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Who is kidnapping Syrian Alawite women in broad daylight?

SSM-Editor 3 weeks ago Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Julani), Alawites, Idlib, New Syrian Government, News From Syria Leave a comment 177 Views

Alawite girls who have been kidnapped

published by Daraj, April 17, 2025

“They tortured and beat us. We weren’t allowed to speak to each other, but I heard the kidnappers’ accents. One of them had a foreign accent and the other had a local Idlib accent. I knew that because they were insulting us because we were Alawites.”

Following the testimonies of Syrian women who were kidnapped on the Syrian coast, we found Rabab (a pseudonym for security reasons), who was kidnapped in broad daylight and found herself with Basma (a pseudonym) in the same house, where they were both beaten and insulted for being “Alawites,” according to their testimony to the investigators. Rabab was kidnapped from a public square in a coastal village and found herself in a van a short distance from her abduction location, as the vehicle didn’t stop at any checkpoint. She was then thrown into a room in a house with Basma, who had been kidnapped before her.

“They tortured and beat us,” Rabab says. “We weren’t allowed to speak to each other. But I could hear the kidnappers’ accents. One had a foreign accent, the other a local one from Idlib. I knew because they were insulting us because we were Alawites.” The phenomenon is reminiscent of the Yazidi captivity in Iraq, but has yet to reach the same level.

There have been repeated pleas from families trying to uncover the fate of their daughters who were kidnapped in broad daylight, whether from the Syrian coastal cities and countryside, or from the countryside of Homs and Hama. We at Daraj tracked down ten cases of kidnapped girls, with varying stories about them and their experiences. These stories are shrouded in fear among the families of the abducted girls, summed up by one father’s reaction: “We hope to die.”

The appeals coincided with the “military operation” launched by Syrian Defense Ministry forces to “comb” the coast in search of fighters loyal to the ousted Assad regime. The fighters had set up ambushes against public security forces, killing hundreds of them. The operation was followed by acts of torture and indiscriminate killing of hundreds of Alawites.

Inside the house, testimonies collected by the investigators indicate that there were other women whose voices the kidnapped women heard, but it was not easy to verify this, as the kidnapped women had their hands and feet tied to a chair, which could only be removed when entering the bathroom.

Rabab’s kidnapping lasted no more than a few days, as she heard the kidnappers say that there was information about an expected raid by the General Security. They took her outside, and she soon found herself on the road. Basma, however, was not released. Rabab heard warnings not to hit her or approach her because, as she says, “one of the kidnappers had fallen in love with her!”

Rabab’s case is not unique. Social media has been circulating about girls who were kidnapped and then returned to their families, with details of the kidnappings kept secret.

Basma is one of those still missing, but she contacted her family by phone. According to their testimony to the investigation’s reporters, they saw signs of beatings on her face and weight loss. The purpose of the communication with her family was to reassure them that she was “fine” and to assure them that they should not publish anything about her, as she was alive and her whereabouts were unknown.

The power of double silence

Fear of social stigma or “shame” in a traditional, conservative environment, and of retaliation by the kidnappers, has forced the families of the kidnapped women and their relatives into a double silence, especially since the kidnappers resort to threats.

Among the testimonies we collected was an incident involving an 18-year-old girl whose family received threatening messages. The young woman was kidnapped in broad daylight from the countryside of a coastal city in Syria. Her family later received a text message threatening them to remain silent or else she would be sent back dead.  Later, the girl contacted them via audio recordings from a foreign number (Ivory Coast) to say that she was fine and did not know her whereabouts.

A similar threat received by another kidnapped family, via voice messages from a number belonging to an Arab country, in which the kidnapped woman told her family that she was “outside Syria,” and her marriage was held, which allowed her to reassure her family that she was alive, to be cut off from communication with her later.

Despite the announcement of the end of the “military operation” in the Sahel, and the announcement of the new authority in Syria of the formation of a fact-finding committee, and the extension of its work, the killings condemned by Human Rights Watch as “atrorities” continued, and “Amniste” described as “mass killings”, without publishing an official number on the number of victims, relying on civil sources, and human rights documentation centers outside Syria, which pointed out that the number of victims since the fall of the regime exceeded two thousand people, most of them in the coast.

In addition to the killings, the phenomenon of kidnapping women and girls in broad daylight, whose photos are circulating, either their families or locals, have emerged on social media with phone numbers, in an attempt to obtain any information that may be useful in determining their fate.

The stories of the girls and women whose photos and news of their abduction have been published, after being followed and compared, show that we are facing multiple examples of kidnappings and the fate of the kidnapped women. The first is for girls who fled the massacres in fear, then returned to their homes, and another for girls who were kidnapped and have not yet returned. Worryingly, some of the girls were abducted and returned to their homes, while others were able to communicate with their families to tell them that they had become outside Syria.

