On August 17, a bus on its way to Suwayda through the only humanitarian crossing open to the besieged governorate was hijacked. Among its passengers were six women and a child. According to the testimony of a relative of one of the abducted women, the kidnappers contacted the family claiming they were from “General Security,” demanding to exchange the women for detainees in their custody. However, the family could not verify whether the kidnappers were indeed an official body or belonged to tribal factions.
These women are not the first kidnapping cases. Following the withdrawal of government forces and tribal factions, what has come to light is not only the scale of atrocities in Suwayda, but also cases of enforced disappearances targeting women and children.
Stories continue to emerge, and terrified families are demanding to know the fate of the missing women and to have them returned. To date, no official or international report has been issued about what happened, amid the ongoing siege on the city and local actors’ insistence on allowing an independent UN investigation committee, while rejecting an investigative committee chosen by the Syrian government, which they consider complicit in the conflict and therefore not impartial.
Is There a Phenomenon of Women’s Abductions in Suwayda?
The issue of enforced disappearances in Suwayda is highly complex, with cases ranging from victims presumed dead whose bodies were never found, to others abducted arbitrarily by official or non-official actors.
According to local statistics compiled by the Suwayda 24, the number of missing people since the attacks on the governorate began on July 14 has reached around 450. The Higher Legal Committee, formed by the spiritual leadership of the Druze community, documented lists of 230 missing people, including 17 women and 8 children, one of them a three-month-old infant. Forensic medicine also received reports of 170 missing people believed by their families to have died.
Families are shown photos of unidentified corpses for identification. Comparing figures from the legal committee, forensic medicine, and local sources, the number of missing is estimated at around 450, including about 60 women and 20 children. More than half of them remain unaccounted for, according to Suwayda 24.
Over the past two weeks, batches of abductees have been released, while corpses arrive almost daily at Sweida National Hospital from devastated villages in the north and west of the governorate, transported by Syrian Arab Red Crescent teams from Damascus and Daraa. Among those released were a woman, a young woman, and two girls who had appeared earlier in a video by a fighter claiming to have rescued them—only for it to later emerge that they were abductees who had been exchanged for detainees.
Magida Ridan, who was among those exchanged, said the kidnappers handed them over to the government, which then transferred them to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. Sources from Suwayda 24 confirmed that U.S. mediation helped secure the return of some abductees, alongside evacuation operations of Bedouins from inside the governorate.
Still, the file remains entangled. Families were held in shelters in Daraa—some released and moved to Jaramana, while others remain detained in homes in Daraa, rural Damascus, and even Hama. The kidnappings in the first days of the assault focused on western villages such as Thaala, Dour, Majdal, Mazraa, Taara, and Douweira, before extending to northern villages from al-Soura al-Kabira to al-Mutouna, and to some neighborhoods of Suwayda city itself.
So far, no official report has been issued regarding sexual violence in Suwayda, though local sources told Daraj that rape cases exist but could not be confirmed.
In recent days, a horrific photo circulated showing three naked, murdered women. Initially it was rumored they were Bedouins from Sweida, but the platform Takaad verified that the women belonged to the Druze community and had been executed, along with nine other family members, by pro-regime forces. The platform stated it is withholding further details out of ethical considerations and at the request of victims’ families, while affirming it would provide full information to any independent investigative body.
Kidnapping and Sexual Violence on the Coast
Concerns among women in Suwayda in particular, and Syria in general, have grown after increasing cases of abductions of Alawite girls and women during and after the coastal events.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the coastal events documented cases of threats, kidnappings, and sexual assaults targeting Alawite women in the governorates of Hama, Tartous, and Latakia between January and March 2025.
According to the report, which included harrowing testimonies, the armed men used degrading language, threatened women with abduction and forced marriage, and referred to them as “slaves” and “spoils of war,” especially after carrying out executions of their male relatives. In certain cases, direct threats were made of sexual violence and of killing children, while repeated rapes, religious insults, forced marriages, and transfers of victims to other governorates were also recorded.
At least six women were documented as kidnapped. While the whereabouts of two remain unknown, the others were released. Women in the villages of al-Rassafeh and al-Sanoubar were threatened with sexual violence and being “taken as captives” after armed men executed their male relatives during the coastal events.
In the village of al-Qabou al-Awamiyah in Latakia governorate, an armed man told an eyewitness: “You Alawite pigs, we will wipe you out. You are infidels. Your men should be killed with the sword, and your women used for amusement.” Initial investigations by the Commission indicate that some women were abducted for forced marriage or to extort their families for ransom. The inquiry is still ongoing to document further cases and identify those responsible.
In one case described by the report as “particularly troubling,” a woman was repeatedly raped by gunmen belonging to an unidentified faction after they searched her house for weapons. In addition to the sexual violence, the victim was severely beaten, subjected to religious insults, and described as a “war trophy.” The assaults continued for several days, during which the perpetrators discussed plans to transfer her to another governorate where other women had been taken. She eventually managed to escape with other residents of her town.
By contrast, an investigation conducted by the Fact-Finding Committee appointed by interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Shar’a denied receiving any information about the abduction of Alawite women or girls. This denial raises questions as to whether armed groups linked to the state may have been involved in these violations, or whether the aim of the denial is to absolve any official body of responsibility.
What links the kidnapping of women in the coast and in Suweyda? Despite differences in pretexts—forced marriage on the coast versus prisoner exchange in Sweida—both cases reveal a common pattern: women were treated as bargaining chips, tools of negotiation, and instruments of humiliation against local communities in the context of complex armed and social conflicts.
This reality exposes the vulnerability of women in conflict zones and the absence of any genuine legal or social protection guaranteeing their basic rights.
The implications are grave: the destinies of Syrian women are determined not by law or justice, but by power dynamics and the balance of interests on the ground. This reflects the fragile situation women endure, compounded by the double humiliation of belonging to religious or ethnic minorities within what increasingly appears as a sectarian conflict. Their suffering is further deepened by the general subjugation of women, who are perceived as the weakest link and thus exploited as tools in conflict—through displacement, rape, or the imposition of coercive roles. In this way, women’s bodies, as well as their religious and ethnic identities, become yet another battleground for settling scores and producing further exclusion.
