Abstract

Boko Haram is well known for its use of women as suicide bombers. While prior research has examined why this phenomenon is occurring, as well as what makes Boko Haram a unique terror group, the present study examines how their female bombers are infiltrating targets, what types of targets are being successfully infiltrated, and whether the bomber’s gender has an impact on the infiltration tactic and the success of the bombing mission. Utilizing the open-sourced data provided by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), a complementary qualitative dataset was compiled that included 102 female suicide bombing incidents from 2014 to 2017. Results of content analysis indicate that there was a variety of infiltration tactics used by the female bombers that progressively evolved as specific tactics’ effectiveness waned, and that gender impacted the missions allowing for the female bombers to effectively infiltrate soft targets with high casualties, increasing the group’s overall utilization of females in operative roles.

摘要

博科圣地组织以利用女性作为自杀式炸弹袭击者而闻名。虽然之前的研究已经研究了为什么会发生这种现象，以及是什么让博科圣地组织成为一个独特的恐怖组织，但本研究调查了他们的女性炸弹手如何渗透目标，成功渗透了哪些类型的目标，以及炸弹手的性别是否与对渗透战术和轰炸任务成功的影响。利用全球恐怖主义数据库 (GTD) 提供的开源数据，编制了一个补充性定性数据集，其中包括 2014 年至 2017 年的 102 起女性自杀式爆炸事件。内容分析结果表明，恐怖分子使用了多种渗透策略随着特定战术有效性的减弱而逐渐演变的女性轰炸机，