Women Fight For Right To Join Al Qaeda

In this November 2005 file photo, Iraqi Sajida al-Rishawi reveals an explosive belt as she confesses to her failed bid to set off an explosives belt inside an Amman hotel targeted by al Qaeda. (CBS)

(AP) Muslim extremist women are challenging al Qaeda's refusal to include - or at least acknowledge - women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.

In response to a female questioner, al Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al Qaeda fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al Qaeda.

A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."

"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al Qaeda, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."

Such postings have appeared anonymously on discussion forums of Web sites that host videos from top al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. While the most popular site requires names and passwords, many people use only nicknames, making their identities and locations impossible to verify.

However, groups that monitor such sites say the postings appear credible because of the knowledge and passion they betray. Many appear to represent computer-literate women arguing in the most modern of venues - the Internet - for rights within a feudal version of Islam.

"Women were very disappointed because what al-Zawahri said is not what's happening today in the Middle East, especially in Iraq or in Palestinian groups," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. "Suicide operations are being carried out by women, who play an important role in jihad."

It's not clear how far women play a role in al Qaeda because of the group's amorphous nature.

Terrorism experts believe there are no women in the core leadership ranks around bin Laden and al-Zawahri. But beyond that core, al Qaeda is really a movement with loosely linked offshoots in various countries and sympathizers who may not play a direct role. Women are clearly among these sympathizers, and some are part of the offshoot groups.

In the Iraq branch, for example, women have carried out or attempted at least 20 suicide bombings since 2003. Al Qaeda members suspected of training women to use suicide belts were captured in Iraq at least three times last year, the U.S. military has said.

Hamas, another militant group, is open about using women fighters and disagrees with al Qaeda's stated stance. At least 11 Palestinian women have launched suicide attacks in recent years.

Jihad is not exclusive to men.

Umm Farouq

"A lot of the girls I speak to ... want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women's leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don't have a special militant wing for women ... but that doesn't mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."

Al-Zawahri's remarks show the fine line al Qaeda walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al Qaeda's attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large. On the other hand, noted SITE director Katz, al-Zawahri has to consider that many al Qaeda supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.

Al-Zawahri's comments came in a two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web site, where he answered hundreds of questions sent in by al Qaeda sympathizers. He praised the wives of mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He also said a Muslim woman should "be ready for any service the mujahedeen need from her," but advised against traveling to a war front like Afghanistan without a male guardian.

Al-Zawahri's stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. air strike in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2001. He later accused the U.S. of intentionally targeting women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I say to you ... (I have) tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favorite wife's chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling," he wrote in a 2005 letter.

Al-Zawahri's question-and-answer campaign is one sign of al Qaeda's sophistication in using the Web to keep in touch with its popular base, even while its leaders remain in hiding. However, the Internet has also given those disenfranchised by al Qaeda - in this case, women - a voice they never had before.

(AP) The Internet is the only "breathing space" for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, "Ossama2001" wrote. She said al-Zawahri's words "opened old wounds" and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.

Another woman, Umm Farouq, or mother of Farouq, wrote: "I use my pen and words, my honest emotions ... Jihad is not exclusive to men."

Such women are al Qaeda sympathizers who would not feel comfortable expressing themselves with men or others outside their circles, said Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on terrorism and Islamic movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

"The Internet gives them the ideal place to write their ideas, while they're hidden far from the world," he said.

Men have also responded to al-Zawahri's remarks. One male Internet poster named Hassan al-Saif asked: "Does our sheik mean that there is no need to use women in our current jihad? Why can we not use them?"

He was in the minority. Dozens of postings were signed by men who agreed with al-Zawahri that women should stick to supporting men and raising children according to militant Islam.

Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called "al-Khansaa" - named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle - has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the "women's information office in the Arab peninsula," and its contents include articles on women's terrorist training camps, according to SITE.

Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August 2004 with the lead article "Biography of the Female Mujahedeen."

The article read:

"We will stand, covered by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in hand, our children in our laps, with the Quran and the Sunna (sayings) of the Prophet of Allah directing and guiding us."

