WEBDESK – Sexual violence against Alawite women is surging in post-Assad Syria as armed extremists exploit the country’s power vacuum, according to human rights monitors.
Amnesty International reports at least 36 Alawite women and girls abducted this year across Latakia, Tartous, Homs and Hama — with several victims raped during captivity. Survivors describe being seized from the streets, transported through unchecked checkpoints and held in abandoned buildings controlled by fighters linked to extremist factions.
The woman was walking home on an ordinary July afternoon in her coastal town when three armed men stopped her, dragged her into a van, and vanished into Syria’s interior. What followed was a week of terror she says she will never forget.
They drove her for hours to an abandoned building in northern Syria and locked her in a dark, windowless room. Over the next several days, she says she was raped twice by masked men who hurled sectarian slurs at her because she was Alawite. One told her, “You Alawite women were born to be our sabaya,” invoking a term extremists use for women taken as sex slaves during conflict.
She is one of dozens of Alawite women who, rights groups say, have been kidnapped, assaulted or raped since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad last year. Many attacks appear to be carried out by Sunni extremists or jihadist fighters seeking revenge after years of civil war and sectarian bloodshed. While no coordinated campaign has been documented, the cases highlight growing fears that Syria’s new interim authorities — many of them former insurgents — are failing to confront crimes targeting a vulnerable minority.
Amnesty International reports at least 36 Alawite women and girls abducted between February and July, primarily in Latakia, Tartous, Homs and Hama. Secretary-general Agnes Callamard said the pattern “cannot be denied,” urging leaders to address the crisis rather than dismiss victims’ accounts. But Syria’s Interior Ministry says it found only one legitimate kidnapping out of 42 reported cases — a conclusion rights monitors have condemned as implausible.
Survivors describe captors in black uniforms passing through checkpoints unchecked and holding women in buildings staffed by armed men. One woman became pregnant after her assault and later obtained an illegal abortion. Another survivor attempted suicide during captivity. Families say authorities recorded their testimonies but provided no updates on investigations.
The attacks echo, on a smaller scale, the trauma of ISIS’s enslavement of Yazidi women a decade ago. With sectarian clashes surging since Assad’s fall, activists warn that extremist groups now operate with near-total impunity.
“I live in constant fear,” said the July kidnapping survivor, now raising her young son alone. “I did not expect to survive. I don’t believe Syria can ever be safe for us again.”
