As Political Tides Change in Syria, Yazidi and Kurdish Women Fear Renewed Persecution
“They wanted me dead because I’m a Yazidi woman,” said Fileh Shakir, referring to the Turkish-backed Islamist groups known as the Syrian National Army (SNA).
Shakir, a member of a long-persecuted religious minority, has grown accustomed to being uprooted. She is originally from the village of Feqirah in the Kurdish-majority Afrin region in northwest Syria. But in 2018, the SNA invaded and occupied Afrin, committing a host of crimes, from theft and kidnapping to rape and murder. Shakir and her four children were able to escape to the northwestern city of Tel Rifaat.
“We had finally settled into a life that, at the very least, felt safe—though we dreamed every day of returning to Afrin,” Shakir told More to Her Story. “But even that safety was shattered when the attacks on Aleppo began. Once again, we were targeted by the Turkish-backed SNA, whose first objective was to violate women, particularly Yazidi women.”
History would change their fate again. In December 2024, the militant Islamist organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overtook key cities across northern Syria and toppled the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad, putting an end to a 13-year civil war and six decades of autocratic rule. Coinciding with HTS’ offensive was another by the SNA, which pushed south of Damascus into the city of Shahba. Shakir fears for the safety of Yazidi women like her who were unable to flee the areas occupied by both rebel groups, both of which host former ISIS fighters.
“They see Yazidis as infidels and force them to either convert to Islam or be killed. These violations are happening very publicly, but the world is blind and deaf to it,” Shakir said. In early December, Shakir was able to join a caravan of displaced persons heading to the city of Tabqa in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Now, she and her children are sheltering in a school in the village of Merkeb in the Jazira region.
Women like Shakir have long been the collateral damage of Syria’s decades of conflict, whether they are religious minorities or not. According to a December 2024 report from The Syrian Network for Human Rights, 1,264 Syrians were killed in 2024. Of these, Assad regime forces killed 356 civilians, including 92 children and 40 women. Of these, all armed opposition factions, such as the SNA, killed 25 civilians, including four children and three women. HTS killed 21 civilians, including two children and two women, while four civilians, including one child, were killed by ISIS.
“When we heard that Bashar Assad’s [regime] had fallen, everyone was, of course, happy, and we celebrated. But we were also unhappy because Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is no better, and we don’t trust them,” Imam from Afrin told More to Her Story. “We also heard that many women were freed from Sednaya prison, but there are countless Sednayas in Afrin, where dozens of women are imprisoned, raped, and killed. Why does nobody speak about them?”
Other minority groups may face increased danger under Syria’s new transitional government. Women’s rights activist Reyhan Loqo, who is a spokesperson of the Kurdish Kongra-Star women’s organization, explained that Kurdish women were among the pioneers of the Syrian revolution, and eventually Arab and Syrian women joined their movement. Loqo said she is witnessing a resurgence of persecution of these women and fears for their wellbeing and safety.
On December 10, 2024, three members of the Zenobia Women’s Association, a civil society organization promoting women's participation in building sustainable peace in Syria, were killed. They died in a Turkish bombardment on the city of Manbij during the SNA’s invasion and eventual capture of the city. The Zenobia Women’s Organization, formed in June of 2021, gathers women from ethnic and religious groups, particularly from areas which were formerly under ISIS control in northeast Syria. It is unclear whether they were specifically targeted.
Meanwhile, the northeast Syria-based organization Synergy Association for Victims has claimed that there have been several violent attacks, arrests, and killings of Kurdish women and religious minorities by the SNA since December 2024. They plan to publish formal data on their findings in the coming weeks.
Suad Hisso, the head of the Yazidi Union of Syria, says the new government led by HTS “does not represent us. We don’t have faith in it, because everyone knows their radical history and how opposed they are to women’s freedom.”
Prior to the forming of The Yazidi Union of Syria, there was no political representation for Yazidis in Syria. The Union was created to represent the minority group on the domestic and international levels. Hisso cites the historic persecution, rapes, and killings of Yazidi women carried about by HTS’ predecessor groups, Al-Qaeda in Syria and Jabhat al-Nusra, as reasons why she fears a resurgence in violence under an HTS-led regime. She sees HTS as “nothing but an extension of ISIS, which specifically targeted the Yazidi people.”
Shirin Choli, director of the Center for the Study and Defense of Women’s Rights in Qamishlo, told More to Her Story that efforts have been made for the past 13 years to hold those responsible for severe human rights violations — such as rape and extrajudicial killings — in Syria accountable. However, despite documentation of these crimes by civil and humanitarian groups, there has been little international response to these calls for justice. Choli specifically referenced the case of Hevrin Khalaf, a Syrian Kurdish politician and founding member of the Future Syria Party, who was murdered by an SNA faction in 2019. When the Center for the Study and Defense of Women’s Rights attempted to bring Khalaf’s case to the court, they were told that the case was not prosecutable due to northeast Syria’s lack of official political status.
Until now, HTS has issued no explicit policies or statements. However, a spokesman for the Syrian transitional government stated in a recent interview with Al Jadeed News that women should work “according to their physical and mental capabilities,” and that it is preferable for women to work in teaching or stay at home.
During a landmark meeting on January 3 with German and French foreign ministers, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa declined to shake hands with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock but extended his hand to her male French counterpart. Al-Sharaa has stated that he believes in education for women and that his country “will not become Afghanistan,” though only time will tell what fate awaits Syrian women across the country.