By Associated Press writer Lauren Frayer; AP writer Pakinam Amer contributed to this report from Cairo; AP writer Diaa Hadid contributed from the Gaza Strip; and AP writer Zeina Karam contributed from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Food Prices Predicted to Ease Before Entering Steady Climb

PARIS, May 29 -- The recent steep jump in global food prices should ease in the near term, according to a new report, but prices over the next decade are likely to remain high, spurred by the rising cost of oil, the declining dollar and increasing demand for biofuels.

The rush to invest heavily in ethanol and other biofuels needs to be reevaluated, particularly since the benefits "are at best modest, and sometimes even negative," according to the annual global agriculture assessment by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).

About 33 percent of the expected rise in food prices over the next decade can be tied to biofuels, OECD agriculture official Loek Boonekamp said, but the economic, environmental and energy-security benefits of diverting agriculture products to fuel "are probably smaller than commonly expected."

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría told reporters in releasing the 72-page report that "we do not expect the current price levels to last" but that "the average of most agricultural commodity prices over the next 10 years will still exceed the average of the previous decade by about 10 to 50 percent in real terms, depending on the commodity you look at."

One reason for the spike in food prices is temporary weather anomalies, such as droughts in wheat-producing regions. But other changes affecting prices are more lasting, such as population increases, demand for biofuels and changes in food consumption patterns as rising income in developing nations such as China and India push people away from traditional staples such as rice toward meat and dairy products typically consumed by the more affluent.

Overlaying these issues, the report says, are complex, constantly changing variables, particularly the downward slide of the dollar and the rising price of oil, which is used in producing and transporting food. And a key unknown is what impact climate change could have on future food production, the report says.

Gurría said higher investment in research and development, technology transfers to less-developed countries and the use of genetically modified seeds could increase agriculture output, lowering prices.

"Today, around 862 million people are suffering from hunger and malnourishment -- this highlights the need to reinvest in agriculture," said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the FAO.

While higher prices help people who produce food, "the poor, and in particular the urban poor in net food importing countries, will suffer more," the report said. "In many low-income countries, food expenditures average over 50 percent of income and the higher prices . . . will push more people into undernourishment."

In such countries, "rising food prices mean an erosion of the capacity to meet basic needs, and this is likely to become a potential source of political tension and even violence," the report said. Escalating food prices have already touched off riots in some countries.

Food prices in the past year have risen more than 20 percent in China, Kenya and Sri Lanka; more than 18 percent in Botswana and Pakistan; and 11 to 14 percent in Indonesia, South Africa, Egypt, Haiti and Bangladesh, according to the report.

No country has been immune. In the past year, the report says, the price of butter was up 50 percent in Poland, 40 percent in France and 36 percent in Jordan. Eggs rose 34 percent in the United States and 30 percent in Britain. The price of vegetable oil -- a key commodity in diets in developing countries -- rose 47 percent in Botswana and 18 percent in India. Meat prices jumped 45 percent in China.

The report predicts prices will continue their climb, on an average basis, in the coming decade. When the average for 2008 to 2017 is compared with the 1998 to 2007 period, beef and pork prices could be about 20 percent higher, raw and white sugar about 30 percent; wheat, corn and skim milk powder 40 to 60 percent; butter and oilseeds more than 60 percent; and vegetable oils more than 80 percent, the report says.

The report estimates the cost of oil at $90 a barrel this year and next, gradually rising to $104 a barrel in 2017. The projections illustrate the difficulty in working with such a moving target, because in fact, speculation has driven the price of oil as high as $135 a barrel in recent weeks. Some analysts predict the price will fall to $80 a barrel next year, while others forecast prices of $225 or more by 2012.

FAO economist Merritt Cluff said food prices in the report would be even higher "if we were able to redo the models" based on current oil prices.

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The Coming Energy Wars

Oil prices could hit $200 a barrel in the next few months. How the spike changes everything.

