Violence against women, in all its forms, is rooted in deep-seated discrimination and in deliberate attempts by oppressive authorities to strip women of their power and agency. This strategy seeks to confine them to the “zone of non-agency”: culturally as inactive women, socially as powerless, and even biologically as diminished.
This has created a collective memory steeped in an imposed sense of female inferiority used both to justify exclusion and to normalize hostility against women. Beneath the surface, however, lies a web of fears and pathologies: gynophobia (fear of women), misogyny (hatred of women), femicide (killing of women), and other entrenched neuroses that over time have made fear of women instinctive.
The symbolic violence against women is wide-ranging and complex: discriminatory violence, linguistic violence, anthropological-historical violence, epistemological violence, legal violence, and media violence (whether “entertainment” or “news” violence). In today’s Syria, amid political collapse, social disintegration, and a collective silence imposed by force, these forms of violence now manifest in their most grotesque shapes—abductions, enforced disappearances, rape, torture, and murder. What once targeted individuals has expanded into a political, gendered, and societal policy: one of the most important mechanisms of domination, stripping women from public life and turning their absence into a weapon of intimidation that destroys entire communities, curtails education, work, and mobility, alters how women dress and live, and extends its reach into the most private spheres, even the heart itself.
Collective Punishment of Women
Despite the apparent differences in what has happened and continues to happen to Alawite women in the coastal region or in the rural areas of Homs and western Hama, and to Druze women in Suwayda — whether abduction, kidnapping, forced marriage, rape, abuse, murder, enforced disappearance, or detention as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges — what unites these women is not simply that they are treated as vulnerable minorities or used as pressure tools and negotiating cards to break the strength of their local communities. Rather, it is the redefinition of the female body today as a means of collective political and social punishment.
This does not affect minority women in Syria alone; it extends outward as a warning and a threat aimed at any woman or human group that refuses to submit to the authority of the powers that be.
Abduction, kidnapping, and enforced disappearance are, in short, mechanisms used to reassert control over women’s bodies within the boundaries imposed by those powers. A woman’s mere presence in the public sphere, whether for study or work, becomes an a priori accusation that requires justification. This reflects a deep-seated fear of the female body, of its presence and its freedom, within the ideology of Salafi-jihadist extremism. At the same time, it reveals an unspoken acknowledgment of women’s power and their countervailing influence, which drives these groups to exhaust every effort to suppress, confine, and attempt to annihilate women symbolically, morally, and physically, so that the genie never escapes the bottle.
Today’s crimes against women are not committed by perpetrators alone, whoever they may be. In many cases, the authorities in power are not only complicit but active participants — rewriting and exporting alternative narratives through official state discourse that denies the crimes, remains silent about them, or outright lies, and then sometimes justifies them in ways more repugnant than the crimes themselves. This is accompanied by media outlets that cheer and endorse these narratives, while parrots and echo chambers amplify them in grotesque unison.
A quick distinction between the terms currently used regarding the phenomenon of disappeared minority women in Syria since February 2025 may help clarify the situation. The term “abduction” refers to acts carried out by individuals or groups outside the framework of the state, often for material or personal reasons — revenge or ransom — and is a criminal act. “Kidnapping,” however, typically involves an unidentified party or armed group for political purposes, possibly backed by the government, making the term suitable for more complex and broader situations. “Enforced disappearance” refers to the involvement of state authorities, or agents acting on their behalf, in arrest or detention accompanied by denial of the act and concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the victim, as a means of repression and domination. This constitutes a crime against humanity under international law.
It seems to me that what is happening in Syria today to minority women cannot be neatly described by any one of these terms. Rather, based on the details of the stories and testimonies, all three terms together may be necessary to describe the reality we are witnessing.
Women Vanishing from Public Space
In the Syrian coast and the western Hama countryside, testimonies describe women ceasing to attend schools, universities, workplaces, or even markets. Most abductions of Alawite women occur in broad daylight, in public areas, carried out by cars often passing unhindered through security and faction checkpoints, sometimes even without license plates.
