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Interview with a bomber

November 25, 2008 - 09:42:38


DIALA / Aswat al-Iraq: Rania Ibrahim, a 20-year-old dark-skinned woman, has always dreamed of becoming a physician, but instead she ended up as the first female suicide bomber in Diala.

A dropout, Rania married Mohammed, who is 10 years her senior.

She had put on an explosive belt ready for detonation but she was arrested before the attack that could have left dozens of people killed or maimed.

“I never thought I would don an explosive belt. It was one day when my husband, Mohammed, a blacksmith, asked me to accompany him to Baaquba for an important matter,” Rania told Aswat al-Iraq.

Baaquba, the capital city of Diala province, lies 57 km northeast of Baghdad.

Diala province, a mix of Sunnis and Shiites, extends to the northeast of Baghdad as far as the Iranian borders.

In January 2008, Operation Phantom Phoenix was launched in an attempt to eradicate the remnants of al-Qaeda network following the Diala province campaign between 2006 and 2007.

Later on, Iraqi security forces launched a wide-scale security campaign in Diala province. The operation, codenamed Bashaer al-Kheir (Promise of Good), is aimed at tracking down members of al-Qaeda network in Diala, Iraq’s most restive city, after the armed group lost its strongholds in the western Iraq predominantly Sunni province of al-Anbar, where tribesmen fought its members and flushed them out of the city.

“We headed for the city of al-Katoun, (3 km western Baaquba), at an abandoned house where we met a 40-ish woman of the name Umm Fatima. She talked to me about issues I was in the dark about, mostly jihad and revenge,” Rania said.

“Mohammed also spoke about the shihada (martyrdom) and paradise. One hour after I drank peach juice my husband served me, I felt a terrible headache. He and Umm Fatima then put wrapped an explosive vest around my body. I didn’t object much then, maybe because I was not fully aware of what they were doing.”

“My husband planted a kiss on my forehead and said ‘we’ll meet in paradise enshallah (God willing)’. I did understand what he meant then or where I was going or what I was to do. I boarded a taxi cab with Umm Fatima and headed to Baaquba, where we roamed the local souk (market). After nearly 30 minutes, we parted in the crowded place. I went to al-Amin neighborhood near the souk, where I was arrested before I reached a joint checkpoint of policemen and Popular Committees.”

Rania said her marriage to Mohammed was like a “coup” in her life.

“I hated death so much and valued life so dearly. One of the things I greatly enjoyed was old Iraqi singing,” Rania said with a smile on her lips as she started to hum a love song by Iraqi singer Yass Khidr.

“On the very first day of my marriage, Mohammed recited a long list of No’s, including the TV and listening to songs on the radio. He said that these could lead us to hell and perdition. Mohammed was sometimes absent for four days weekly on the pretext of work pressures. I did not have a child although I was married three years ago,” she said.

“Above all, Mohammed reneged on his promise that I should be meeting him in paradise. I met him a few days later, but in prison,” she quipped.

She said if her father had been alive, all of that would not have happened.

“I was my father’s pampered daughter but all this has changed when death snatched him and my brother away as armed groups murdered them in a very heinous manner,” she said.

Saja Qaddouri, the official in charge of the security committee in the Diala local council, told Aswat al-Iraq that all indications and figures prove that Diala ranks on top of Iraqi provinces with explosive attacks waged by female suicide bombers.

“Most of these female suicide bombers are either mentally-disabled or bereaved women who have lost their loved ones in armed confrontations that gripped the province during the past five years between armed groups and security forces,” Qaddouri said.

Despite the bad security conditions in some Iraqi provinces, Diala is strangely unique in terms of suicide blasts carried out by female bombers.

“The total number of these suicide bombing attacks exceeds 22, most of them took place inside the district of Baaquba,” she said.

She attributed the matter to the control wielded by al-Qaeda network in most areas in Diala during the years 2005 and 2006, the establishment of strongholds for the so-called Islamic State of Iraq group, mainly the key one in al-Katoun neighborhood, and the absence of the power of law all that time.

“These factors were behind nourishing the ideologies of al-Qaeda on the pretext of jihad in some women,” Qaddouri noted.

She pointed out that after Operation Arrowhead Ripper was launched on June 19, 2007 to track down members of al-Qaeda in the province, several clashes erupted between the hard-line Islamist groups and Iraqi security forces.

“The elimination of large numbers of gunmen in these clashes, some girls, particularly between the ages of 15-20, embraced some ideologies of vendetta after having lost many of their loved ones in those confrontations.

“Armed groups capitalized on this and also used mentally-disabled women to carry out suicide bombing attacks,” she explained.

She suggested that in order to deal with this phenomenon, the Iraqi Interior Ministry should attract women volunteers and help them join in the formation of the Daughters of Iraq, in addition to activating the role of feminist civil society.

A psychiatrist, Ahmed Bekka, told Aswat al-Iraq that al-Qaeda Organization’s emirs (leaders) used to give some girls hallucinatory pills to guarantee their bombing operations would be successful.

“One of the things that could be done is to trim the volume of women’s unemployment and provide varied jobs for them based on their education and qualifications,” Bekka said.

AmR (F)/SR

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