Chechnya's Black Widows are female Islamic suicide bombers. They are a product of Muslim warlord Shamil Basayev, the man responsible for the 2002 Dubrovka Theater siege in Moscow and the Beslan school massacre. Basayev claimed to have trained, equipped, and deployed 50 Black Widows - and their missions are always deadly.
In the Russian media, the term "Black Widow" has been applied to all female suicide bomber regardless of ethnicity, as fears have increased of ethnic Russians converting to Islam and joining their ranks. Many have come to see the Black Widows as an overall religious phenomenon that extends well beyond the entity calling itself the "Black Widows' Brigade.".
In his quest to turn the Caucasus region into a united Islamic theocracy, Shamil Basayev's terrorist crusade of suicide bombings has come to plague Russia. Many hundreds of innocent people have died directly from Black Widow suicide attacks, including 150 in the summer of 2003 alone.
The first known "Black Widow" was Khava Barayeva, a Muslim woman who blew herself up at a Russian military base in Chechnya in June 2000. An arrest warrant was issued in Russia in early 2004 for a woman popularly referred to as "Black Fatimah," (the name of Muhammad's daughter) who was thought to be one of the principal recruiters of suicide bombers inside Russia.
Some claim that potential suicide bombers are drugged and coerced into action and that extensive brainwashing techniques have been used on these women. But that is not true. They are just devout, religious Muslims, and thus are infected with the most corrosive moral and mental poison known to humankind.