Ordinary people avoid leaving their homes after 6 or 7 p.m. Yet despite the visible presence of checkpoints run by the Ministry of Defense and the General Security, the abductions happen in daylight, in full view. The rape of young woman Rowan Asaad, assaulted in broad daylight on her way to work in Huwarat Amourin in the Ghab Plain, illustrates the brutal targeting of an entire sect through its women. Similar is the case of Salwa Ibrahim Ghazoul (38), Zeinab Ghadir al-Dhikr (17), and many more.
Alawite women live in a constant, unrelenting state of fear. Some have returned home after their release, only to be forced to make strange public statements. When Hiba Abbas returned after a week of abduction in Jableh, and before her, Bana Hisham Khaddour, 16 years old, and others, none of the victims shared any genuine details about what had happened to them. Aya Talal Qassem came out to say that she had gone to Aleppo on her own because she had been promised a job!
As for Zeina, who was 17 years old when she was abducted in February 2025, one of the earliest recorded abduction cases, she did not return to her family until two days after Reuters published its report on the abduction of women in Syria, four months after her disappearance.
Then there was the case of Mira Thabet from the Homs countryside. Though she had fled with her lover despite being engaged to someone else, she returned in conservative attire. Her story stirred enormous public uproar and seemed closer to a farcical scenario designed to undermine the credibility of all other accounts of abductions and kidnappings of Alawite women.
Even more jarring was the case of 13-year-old Zeina Ali Ibrahim, abducted in August from al-Sabboura in the Salamiyah countryside in Hama province. Here the authorities found themselves cornered about which fabricated story to concoct: How could a child that young have “run away with a lover”? Or leave her family to live with a friend? Or move to Aleppo for work?
“Security” Without Safety
The great paradox today is the absence of security despite the overwhelming physical presence of the security apparatus. A climate of complicity—sometimes silent, sometimes blatant—has turned the security agencies under the authority of the Ministries of Defense and Interior into actual partners in perpetuating fear. Abductions are carried out systematically in full view of the transitional authorities and with their involvement—whether by denying the kidnappings altogether, by the participation of some of their members, by turning a blind eye to armed groups affiliated with them, by ignoring or dismissing reports of abductions, or through the conspicuous lack of seriousness shown by the Ministries of Defense and Interior in handling such a grave issue.
This denial has been on display in statements such as those made by Sheikh Anas Ayrout, a member of the “Committee for Civil Peace” and the “Ifta’a Committee,” who swore three times that no Alawite women were being abducted in Syria. Likewise, the “Fact-Finding Committee” investigating events in the coastal region declared that it had not received any reports of abductions, neither verbally nor in writing. This rhetoric of denial simply reproduces fear, transforming abductions from an overt crime into a private burden borne solely by the women and their families. It stands in stark contradiction with all international reports that have documented patterns of violations involving gender-based violence, threats, forced marriages, and human trafficking, whether from Reuters, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, the United Nations, or Amnesty International. Yet the position of the authorities remains fixed on denial.
Stripping Women of Victimhood
When stories become undeniable, the stage of justification begins. We recall here what Anwar al-Baba, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, said at the Civil Peace Conference: “There are social and economic reasons for the disappearance of Alawite women.”
This process strips the victim of her humanity by shaming, discrediting, and demonizing her, while also preparing public opinion to accept a narrative that deprives the victim of her own story and her rights, transforming her from victim to culprit. What happened is reframed as a personal decision or emotional choice. The script is repeated again and again, especially now that abductions are no longer exceptional events but systematic practices.
Thus, the victim is stripped of her rights twice: first, when her body is forcibly disappeared and her family is silenced; and second, when she is robbed of her very status as a victim, coerced into adopting a degrading narrative, and blamed for her own disappearance.
This reality led one Alawite girl, before leaving her house for work each morning, to send a daily text message from her phone stating: “I’m not running away with anyone. I love my family very much. There are no problems between us. I don’t want to learn sewing, makeup, or hairdressing. And if I disappear, it means I’ve been abducted.” What started as her individual precaution has now become a widespread practice—akin to a safety protocol—followed by many women in the coastal region, where the risk of abduction has become part of daily life.
