I have a Pakistani contact who has cast some doubt on elements of this story -- more information as it comes available. But anyway, here is more evidence that suicide bombing is not just, as it is often represented, the last resort of the poor and outgunned. From the BBC, with thanks to Skeetstreet:
Two sisters suspected of training to be suicide bombers have been arrested from the northern Pakistani town of Swat, police say.Police had been looking for them since June last year, officials said.
The women are related to a top militant who has been sentenced to death for his role in the bombing of two Shia mosques in Karachi last year.
These are the first ever arrests in Pakistan of women charged with being suicide bombers.
"It removes a major threat because such an unusual attack using female suicide bombers would have caused a lot of damage," a senior unnamed Pakistani security official is quoted as saying by AFP.
"It would have set an example for others to follow."
Radical influence
Their father Sher Mohammed Baloch told the BBC News website that his daughters had come under the influence of their uncle Gul Hasan, who is a senior member of an outlawed Sunni Muslim militant group, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
Okay, so these girls were arrested for being suicide bombers. It's only fair to 'field test' them. That would mean strapping fully loaded suicide belts on them and send them into a field monitored by a sapper robot that detonates bombs. If the sapper detonates a belt, then the girls are suicide bombers, no doubt about it. Yep, I like that idea.
I guess being a female suicide bomber in Pakistan beats being raped by 12 neigbors and watching them get off scot-free. Or having acid thrown in your face by a local guy whom you didn't want to marry. Or being hammered to death in your sleep by your father for shaming the family for letting 12 strangers rape you. (Or not marrying the guy who threw acid in your face.) 'Honor' must be restored, after all.
You have to keep these things in perpsective!