume its growth thereafter.

Let’s be clear: Secretary Panetta’s $6 billion reduction for the next fiscal year is a positive first step and a major achievement. It will be the first real reduction in baseline defense spending in more than a decade. Even more importantly, with his budget adjustments, Secretary Panetta has seized the opportunity to address some of the long-term strategic and fiscal challenges facing the Pentagon, including shifting to a posture focused on 21st century threats and working to stem the unsustainable growth of the Pentagon’s personnel costs.

But with the fiscal year 2013 budget request topping $500 billion, there is a long way to go to reach sustainable levels of defense spending and bring the Pentagon budget back in line with historical norms—as we explain below.

Putting the cuts in perspective

The Pentagon’s base budget request will be $525 billion for fiscal year 2013, down $6 billion from FY 2012. The problem is that this FY 2013 request will represent the only actual cut in the next decade. After FY 2013, the Pentagon’s budget will once again rise steadily, by between $9 billion and $14 billion annually over the subsequent years in nominal terms.

Panetta’s projections have been mischaracterized as representing a drastic “cut” in military spending. In reality, these $487 billion in reductions over 10 years come from projected growth of military spending. As a result, even when adjusted for inflation, Panetta’s reductions halt the growth in the Pentagon’s budget, but they do not bring the budget down much from its current level.

And due to the tremendous increases in spending that have occurred over the past decade, Panetta’s plan essentially holds the baseline defense budget near historic highs: Between FY 1998 and FY 2012, the Pentagon’s base budget grew in real terms by $173 billion, or 48 percent.

The proposed reductions will mean the Pentagon spends only about 8 percent less over the next decade than it originally projected. These reductions fall short of a number of bipartisan deficit-reduction proposals, including those of the Simpson-Bowles Commission and the Gang of Six. Yes, the Pentagon will spend less than it originally planned, but it will still spend $2.73 trillion over the next five years, more than the $2.59 trillion spent over the last five years.

Why the cuts are happening now

The Obama administration’s adjustments to Pentagon spending are driven by both new fiscal and new strategic realities. They include reductions in ground forces, removing troops from Europe, addressing soaring personnel costs, and adjusting Tricare fees.

Secretary Panetta plans to reduce the Army and Marine Corps’ active-duty force by 92,000 troops, a move the Center for American Progress recommended in its 2010 defense budget report. This choice is in line with the recently unveiled defense strategy, which shifts focus away from manpower-intensive nation-building operations. Even with these reductions, it is important to note that the Army and Marine Corps will maintain the ability to fight and win a major ground war, should the need arise.

In fact, both Secretary Panetta and Gen. Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, have said they are “comfortable” and “satisfied” with these reductions in the force structure, which will leave the ground forces larger than they were when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States will also remove two brigades from Europe—another CAP recommendation—and increase funding for Special Forces and drones by 30 percent. These moves address two strategic realities.

First, our European allies, many of whom have cut defense spending in response to their own budget woes, must take on more responsibility for their own security.

Second, faced with the decentralized threat of extremist networks, the United States is rightly shifting to smaller, more agile deployments. This “lily-pad” strategy, whereby small U.S. bases in a troubled region provide launching points for operations such as Tuesday’s Navy SEAL raid, is more effective than large deployments, provokes less ill will, and requires fewer resources.

Yesterday, Secretary Panetta also laid the groundwork for the Department of Defense to take on its unsustainable personnel costs. These costs have increased by 40 percent above inflation since 2001 and must be brought under control. According to the bargain we make with the men and women who volunteer for our military, they deserve to be paid as much as their civilian counterparts of comparable qualifications and have access to affordable, top-quality health care for life and excellent retirement benefits. But as the Pentagon’s own studies document, the current military compensation levels have exceeded the standards set by the Department of Defense’s Employment Cost Index. The compensation, health care, and retirement systems in their current forms are simply unsustainable in the long term.

