“Women of Al-Qaeda”… The road from cooking to murder

By: Rahma Mahmoud

The role of the women within al-Qaeda terrorist organization was limited to caring for the house, preparing food, caring for children, teaching them the extremist ideas. They also hide wanted criminals, treating sick and wounded, in addition to helping the couples with children to hide.

Yusef al-Ayeri, the founder of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (killed in a clash with Saudi security forces in 2003), pointed out in a letter entitled “The Role of Women in the Jihad” the fighters’ wives effective role in the organization.

He also declared the reason of addressing the women in his letter, pointing out “if the women have any concept, they become the greatest incentive for it, which is very important to be satisfied of the men fate.

From the other hand, if they opposed something, they become one of the greatest obstacles to their husbands, in this case, they must be patience, while their men going out to jihad.

Al-Ayeri expressed to the women, “if you prevent your men; whether they are sons or husbands or brothers, from going out to jihad, you will fall in the mantrap of committing a grave sin”.

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s opposition to the principle of women’s participation in armed action was also written before. In December 2009, his wife, Omaima, sent an open discourse to the women of al-Qaeda.

The brief of the discourse was “not to join in jihad” because “the fighting is not easy for women to do” as it need in case of the women to a precluding man with her, and she called them for supporting the jihad by other means.

Despite the reservations of Osama bin Laden and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the role of women, and despite their assertion that “women’s jihad is based on traditional roles in the house, family and some logistical roles, the organization used some female models to motivate its fighters.

Among those female models; Om Omar al-Makiya, an elderly woman who played a role during the Afghani Jihad by sending her son to fight, and incited the women in Mecca to jihad. She also was sending the foods that she has cooked in her home for the fronts in Afghanistan, before she decided to travel there to meet the women. After she has reached there, she insisted on fighting in the battle front.

Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist detained in US jails for attacking US soldiers in Afghanistan, is the most famous women in al-Qaeda.

Afia, a neurologist, was educated at the largest US University and now sits in a US prison in Texas for a 86-year sentence after being convicted of trying to kill US soldiers.

The women in al-Qaeda have a more developed-role, after the Russian war in Chechnya, and the US invasion of Iraq, as well as the speeches of the organization’s legal authority Abu Omar al-Seif, on the participation in the fighting.

Saudi Arabia arrested the first terrorist women, belonged to al-Qaeda. She was the wife of Saleh al-Awfi, the former al-Qaeda leader in KSA, he was killed in a clash in April 2005. Saudi authorities accused al-Awfi’s wife of multiple charges, as being in a weapons storage facility, covering up their activities. As well as keep her three children at risk, ignoring their bad condition, participate her husband and the rest of the elements of the organization in hiding, until she was arrested in 2004.

The up growing role of the women in al-Qaeda also displayed through the first women’s magazine, “Al-Khansaa” which issued, in September 2004. Umm Osama, an Egyptian woman arrested by the Saudi authorities for her activity in the women’s media arm of the terrorist organization, admitted by her responsibility for editing the magazine.

The Saudi television broadcast the confessions of “Umm Osama, explaining that she was carrying out logistical tasks for al-Qaeda through her website.

The roles of al-Qaeda’ women also evolved, following the announcement of the merger of al-Qaeda in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in January 2009 and the formation of so-called “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula”, led by Nasser Abdul Karim al-Wahishi (Abu Basir) and his Saudi deputy Saeed Ali al- Al-Shihri (Abu Sufian al-Azadi).  The women started to travel to their husbands. Wafaa Al-Shihri traveled with her three sons to Saeed Al-Shehri, in Yemen on March 12, 2009. She began there to play media roles through Al-Malahim Media Production Organization which belonged to the terrorist organization.