The story of Mai Salloum, which became widely known, is among the most brazen. After her disappearance, she briefly appeared at a police station in Latakia, only to vanish again. Later, she reappeared in a video, veiled, claiming she was safe and staying with a friend in Aleppo, denying she had been abducted, despite the tangled and glaring circumstances surrounding her case. Her family rejected that account, describing her as being in a strange, unstable state, unable even to recognize her husband or her brother.
For the security services, the matter was reduced to what one officer told her brother: “Your daughter isn’t a minor. If she wants to go with whomever she loves, that’s her choice.” Once again, the insinuation targeted the “morality” of Alawite women. An abduction case was reframed as an “elopement with a lover,” and no one was pursued or charged.
Videos denying abduction have become an integral part of propaganda and mechanisms of domination: victims are coerced into playing the role of the runaway, forced to sacrifice their reputation, obligations, and ties with family and community. It is a new stage of violence, one that goes beyond the body to seize control of the victim’s narrative itself, reshaped according to the perpetrator’s script.
Silence and Threats
Fear of social stigma or dishonor in conservative communities, along with fear of retaliation from the kidnappers, has forced some families of abducted women into silence. The kidnappers often pursue them, issuing threats against anyone who dares to publicize the abduction or demand disclosure of the victims’ fate.
Some families received threatening messages from unknown foreign numbers. According to a United Nations report, in at least two cases, the police and security forces even blamed the families themselves for the abduction. In one case, involving an 18-year-old girl abducted in broad daylight, her family received threatening messages instructing them to remain silent or risk receiving their daughter’s body. Later, the victim herself sent recordings from a foreign number, telling them she knew where she was being held, that she had been forcibly married, and then all contact with her was cut off.
The use of aliases, forced upon many abducted women or their families, reveals the extent of the fear. One testimony, given under a false name by an Alawite woman, described being abducted from a public square in a coastal village. She suddenly found herself in a passenger van that passed through checkpoints without being stopped, and was thrown into a room with another abducted woman. Both were beaten and humiliated for being Alawite. “They tortured and beat us. We weren’t allowed to speak to each other, but I recognized their accents: one had a foreign accent, the other was local, from Idlib. I knew because they insulted us for being Alawite.” She remains among the disappeared. She once called her family by phone, who saw signs of beating on her face and obvious weight loss, but she insisted she was “fine” and begged them not to publicize her case.
An Amnesty International report confirmed the extent of the violations—killings, arbitrary arrests, and ongoing abductions of women. Stories of missing women appear on social media almost daily, accompanied by pleas from families desperate to learn their daughters’ fate. Testimonies collected from survivors revealed patterns of beatings, drugging, forced marriages of underage girls, and threats of forced divorce for married women in order to legitimize their detention as “wives” of the kidnappers alongside threats of execution if they spoke out.
According to reliable reports cited by Amnesty, at least 36 Alawite women and girls between the ages of three and forty have been abducted in the coastal regions. Some were seized on their way to school or to visit relatives, others from their homes, often in broad daylight. Many were drugged and then physically or sexually assaulted, and released only after ransom was paid.
The true number is undoubtedly far higher. In one small town south of Latakia, Bustan al-Basha, four girls were abducted in a single week. One of them, Hala, was taken while walking from her home to her parents’ house. Three men pushed her into a small truck and drove for hours through one checkpoint after another without being stopped. They eventually took her to an abandoned industrial site and locked her in a room for a week, where they raped her in turns three times. When she cried for help, they mocked her: “Let Bashar al-Assad come save you!” They later dumped her by the roadside and threatened to kill her son if she spoke about what had happened.
Another case involved Maya, a 15-year-old who disappeared from Latakia for two months. During that time, her family received repeated threats and blackmail, including photos showing her beaten face. Desperate, her family released a video plea demanding information about her fate. Shortly afterward, a video appeared on a fake Facebook account showing Maya in a white headscarf, walking with a man who claimed he would marry her, though he was clearly underage himself.
