What life was/ is like for women in terrorist-held areas in Syria??
In Syria, all Western-supported terrorist groups [ Jabhet Al-Nusra, Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, armed moderate opposition….you can name it] have exploited women and forced them into illegal activities, including begging, prostitution, sexual slavery, and theft.
These groups and their dirty and brutal acts are supported and financed by the US and its allies.
In August 2023, the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV Channel quoted the US Al-Monitor website as saying that terrorists affiliated to “Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham” [previousky known as Jabhet Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda in Syria] and the “Turkestan Islamic Party” force women in Idlib governorate in north-west Syria to be engaged in sexual slavery and they traffic them between Syria and Turkey. (1)
The TV channel indicated that these crimes happen in total darkness, making it difficult to get details of the crime or the victims, as there is no official data on the exact number of sex trafficking victims in Syria that could be way beyond the records.
It narrated the story of several women taken as victims of sex and organ trafficking networks.
Wafaa, 19, recalled being at the hands of a Kuwaiti man nicknamed Abu Abdallah, telling Al-Monitor: “My nightmare began on February 3, when a man in his 60s known as Abu Abdallah came to my house, where I was living with my uncle after my father was killed in battles in Idlib in 2015. He was accompanied by a Muslim cleric that went by Abu Hamza, and they both asked my uncle to buy me for $5,000, to which he agreed.”
“Abu Abdallah immediately took me to the house of a woman named Mona, in Deir Hassan village, in the north of Idlib, where she was running a prostitution ring. There I saw a large number of women, who like me, were bought by Abu Abdallah.”
Wafaa said that he repeatedly raped her and sold her to his friends. “I told my uncle about what I was going through in this house,” she said, adding: “but he did nothing to save me. So I accepted my fate and surrendered to physical abuse until I was taken to Turkey.”
In Gaziantep, there were several Syrian women and girls staying there and men from different Arab nationalities were walking among them, examining their bodies before buying one of them, according to Wafaa.
Many families were forced to sell daughters to strangers in exchange for sustenance, just like the case of Najla (a pseudonym), 17, whose mother sold her to a 37-year-old Saudi man for $3,000 for a temporary marriage in exchange for money.
These crimes were also committed by all terrorists groups, which are called” armed opposition” by the western media outlets, in all areas that had or have been under their occupation in Syria since 2012.
In this context, the second edition of Mark Taliano’s “Voices from Syria ” book asserted that the terrorists control occupied territories with unspeakable barbarism. A witness to the massacre at Adra in 2013 described the scene in these words (2):
“The rebels began to attack the government centres, and attacked the police station – where all the policemen were killed after only a brief clash because of the large numbers of attackers. They (the attackers) then headed to the checkpoint located on the edge of the city before moving to the clinic, where they slaughtered one from the medical staff and put his head in the popular market. They then dragged his body in front of townspeople who gathered to see what was happening. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic Front fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been seen since.”
“When the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) would try to enter Adra, the jihadists would throw women and children from the 20,000 people it captured off the top floors in front of the army.”
Even in Douma suburb in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus, terrorist groups put women in cages and used them as human shield to prevent the Syrian Army from atracking the suburb in November 2015.
Taliano continues, “Women in particular have no rights in terrorist-occupied areas of Syria but Western “progressives” and even “feminists” have allowed themselves to be socially-engineered by Mainstream Everything to support state policies of oppression and devastation.
Lilly Martin, an American living permanently in Syria, wrote: ” On March 21, 2014 terrorists beheaded my Christian neighbors, and raped the old ladies who they kidnapped and took to Turkey, and killed others, and destroyed the whole village of Kessab, Syria. This is not a rumor, this is a fact. (3)
Vanessa Beeley reported on 12 December 2016 (4) that we spent much of yesterday in Hanano speaking with very recently liberated civilians. “One lady I interviewed and filmed told me that her 8 year old daughter had died in Nusra Front prison 3 days before the liberation by SAA. Her eldest daughter had been chosen to be raped by the terrorists, saved by the liberation. Her husband had been shot by the terrorists. She told me of a woman who had been begging the terrorists for food. They shot her in the mouth. She said terrorists had been murdering anyone who tried to leave Hanano via the humanitarian corridors and then blaming it on the Syrian government. She described all manner of torture and atrocities committed by these NATO “moderates”.
“It is known and documented, and has been for years, that the West and its allies support these un-Islamic terrorists to destroy and control other countries and their peoples. It is known and documented that the terrorists who behead, rape, and pillage their way through the Middle East and elsewhere are our proxies. We pay the bills, and we orchestrate the carnage,” the book asserted. (5)
Actually, the west-supported terrorists’ brutal implementation and misinterpretation of Shari’a law in the areas under its control was spreading.
In March 2021, Three women and one man were stoned to death in Idlib on the orders of HTS terrorists.
According to sources close to HTS, who spoke to The New Arab’s Arabic language service Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the individuals executed were charged with “adultery” and “attempted murder”.
