Recruitment of women by al-Qaeda disturbs Iraq government

While considered a religious taboo in Islam to involve women in combat, al-Qaeda in Iraq is using every means possible to recruit women to help the terrorist group make a noticeable resurgence in the nation's Sunni Arab strongholds, according to a report in the India Times on Monday.

With the Iraqi forces and the U.S. troops in the past years fiercely fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, they successfully pushed them out of their strongholds. But now, al-Qaeda extremists are coming up with other ways to penetrate the current Iraqi security measures. Al-Qaeda is working hard to increase the role of women in its terrorist activities. They know that they are using unethical means to recruit women, in addition to their using the widows of their former members and their female relatives, say experts.

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Women can be used to convey letters and explosives in addition to their possible role in gathering intelligence about al-Qaeda's targets, according to experts. A woman activist in Baquba said that the female victims of al-Qaeda would fall under psychological and physical pressure as their conservative society would push their families to reject them or even kill them to save the honor of the family. The miserable female victims will have nothing else but to accept being used by al-Qaeda and even to be used as suicide bombers, according to reports. Using women by al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group is not a new phenomenon. In 2008 alone, there had been 33 female suicide bombers who carried out attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces in Diyala province. Prior to the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, its security forces backed by U.S. troops had dismantled at least three al-Qaeda cells tasked with recruiting women. In fact, one of the cells was actually run by a woman named Um al-Mu'mineen, or the mother of believers in Arabic, who was tracked and captured in Baghdad in mid-2010.