Jeff Pachoud / AFP-Getty Images

This spring, America hit a historic point. With average gas prices per gallon edging toward $4, America's notoriously profligate ways started to change fast. Americans are driving less, using mass transit more, buying fewer gas guzzlers, indeed shopping less wantonly in general, and lowering their previously unshakable confidence as consumers. Suddenly, Americans are acting differently; if not exactly like Swedes, then not quite like themselves, either. It's a shift that could change the world.

And there are more changes to come. So far the price shock has triggered the most obvious consumer shifts in the United States. Europeans, already greener, are also are buffered by a stronger currency, and Asians are protected from the spiking price of oil by subsidies that control the impact on gas prices at the pump. But if oil prices continue to rise, and the subsidy dam breaks, as seems likely, the energy revolution now transforming America will spread. "We sailed through $80 a barrel," notes energy authority Daniel Yergin, author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power" and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "But that doesn't mean we'll sail through $200 a barrel. That sort of price would have enormous global consequences."

A year ago no one was talking about $200 oil, and now everyone in the markets is, for scary reasons. Oil prices climbed from $10 in 1999 to $95 last year without slowing the surging world economy, in large part because the markets believed the spike was at core driven by rising demand, particularly from India and China, which feeds growth. There was concern over supply, too, but nothing like the tumult prompted by the stranglehold OPEC imposed on the world in the 1970s, at least not until recent months. As the per-barrel price climbed over the last few months, with futures reaching $135 last week, the consensus began shifting to a new more gloomy view: that not only would long-term demand, led by China and India, continue to grow, but that the supply threats, including increasing conflict, falling investment, industry bottlenecks and downward estimates of big field reserves in major oil states—aren't going away any time soon. Now many (though not all) serious people take $200 oil—and the prospect of another '70s-style oil shock—seriously. Goldman Sachs warned that the $200 barrier could be hit within the next six to 24 months.

That's way too fast for comfort (or should be) even for those who welcome high gas prices as a way to induce energy conservation and fight global warming. Already skyrocketing oil prices are causing real pain for ordinary people, threatening global economic growth, and reviving the specter of inflation. The price pressure is now particularly acute in big emerging markets like China and India, which in recent years had become paragons of fiscal responsibility that tended to dampen global inflation by exporting cheap goods and services. Now they threaten to become exporters of inflation, particularly if energy price controls give way. Americans now making up for their losses at the gas pump by flocking to Wal-Mart for cheap Chinese goods would be out of luck. Make no mistake: $200 oil in 2009 would be a painful shock, not just a green tax on gas guzzlers.

Oil drives so much of the global economy, it's almost impossible to fully imagine the world of $200 oil. No question, the shock will force nations to go greener much faster than now, particularly by conserving energy and developing and adopting new non-fossil fuels. But none of this can happen full stop in six to 24 months. So the predictions tend to be gloomy: some analysts see a shift toward regional trade, and even a major reversal of globalization itself, as rising transport costs make it too expensive to ship many kinds of goods long distances. A major acceleration in the transfer of wealth that has, in the past five years, shifted trillions of petrodollars from oil consumers to producers would alter the world balance of power—including a boost for the troublesome oil autocrats of Iran, Venezuela and Russia. At $200 a barrel the proven oil reserves of the six Gulf nations alone would rise in value to $95 trillion, about twice the size of public equity markets, according to Morgan Stanley managing director Stephen Jen. That would make the Sovereign Wealth Funds of oil states market kingmakers. Western efforts to press more openness on these funds, many controlled by royal courts, would surely grow.

While some optimists believe the windfall could bring the Middle East into the modern world if it's smartly invested, that's a big if. Already many small states are struggling to wisely invest their oil windfall to date, and the corrupting curse of oil wealth is well known. Michael L. Ross, associate professor of political science at UCLA, notes that the percentage of the world's wars that take place in oil states is growing. The number of oil states is also rising—with Cambodia, East Timor and others joining the ranks—with more likely to follow as prices climb. Many of these newcomers are small, and ill equipped to cope with the corruption that often wastes the windfall.

