'She's not coming back': Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria

New Straits Times

7 hours ago

"DON'T wait for her," the WhatsApp caller told the family of Abeer Suleiman on May 21, hours after she vanished from the streets of the Syrian town of Safita. "She's not coming back."
Suleiman's kidnapper and another man who identified himself as an intermediary said in subsequent calls and messages that the 29-year-old woman would be killed or trafficked into slavery unless her relatives paid them a ransom of US$15,000.
"I am not in Syria," Suleiman herself told her family in a call on May 29 from the same phone number used by her captor, which had an Iraqi country code. "All the accents around me are strange."
Suleiman is among at least 33 women and girls from Syria's Alawite sect - aged between 16 and 39 - who have been abducted or gone missing this year in the turmoil following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
His overthrow in December after 14 years of civil war unleashed a furious backlash against the Muslim minority community
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria told Reuters it is investigating the disappearances and alleged abductions of Alawite women following a spike in reports this year.
Suleiman's family borrowed from friends and neighbours to scrape together her US$15,000 ransom, which they transferred to three money-transfer accounts in the Turkish city of Izmir on May 27 and 28 in 30 transfers ranging from US$300 to US$700, a close relative told Reuters, sharing the transaction receipts.
Once all money was delivered as instructed, the abductor and intermediary ceased all contact, with their phones turned off. Suleiman's family still have no idea what's become of her.
Detailed interviews with the families of 16 of the missing women and girls found that seven are believed to have been kidnapped.
Three of the abductees - including Suleiman - sent their families text or voice messages saying they'd been taken out of the country.
There has been no word on the fate of the other nine. Eight of the 16 missing Alawites are under the age of 18, their families said.
All 33 women disappeared in the governorates of Tartous, Latakia and Hama, which have large Alawite populations.
Most of the families felt police didn't take their cases seriously when they reported their loved ones missing or abducted, and that authorities failed to investigate thoroughly.
Ahmed Mohammed Khair, a media officer for the governor of Tartous, dismissed any suggestion that Alawites were being targeted.
Syrian rights advocate Yamen Hussein, said as far as he knew, only Alawites had been targeted.
"Targeting women of the defeated party is a humiliation tactic that was used in the past by the Assad regime."
Zeinab Ghadir is among the youngest. at 17 years of age.
She was abducted on her way to school in the Latakia town of al-Hanadi on February 27, according to a family member. The suspected kidnapper contacted them by text message to warn them not to post images of the girl online.
The family has no idea what has happened to her.
Khozama Nayef was snatched on March 18 in rural Hama by a group of five men who drugged her to knock her out,, a close relative said citing the mother-of-five's own testimony when she was returned.
Days after Nayef was taken, 29-year-old Doaa Abbas was seized on her doorstep by attackers who dragged her into a car waiting outside and sped off, in the Hama town of Salhab.
Three Alawites reported missing by their families on social media this year, who are not included in the 33 cases identified by Reuters, have since resurfaced and publicly denied they were abducted.
A host of dire scenarios are torturing the minds of the family of Nagham Shadi, an Alawite woman who vanished this month, her father told Reuters.
The 23-year-old left their house in the village of al Bayadiyah in Hama on June 2 to buy milk and never came back, Saudi Aisha said, describing an agonising wait for any word about the fate of his daughter.
"What do we do? We leave it to God."