They were brutally executed in the city centre and the sentence was carried out by the security apparatuses, sources said, indicating that the terrorist of HTS used to carry out public executions against civilians.
Moreover, women in terrorist-held areas are prevented from attending schools, studying at universities, going outside homes without Niqab ( Long garment worn by women to cover their entire body and face) …etc.
All these terrorists’ acts against women have nothing to do with Islam because terrorists hold extremist ideology based on violence and murder.
Besides the usurpation of women’s rights, the freedom of movement of both women and men to safe government-held areas through humanitarian corridors that have been opened by the Syria state with the aim of evacuating civilians from terrorist-held areas was blocked.
According to the testimony of Terrorist Mohammad Faraj Hallaq (6) that was mentioned in the “Voices From Syria” book, “the terrorists hoard food, distribute food only to those who work with the terrorists and obey their orders, force others to fight the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) under the threat of death, imprison protestors, and plant explosions in ‘humanitarian corridors’ to prevent people from escaping terrorist-occupied areas.
Taliano continues, “The captivity and forced servitude of residents in terrorist-occupied areas is further illustrated by a Facebook post Lilly Martin shared with friends:
‘Breaking news from East Aleppo: Oct 21,2016: a family were able to get out to safety! Yes, I watched the interview with them on local TV. The wife said they got tired of waiting so many days to evacuate to safety. They knew that snipers were shooting at people trying to leave, but decided they would take their chances, because her husband was ill and needed medicine and food. They noticed a group of likewise civilians waiting to make a dash for it. They all started running. During their sprint out, 10 civilians with her were shot dead, including a pregnant woman! Her husband said he had been 85 kilos weight, but was now 65 kilos. He was haggard and ill looking, and using one walking cane. The children also stated that they lived in fear of the terrorists. They would not allow children to attend school, they would shoot kids if they stood in the streets and stared at them. Bread had been 25 Syrian Pounds (SYP) a packet, and was now SYP1,000 . Unbelievable hardships and suffering. I believe these stories because they were coming right out of the mouths of the people, just minutes after running to safety. If it was a reporter recounting stories, I could doubt it, but you can’t doubt their stories. I always said to myself that once the people get out of East Aleppo, you will hear horror stories, and these stories will directly reflect on these American backed and supported terrorists.’ “
Here, the question that we want to raise on the occasion of the International Women’s Day is: “ What have the International Organizations that support women all over the world done on the ground to protect women in terrorist- held area?? “ …Nothing
In December 2011, the American investigative journalist Miri Wood (7)wrote the following:
“ femicide and other heinous atrocities against Syrian women continue to be ignored by the West, including so-called feminist groups. Watching the wretched diplomats drone on about protecting the murderers of Syrian women while braying about the need for ‘rights of women in the SAR’ makes it woefully past time for the gloves to come off. There is something particularly rancid when a man who has ignored mass slaughter, kidnapping, and rape of women dares to utter a single word about women’s rights.
Between April 2011 — mere weeks after NATO’s Spring was exploded onto Syria — and June 2013, thirty-seven thousand (37,000) rapes were committed against Syrian women, and one thousand (1,000) Syrian women were kidnapped.
In August 2011 — during the early days of the foreign invasion of Syria, when all the ‘moderate’ terrorists were members of the so-called ‘Syrian Free Army’ — Syrian television journalist, Yara Al Saleh was among the 1,000 women kidnapped (along with her crew, some of whom were murdered.” (1)
These kidnapped and raped women are victims of the terrorist war that has targeted every civilian and every stone in the country since 2011.
To sum up, it is heartbreaking to read stories about the suffering of such women, who live in terrorist- held areas and whose rights are genetic and date back thousands of years, to the great warrior queen, Zenobia.
The women in terrorist- held areas want to move to government-secured areas where they have full rights to vote, to become parliamentarians, ministers, and ambassadors, to be safe, and to wear what they want.
Basma Qaddour
Notes:
- Mir Wood, “ Femicide & Atrocities against Syrian Women by West’s Terrorists.” Syria News. 28 September, 2018. (Femicide & Atrocities against Syrian Women by West’s Terrorists (syrianews.cc)) Accessed 11 March, 2024.
Mark Taliano and Basma Qaddour, Voices from Syria, Second Revised Edition. Global Research.
Voices from Syria – Second Revised Edition – Mark Taliano
Voices from Syria: Mark Taliano: 9780987938916: Amazon.com: Books
(2) “Voices From Syria” book, second edition, Chapter I “ In Their Own Voices”, Page.17.
(3) “Voices From Syria” book, second edition, Chapter I “ In Their Own Voices”, Page.12.
(4) “Voices From Syria” book, second edition, Chapter III “ Feigned Humanitarianism as Cover for Crimes of the Highest Order”, Page.40.
(5) https://www.newarab.com/news/syrian-islamist-militant-group-stones-three-women-death
(6) “Voices From Syria” book, second edition, Chapter VI “ Syrians Support Their Homeland”, Page.67
(7) https://marktaliano.net/femicide-atrocities-against-syrian-women-by-wests-terrorists-by-miri-wood/
