In Meet the New Face of Terror, for the Washington Post, Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank explore the growing role of female suicide bombers in global jihad. The authors note a significant tactical benefit that the jihadists gain in endorsing female suicide bombers — something that was previously considered taboo: "Women are less likely to be searched at checkpoints or borders and can hide explosives under their Islamic dress." 

One such female terrorist interviewed calls on her "sisters" to "rise up and go to the airports and clearly declare we are going to fight." 

Malika el-Aroud is a case in point. She is the Belgian-Moroccan widow of the al-Qaeda operative who assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, just hours before 9/11. Aroud traveled to Switzerland after the U.S. invasion toppled the Taliban. Although she had played the traditional wife's role in Afghanistan, segregated from her husband's colleagues and unaware of her husband's impending mission, she took on a much more assertive role back in the West, visiting al-Qaeda prisoners in European jails and running a pro-al-Qaeda Web site. When one of us met with Aroud in her Swiss chalet last year, she did not disguise her violent views, which outlined — for want of a better term — a neofeminist militant jihadism. Because of the war in Iraq, she told us, "even us sisters should all rise up and go to the airports and clearly declare we are going to fight." Aroud was convicted last month of terrorism offences in Switzerland. But there are plenty more like her. 

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