Introduction
INSIGHT monitored incidents of kidnapping women, girls and children in the Syrian coast between early February and May 2025.
During their security operations in the governorates of Latakia, Tartous, Homs, and Hama, specifically on March 6th, 7th, and 8th, 2025, the new government’s forces (including Syrian and foreign groups and members who recently joined them, and armed individuals and groups participating with them), committed widespread violations, most notably mass killing, kidnapping, arrest, looting and forced displacement.
Kidnappings continued before, during, and after the security and military campaign launched by the Syrian government’s forces in the region as a response to the attacks on its checkpoints by an armed group loyal to Bashar al-Assad regime, and after the Syrian government decision of forming a committee to investigate violations.
The practices carried out by the forces affiliated with the Ministry of Defense and the forces supporting them, constitute a flagrant breach of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and amount to a war crime.
INSIGHT obtained testimonies from families of victims, and activists in the Syrian coast, who reported cases of kidnapping.
Some of the cases were presented in this report, along with the numbers of victims, whose incidents of kidnapping were documented by our team.
The report is based mainly on testimonies from families of victims and survivors about the details of 10 cases of kidnapping of 15 people, (12 women, girls and female children, a man and two male children).
Some testimonies were documented through direct interviews with witnesses, and others through open sources on the Internet. In addition to other sources like: official statements of the government, political parties, human rights organizations, and activists working in the areas where kidnapping incidents occurred.
The report’s authors followed up on the cases and scrutinized them to extract what could contribute to the survival of the victims and the achievement of justice for them, despite of the challenges related to avoiding security risks and presenting the facts without misleading them, nor harming the victims.
The Victims
All the victims and survivors in the ten cases are Alawite, which confirms that the violations were based on the identity, and for the purpose of revenge or disparagement against the group as a whole, despite the absence of any evidence that the kidnapped women or their families participated in violations and crimes carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
It appears from the cases documented by INSIGHT that the ages of the kidnapped women were between 13 and 26 years.
The perpetrators were not deterred by the fact that some of the victims were married. A family of a kidnapped married woman received a call from their daughter who said she had married someone else, while other families did not receive any call.
A family member of one of the kidnapped women said: “Since that time until today, we have not heard any news, nor received any contact or anything about her”.[1]
The number of male and female abductees whose abduction was recorded by INSIGHT was 54 civilians (35 women, 11 men and 8 children).
At least 66 civilians were arrested by forces that explicitly declared themselves “General Security” or officially affiliated with the Syrian Ministry of Interior or Defense. They were 63 men, 2 women, and 1 child.
The number of civilians killed based on sectarian affiliation in the Syrian coast, from the beginning of March until mid-May, reached 1,022 civilians (887 men, 83 women, and 52 children).
INSIGHT documented the injury of 52 Syrian civilians in the Syrian coast during the same period, (8 men, 4 women, and 3 children).
Places and times of kidnapping
The kidnapping cases presented in the report were in the governorates of Latakia, Tartous, Homs, Hama, and their countryside. Two cases were in official institutions, three on public transportation, and four in places near the victims’ homes.
All the places that witnessed kidnapping incidents are located in major cities or on public roads under the control of forces affiliated with the new Ministry of Defense, which were on alert due to fears of potential attacks or ambushes by supporters of the former regime.
Although audio recordings of three kidnapped women received by their families after the kidnapping stated that they were in a coma before arriving at the locations to which they were transferred, it is difficult for other factions or armed groups to be present in the coast and move or transport people without informing the ones who lead the operations in the region.
The girls and women, of this report, were kidnapped and returned between February 9th and May 9th, 2025, during the day time, which once again indicates that the kidnappers enjoyed control and influence in those places.
The Perpetrators
The kidnappings took place during a period of security operations in which multiple parties participated, most of which were affiliated with the Ministry of Defense in the new government. But in the cases where the kidnapped women were close to “arrest”, in which “General Security” was mentioned, were among the first survivors.[2]
The families of the kidnapped women have only little information about the kidnappers. The brother of one victims said: “Now we do not have any information about the kidnappers, and we have not received proof of their safety or whereabouts.”.
The family of another kidnapped woman indicated that the number that contacted them was not Syrian. “I think it was a U.A.E number.”.
Testimonies of victims of the security operation in the Syrian coast last March, indicated that soldiers from the groups that participated followed different rules; whether to kill the women or not, or intentionally cause injuries to the limbs of men instead of shooting them in the head.
