Russia's "Black Widows": When Suicide Bombing Is Women's Only Power

Following the recent subway bombings in Moscow, there has been a lot of talk of Chechnya's "black widows": female suicide bombers who attack in retribution for the murder of their husbands, sons, or brothers.

The language of articles on the black windows takes on a macabre horror movie feel: the National Post claims the widows "live only to wreak vengeance," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation talks of a "baby-faced teenager" suspected of one of the bombings, the L.A times describes the Moscow bombers' severed heads and faces "charred and streaked with blood."

The bombings in Moscow are horrifying and awful, without a doubt.  But turning the black widows into an eerie media spectacle, a freakish depiction of the Muslim woman gone mad, misses a critical point: women are so often the most brutalized victims of war and occupation, and Chechnya has been in the grip of both for more than twenty years.

The L.A times identifies key reasons Chechen women commit such acts of violence — they have seen their families destroyed and their sisters and daughters raped, and traditional Chechen society places intense pressure on them to maintain and defend the family honor — but a recent New York Times editorial entitled "What Makes Chechen Women So Dangerous?" gets straight to the point: Chechen women are dangerous because they, as well as many other Chechens, have been so disempowered and brutalized by the occupation and militarization of their country.

I do not want to imply that men do not suffer tremendously from war and occupation, but not enough emphasis is placed on how much women's bodies and lives are destroyed as a consequence of these things. Chechnya is one clear and deadly example. Women have little power in traditional Chechen society and their predominant responsibility is to uphold their family and their society's honor. Ongoing armed conflict has directed all of their society's resources to men and war, made them victims of sexual violence, and destroyed their families. What do they do? They resort to a final, grotesque sweep at honor and dignity with terrible consequences: suicide bombings.

I do not in any way intend to justify such bombings and find them abhorrent.  But instead of simply emphasizing the grim horror of "black widows," we should be looking at where they come from and why they exist, and thinking about ways to prevent them from resorting to this in the future.

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