To address these costs, Secretary Panetta announced the Department of Defense’s intention to increase the fees paid by retirees in order to preserve the long-term viability of the Tricare military health system, as CAP recommended in the 2011 report, “Restoring Tricare.” He also called on Congress to establish a commission to review military retirement and announced that military pay raises will be limited beginning in 2015. These adjustments should bring total military compensation back in line with the Employment Cost Index, as the policy dictates.

Additionally, Secretary Panetta wisely advocated another round of BRAC base closures to further reduce unnecessary Pentagon expenditures. The BRAC process allows independent experts to submit a list of recommended installations for closure or consolidation to a simple up-or-down vote in Congress—the best way to avoid partisan or parochial deadlock on these crucial decisions.

High military spending is still a problem

The underlying facts of Panetta’s announcement yesterday should not be lost in the debates that will surely rage up to and beyond the release of the full budget details in February. The defense “cuts” are in fact one small year-to-year reduction followed by continued growth. The reductions still fall far short of historical standards, by which we are still in a period of heightened military spending.

Unfortunately, we have done nothing to roll back more than a decade of continuous growth in military spending, despite the end of the war in Iraq and the beginning of our drawdown in Afghanistan. The shifts Secretary Panetta outlined yesterday represent a small step toward a more reasonable, sustainable strategic stance, but they still avoid many of the hard choices the Pentagon must face over the coming years, including eliminating the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 and reducing the planned purchases of the new ballistic missile submarine.

Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Max Hoffman and Alex Rothman are Special Assistants with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center.

See also:

• Restoring Tricare by Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman
• Strong and Sustainable by Lawrence J. Korb and Laura Conley

For a decade, the United States has been militarily engaged in inconclusive counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars have by and large failed to produce the outcomes projected by American political leaders at their outset, instead resulting in ambiguous achievements that leave the future of U.S. interests in each country uncertain. This failure to achieve more despite the loss of thousands of American soldiers and over a trillion dollars has cast real doubt on the efficacy of American military power.

But 2011 witnessed a number of significant military accomplishments for the United States:

• The killing of al Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden in a daring raid into Pakistan
• An expanded drone campaign in Pakistan that has left the core Al Qaeda organization at the brink of defeat
• A successful air campaign against dictator Moammar Qaddafi’s regime in Libya

While these events signal a shift in overall U.S. military strategy, they also serve to renew—at least in part—the credibility of American military power. As the Obama administration uses its new defense budget to formalize this shift in strategy, it can point to the real accomplishments of the means it has chosen to emphasize—special operations forces, drones, and air and naval power instead of large ground forces—to carry out a leaner but effective approach to national security. The president can start highlighting the merits of this slimmed-down strategy at tomorrow’s State of the Union address.

Bin Laden raid

The raid to kill Osama bin Laden had a number of benefits for American military power. For one, it demonstrated the proficiency of American special operations forces, which normally operate out of the spotlight. The raid showed these forces can penetrate deeply into the heart of a highly militarized foreign nation to carry out high-priority, high-risk missions.

But more than showcasing the skill and daring of American special operations forces, the bin Laden raid demonstrated that the United States has the will and capability to eliminate individuals foolish enough to direct attacks against it—even if it takes longer than hoped due to self-inflicted policy mistakes.

Drone campaign

Similarly, the stepped-up campaign of drone strikes against al-Qaida Central in Pakistan—as well as other strikes in Yemen and Somalia—has repeatedly demonstrated the effectiveness of American intelligence agencies, special operations forces, and technology.

In addition to crippling al-Qaida Central to the point where strategic defeat of the organization that attacked the United States on September 11 is, in the words of then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, “within reach” if as few as two critical figures are killed, the drone campaign has given unmanned aerial vehicles such as the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper a sinister reputation unique among weapons in the U.S. military arsenal. While the drone campaign’s reputation is portrayed primarily as negative, creating image problems for the United States in countries such as Pakistan, the lethal aura drones have acquired as a result does confer advantages to the United States.

