Evolution of Terrorism or a Decline of Terrorism in Iraq?

On the New York Times web site, there was an article posted in which it talked about a recent attack that took place in the Iraqi region of Diyala. The interesting circumstances about this attack versus many others was the fact it was conducted by a woman. I guess the trend is turning toward more attacks by women. The post on the article actually has changed to some degree since I originally read it, so I'll share some of what it mentioned additionally. Apparently it suggested two opposing viewpoints as far as what this trend really means. U.S. officials suggest that this means the insurgent forces are losing numbers and are required to rely upon women in order to carry out such attacks. The opposing view is the idea that women are typically considered to be less of a threat and their clothing make it easier to conceal explosives and so it is advantageous to use women to carry out such attacks.

These opposing viewpoints really bring up some interesting issues. The first viewpoint was suggested by U.S. officials. It's reasonable to ask if this is just spin coming from the government in order to help support the effort in Iraq. It does seem reasonable that women could become the new suicide bombers because insurgent forces are reduced to few but women, but the likelihood is questionable. Now the other theory suggests an evolution in terrorist tactics by using women for the reasons stated above. For me, this seems a bit more likely of an outcome, especially because women are not treated as equals in most Arab cultures, so it seems like they would be more "expendable" for terrorist organizations. Certainly there seems to be a lot of strength in this tactic because of Western chivalric attitudes toward women. Women are not typically seen as threats and as potential combatants and certainly there is an attitude of preserving women from attack and doing them no harm. If this really is an evolution in terrorist tactics, it appears that it will be another difficult battle for counterterrorist forces to learn how to combat.