Right now the people of the city of Sweida are fighting to defend themselves in Syria. Sweida is a region in southern Syria where mostly Druze people live, which is a minority religious group. The leadership of the Druze people are calling for humanitarian corridors to evacuate people to areas of the Autonomous Administration and to Jordan. On July 13 forces allied with HTS began big attacks on the region and the people have resisted. This is just the latest phase of the jihadists in Damascus trying to secure their power. And again the international media tries to cover up their crimes.
We have seen many great tricks in the Middle East and today in Syria we see another. State leaders and their national media have transformed men once seen as Islamist fascists into respectable politicians. The US removed HTS from the terrorist list, took the $10 million bounty off al-Sharaa’s head and they became the “Syrian Transitional Government”. But make no mistake. These are the men of al-Nusra and ISIS. Men who murdered hundreds of civilians, raped hundreds of women, assassinated women leaders like Hevrîn Xelef, and sold women as sex slaves. And they have not changed. This diplomatic face of jihadism reflects a change in tactics, but the ideology remains: to impose Islam with violence for power.
Background
In 2016, al-Nusra split from al-Qaeda. It was dissolved when it joined with other jihadist groups to form Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”). HTS declared itself on 28 January 2017, with Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as al-Jolani) as its emir and overall military commander. With the support of the Turkish-backed SNA (Syrian National Army) HTS took control of Idlib in 2018, a city in north-western Syria, between Aleppo and Latakia. Here they established their “Syrian Salvation Government” under Islamic law.
In Idlib, Turkey’s support allowed HTS to keep control and gain experience in state building and governance. Attacks on women were a basis for this state building. They used both law and culture to erase them from public life and present house-bound care takers and mothers as the ideal woman. Women must be fully covered and can only be in public with a male guardian. Many women attend university in Idlib but they can only study religion and domestic skills and take jobs in women-only environments like girls schools and women’s health. Not all these restrictions are legal, but breaking any of them risks harassment, intimidation and arrest and openly protesting them is heavily punished.
With its strength from Idlib, HTS launched its offensive in November 2024 and overthrew the Assad regime. Videos and pictures from the beginning showed many HTS and SNA fighters carrying ISIS flags and wearing ISIS badges on their military uniform. When the Assad Regime fell, HTS suddenly started talking about a “Syria for all Syrians”. At the same time they created their new government.
Now
The project of this new government is clear in its leadership, constitution and actions. The proposed constitution declares Syria as an “Arab Republic”, with Islamic law as its legal system and Arabic as its official language. It also gives al-Sharaa dictatorial powers. For example, only he can appoint ministers and judges and there are no processes to challenge these decisions. For HTS, peoples who are not Sunni Muslims challenge the identity of their new Islamic Arab state. As in Idlib, the oppression of women is a basis for dealing with this problem.
A first step in their state-building was to give known jihadists, who are experienced at waging war on women, leadership roles in the government and military. Shadi al-Waysu was the first Minister for Justice. Before, he was a judge for al-Nusra. In 2015 videos of him sentencing women to death and supervising their executions spread online. When people protested al-Waysu’s appointment, HTS confirmed the videos were real but said these actions were in the past. Abu Hatem Shaqra, Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr, and Mohammed al-Jamma were all SNA members. When HTS formed the new Syrian army at the start of 2025, SNA dissolved itself into it. All three men are now commanders. Shaqra participated in the assassination of Hevrîn Xelef in 2019. He is now the commander of the SNA division operating in North and East Syria. Abu Bakr and al-Jamma led divisions of SNA. Both are famous for their own brutality and the atrocities their divisions committed in Afrin and Northern Syrian since 2018. Kidnapping, stealing, rape, murder, extortion, and torture were all weapons they used every day against the people. Abu Bakr’s divison was especially known for systematically kidnapping women to be sold as sex slaves.
These leaders are using a range of tactics to force Islam on the people. Religious fliers tell women how to cover themselves according to Islamic law. Segregation is being introduced, with men and women being separated in buses and bread lines. New laws and polices are then enforced with terror. With murder, kidnap, rape, ransom, humiliation, and torture they punish minority identities and those who challenge Islamic law. Assad, an Alewi, had his strongest support from other Alewi people. As a minority connected to the old regime they now face the most violence.
In March and April videos showing piles of bodies of Alewi people living on the Syrian coast flooded the internet. Civilians told stories of fighters coming to peoples homes asking them if they were Sunni or Alewi and then murdering them. Women were stripped naked and marched through the street before being shot. It was at this moment, on 13 March, that the HTS government decided to publish its proposed constitution. As women, men, and children are murdered, more and more women are being kidnapped and disappeared. Most of the women are Alewi and were kidnapped from coastal areas, most in broad daylight. Their families are then threatened to keep silent or forced to pay ransoms. At least 25 other women were kidnapped but have been released, most were raped. Some reappear wearing new Islamic clothes. Some with new Sunni husbands or fiances. Many women are being taken to Idlib and sold, others seem to have been taken out of Syria.