Drones’ deadly reputation has already created fear among al-Qaida and other militants in Pakistan. As early as 2010, President Obama’s expanded drone campaign was reported to “cast a pall of fear” among militants in Pakistan’s border region and created a sense of paranoia among militants that new recruits could in fact be spies.

Drones may in fact be creating something of a new and credible deterrent against terrorist groups. Based on interviews with administration officials, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius suggested that the administration’s refusal to use drones against Somalia’s al Shabaab militant group was premised on a deterrent strategy: If al Shabaab did attack the United States, it would receive the full brunt of an American drone campaign. As one senior administration official later told reporter Greg Miller, “It would certainly not bother us if potential terrorists took note of the fact that we tend to go after those who go after us.”

Air strikes against Qaddafi

Finally, the successful military campaign against Moammar Qaddafi and his regime in Libya has helped ease doubts about the credibility of conventional U.S. military power. By leveraging American comparative advantage in airpower and high-technology weapons and leaving ground fighting to Libyans themselves, the Obama administration and its NATO allies implicitly limited their military objectives to the fall of Qaddafi. Given the successful outcome of the NATO campaign, this limitation enhanced the credibility of American and allied conventional military power by not staking that military power on an ambitious effort to create political change with a huge ground force presence.

The new strategy’s payoffs

Last year’s foreign policy achievements have two main benefits for the Obama administration in particular and for the United States more generally.

First, they provided something of a test-run for the administration’s new defense strategy that relies less on large ground forces to accomplish U.S. objectives and more on special operations forces and air and naval power. This test-run has given the new strategy some credibility as the Obama administration seeks to implement it this year.

More importantly, the killing of Osama bin Laden, dismantling of Al Qaeda, and overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi increased the overall credibility of the United States and President Obama in particular. These events serve as an indicator to the world that the United States can still accomplish significant military objectives after a decade of inconclusive wars and shifting goals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together with the end of the war in Iraq, the Obama administration at least partially re-established a sense that the United States can achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.

On a smaller but still important scale, President Obama’s personal international credibility has been bolstered by fulfilling campaign promises to kill Osama bin Laden and end the war in Iraq as well as making good on pre-intervention assertions that Qaddafi must leave power.

The usual suspects complain that the new defense strategy “embraces decline” and sounds an “order of retreat.” But on the contrary, the new approach puts U.S. defense strategy on a more politically and fiscally sustainable course that enables the United States to meet its international responsibilities at tolerable costs to the budget and risks to American lives and interests. Rather than fighting indefinite, unpopular ground wars at exorbitant cost, the new strategy leverages America’s comparative advantage to project power at lower risk and cost while keeping the global commons safe.

Other worries are more grounded. NATO allies in Europe worry over the shift in emphasis to Asia, which already resulted in the announced withdrawal of two Army combat brigades. While the administration should address NATO concerns, a lower permanent American military footprint in Europe could have benefits by obliging NATO allies to reconsider their own defense strategies. The war in Libya showed the limitations of even our strongest NATO partners like Britain and France, and Norway’s defense minister recently expressed doubts as to the capability of NATO militaries to meet their collective self-defense obligations. But they should not have doubts over the capability of American military forces to meet the United States’ obligations.

In short, over the course of 2011, the Obama administration has, however partially, reasserted the credibility of American military power after a decade that saw that credibility eroded by misguided strategic and policy choices. President Obama and his national security team now have a chance to build upon this renewed military credibility with their new defense strategy. They should be given the opportunity to do so.

Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

See also: A Return to Responsibility: What President Obama Can Learn About Defense Budgets from Past Presidents by Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman; Sensible Defense Cuts by Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman; Defense in an Age of Austerity by Lawrence J. Korb and Alex Rothman

President Barack Obama unveiled sweeping changes yesterday to U.S. military strategy that are the result of an extended Pentagon review of our strategic interests and defense priorities. After a decade of war and nation-building coming at a tremendous cost to the United States in both blood and treasure, President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the military’s shift to a more agile and sustainable posture primarily focused on protecting U.S. interests in the Middle East and Pacific and countering 21st century threats.

