From dismal Chechnya, women turn to bombs
By STEVEN LEE MYERS (New York Times)
Updated: 2004-09-10 15:31

Mariyam Taburova and three of her roommates left the cramped, dismal apartment they shared here in Chechnya on Aug. 22. She has not been seen or heard from since. The others, however, have been.

A market at Grozny, Chechnya, where many goods are brought from Azerbaijan. What began as a separatist movement has stretched into a decade of war that has left the city in ruins and the residents desperate. [nytimes]

Amanat Nagayeva and Satsita Dzhbirkhanova checked in two days later for two flights leaving Domodedovo Airport near Moscow and, according to Russian officials, detonated explosives that brought down both airliners, killing 90 people.

A week after those bombings, a woman believed to be Ms. Nagayeva's younger sister, Roza, blew herself up outside a Moscow subway, killing at least 10 people.

The women - known to their neighbors here as decent people making what they could of life in a place marred by appalling destitution - are suspected of involvement in one of the deadliest waves of terror ever in Russia. With Ms. Taburova's whereabouts still unknown, the terror may not yet be over.

They are not the first women linked to the terrorism spawned by the war in Chechnya, nor were they the last. At least two women, perhaps four, were among the attackers in the brutal siege of Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, to the west, in North Ossetia, though they have not been identified.

In Russia, such women are known as shakhidki, the feminine Russian variant for the Arabic word meaning holy warriors who sacrifice their lives. In the media, they are known more luridly as black widows, prepared to kill and to die to avenge the deaths of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons in Chechnya. But the circumstances that bring women to suicidal attacks are not so simple.

Their participation - despite Chechnya's deeply patriarchal society, or perhaps because of it - reflects the radicalization of a war that began as a separatist struggle but has turned increasingly nihilistic.

It has also exposed the deep schisms that are tearing apart Chechnya, where few people interviewed here spoke warmly of Russia or the Kremlin, but where all expressed horror at the bombings, the school siege and other attacks carried out for the sake of Chechnya's independence. "We were so shocked," one woman who worked beside Ms. Dzhbirkhanova in Grozny's central market said, speaking only if she were identified by her first name, Yana. Her eyes reddened with tears. "How could she?"

Chechens themselves have not embraced a cult of religious martyrdom, as have, for example, many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, insurgents in Iraq or militant groups like Al Qaeda.

Here in Grozny, there are neither posters nor graffiti celebrating shakhidki. Chechnya's imams, leaders of a moderate Islam in an outwardly secular society, do not preach fiery sermons revering them. And those who knew the four women said they simply could not believe they were involved in any way.

Instead, rumors swirl. Some other fate has befallen them, their neighbors said: kidnapping, arrest, death perhaps - anything but suicide.

"It is not normal," said Khozh-Akhmed Israilov, a security guard in Grozny's market who knew Ms. Dzhbirkhanova, echoing many others interviewed here. "How could someone do this to themselves? Only God can take life. She knew very well that to take her life was a sin."

Unheard of when war ravaged Chechnya the first time, from 1994 to 1996, female suicide bombers have taken part in at least 15 attacks since the war erupted again, in 1999. Among those were the hostage siege of a Moscow theater in October 2002, where 19 of 41 captors were women. The women apparently involved in the plane bombings were not, technically, black widows. Ms. Dzhbirkhanova, said to be in her early 40's, was divorced. So were the Nagayeva sisters, 26 and 24. All three divorced, neighbors said, because they could not have children, something deeply stigmatized in Chechen life.

The Nagayeva sisters did lose a brother, Uvays Nagayev. On April 27, 2001, he and a friend were badly beaten by Russian soldiers, according to a report compiled by Memorial, a human rights organization. He escaped, but on May 2, he was arrested at the family's home by soldiers in a Russian armored vehicle. He has not been heard from since.

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