No industry will be unaffected. Any company that moves goods or people needs oil. At $200 oil could make the long-predicted death of Detroit, or at least one of its Big Three, a reality. Airlines are vulnerable too. Skyrocketing jet fuel prompted American to announce it would cut flights due to the grounding of numerous older, less fuel-efficient planes. Air France-KLM recently warned that profits are likely to fall by a third this year, and CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta suggests $200 oil would represent a far bigger shock than 9/11 or the SARS epidemic of 2003, which sent the airline industry into a tailspin. "It's more than a change, it's a revolution, a new industry, in fact," says Spinetta. "We would have a lot of bankruptcies very rapidly in Europe, the U.S., and Asia. And there will be restructuring of networks, cutting routes, cutting capacities." The effect of mergers and cutbacks may leave smaller cities from Tuscany to the American Midwest with ghost airports.

The oil-induced depression of the American consumer may be a harbinger of what's to come elsewhere. In the United States, consumer confidence is now at a 15-year low. Energy Department data show that $4-a-gallon gas is finally forcing Americans to cut back on driving; this year gas consumption in the country is expected to drop for the first time since 1991. No amount of "fiscal stimulus" looks likely to help: Citibank estimates that even if prices merely stay as they are, the year-on-year increase in the U.S. consumer-gas bill will siphon away the bulk of the $120 billion in expected tax rebates. As food and gas prices go up, spending on everything else will go down. No wonder big-box stores like Wal-Mart are having record quarters, and middle-market chains are suffering.

Expect these trends to hit Europe soon, too. Germans are actually beginning to slow down on the autobahn to save fuel, which has risen in price from 0.92 to 1.53 euros per liter since 2000 (a 66 percent increase). Analysts say that the more Europeans spend on gas, the less they will spend on furniture, clothing and white goods. Indeed sales in all those categories are already down. "It's going to feel like a global recession inside many companies," notes Citibank European equities economist Richard Reid. "We expect an increase in corporate failures, and a lot of M&A. You might well see flush emerging-markets firms [think Tata] swooping in to buy up ailing Western firms on the cheap."

With oil futures up 40 percent in just the last two months, the sense of an accelerating shock is already palpable in the United States. While American automakers were moving slowly toward smaller cars before the spike, sales of SUVs and pickups are now falling so fast, they appear to be caught flat-footed. "At $200, GM tanks," says energy expert Philip Verleger. "They just don't have time to fix their fleet." Ford CEO Alan Mullaly, warning two weeks ago that he no longer expects a return to profitability in 2009, said he believes the gas-price shift is permanent. Ford has slashed production of its F-series pickup trucks, an American best seller for 20 years. Meanwhile, Nissan unveiled a $115 million new plant outside Tokyo designed to build lithium-ion fuel cells to power a new generation of battery cars.

The individual decisions about what we'll drive, how often we'll fly and whether we'll upgrade our televisions as quickly are only part of the larger macroeconomic threat of higher oil prices. The threat has yet to be officially tallied; major financial institutions like Morgan Stanley have only just begun to seriously discuss the potential downgrades to the global economy should $200 oil become a reality. But already, it's clear that oil is catalyzing the threat of inflation in rich countries as well as poor. Inflation looks likely to be about 5 percent in the United States this summer, and about 3 percent in Europe. But in emerging economies, double-digit inflation could become the norm. "In America, it will feel like the opposite of the 1990s," says Morgan Stanley chief U.S. economist Richard Berner. "But if you think things won't be pleasant for industrial nations, think about developing economies, where people spend 50 percent of their income on food and fuel."