The cornerstone of this change is a reduction in the size of the ground forces. In particular, the Army, which added 65,000 positions while carrying out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will return to numbers slightly above its pre-September 11 size of about 480,000.The Army will, however, increase the size of its special forces.

With the United States unlikely to undertake extended nation-building operations in the foreseeable future, this new strategy will rely increasingly on the United States’ overwhelming naval and air superiority to project power around the globe. Moreover, the Pentagon will funnel more resources into countering 21st century threats, principally terrorist groups and subnational actors, nuclear proliferation, anti-access technology (a key element of China’s strategy to restrict U.S. capabilities in East Asia), and cyber security.

Equally important, President Obama’s new strategy will allow the United States to refocus its attention on its economy, which is the bedrock of U.S. global power and strength. As President Obama noted in his remarks, and as we at the Center for American Progress have emphasized repeatedly, “We must put our fiscal house in order here at home and renew our long-term economic strength.”

The new strategy will enable the Department of Defense to find savings of nearly $500 billion throughout the next decade from projected levels of defense spending. (This will not affect veterans programs, which are funded through the Veterans Administration.)

In fact, this reduction—as the United States winds down its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan—is quite moderate when compared to prior defense drawdowns. President Dwight Eisenhower, for example, cut the defense budget by 27 percent after the Korean War. President Nixon cut it by 29 percent after Vietnam, and the combined efforts of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton reduced defense spending by a whopping 35 percent after the end of the Cold War.

Under President Obama’s plan the defense budget will continue to grow in nominal terms, though not quite fast enough to keep up with expected levels of inflation. Even with $500 billion in reductions, the United States will continue to spend more on defense each year in the next decade than it did during the height of the Cold War and, as the president noted, more than the next 10 countries combined.

President Obama’s plan also leaves room for additional cuts. The Center for American Progress has identified fiscally responsible reductions that, if implemented throughout the next decade, would reduce defense spending by about $700 billion without undermining our national security.

The Department of Defense will announce the specific program cuts that will enable it to meet the $500 billion target in its fiscal year 2013 budget, due next month. But President Obama’s strategy—and his goal of $450 billion in savings in 10 years—present a responsible step toward regaining control of the defense budget, which skyrocketed by nearly 70 percent under the Bush administration.

Excess defense spending does not make our nation safer. It diverts resources from critical investments here at home. President Obama is wise to use the U.S. drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan as a turning point to update and improve U.S. national security strategy while clamping down on the waste and mismanagement that plagued the Department of Defense in the past decade.

Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Alex Rothman is a Special Assistant with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center.

See also:

• A Return to Responsibility: What President Obama Can Learn About Defense Budgets from Past Presidents by Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman
• Sensible Defense Cuts by Lawrence J. Korb, Laura Conley, and Alex Rothman
• Defense in an Age of Austerity by Lawrence J. Korb and Alex Rothman

In Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks at the launch of the Global Counterterrorism Forum in September 2011, she expressed the need to deepen our understanding of the process of radicalization and terrorist recruitment in order to undermine the appeal of extremism.

She’s absolutely right, but there’s still a gaping hole in the U.S. National Counterterrorism Strategy of 2011’s approach toward countering radicalization: the fact that terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban continue to exploit uniquely female motivations as a tool to recruit female suicide bombers to attack U.S. soldiers and international aid workers.

As the number of female suicide terrorists rises, it becomes increasingly important to acknowledge and address this threat to American lives and interests. Doing so would result in a more comprehensive counterterrorism strategy.

We outline the problem below as well as some of the factors that lead women to become terrorists.