The case of Abeer Suleiman, 29, who was abducted on May 21, is equally chilling. Just hours after her disappearance in the city of Safita, her brother received a phone call: “Don’t wait for her… your sister won’t come back.” Another caller, claiming to be a mediator, later told the family that Abeer would be killed or sold into human trafficking unless they paid a ransom of $15,000. Abeer herself briefly spoke to her family from the same phone, which had an Iraqi number: “I’m not in Syria… everything around me sounds strange; I don’t understand.” The family managed to raise the ransom and transfer it into three separate accounts in Izmir, Turkey, but the kidnappers and mediator then cut off all contact and shut down their phones. To this day, Abeer’s fate remains unknown.
Women as “Prisoners of Exchange”
In the case of Druze women in Suwayda during the massacres of July, the situation escalated from abductions and kidnappings into instances of enforced disappearance. This shift was accompanied by hate speech and incitement in pro-government and allied media outlets, as well as on social media platforms, portraying the Druze as traitors and infidels who deserved killing and abuse. There were even explicit calls for abducting and enslaving Druze women.
This is an extremely complex file, with cases ranging from victims who are believed to have been killed (with no bodies recovered), to others abducted arbitrarily by official or unofficial actors. Stories continue to emerge, with terrified families pleading for the return of missing women. While bodies of massacre victims were arriving at Suwayda Hospital from multiple devastated villages in the north and west of the governorate, a video surfaced showing a woman with a girl and two children alongside an armed man who claimed he had rescued them from al-Hijri militias. It later became clear they were, in fact, captives being held for use as bargaining chips.
This was confirmed by Majida Ridan, one of the women who was eventually released in a prisoner exchange. Yet the issue of kidnapping and enforced disappearance in Suwayda remains highly fraught. Entire families were detained during and after the massacres, first held in shelters in Daraa city, then some were transferred to Jaramana in Damascus’s suburbs, where a Druze majority resides. Other families remain detained in Daraa and surrounding towns, and their women are being treated as prisoners of war.
In another incident, tribal fighters were filmed in a vehicle with Druze women and children from local villages. When asked by an Alaraby TV reporter about their identities and why they had civilians with them, the fighters claimed they had taken them “for protection.” When the reporter asked one of the women why they had “handed themselves over,” she replied: “They took us!” Flustered, the reporter cut the interview short: “It seems this isn’t the right time for a conversation.” These were not isolated cases. With the withdrawal of government and tribal militia forces, the extent of the atrocities in Suwayda—including enforced disappearances of women and children—began to come to light. The fate of dozens of other women remains unknown. On August 17, a bus entering Suwayda through the sole humanitarian crossing was hijacked; six women were among its passengers. The kidnappers contacted families of the disappeared, informing them that the women would be exchanged for prisoners in their custody.
So far, no precise figures exist for the number of missing women and girls in Suwayda. However, a UN experts’ report issued on August 21 documented the abduction of at least 105 women by forces affiliated with the Syrian government, with 80 still missing. The report also documented at least three cases of women raped before execution, evidence of a growing catastrophe whose full scale remains unclear.
Another deeply disturbing dimension is the sexual violence committed against women in Suwaydaduring the massacres. A horrific image circulated online showing three naked, murdered women. Initially, as part of a smear campaign against the Druze led by the authorities and their allies, claims spread that the women were Bedouin. The fact-checking platform Taakad later verified they were Druze women, killed along with nine family members by forces linked to the transitional authority. Out of respect for the victims’ families, Taakad withheld further details.
In al-Koum district of Suwayda, one atrocity revealed the rape of a mother and her three daughters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 12 other family members were killed, including eight women and girls, some raped before execution, and an elderly man. They were murdered in different ways: some by point-blank gunfire, others executed in a car. The UN confirmed that some freed Druze women now fear returning home, worried for their safety.
Throughout history, women have often carried war-torn countries to safety, shouldering the burden of rebuilding and survival. Today, shattered Syria needs its women more than ever. Yet instead of empowering them, the ruling powers and their allies are systematically undermining them: through abductions, kidnappings, and enforced disappearances that humiliate minority groups, terrorize them by targeting their women, strip women of their presence, power, and agency, exclude them from public life, use them as bargaining tools, and instrumentalize their bodies as a means of collective political and social punishment for any community that dares defy the forces of control ravaging the country.
How can Syria ever be rebuilt without its women?
