The scene of a human-bomb attack near Baquba mosque, northeast of Baghdad, Dec. 20.

It goes against religious taboos in Iraq to involve women in fighting, but three recent suicide bombings carried out by women could indicate insurgents are growing increasingly desperate. The female suicide attacks come as U.S.-led coalition forces are increasingly catching militants suspected of training women to become human bombs or finding evidence of efforts by al-Qaida in Iraq to recruit women, according to military records.
With coalition forces pushing extremists out of former strongholds and shrinking their pool of potential recruits, the militants are being forced to come up with other methods to penetrate stiffened security measures, said Diaa Rashwan, who follows Islamic militancy for Egypt«s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
“There«s a sense that this is an act of desperation,“ said Col. Donald Bacon, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Female suicide bombers are a small part of the insurgents« battle to force U.S. troops from Iraq and rattle Shiites from newly acquired power. Women have been responsible for 14 of 667 suicide attacks since May 2005, or 2 percent. They have caused at least 107 deaths, or 5 percent of the 2,065 people killed during this time period, according to Associated Press statistics.
But those attacks appear to be increasing.
In November and December, women carried out three suicide bombings in Diyala province, one of Iraq«s most violent areas, where al-Qaida in Iraq has a stronghold. The last female suicide bombing had been in July.
On Nov. 4, a woman detonated an explosives vest next to a U.S. patrol in Diyala«s regional capital, Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, wounding seven U.S. troops and five Iraqis. On Dec. 7, a woman attacked the offices of a Diyala-based Sunni group fighting al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 15 people and wounding 35. Then, on Dec. 31, a bomber in Baqouba detonated her suicide vest close to a police patrol, wounding five policemen and four civilians.
Devastating attacks continue in Iraq even as Iraqi casualties are down by 55 percent nationwide since June 2007, according to an AP count. American and Iraqi forces, and thousands of Sunni tribal groups who turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, have pushed the extremist group from Baghdad and Anbar province west of the capital. The al-Qaida fighters have moved into Diyala northeast of Baghdad and farther north into Mosul, 225 miles northwest of the capital.
The tightening noose--at least for now--appears to be prompting the militants to turn to women attackers, Rashwan said, noting that extremist groups use women only when they see no alternative.
“Women should be in the last rows“ of fighting, he said. “So to see women (suicide bombers) shows an abnormal situation--the absence of men.“
Women have acted as suicide bombers for other causes. The first known female suicide bomber was Sana Mheidali, a Lebanese who killed two Israeli soldiers in 1985.
Female Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have carried out at least 60 suicide bombings in 24 years. Palestinian Muslim militants send out women suicide bombers, as does the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged a guerrilla war since 1984 for autonomy in Turkey«s southeast.
Because of Muslim cultural sensitivities, women can be excellent candidates for suicide attacks when there are no female security guards. Most Iraqis are conservative Muslims who believe physical contact is forbidden between women and men not related by blood or marriage. As a result, women are often allowed to pass through male-guarded checkpoints without being searched. In October, the U.S. Army trained 20 women to work as security guards in a Baghdad suburb after a female suicide bomber entered a nearby building without being searched.
“We know it«s a tactic that al-Qaida in Iraq is trying to use,“ Bacon said.
At least twice in December and once in August, al-Qaida members suspected of training women to use suicide belts were captured, the U.S. military has said. There are no military reports before August indicating suspicion of al-Qaida in Iraq training women attackers.
Some female bombers appear to be motivated by revenge, like the woman who killed 15 people in Diyala province on Dec. 7. She was a former member of Saddam Hussein«s Baath party whose two sons joined al-Qaida in Iraq and were killed by Iraqi security forces.
But other women may be ideologues, just like their male counterparts, said Mohammad Hafiz, a University of Missouri professor who focuses on Muslim extremism.
Still others are influenced by relatives and spouses, “especially those dependent on them emotionally or materially,“ Hafiz said.
One of them, Sajida al-Rishawi, was married to a suicide bomber. The Iraqi woman tried unsuccessfully to detonate her explosives belt in an Amman, Jordan hotel on Nov. 9. 2005. Her husband and their other accomplices succeeded in blowing themselves up, however. Three hotels were bombed, and 60 people were killed.
Although use of women can be a sign of desperation, female suicide bombers also help extremist groups attract male recruits. Militants exploit the image of desperate women fighting because there aren«t enough brave men, taunting would-be male suicide bombers into action, Hafiz said.
“Women,“ Hafiz said, “make great propaganda.“
AP.COM