Not a new threat

Female involvement in terrorist groups is not a new phenomenon. Secular groups began using female suicide terrorism nearly three decades ago.

Sana'a Youcef Mehaidli, a member of the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party, conducted the first known female suicide attack in April 1985 when she drove a truck filled with explosives into an Israeli Defense Force convoy, killing two soldiers and injuring another two. In addition, 76 percent of attackers from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a separatist terrorist group in Turkey, have been women.

The successful integration of women as suicide terrorists in secular groups led terrorist groups based in religious ideology to begin including women in their operations as well. Al Qaeda and the Taliban have both formed female suicide cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to reports from 2010, culminating in the first female suicide bomber attack in Pakistan on Christmas Day of that year.

Factors that motivate women to become suicide bombers

Radicalization is largely a gender-neutral process and is usually in response to some combination of economic, political, and social factors, including economic conditions, lack of political rights, or military occupation. Added stressors and psychological factors can transform a radical into a terrorist and, in the most serious cases, into a suicide terrorist.

For women, the impetuses that drive the motivation to carry out a suicide attack are often unique to the experience of females in conflict scenarios. One unique impetus is the loss of feminine honor and the desire to redeem it.

Feminine honor

Both Dr. Anat Berko of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and Lindsey O’Rourke from the University of Chicago note that the idea of the female body as a symbol of honor is a longstanding notion in many communities, particularly as it relates to a woman’s perceived sexual purity. While this concept has lost salience in most areas of the world, there are some places—particularly in more conservative Middle Eastern and South Asian communities—that continue to take sexual purity very seriously.

If a woman’s honor is compromised through a violation of this purity, such as sex out of wedlock or being a rape victim, the shame is not only placed on her but also extended to her family. Suicide terrorism, frequently viewed by radicals as a form of martyrdom, is seen as a way to gain redemption and restore that honor.

The inability to fulfill predetermined social roles, such as bearing children, could also compromise a woman’s honor. In some communities, this loss of honor is grounds for divorce and could taint a woman as unmarriageable.

Wafa Idriss, who in 2002 became the first female suicide terrorist of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was divorced by her husband because of their failure to have children. Her life during the conflict as a volunteer medic is full of examples of what could radicalize a person, but there are certain details that make her motivations the result of a uniquely female experience—in particular her inability to have children.

Inequality

Besides perceptions of honor, social structures that promote female inequality and dependency provide more pressures that could attract a radicalized female to suicide terrorism. Giving your life to further the cause of radical groups alongside men can be perceived as a way for women to achieve equal social status, a measure that a man would not feel as pressured to take since he does not necessarily feel or experience social subordination the way a woman might.

Other women are forced to be economically and socially dependent on men and never learn the skills that would allow them to be independent, such as reading or writing. As men continue to die in conflict and women are left to carry on without them, they are inadequately equipped to assume full economic responsibility for their families, resulting in greater strains on them and their families. The increased economic and social pressures have the potential to push a woman over the edge. Sometimes terrorist groups will even make promises to provide for and take care of women’s families if they execute a suicide attack.

The best example of this violent reaction to the loss of a male figure is the Black Widows, an all-female Chechen suicide terrorist group associated with the terrorist group Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs. Their primary motivation is believed to be revenge for husbands, brothers, fathers, or relatives who were killed in the two-decade conflict between Russia and Chechnya after the latter declared independence.

Why women are such successful bombers

Women’s success in suicide attacks highlights just how little this national security threat is being addressed.

Mia Bloom from the International Center for the Study of Terrorism attributes their success to several factors, most notably the fact that women are still not expected to be involved in violence. The common social assumption that women are inherently weaker, gentler, and more peaceful than men discounts their ability to engage in such lethal activity. That assumption allows female suicide terrorists to be overlooked by counterterrorism efforts and escape thorough security inspections in many conflict zones, despite recent attempts to correct this security lapse.

