Michael Ware

Journalist

AAM: "It's a brutal, brutal business."


Length: 3:29

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Michael speaks with John Roberts about a woman arrested in Iraq who had been recruiting female suicide bombers. How and why she had found so many who were willing to participate is truly heartbreaking.


JOHN ROBERTS: It's 21 minutes now after the hour. Some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq have been triggered by female suicide bombers. Many have been recruited by one woman known as the mother of believers. She was arrested before last week's provincial elections. Iraqi authorities showed a tape in which she described her recruitment methods.

Now, CNN cannot verify which interrogation technique if any was used to get her confession. Authorities do say her arrest could be a major blow to terrorists in Iraq who see women as the perfect weapon in a place where culture forbids a man to frisk a woman.

Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware joins us now in the studio this morning. Just how bad a problem, how serious a problem were female suicide bombers becoming, and what kind of a dent might this arrest if any, put in it?

MICHAEL WARE, CNN BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT: Well, we saw that over the last couple of years the use of female suicide bombers went from eight attacks in a year to over 30 or to 30. So that's quite a rise but in the broader scheme it's still mostly male suicide bombers.

Now, as it's so often been said to me by the troops when we're in the midst of a battle on the front line, the most dangerous weapon on a battlefield is a man prepared to die because he can come in, he doesn't have to worry about how he gets home. More so even with a female suicide bomber. Because of the cultural restrictions, they're wearing the abaya, men can't touch them to pat them down. So the insurgents or the Islamic extremists have been using that as their advantage.

But there's one thing to stress here, John, this is not al-Qaeda. This is a group called Ansar al-Sunna, an extremist Iraqi group that did not exist until the American invasion.

ROBERTS: Now, in terms of the, you know, the security procedures here, just prior to the elections, didn't they use some female security officers to try to pat down the women? Did that have any effect?

WARE: Absolutely. I mean, you know, there were a lot of things that went into the security envelope that secured these elections. But one of the things obviously is, you know, searching women as they're coming in to vote. And to do that, they use female security officers but there are simply not enough. So we saw that they actually recruited teachers and public servants -- female teachers and public servants -- to lend a hand. I mean, it's quite an issue.

ROBERTS: Now, let's go back to this woman who, as we said, talked about herself as being the mother of all believers. She said apparently in her confession that she preyed on vulnerable women, troubled souls in particular. She says, "She was able to persuade women to become suicide bombers, broken women, especially those who were raped." And there's some idea too that she was involved in a plot that she would have these women raped...

WARE: Yeah.

ROBERTS: ... and then have them referred to her for counseling?

WARE: Yeah, I mean, that's impossible to verify but it certainly fits within the cultural framework. I mean, what we've seen in the past is that the female suicide bombers are often the surviving relatives of men who have died in battle or been suicide bombers themselves, so they're trying to avenge the death of their loved one. But we also see as we see across the Middle East, women who, say, have been raped or have been caught having an affair or just a romance can be shunned by their families. They're disgraced, so what else is there for them?

So there's a suggestion from this woman that in a few instances, she witnessed the rape, would intervene, pull the woman aside, say, "Well, what choice do you have now?" and then hand them back. It's a brutal, brutal business, John.

ROBERTS: So the woman gets victimized twice.

WARE: Absolutely, and she becomes a lethal weapon.

ROBERTS: Michael, good to see you this morning.

WARE: Cheers, mate.

ROBERTS: Thanks for that. Kiran?