Just Finished re-Reading: Shoot the Women First by Eileen MacDonald (FP: 1991) [241pp] 

The first time she heard about it she wasn’t sure what to think. Apparently, a head of a German anti-terrorist unit was giving the advice that, in any terrorist situation, the security services of the country involved should prioritise in ‘neutralising’ the female terrorists as quickly as possible – in other words to shoot the women first. But why? This book was the authors attempt to discover the reason behind that advice – not by speaking to the security services (that came later), but by speaking to the terrorists themselves. Over the subsequent months she travelled to Spain to speak to the women of ETA, the Basque separatist organisation, interviewed Kim Hyon Hui the North Korean woman who planted the bomb on Korean Air Flight 858 killing all on board in an attempt to disrupt the Seoul Olympic games that year, spent time with the women of the West Bank and interviewed Leila Khaled, infamous hijacker of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), felt vulnerable, for the first time, when she spoke to women from the IRA, interviewed Susanna Ronconi of the Italian Red Brigades and finally spent some time with a number of infamous women of the Red Army Faction from Germany including Astrid Proll. 

I remember reading this not long after it came out in paperback. It was the days when I was commuting into London each day on the train from Kent. You can imagine to looks I got when people saw the title! Reading it over 30 years ago meant that I had very little memory of the text so it felt like the first time. It was interesting looking back to the sometimes dark days of the 70’s and 80’s when planes were being hijacked on a regular basis and bombs were going off all over Europe – including the very city I worked in each day. It was also interesting peeking into the minds of the women doing the hijacking, planting the bombs and shooting it out with the police and security services. Most interesting, naturally, was both their motivation and the ever-present question of why they were considered more dangerous than men.  The author went through several theories – including the old arguments about female terrorists being lesbians or ugly (neither of which is universally true) or even that they felt that had to out-do the men to prove they were worthy (sometimes true to some extent). The answer slowly crystalised through conversations and with a final interview with a member of the German Security Services. Male terrorists, it appeared, treated their activity as a ‘job’ - something they did. Female terrorists, by contrast, treated it as their life. Generally, they had sacrificed much more than the men – family, children, a future – and so their dedication to the cause was much greater. When confronted by armed police a male terrorist would be more likely to surrender, a female terrorist much more likely to pick up her AK-47 and start shooting.  

One of the things that most surprised the author – no doubt expecting the women she spoke to be monsters or at the very least damaged or broken people – was how very ordinary these women were. Although a few frightened her in various ways, she couldn’t help but like a number of them and even admire their stance in the face of oppression and dangerous violence. Many, if not all, were feminists of one sort or another striving for a form of equality. All of them were looking to the future for a better life and better prospects for their children or the future generations of their people. None took their activities lightly and many agonised over the people they had personally killed but felt they had little choice in the matter.  

In some ways this was not an easy read. These women were often killers after all who used violence and the threat of violence to promote their political ends. But terrorism cannot be effectively opposed in any age if we do not at least attempt to understand those who undertake these actions and the reasons behind their acts. I think this book – not at all dated since its original publication – goes a small way towards that understanding. Recommended if you can source a copy.  

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