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Police in Moscow say that the two women suicide bombers who blew themselves up on packed underground trains this morning were accompanied by other women.

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While there is no single reason women decide to give up their lives, experts say they have usually suffered a traumatic event that makes them burn with revenge or question whether they want to live. This can be the death of a child, husband or other family member at the hands of Russian forces or a rape. Russian authorities have said the women are sometimes drugged.

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Who Becomes a Female Suicide Bomber?

“The reasons for women’s participation in deadly attacks vary greatly and it is hard to generalize, for this phenomenon is too recent and the attacks have been too few. Either not enough research has been conducted yet or the sample size is too small to make effective generalizations.” Although the data are limited, female suicide bombers, just like male suicide bombers, have one characteristic which typifies all―they are young. The average age varies from 21.5 (Turkey) to 23 (Lebanon), a small differential. Other characteristics do not hold. Some are widows and others have never been married; some are unemployed and others are professionals; some are poor and others are middle class. Most analysts can easily compare the Black Widows in Russia with the Palestinian suicide bombers, since both appear to be serving “struggles of national identity” with religious overtones. Additionally, as is true of the male counterparts, several female suicide bombers have experienced the loss of a close friend or family member. The selection of women for suicide operations and the methods used to persuade them generally are similar to those employed for men. The recruiters take advantage of the candidates’ innocence, enthusiasm, personal distress, and thirst for revenge.

Finally, the question of when to recruit comes into play. Some believe that recruiters of female suicide bombers try to “get them while they are young as the LTTE leaders personally brainwashed preadolescent boys and girls, many of them orphans.” Russian authorities seem to believe that “you need complete control of all their conditioning, usually from the time they are 11 or 12.” At the same time, however, the Russians obviate their own argument by noting that the Chechen insurgency hasn’t been going on long enough to “grow” the number of female suicide bombers who have attacked them. Other Russians believe that the female suicide bombers are “sold” to terrorist organizations, drugged to perform such acts, and/or raped and blackmailed if they do not participate. Finally, as one journalist describing the Black Widows concluded, “There are so many theories to explain the women’s motivation that it is impossible to sort through them.”