Attacks by women tend to be more lethal as well. In general, a woman is able to more easily reach high-profile targets and carry out more assassinations due to the lack of security focused on thwarting female suicide attacks and a general unsuspecting attitude toward women.

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s 1991 assassination by a Tamil Tiger female suicide bomber, who was close enough to touch his feet when the bomb went off, shows how much closer women can get to their targets in many scenarios.

These unique capabilities are probably why women are responsible for 65 percent of all assassinations among groups that use female suicide terrorists, even though they only make up 15 percent of total suicide bombers in these same groups, according to Lindsey O’Rourke.

In addition to inflicting death and injury on their victims, female suicide terrorists can inflict an additional psychological damage on survivors of the attack. A woman carrying out a suicide attack is considerably more effective in psychological warfare since it cuts against common societal views of women and builds suspicion toward a previously “harmless” segment of the population.

Further, the tendency for media outlets to focus on the gender angle is in larger part a reason why groups like using female suicide bombers—their actions have higher shock value and garner more media attention, and it sends the message of how serious these individuals and groups are about furthering their cause. As is common with these cases, the media led stories about an attack on the Moscow subway in 2010 with the fact that the attackers were women.

Finally, successful female suicide attacks are in part attributable to existing social, cultural, and religious restrictions on gender interactions resulting in weakened security measures toward women. For instance, men are not permitted to touch or pat down women in a way that would allow them to effectively search for explosives.

This problem is exacerbated by the use of both disguises and traditional female garb, such as the niqab, to hide weapons and explosives. Many women—and sometimes even men—disguise their bombs as faux pregnancies.

In 1996 a female suicide bomber from the PKK killed nine Turkish soldiers at a military parade when she detonated what turned out to be a bomb, not a baby. And in 2010 British intelligence discovered that women were being fitted with exploding breast implants, which are nearly impossible to detect at most security checkpoints.

A persistent problem that needs official recognition

With continuing problems of social equality and 86,000 war widows in Iraq, the impetuses for female suicide terrorism do not appear to be going away anytime soon.

In fact, Debra Zedalis, a terrorism expert from the U.S. Army War College, stated in 2004 that trends were pointing toward an increasing reliance on female suicide terrorists. In 2009 Umayma al-Zawahiri, wife of current Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued an open letter to her sisters in Islam stating that women could contribute to terrorist organizations as suicide bombers. Since that letter went public, a number of websites and publications have emerged encouraging women to take on a more active role in terrorist organizations.

We remain exposed to a growing female suicide terrorism threat without proper recalibrations to our current counterterrorism policy to address women’s motivations, tactics, and targets.

Efforts such as the 300-person Daughters of Iraq program, a U.S. military initiative that trains Iraqi women how to pat down and search suspected female suicide terrorists at check points, help mitigate some of the effects of this problem and should be promoted. But our counterterrorism strategy must also identify and address uniquely female motivations for suicide terrorism just as it identifies and addresses some of the gender-neutral motivations for suicide terrorism.

We should answer Secretary Clinton’s call to better understand the process of radicalization. But if we want to actually protect our country, we can’t simply forget about half of the world’s population. Including a female element to our counterterrorism policy also would be a welcome addition to Secretary Clinton’s larger push to make advancing women’s rights around the world a key piece of a progressive foreign policy. A counterterrorism strategy that works in coordination with a women’s rights strategy would be a progressive way to keep us all safer.

Ken Sofer is Special Assistant with the National Security team at American Progress. Jennifer Addison is an intern with American Progress.

The nexus of climate change, migration, and security poses a new challenge to traditional conceptions of national and human security. Experts Koko Warner of the United Nations University, U.K. Climate and Energy Security Envoy Rear Admiral Neal Morisetti, Anne-Marie Slaughter, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, and Senior Fellow Michael Werz of the Center for American Progress discuss the need for a new approach to these overlapping problems.

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(mp4, YouTube)

See also:

• Climate Change, Migration, and Security by Michael Werz and Laura Conley

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