This may indicate the lack of central orders for the armed groups participating in the operation. There is also a lack of clarity in military orders regarding permitting or refraining from theft, and the specific age for children in terms of killing them like their relatives or leaving them. All of this was differed from one armed group to another within the Syrian coast.[3]
During the security operations, the killing of people from the families of former abductees and the confiscation of their phones caused a loss of communication with potential abductors who were bargaining for financial ransoms.
The looting of money and property also caused increased living pressures on the families of the kidnapped women, whose breadwinners were already arbitrary dismissed, arrested, or killed.
In the months that followed the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the new government announced several times the integration of armed factions and groups into the Syrian army affiliated with the Ministry of Defense. The first of which was the Victory Conference[4] at the end of January, and the same announcement was repeated several other times.[5]
Efforts of the kidnapped women’s families
The families of the kidnapped women call on the relevant official and human rights authorities to help them recover their daughters by any means possible.[6]
The families of the kidnapped women all submitted complaints to “General Security”, as it is considered the most reliable security body and the closest to the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the government in Damascus.
Some of them tried to go back to cameras at the site. But most of them were unable to do so, due to the malfunction of those cameras at the time of the kidnapping or the claims by the owners or supervisors that they were broken.
Two families received calls from people who claimed to be kidnappers and requested ransoms. However, the families did not receive other calls after demanding confirmation of the validity of their allegations and the safety of the kidnapped.
The cases in which the missing women were returned back, their families refrained from revealing any details, perhaps as a measure for their security and community protection. They allowed pro-government media and platforms to provide explanations that detracted from the social dignity of the survivors and their families.
The mother of one of the survivors explicitly announced that her family was under pressure to say that her daughter, who survived kidnapping, have ran away with her lover, although this was not true. “Oh, May God punish them!”.[7]
Throughout the years of the conflict in Syria, “National Army” militants used the arrest of women as a means of undermining dignity and forcing male relatives to surrender, make confessions, or pay financial ransoms.[8]
Forced marriage
There is no conclusive evidence that kidnapped women and survivors were subjected to sale and sexual slavery similarly to how ISIS dealt with Yazidi women in north Iraq following the attack in August, 2014. But, the stories of sexual assault and then forced marriage match previous victims.[9]
The kidnappers sent audio recordings of two abductees to their families, claiming that they were outside Syria and that they were well and married, although one of them was previously married.
During its period of control in Idlib, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham did not claim responsibility for the kidnapping and captivity of women from other sects. Despite this, the family of one of the kidnapped women believed that their daughter is in Idlib.
An activist was widely attacked on social media in April 2025 when she mentioned her suspicions about the presence of kidnapped women from the Syrian coast in Idlib in her recent visit there.
There are testimonies prove that the factions of the “National Army” that joined the Ministry of Defense after the fall of the previous regime committed violations related to the arrest and assault of women, including sexual assault, during their control in Afrin, northwest Syria.[10]
Misleading and insulting dignity
INSIGHT followed the appearance of girls and women who denied being kidnapped following the spread of news on their kidnapping or periods of absence from their homes, which sometimes made verifying information difficult due to the spread of misleading news, and the refraining of families and survivors to speak.
During the years of war in Syria, parties such as the forces of the former regime and factions of the “National Army” exploited the appearance of women who showed up to deny that they were subjected to violations.
As in the case of Mrs. Nazliya[11], whose killing spread along with violations that were being committed against women in the village of Kakhira in Afrin, and the detainee Zaynab Al-Hosni[12], who appeared on Syrian television to say that she had fled from home because her brothers were beating her, a narrative similar to what survivors in the coast recently said.[13]
Survivors’ stories, as arranged and narrated by a large cyber army, attempt to stigmatize the kidnapped women in their own communities in the Syrian coast by deviating from social, religious and moral rules.
The same accusation was made by the commander of a “General security” patrol when they captured an activist and his fiancée in Homs. The commander said to the girl: “I will teach you and your family the right manners, and I will trample on your head, and I will not let you out from the center until you cover your head.”[14]
However, the families of the remaining kidnapped women, who are in ordeal, hope that they will return safely, regardless of the narratives that will be told or force them to tell.[15]
Despite the strenuous attempts to deny these incidents, obstruct documenting them, and the attacks on witnesses, victims, and their families, it can be confirmed that dozens of cases of kidnapping girls and women, killing, and other sect-based violations against Alawites occurred in the Syrian coast.
