The name of the Wagner paramilitary group’s target is Aissatou (not her real name), who they say is providing logistical help to jihadist groups.
“Wagner raided her house but she wasn’t there,” a local source told AFP on condition of anonymity, of the raid in early February.
“She was suspected of passing on information about the harvest schedule to the jihadists and took care of some of their purchases,” the source added.
The seemingly trivial tasks are fundamental to the activities of the jihadist groups, who roam the Sahel, a semi-arid belt stretching along the Sahara desert’s southern rim from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.
“Women are rare on the front lines of combat but they play a discrete and highly strategic role within terrorist groups,” a Nigerien security source told AFP.- ‘Wives in heaven’ -Women’s roles vary depending on the jihadist group.
Affiliated to Al-Qaeda, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) “formally banned the participation of women in combat”, Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane Elyessa, from the Ivory Coast-based International Academy for the Fight Against Terrorism, said.
The group’s religious interpretation is that “there were no women fighters during the time of the Prophet (Mohammed) or after his succession,” the researcher told a seminar, organised by the academy at the end of last month.
In the central Sahelian countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, where the JNIM dominates, women are mainly involved in logistics, ranging from intelligence to sourcing supplies for fighters.
“Last September in Wagadu Forest (on the border with Mauritania) I came across about 10 women married to jihadists,” a source recounted to AFP, speaking from central Mali.
“They were tasked with identifying motorcycle mechanics, passing messages to village chiefs and identifying military spies,” the source said also on condition of anonymity.
A woman was detained in Niger with an AK-47 assault rifle, a large quantity of magazines and cartridges hidden in her suitcase “destined for armed terrorist groups”, the army said last month.
In neighbouring Burkina, authorities reported cases of “women observed picking up wounded and dead terrorists” during a July 2022 attack against the Kelbo military detachment in the north of the country.
However, other jihadist groups “accept women participating in suicide operations”, Elyessa told AFP, pointing to Boko Haram in the area around the Lake Chad bassin.
Women strapped with explosives carried out a series of attacks in Gwoza in Nigeria’s Borno State last June on behalf of Boko Haram, a UN Security Council document dated early February showed.
The attackers sometimes don’t have a choice or are unaware they are carrying explosives. In some conflicts, women are sometimes kidnapped by jihadists to work for them or recruited by force.
– Economic motives –
Women are often recruited for suicide attacks because of their radical beliefs and conviction that their sacrifice will be rewarded after their death, Elyessa said.
Before carrying out an attack, they undergo preparations to become “wives in heaven”. Their hair is braided and henna is applied to their hands and feet, local sources in northern Nigeria told AFP.
As well as ideology, women join jihadist groups to fight social injustice, out of loyalty to a guardian or ethnic solidarity and to find a devout husband, Elyessa said.
Economic reasons are another motive that is particularly common in northern Benin and Togo, which are also affected by jihadists from the Sahel.
“They are much more into the ‘business’,” Abdel Aziz Mossi, researcher and lecturer at Benin’s Parakou University told AFP.
He said the women developed “informal economic networks” to ensure their daily survival in “areas more or less abandoned by the state”.
An effective programme to counter the jihadist narrative is needed, he said, voicing fears that women’s involvement will only become greater in the region.
“We have to find solutions so that the women are also involved in the (anti-jihadist) fight, prevention, dialogue, civil-military action,” he said.