The first is the fear of the survivors and the families of the kidnapped women to talk about what happened, not only to avoid the social stigmatization or “shame” that pursues the kidnapped and what they were subjected to, but also because the kidnappers pursue social media, and make threats to those who publish or try to speak in public, and demand the disclosure of the fate of the kidnapped.

This fear and seeking to protect the identity of witnesses prompted us to adopt a narrative technique in providing documented testimonies (meetings with 10 cases of direct victims or their first-degree relatives) based on concealing the identities of the kidnapped and the owners of certificates, and the absence of accurate names of places and evidence that may indicate their identities, and the division of the text through topics and concepts, not the stories of individual victims, especially no evidence of the identities of the kidnappers, nor their affiliations.

Kidnapped in broad daylight!

We monitored the areas where the kidnappings are taking place, through the boycott of social media news and the testimonies we collected, and testimonies indicated that the publication of photos of the girls and asking about their fate through social media ended with some of the families of the kidnapped receiving threatening messages from Syrian and foreign numbers unknown, warning them not to publish the photos of the kidnapped or demanding them, otherwise the kidnapped will be returned “a body.”

It is noteworthy that the kidnappings that we followed and monitored the details of, were carried out in broad daylight, and in places that are difficult to describe isolated, some were kidnapped during the exercise of their daily lives from buying things, or on the way to work, or school.

Testimonies we obtained indicated that Van cars were carrying out kidnappings, one of which enabled a witness to identify its type through a surveillance camera recording on the street, which passed after the kidnapping of one of the girls, on March 23, 2025, at 14:23, but the car did not carry a tigress.

The mother of one of the kidnappers says that the road is blocked by the lack of evidence, the inability to identify the kidnappers, or the car they used, and concludes her conversation with the “staircase” with “no accountant and no control. I don’t trust anyone anymore, even the new state, even if they jail me, it doesn’t divide me anymore.”

Public Security: Technical Inability to Pursue

Those who communicated with them, most of them, filed complaints to the General Security in the areas where the kidnappings were carried out, and the General Security was cooperating and opening investigations that are still ongoing, but there is a technical inability to follow the Syrian phone numbers that were used to threaten, not to mention that the cars that carried out the kidnapping were without a tiger, and cannot be tracked, and even those that contained a tiger that was not reached to the owners.

It was not without insults and ridicule directed at some of the families of the abductees, such as advising them to leave Syria, and that the path of investigations will be blocked or reminding the parents that the kidnapped married if she returns to her family or her husband must enter the count, as she has become divorced! Here is a reference to the possibilities of marrying the kidnapped or “sabha”.

We tried to contact the Syrian General Security in the Sahel region regarding the measures they have taken to determine the fate of the abductees or the kidnappers, but we have not received a response.

Am I reviving the practice of captivity?

Due to the media blackout in terms of controlling the work of the press in the Sahel regions, and the concern of parents to speak publicly, rumors and rumors prevail, the most prominent of which is linking the repeated kidnapping of Alawite girls to “sabbing”, a serious violation previously practiced by the organization “Daash” during its control in Iraq and Syria, and the kidnapping of many women and their captivity, especially from the Yazidi minority, whose victims are still missing.

But the Nusra Front, which split from ISIS and al-Qaeda and took control of northern Syria and changed its name until the fall of the regime, did not record during its rule cases of captivity of women, it is true that the group was radical and practiced intimidation and suppression of freedoms and imposes a hardline dress and lifestyle that sometimes reached the point of executing women in public, but there were no cases of captivity.

Writer and researcher Hossam Jazmati confirmed to “Daraj”: “The history of the former Al-Nusra Front, and the former Headquarters for the Liberation of Al-Sham, did not contain cases of captivity of women, but it was limited to ISIS, which revived the “Year of Sab’i” and practiced against the Yazidis, but other organizations in Syria did not know about this practice, and the recorded and known cases of kidnapping before the fall of the regime, the aim of which was often aimed at benefiting from the kidnapped women in the exchange of prisoners or prisoners with the regime, while the current cases of kidnapping are likely for various reasons, or are just cases carried out by gangs or individuals for various personal purposes, no talk or information about the re-exercise of captivity on Syrian women.”

The kidnappings continue until the moment of publication of this investigation, with the stories of kidnapped women almost daily on social media and the appeals of parents trying to determine their fate. The lack of security stability in the region increases these cases, which amounted to the kidnapping of a girl from the countryside of Latakia and then found in Damascus! At the same time, the General Security in Syria publishes videos showing the release of kidnapped people and news of the arrest of gangs for kidnapping, but what makes the case of kidnapping women and girls difficult is that the kidnappers did not demand a ransom, but only threatened parents and husbands and demanded them to remain silent

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