Perspectives on Race, Gender and Power Differentials in Lived Experiences of Failed Suicide Bombers in Pakistan

Munir Ahmed Zia Rao,Rubeena Zakar

doi:10.52567/pjsr.v3i4.66

Abstract

The study documents lived experiences of failed suicide bombers in Pakistan. It describes the influence and impact of social structures like gender, geography race and ethnicity with reference to their experiencing of suicide bombing. The study also characterizes the power relations in their interactional contexts entailing in unquestioning submission and support to militant organizations. Owing to ideological charged conditions and overwhelming existence of terrorist organisation certain regions and ethnicities in Pakistan exhibit unusual inclination to suicide terrorism. The article also argues the strategic necessity and ideological under pining of feminizing suicide terrorism in Pakistan by terrorist outfits. Feminizing of suicide terrorism in Pakistan is driven by out of strategic and political expediency. Women in Pakistan are enlisted mostly by means of physical and emotional coercion, exploitation of familial ties and patriarchal influences. The lived experiences of the male and female suicide bombers gathered from in-depth interviews and secondary data delineate the factors and process of ‘zombification’. Keywords: Female suicide bombers, Suicide bombing, gender, race and ethnicity, terrorism, power.

Highlights

Suicide bombing is carried out for achieving pre-designed objective both at individual and organizational level wherein the subject lays down his or her life
Pakistani women are controlled through restraining behavioral codes, strict gender segregation, familial patterns and robust ideology pinning family honor to feminine virtue (Moghadam,1992)
Gender splits men into violent and women into non-violent roles and Pakistan women’s roles in terrorism too was initially circumscribed within supporting non-violent spheres. This division is not watertight as Iqbal (2015) observed that militant groups recruited women for a wide variety of roles ranging from static non-violent to a broader violent role

Summary

Introduction

Suicide bombing is carried out for achieving pre-designed objective both at individual and organizational level wherein the subject lays down his or her life It is not a recent phenomenon rather a recurring strategy employed by different militant outfits throughout human history. The findings offer an insight into the radicalization and indoctrination grounded in power differentials in the socio and militant setup The findings endorse those tribal social settings, regions and ethnicity have a dominant role and presence in terrorist organisations and leading role in this extreme radicalization. The paper reflects the negligible role of feminine gender in terror suicidality as out of 15 in-depth interviews of failed suicide bombers there was only one female perpetrator This insignificant display of feminist violent talent can be traced to hypermasculinity, and patriarchal influences embedded in social settings of Pakistan wherein perpetration of violence is deemed as male prerogative

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