These incidents can be confirmed based on what the witnesses reported, the targeted areas, the identities of the victims, and the accompanying slogans.
Governmental measures
On March 9th, the Syrian government announced the end of its security operation in the coast, and President Ahmed Al-Sharaa announced the formation of an investigation committee of the violations.
A month later, the work of this committee was extended for three months[16], but so far there are no announced lists of the dead, kidnapped, and detainees.
In the previous months, the government deployed security checkpoints directly affiliated with “General Security”[17]. The official media announced the arrest of gunmen accused of committing violations against civilians and others loyal to the former regime.[18]
Representatives of the government made pledges to the families of the murdered, without announcing progress on the file of the kidnapped women.[19]
Families of kidnapped women complained of repeated routines of filing the complaints. They were asked to re-submit the complaint and bring witnesses, without reassuring them of the possibility of finding a lead.
There is no doubt that the failure to hold accountable the perpetrators of the “individual cases” at the beginning of this year, and the delay of prohibiting the sect-based killing in the official “Fatwas” (Islamic sermon), led to further violations in the Syrian coast, then later in Jaramana and Sahnaya, in Damascus and Suwayda.[20]
Excluding Alawite representatives (who have not been involved in crimes with the former regime) from the political partnership is another responsibility of the new political authorities.
The families of the kidnapped women, and the victims in general, know people who participated in security operations in their villages and neighborhoods, which portends retaliations in the future; if investigations are not conducted fairly and seriously to hold the perpetrators of violations accountable, or those who were kidnapped and arrested based on their sect are not returned (as long as there are no evidence of their participation in the former regime’s crimes).
On May 17th, the Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa issued a presidential decree of forming the “National Authority for Missing Persons,” headed by Muhammad Reda Jalkhi, to research and reveal the fate of missing and forcibly disappeared persons.[21]
On the same day, he issued the formation of the “National Authority for Transitional Justice” headed by Abdel Basset Abdel Latif, to investigate the crimes committed by the former regime only.[22]
Recommendations
- The new Syrian government must take strict measures to stop the violation of the right to life, freedom, security, and other rights, for a new era entitled dignity for all Syrians, redress for the victims and their families, regardless of their sect or race, and to hold all the perpetrators accountable, in particular those involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity, torture, enforced disappearance and sexual slavery.
- It is necessary to accelerate the paths of transitional justice and the right to know the truth and reparation, to end the era of systematic violations by the former regime and the intervening and parties in Syria. The delay in addressing these files will lead to continuous suffering of Syrians even after the fall of the oppressive regime, due to the impunity of the perpetrators many times.
- Providing comprehensive care and treatment for civilian and military victims of crimes and violations in the Syrian coast, and eliminating the restrictions on revealing what they were exposed to with their families and relatives.
- The decisions to form the committee for “Missing Persons” and “Justice Authority” must be reviewed to include all crimes, as the decisions will pave the way to distinguish between victims and the impunity of some perpetrators.
- Activating a real national dialogue between the Syrian components and making amendments to the outcomes of the previous sham dialogue, and the constitutional declaration, which was not comprehensive, to avoid further violence that will cause more tragedies (in case it was repeated) for the Syrians, most of whom were victims of the previous regime and the war.
- Stopping the former leaders of the”National Army” factions who have previously committed violations from getting further power, and not granting them leadership authority after they joined the Ministry of Defense following the fall of the previous regime.
- Ensuring the representation of women in decision-making positions to stop violations based on extremist ideologies that diminish the value of Syrian women based on their sex, sect, and ethnicity.
- Benefiting from international efforts will achieve greater professionalism and integrity for the work of the “Commission of Inquiry of Violations” in the coast, such as the Independent International Commission of Inquiry and the United Nations Foundation for Missing Persons. Involving local communities or representatives of victims in the investigations will increase the credibility of their results.
- Holding accountable those who incite crimes on sectarian grounds, and those who detract from the dignity of Syrian Alawites, such as forcing them to do humiliating behavior, or calling them infidels, apostates, and remnants of the former regime, and calling for “Jihad” against them.
[9] https://insight-md.org/en/?p=863
[10] https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/29/everything-power-weapon/abuses-and-impunity-turkish-occupied-northern-syria
[21] https://npasyria.com/213306/
[22] https://npasyria.com/213349/