Zeinab Ghadir, who is 17, was kidnapped on her way to school. Doaa Abbas was dragged into a car outside of her own home. Both have disappeared. Mina and her sister were walking to the market when a car stopped them, asked “Are you Sunni or Alawite”. When they said Alawite the men forced them at gunpoint into the car. They reappeared two months later, left on the street at night, dressed in niqabs. One women was kidnapped during a doctors appointment and taken to Lebanon to be sold. She then escaped from the man who had bought her. Another woman was kidnapped and released with her head shaved and injuries all over her. Mira went missing and reappeared weeks later but she was wearing a blue jilbab and accompanied by a Sunni man. She denied being kidnapped and said she ran away to marry him.
Although Alewi women have been the most targeted, HTS has started using the same tactics against Christian and Druzi women as violence escalates against these groups. Women are being kidnapped from all over Syria including two women from Damascus when they were walking to university. Also in Damascus, armed men raided a nightclub, beating the people inside and chasing them out of the club. A few days later another night club was attacked and the attackers opened fire inside. A woman was killed and many others injured. In June, a member of HTS made a suicide attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus killing 22 people and injuring 60. Right now intense fighting is spreading across Druze areas and so the disappearences of Druzi women are too.
The HTS government is a government of known jihadists who are consolidating their power with genocide and building up a system of sex slavery and forced marriage. Over 4000 people have been killed on the coast and over 60 women are known to be missing. 50 had their names published in a recent list. As we write, smoke and ash is thick in the air across the coast of Syria from massive forest fires. Fires that allies of HTS publicly said that they started deliberately to punish Alewi people. Hundreds of thousands of trees have been destroyed. Life that will take decades to regrow. Already 3% of all the forest in Syria is gone. All this in a land that is struggling against intense desertification because of water shortages created by Turkey.
Fighting back
The society accepts none of this. With protests they are publicly condemning HTS. In Damascus in December, hundred of men and women protested in the Umayyad Square. Women also organised their own demonstration at the Hejaz railway station. Since the Assad regime fell, people all across Rojava stood in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in the rest of Syria. In Qamishlo and Ain Issa thousands of women took to the streets to protest the appointment of Shaqra and protect the memory of Hevrîn Xelef. In Dêrik, the Christian, Arab, and Kurdish communities organised together and protested the attack on the Greek Orthodox church in Damascus.
Right now, the resistance of the Druze people against HTS is the biggest example of this. For days the people have resisted the occupying force in the face of HTS trying to spread terror with the same tactics they use against Alewi people. Beheadings, hundreds of people massacred, holy places destroyed. And again now hundreds of women are missing and 90 are known to have been kidnapped. The people are defending themselves in organised armed groups under the Sweida Military Council, men and women fighting side by side. Individuals show the courage of the people like Fewziye Fexredîn El Şaranî, who defended her community in El Dor. She fell where she fought after killing 7 attackers. Now a third ceasefire is in place in Sweida after the first two were violated. In solidarity, people and institutions in Syria, North and East Syria, and Lebanon are condemning the attacks with statements and protests.
Across Syria the people, with the leadership of women, are in openly rebelling against the jihadist rulers. This shows the weakness of their new grip on power and the strength of the society they are trying to control. Another expression of this is successes of the Autonomous Administration to defend itself against the jihadist regime. When HTS attacked the Assad Regime, the SNA started their own war with the Autonomous Administration. The SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) and the society proved it could not be destroyed militarily and forced HTS to take a diplomatic approach.
We clearly see the connection between power, genocide, feminicide and ecocide. HTS is taking a diplomatic line to these tactics with democratic language.When the Taliban took power they also used this language of inclusivity. They gave speeches announcing their aims of equality, the protection of minorities, and democracy. In practice, they committed atrocities that they then denied responsibility for and promised to investigate and bring those accountable to justice. The new Syrian Regime is using the same tactics. With suits and press conferences they tell the world they are democratic, inclusive, and supportive of women. Then in action they are building up an fundamentalist Islamic state.
It is essential for all humanity that we stop their project. We are in a very dangerous situation where, without a strong struggle, the hegemonic powers supporting HTS could succeed in building another puppet state in the Middle East. However, with the collapse of the Assad regime, we as the people have an opportunity to build our own project. To build an inclusive paradigm of governance where all peoples can live together as they want, in peace, and with their own free will. For our friends across all of Syria, Abdullah Ocalan’s model of the Democratic Nation is this paradigm. To dictatorship and Islamic law they answer Democratic Confederalism. To women’s slavery they answer women’s liberation. To Sunni Arab nationalism they answer Democratic Nation. Their answer to HTS’s Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic Syria.
We call on all democratic forces to stand with the people of Syria against fascism, misogyny, sexism, and Islamism.
To fight against genocide, ecocide and feminicide with democracy, women’s liberation, and ecological struggle for the peoples of Syria, the Middle East, and all of humanity.
