As I see it | Indonesia needs more women in counterterrorism, like Malaysia’s Normah Ishak

The two terror attacks in Indonesia this week point to an alarming trend: women are taking a leading role in extremist causes, and in some cases supplanting men as frontliners

As Jakarta moves to invest in women to close the gender gap, it should show that they can be as influential as men in the fields of intelligence and security

Reading Time:3 minutes

Police officers stand guard at the main gate of the National Police Headquarters in Jakarta following a suspected militant attack. Photo: AP

Published: 11:00am, 2 Apr 2021Updated: 11:52am, 12 Apr 2021

Indonesia’s two terror attacks this week resulted in limited casualties, but they point to an increasingly alarming trend.

While women have always been crucial to terrorist networks, mostly behind the scenes, they are taking a leading role in extremist causes and in some cases supplanting men as terror masterminds’ frontliners of choice.

After a recently married couple – the woman being four months pregnant – unleashed a pressure-cooker bomb at a cathedral in Makassar on Palm Sunday, killing themselves and injuring at least 20 others, three women were among those arrested for possible links to the perpetrators. On Thursday, a 25-year-old female university dropout went to the national police headquarters in Jakarta and fired at officers. She was shot dead.

In a report published last September, the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) think tank pointed to the growing number of female extremists in Indonesia. While only four women had been imprisoned on terrorism charges before the declaration of Islamic State (Isis) in June 2014, by last September there were 39 women awaiting trial or serving sentences for terrorism in the country.

What changed? Experts who have studied Indonesian terrorist networks say women have always been crucial to their resilience. Among other things, they raised funds to conduct attacks, evaded surveillance to pass messages, and were part of marriages that solidified ties between groups with jihadist leanings.

Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the al-Qaeda network’s Southeast Asian offshoot – which carried out some of Indonesia’s deadliest attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people – did not use women as combatants. But as more women radicalised by Isis ideology to seek martyrdom began carrying out attacks, and the phenomenon was amplified on social media, gender norms were overturned.