The Involvement of Women and Children in the Bombing Attack in Indonesia

This paper discusses women and children involvement in the terrorism in Indonesia. As it is the fact that in the first half of the 2018 there was bombing attack in Surabaya and Sidoarjo East Java involving women and children as the main actors. This action marks as a new strategy of terrorist group in Indonesia to employ them as the martyr of their battle. Indonesia has experiences a series of bombing attacks for many years with the men as the main perpetrators. In the past, women in the jihadist group are usually as the housewife and nurturing their children as well as supporting their husband by providing logistic. Data of this article was collected using interview, observation and documentary research. Findings of this study shows that nowadays, using women as the martyr was an effective way to gain the terrorism goal for the following reasons; firstly, women have skills to transfer their knowledge to their children including the radical thought, therefore all member of the family are involved in the bombing actions. Secondly, women are less suspected than men; therefore they will freely attack at the public sphere. Thirdly, women can play many roles in the terrorism act both in the back and the front line of actions. Furthermore, this study also found that the daily performances of those actors of terrorism are similar of common people and they interact with their neighbors in which this different from the past where generally terrorist families live as a “closed” group.