Indeed, there's concern that as higher oil prices force many Asian economies to reduce or even cut their generous fuel subsidies, growth will slow sharply, and there could be social unrest as the world's poorest become more desperate. The political ramifications of this (which already include moves away from free trade), combined with the ever-rising costs of doing business as usual, could force a retrenchment from globalization. "It's a harbinger of the reversal of globalization," says Jeff Rubin, chief economist for CIBC World Markets. "At $200 a barrel, you'll see transport costs rise so much that they will effectively reverse the trade liberalization of the last 30 years." He predicts that world trade will realign itself regionally, so that while Japan may continue to ship in goods from China, the United States will increasingly import from Latin America. "If you look at the period from 1973 to 1979 [when oil spiked] you'll find the same thing happened," he notes. "The share of imports to the U.S. from Latin America and the Caribbean rose by 6 percentage points. That was all about freight costs."

Regionalism won't stop at trade. There will be new financial and service hubs in energy-rich areas like Russia, Latin America and the Gulf. Sovereign Wealth Funds will continue to buy up big chunks of Western banks and blue-chip companies, as well as investing more broadly in a new range of countries and currencies (which is likely to make forex movements stronger and more unpredictable). The rise of the Sovereign Wealth Funds has already triggered a protectionist backlash, including U.S. moves to step up the vetting of foreign investors in American firms.

Worse conflicts are possible. "As areas like the Mideast and Africa, Russia and Venezuela continue to rise, you're going to see increasing energy greed, aggressive behaviors and neocolonial actions on the part of various countries," predicts Scott Nyquist, the head of McKinsey's energy practice. As Iran gets richer, Hizbullah might get stronger. China will clearly wield more might in Africa. Western ideas about civil society, the environment and women's rights could be displaced with new sets of values.

More blood will almost certainly be spilled. Oil wealth tends to wreak havoc on a nation's economy and politics, discouraging diversity, aggravating ethnic grievances and making it easier to fund insurgencies. Oil countries now host about a third of the world's civil wars, up from one fifth in 1992. "There's a vicious cycle, which you can see played out in places like Iraq and Nigeria, where conflict fuels higher prices, and higher prices in turn fuel conflict," says UCLA's Ross.

The lack of any spare capacity in the global pipeline makes it difficult to solve such situations with sanctions; taking any oil off the market would, at this point, merely ignite an already explosive situation. The megatrends fueling the global supply shortage tend to feed on one another. Higher prices fuel the growing tendency of oil states like Russia and Venezuela to re-nationalize fields. That often leads to lower output, due to the inefficiency of most state oil companies, notes Sanford Bernstein analyst Ben Dell. The publicly traded companies have to go where they can. As fields in peaceful places (Alaska, the North Sea) are tapped out, the hunt for new oil has moved into conflict zones (Nigeria and Angola) or geologically extreme territory (Siberia, the deep sea). And while higher prices are already driving down energy consumption in rich nations, that drop does not offset the booming demand in emerging markets.

Meanwhile, though numerous green technologies hold plenty of promise, none of them are going to save the day any time soon. "It's a false god," says Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy. "There will be step changes in technology, but people forget the scale of the oil business. Ethanol production was 5 billion gallons last year, with huge subsidies to farmers and rising food prices. But that's the size of one production platform off the coast of West Africa."

So, what's to be done? For starters, policy makers might stop grilling big oil companies about why prices are so high (since they now control only a small percent of known reserves, it's largely out of their hands), support smarter green initiatives (wind and solar credits rather than ethanol boondoggles) and stop pandering to voters with subsidies and gas-tax cuts that ignore the new reality—oil is a finite resource, more people want more of it, and the profligacy with which we've used it is going to change. "There's a fuel that's cheap, clean and readily available, and it's called conservation," says West. By some estimates, the world could save 25 percent of its oil usage with simple measures like driving the speed limit, turning off lights, and fully using the green technology we already have (hybrids, better insulation, etc, etc). While it's never been the inclination of rich nations—particularly America—to rein in consumption, it's a notion we'll undoubtedly become more comfortable with as energy prices rise. It happened in the 1970s. It will happen again—and if we're very lucky, it will become the important and lasting effect of $200 oil.

With Barrett Sheridan in New York, Keith Naughton in Detroit, Stefan Theil in Berlin, Michael Freedman in Paris and George Wehrfritz in Hong Kong

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