Syria’s Alawite minority population is concentrated around Damascus and the western coastal region, including Homs (pictured). csi
Following a wave of reports of Alawite Muslim women being abducted over the past year, Syria’s Interior Ministry convened an official committee to review 42 cases of alleged abductions.
On November 2, government spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba announced that the investigation had found only one incident to be a genuine kidnapping, and insisted that the remaining cases were runaways, voluntary absences, or even social media fabrications. The official statement further claimed that some women had left with romantic partners, and others had hidden out with friends or relatives.
Well-documented abductions
These findings stand in marked contradiction to numerous independent investigations. Amnesty International, after conducting interviews with families and reviewing evidence from Latakia, Tartous, Homs, and Hama, has documented at least 36 abductions and kidnappings of Alawite women and girls since February 2025.[1] Many of these victims disappeared in broad daylight while traveling to school, work, or religious sites.
Amnesty has highlighted that in nearly all cases, police and security agencies failed to pursue effective investigations, and new evidence brought by families was dismissed or ignored. Family members reported being blamed, intimidated, or pressured into silence by authorities.
The news agency Reuters also uncovered at least 33 cases since March 2025, often involving ransom demands and messages indicating that women had been trafficked out of the country.
On June 26, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the chair of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria, mentioned six documented cases. However, by July 22, 2025, the Commission explicitly expressed concern about 38 Alawite women and girls aged between 3 and 40 years old being abducted across various governorates, including Latakia, Tartous, Hama, Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo since March 2025.
In December, a coalition of Sunni Muslim jihadist groups overthrew Syria’s Assad dictatorship after fifty years in power. Syria’s new president, whom Western powers have swiftly moved to embrace, is Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), the former leader of al Qaeda in Syria.
“The reality is much worse”
Dr. Mouna Ghanem, spokeswoman for the Supreme Alawite Council and founder of the Women Forum for Peace, told CSI that “the reality of Alawite women being abducted is much worse than what Reuters, Amnesty or the UN have reported.”
She frames these crimes in a broader historical context: “The practice of kidnapping Alawite women has a long tradition, from the Ottomans to modern Islamists, and now jihadist groups and government militias.”
The claim that some women simply fled with lovers is a fabrication, Ghanem said. “Alawite women have always had the freedom to marry and love whom they wish. Today’s chaos, following the fall of Assad, has only made these crimes more widespread and less accountable as jihadist elements infiltrate government ranks.”
Ghanem underscored that under the previous regime, kidnappings were linked to security agencies, while now with the influx of jihadists into Syria, the lines of responsibility are much more blurred, compounding families’ suffering.
“Deliberate obfuscations designed to perpetuate harm and shield perpetrators”
Prof. Jens Kreinath, director of the Institute for the Documentation of Human Rights Violations against Religious Minorities in the Levant (IDHRV-ARMIL), has led the most comprehensive documentation effort on the abduction of Alawite women to date. Speaking to CSI, Kreinath reported that since January 2025, the institute has examined 125 cases, including 107 involving Alawite women. Of these, IDHRV-ARMIL has verified 49 abductions, 11 of which implicate Syria’s General Security Service. “These cases reveal a disturbing pattern of targeted violence, coercion, and institutional failure,” Kreinath stated.
Kreinath denounces the government’s narrative as a calculated campaign to disguise a persistent and systemic crisis: “Official statistics grossly misrepresent the scale and nature of the crisis. These are not misunderstandings—they are deliberate obfuscations designed to perpetuate harm and shield perpetrators.”
“The stark discrepancy between the data verified by IDHRV-ARMIL and the figures published by the Syrian Ministry of Interior points to a deliberate strategy: the government continues to target these populations, distort the numbers, interfere with victims’ testimonies, and fabricate counter-narratives aimed at discrediting verified accounts,’” he said.
These acts, especially when perpetrated, enabled, or tolerated by state actors, warrant independent criminal investigation into state-sponsored sexual violence and the systems that sustain it, Kreinath argued.
He insisted that “survivor-centered accountability must be prioritized namely to expose these abuses and ensure justice for those affected.”
A precarious future under new leadership
The situation for Alawite and Christian communities shows no signs of improvement under Syria’s new government. Prof. Jens Kreinath warns that the convergence of environmental collapse, economic desperation, and systemic repression now threatens to push Alawite and Christian communities beyond the breaking point. Despite repeated governmental claims of protection and unity, the conditions facing these minorities have sharply worsened. The persistence of the “Umayyad State mindset,” coupled with entrenched corruption, only deepens the crisis.
“Syria’s missing Alawite women are among the many inconvenient victims of the West’s embrace of the ‘new Syria,’” commented Joel Veldkamp, the director of public advocacy for Christian Solidarity International. “Sexual violence against non-Muslim women is a trademark of jihadist movements in the Middle East, and sadly, it is becoming clear that Syria’s new government is no exception.”
Pointing to President Trump’s warm White House welcome to Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa this week, Veldkamp commented, “If President Trump does not want to be remembered as the president who oversaw the end of Christianity in Syria, and possibly a genocide of Syria’s Alawites, Druzes and Kurds, he must act now to hold his new partners in Damascus accountable for these crimes. These women must come home.”
[1] Amnesty directly documented and investigated 8 cases (5 women and 3 girls). The additional 28 cases Amnesty notes are being reported by activists, journalists, and Syrian feminist organizations.
