Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist

¶ … Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist by Baya Gacemi translated by Paul Cote and Constantina Mitchell (2006)

As an active member of the Algerian Women's Rights League, the need to address the powerful social and political issues identified by Gacemi have assumed increasing importance for me in recent years. In this regard, the following responses and proposals are provided using Gacemi's book, I, Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist, as a guide and source doc.

What steps do you propose to protect women from repressive social norms? How can this situation be changed?

History has shown time and again that those in power will take whatever steps required to stay in power, and this has almost always meant trouble for the women involved. Social norms of any type are difficult to change, and this requires time and there is no room for complacency. More importantly, perhaps, although Algeria is a wealthy nation in terms of natural resources, little of this affluence has been transferred to the poorest regions of Algeria and there are few or no opportunities available for employment or education for many women, especially in rural areas. Unfortunately, many women in Algeria do not have any time to waste waiting for these repressive social norms to change and time is therefore of the essence.

The following steps could help to address some of the more pressing issues facing these women today:

a. Redistribute the country's wealth;

b. Replace the country's religious law with secular, democratic counterparts based on Western models; and, c. Adopt a bill of rights for all Algerians that mirrors the human rights position adopted by the United Nations and other international human rights organizations.

Clearly, though, none of these initiatives will be achieved in the foreseeable future absent substantive change from within, and it is certain that the current trends to Islamic fundamentalism will continue to increase absent these changes.

2. How do you propose to protect women from repressive social norms?

When something is made a priority, it is by definition supposed to get better. Therefore, the only way to ensure that women in Algeria are protected from existing repressive social norms is to make it a national priority to change them. Alas, this is easier said than done for many of the reasons already discussed concerning how those in power tend to try to stay in power at whatever cost, and any proposal to address these issues must face these fundamental constraints at the outset before any further progress can be expected. The increased intervention and oversight of nongovernmental organizations might be useful for this purpose, but these organizations have not proven all that effective in the past.

Furthermore, because the effects of repressive social norms on women are localized in terms of being highly personal affairs that generally exist between husbands and wives and the close social circle that exists beyond the marriage within the community, enforcing any type of protective measure would be virtually impossible if the government and the laws of the land were not changed to support and safeguard these personal rights. Therefore, Algerian women must be empowered to overcome these personal constraints to their individual freedom through education and additional employment opportunities, at home and abroad.

3. How do you propose to guard women from recruiters (GIA) who aim to use women for their cultural and religious purposes?

When a woman is drowning, any type of rope thrown to save her will do; however, once she is safely in the boat, it may become apparent that she would have been better off staying in the water. Unfortunately, this is the case with Nadia and similarly situated women in Algeria today. Absent other viable alternatives, these downtrodden women are faced with the harsh reality of either accepting the offers from fundamentalist Islamic recruiters to join them or subjecting themselves and their families to harsh reprisals. Beyond this pressure, though, there are some powerful religious and historic patriarchal issues at play in the country that will not be overcome easily or quickly either.

Indeed, men in Algeria are absolute rulers in their own homes when it comes to the women in their family, and are free to marry as many women as they see fit and to dispose of the marital assets according to their whims without consulting their spouses. For example, Nadia reports that when her husband, Ahmed, brought home another woman who was five months' pregnant ("and had the flu to boot"), she assumed he had taken her as a second wife. Guarding women from these social conventions will be impossible without addressing the fundamental social conditions and cultural norms that exist in Algeria today, and these issues are discussed further below.

4. Consider the social conditions and cultural norms addressed in Gacemi's book, I, Nadia. The social conditions and norms described in Gacemi's book are enormously repressive for Algerian women and are suggestive of the European Middle Ages, a period in Western history when people still believed that all of their problems were caused by evil spirits. In such unenlightened settings, women will be at a natural disadvantage because of the patriarchal power structure that existed then and now. For instance, Ahmed "always said that women are highly susceptible to demonic possession, that they need to be closely monitored and put on the path of righteousness very early. That's why he and the others sought out adulteresses and stoned them. They killed several that way. Or else they tortured and mutilated them with a knife." In addition, Algerian women recruited by the GIA are required to become hateful as a way of life. In fact, Nadia was criticized on the one hand by one female leader because she was not sufficiently militant: "You have to help the brothers wage jihad to reestablish the caliphate. We women can do a lot to attain that noble objective." On the other hand, the same woman told her later that she envied Nadia because she had a civil wedding while hers was a sham, and her children would have no official father and she would be recorded as an unwed mother.

5. What are the rights, duties, social expectations of these women? Beyond their traditional role as women in a patriarchal society, Algerian women that are forced to join the terrorists are expected to carry out any orders without hesitation. Usually these orders involve killing others and themselves in the process. According to Gacemi, "The terrorists took their cues on how to behave from the teachings of a little book called Hosn El Muslim. It explains how good Muslims should conduct themselves in life. Killing was always on their minds.... He wanted to teach me to kill at any cost." In fact, Gacemi reports that Nadia describes how Ahmed would take her on training missions that always ended with them blowing something up at the cost of their own lives, or at least Nadia's life. The justification used by Ahmed and his colleagues to support these rights, duties and social expectations of women was a fatwa: "Ahmed had a fatwa to justify his activities with the GIA." According to Amhed, "I'm not the one doing the killing. My hand throws the bomb, but it's not really me. God is the one who is ordering me to do it, and he's the one who guides my hand.... Innocent victims who die like that are lucky. They go straight to heaven. They're martyrs."