Women of Al Qaeda

There will be more women launching more attacks, a fact that is provoking new and growing concern among U.S. officials. Until recently, many analysts in American government agencies saw the threat of women suicide bombers as a largely theoretical problem. Their best judgment was that "Al Qaeda Central"--the close-knit organization around Osama bin Laden and ideologue Ayman al-Zawahiri--would resist any effort to use women as homicidal martyrs. But after the incidents of the past few weeks, they are taking the threat of female Islamic terrorists, particularly suicide bombers, much more seriously, according to two U.S. counterterrorism officials who asked for anonymity because they were discussing intelligence matters.

Having seen the phenomenon spread suddenly to Iraq and Jordan, the U.S. officials worry that the plague will move still farther, with women suicide bombers carrying out attacks in Western Europe or the United States. The agencies are particularly concerned about the threat posed by "married couples," either real long-term partners or couples who have been joined together for no other purpose than a suicide mission.

If there's consolation, it's that the terrorist assets now known to exist were not used as effectively as they might have been. The Belgian woman Degauque, with her European Union passport and her northern European looks, could have gained easy access to soft targets in many Western countries. Instead, she blew herself up in Iraq.

But the real lesson of the Degauque bombing is to expect the unexpected. "The terrorists are quite aware of the profiles that exist, and they always change things just enough to throw them off," says Prof. Mia Bloom, author of "Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror." They also aim to provoke. American soldiers in Iraq may become ever more suspicious about women, particularly pregnant women. But in traditional Muslim societies, the need to search women meticulously--"invasively," as Bloom puts it--is sure to create popular anger. "It's a win-win proposition for the terrorists," says Bloom.

Yet the increasing use of women as weapons of holy war also challenges the view of the world that many jihadists thought they'd set out to defend.

II. Knights & Maidens
"Chivalry" is not a word normally associated with terrorism, at least not in the West. But the world in which Osama bin Laden would like to live, and the vision that inspires so many of his followers, is literally about days of old when knights were bold--and fair maidens were kept behind veils, their virtue protected, their lives entirely controlled by men. Since the 1990s, bin Laden has cast his fight as one against "crusaders," and the most important ideological tract by his right-hand man, Zawahiri, bears the title "Knights Under the Prophet's Banner."