Following the Iowa caucuses last night (Jan.4), I watched all three speeches by the Democratic frontrunners in a room filled with liberals. My reading of the room was that everyone thrilled to Edwards’s speech--and did not notice that he failed to congratulate Obama--were slightly disappointed for a while in Obama’s generalities, until he started soaring towards the end, and felt a little “eh“ toward Hillary’s speech.
What I thought was interesting about the speeches was how they turned conventional wisdom on its proverbial tush.
People are pissed at Mark Penn because, per Robert Novak of all people, (apparently channelling Robert Shrum, though that’s just an educated guess), Hillary has been running a general-election campaign on the assumption that her nomination is inevitable.
Most of us assumed that there was sufficient oxygen in the system only for one “un-Hillary“, and when Obama jumped in the race, it appeared he would divide it and therefore invite its conquest.
So the “inevitable“ strategy combined with the well-funded, well-disciplined efficiency of the battle-tested Clinton “machine“ made some sense, with the added bonus of getting the media to play along and make it appear to be self-fulfilling.
But it was actually Obama who was running the general-election strategy the whole time. By refusing to offer the kind of “red meat“ that has given Edwards the “angry“ epithet among silly pundits and talking of “change“ and “unity,“ he’s managed to do what many thought impossible: expand the size of the pie open to Democratic nominees, at least so far.
And while Obama’s cool, almost non-partisan rhetoric is frustrating to many liberals--and altogether too attractive to the likes of George Will and David Brooks--nothing about it precludes his taking an extremely progressive direction as president.
It’s all a matter of recasting the discourse--something for which we liberals have hoping for decades, and believed briefly, might be taking place with Bill Clinton, before he tanked in the first two years of his first term.
Now Hillary appears to be returning to a typical Democratic primary strategy of reaching out various interest groups and her people are hinting about going negative against Obama. But one senses that what doesn’t kill him in this respect will only make him stronger.
And Edwards has already earned the allegiance of many of those groups, and they are not likely to turn over to the un-Edwards should he drop out. Moreover, unlike Edwards, who defined the debate but does not have the resources to fight it all the way to the end, Obama has plenty of money, self-confidence and organisation to fight back.
Nevertheless, we’re left with the same questions we had when Obama entered the race and the ones that Hillary will need to raise if she is to take the nomination:
First, will America vote for a (self-defined) black man with a mysterious family history and a Muslim-sounding name?
Second, is this guy too good to be true?
I don’t know the answer to either one, but with each passing day, the risk seems more inviting, and exciting.
Eric Alterman
GUARDIAN.CO.UK

A Kenyan man leads his children away from his neighborhood as he flees violence during disturbances in the streets of the Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya, Jan. 1.

The decision to return Kenya’s 76-year-old incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, to office was not made by the Kenyan people but by a group of hardline Kikuyu leaders.
They made up their minds before the result was announced, perhaps even before the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, had opened up a lead in early returns from the December 27th election. It was a civil coup.
The planning was meticulous. All that was needed were the extra votes to squeak past Mr Odinga in what had been a closely and decently contested election.
That was why returns from Central Province, Mr Kibaki’s fiercely loyal Kikuyu heartland, were inexplicably held back.
And why, in some constituencies, a large number of voters mysteriously decided just to vote in the presidential race, ignoring the parliamentary ballot.
Real damage was done in Nairobi, the capital, by inflating the number of votes for Mr Kibaki, even after results were publicly announced.
Election monitors were turned away in Nairobi while the tallying went on. But European Union (EU) monitors verified tens of thousands of votes pinched in this way. Mr Odinga’s supporters were not innocent either.
There were serious irregularities in his home province of Nyanza and probably ballot stuffing on his behalf elsewhere.
The EU’s preliminary report on the presidential vote was scathing.
After the result was announced security forces sealed off the centre of Nairboi against the angry poor, most of whom had voted for Mr Odinga.
A few minutes later in State House, in the twilight, Mr Kibaki was sworn in as president, with almost nobody else there.
The reaction to the swearing-in was immediate. Nairobi’s slums exploded in rage. The poor killed each other.
The rest of the city was eerily empty, but for burning tyres. Across the country there was a swelling up of tribal violence, sometimes Kikuyu against Mr Odinga’s Luo tribe, more often Luo and other tribes against Kikuyu. Hundreds have been killed so far and 80,000 displaced. Gang rapes and mutilations are widespread.
Police have orders to shoot to kill. There has been rampant looting in Kisumu, riots in Mombasa and pitched battles in Eldoret. Thousands of Kikuyu have taken refuge in Eldoret’s Catholic cathedral from roving gangs. Kikuyu hiding in another church outside Eldoret were burned alive by a mob. There will be reprisals.
Some non-Kikuyus are already slipping away from Central Province.
Taken together, it amounts to a pulling apart of Kenya’s rich national fabric. Some 98% of Kikuyu voted for Mr Kibaki. Everywhere else he was trounced. “We feel downgraded to second class status, harassed, profiled“, says Najib Balala, a senior Orange.
The Kikuyu highlands encircling the diminishing glaciers of Mount Kenya feel like a state within a state.
The instincts of the hardliners will be to use the security services to reverse the freedoms of Mr Kibaki’s first term; anything to avoid power slipping into Mr Odinga’s hands. It is not clear that Kenya will stand for it.
The government pressured mobile phone operators to suspend text messages for “security reasons“, without success.
Kenya’s media is still keen to report rather than incite. The army’s strong apolitical tradition, with staff officers drawn from several tribes, looks to be holding.
Mr Odinga has called on Mr Kibaki to resign. His Oranges want a campaign of civil action, peaceable, but determined.
Mr Odinga says that Kenyans today will not tolerate betrayal. They are better educated, more independent, than in the past.
They may also be more frustrated, more violent, and harder to control.
A week after voting, the immediate concern is to haul the country back from ethnic cleansing.
A chastened Samuel Kivuitu, head of the electoral commission, now says he is not sure that Mr Kibaki won the election.
The Americans and the British have been twisting arms. The head of the African Union, John Kufuor, is also trying to mediate.
More importantly, well-connected Kikuyu business leaders have been trying to persuade Mr Kibaki to cave in and form a government of national unity. “If they don’t,“ says a diplomat, “the country is heading for civil war.“
ECONOMIST.COM