A pair of deadly bomb attacks in Moscow Monday has revived fears of an old threat: shakhidki, or female suicide bombers.
The Russian word for female suicide bomber, шахидка (shakhidka), is a simple Russianization of the Arabic word shahid, sometimes translated into English as "martyr." The word became commonplace at the height of the second Chechen conflict in 2003 and 2004, when a series of attacks by female suicide bombers set the country on edge. Chechen "black widows" also took part in the gruesome 2002 Dubrovka theater siege, which claimed the lives of well over a hundred hostages.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's ambassador to NATO, told reporters that shakhidka was a poor choice of words. "It's extremely important that the correct language is used," he said. "It's extremely important that both experts and journalists correctly describe who carried out this terrible crime. They're aren't shakhidki. It's wrong to assume that that a suicide terrorist, who sent dozens of innocent people to their deaths, can call themselves martyrs for their faith. They're not martyrs, they're murderers." (Rogozin's Twitter feed is in Russian; his quote is being furiously re-tweeted by Russian Twitter users.)
Mainstream Russian media outlets also use the word "смертницы" (smertnitsy), perhaps best translated as "female suicide attackers" or "she-bombers."
For background, it's worth rereading a 2004 New York Times report by Steven Lee Myers, who traced the journey taken by several women who were recruited to become suicide bombers. But the Times' The Lede blog has an interesting contemporary take on how citizen reporters and bloggers have posted their own accounts of the latest attacks.
[PHOTO: Rossiiskaya Gazeta]
