Syria's Kidnapping Controversy
What the government's recent investigation gets right, and wrong
The issue of kidnapped Alawi women has been a major source of anger and debate within domestic and international Syrian circles since December 8, but it grew in prominence - and controversy - following the March coastal insurgency and massacres. In the weeks following this violence, social media pages were flooded with near daily claims of women going missing. Explicitly Alawi and anti-Damascus Facebook pages dominated the narrative, quickly politicizing the kidnappings as part of a “Sunni sex slave” market run out of Idlib - a claim which was then amplified by western media outlets using later-debunked testimonies. This framing was met with intense backlash from many Sunnis and government supporters, who argued that the reported kidnappings were fabricated.
New claims and reports of Alawi kidnappings once again became rampant on social media in October, spurring the Ministry of Interior to conduct its own investigation into the topic. On November 2, the Ministry held a press conference announcing the results of their short investigation into the kidnapping phenomenon in the coast. The investigation examined 42 reported kidnappings, concluding that only one was real, the others a mix of fabrications and familial or personal disputes. The MoI did not explain how it chose those specific 42 cases and it has yet to release the full investigation.
The investigation and its results appear to have only made the discourse worse. Several Syrian human rights organizations have condemned the investigation, labelling it as clear evidence that the government cannot be trusted to genuinely investigate kidnappings or protect women. On the other hand, Damascus’ supporters have cited the investigation as clear evidence that the Alawi kidnapping phenomenon is a social media ploy pushed by anti-Damascus propaganda networks.
The MoI investigation raises two distinct issues which have too often been viewed as mutually exclusive: 1) the issue of fake kidnapping claims, particularly regarding Alawi woman, created and pushed by pro-insurgent propaganda networks, and 2) the issue of real kidnappings. Most discussions on the issue seem to frame these two aspects as inverse of each other - if one is true the other must false. With this framing, the MoI investigation is either wholly true, or wholly wrong.
Yet in reality, the investigation has both exposed the scale of fabricated kidnapping claims and at the same time underplayed the reality of kidnappings in the country, which other Syrian government bodies have been reporting on frequently in recent weeks. The investigation found:
12 cases involving runaways with a romantic partner
9 cases of short absences of less than 48 hours
6 cases involving fake reports spread on social media
6 cases of runaways due to domestic violence
4 cases related to prostitution or extortion
4 cases involving criminal offenses
1 case of kidnapping
Despite the under-representation of real kidnappings - which will be discussed later - the investigation does provide for the first time a more granular look at the various forms of fabricated and misleading kidnapping claims spread on social media. These can be broken down into five general categories, of which there are many recent examples.
Phantom Kidnappings
Perhaps most blatant are the entirely fabricated kidnapping claims, of which the MoI identified six out of its sample. These include fake reports of kidnappings, as was seen recently targeting the Christian town of Muhardah when propaganda networks spread a viral claim of widespread kidnappings in the town, triggering an explicit denial of any security issues by local pages. Other fabricated claims use pictures of real people, including those who are not in Syria, such as two mid-October claims of a man kidnapped in Latakia using the picture of a Syrian man in Germany and of a woman kidnapped in Homs using the picture of a Mexican woman.
Manipulated Disappearances
Kidnapping reports often begin circulating when someone does not arrive home at the expected time, with families then posting on Facebook asking if anyone has heard from them. These then get spread widely as definitive cases of kidnappings. Sometimes, however, the individual is simply late coming home or has spent the night at a friend’s or man’s house without informing their family. When this occurs, the large “violations documentations” accounts rarely post updates, with some going so far as to re-post the kidnapping claim with a new date rather than share an update that the person is back home. Other cases involve women running away with their partners against parents’ wishes, or cheating on their husbands. The MoI investigation documented nine “short absence” cases and 12 cases of running away with a partner.
Recent examples include the October 22 disappearance of an Alawi woman from Latakia’s Datour neighborhood who didn’t returned home after going to a nearby gym. Some anti-Damascus Facebook pages went so far as to claim there was an (unpublished) video showing General Security kidnapping her. However, 24 hours later her family reported that she had returned home, having spent the night at a friend’s house.
Such manipulated disappearances have innocent intentions more often than not, with friends and family reacting genuinely to not knowing where a loved one is amid a constant inundation of kidnapping claims. It is the lack of clear follow-up that amplifies the harmful impacts of these misleading claims, with most Syrians only seeing the initial missing persons post and not the ‘safe at home’ updates.
Domestic Abuse
Cases of domestic abuse are among the most commonly cited by local security officials when asked about kidnapped woman. Some women enduring domestic abuse who are seeking to escape will contact police or security officials to help them move somewhere else. These officials often have audio records of these ‘911 calls’ as evidence, while the women’s spouses then turn to social media claiming security forces kidnapped their wives. The MoI investigation documented six such cases.
Criminal Cases
Some claimed kidnappings are actually extortion attempts by the ‘victims’ themselves - a result of the dire economic situation many Syrians find themselves in. For example, on October 24 a woman and two men were arrested in an Alawi village in Masyaf for staging her kidnapping in order to extort her parents. A man was arrested for attempting the same thing in Damascus in November. Other criminal cases involve the initially voluntary travel of women who are then abused by their partner. One such case occurred in late October in rural western Homs, where security forces recovered the woman after her partner turned violent. The MoI investigation found eight cases of either extortion or criminal kidnappings.
ISC arrests
Unaddressed by the MoI investigation is a less common - though more serious- type of ‘fake kidnapping’ - that of arrests by uniformed men which witnesses believe to be kidnappings. These appear to exclusively apply to reports of Alawi men being kidnapped, with two recent examples. On October 14, an Alawi diaspora activist heavily involved in online anti-Damascus media campaigns reported that his brother had been kidnapped in Tartous city. However, locals in the city told the author that it was well known he had been arrested outside the police station.
Similarly, on October 23 a video was published showing armed men in what appeared to be General Security uniforms conducting a targeted arrest of an Alawi man in Latakia city (the uniformed men held back bystanders, taking only the one man after he arrived outside his home). Violations documentation pages all claimed he had been kidnapped, but a week later coastal anti-Damascus pages announced that he had “been released” with no mention of the security forces’ role in detaining him and still referring to him as a kidnapped person.
This is part of a broader problem when it comes to understanding the scale of kidnappings. The arrest of men by security forces in the coast is commonly referred to as “kidnapping”, even when it is an explicit arrest, due to the general perception that such actions are universally baseless. This leads to an often exaggerated perception of the frequency of kidnappings in Alawi areas. Nonetheless, local security forces could easily counter these narratives by being transparent about the arrests they are carrying out, rather than simply grabbing men off the street and into unmarked cars.
Real Kidnappings
Despite the huge amount of mis-information and fabricated stories online, kidnappings remain very real and have a range of motivations - financial, personal, and gender-based. They impact all segments of Syrian society, all sects, and all regions of the country, and perpetrators are likewise not just from one sect. While the MoI investigation claims to have found only one real kidnapping among its 42 cases, this implied rarity is directly undermined by recent statements from local security officials and rescued kidnapping victims. These statements alone include kidnappings targeting Alawi and non-Alawi men and women committed by both ex-regime Alawi criminals and Sunni criminals.
Throughout October, Internal Security Command (ISC) directors across the coast, Hama, and Homs have announced multiple arrests of kidnapping gangs as well as the rescue of kidnapping victims. On October 16, ISC forces arrested the brother of Bashar Al-Assad’s infamous cousin, Wissam Al-Assad, and his insurgent cell in the Qardaha countryside. The arrest was triggered by the gang’s murder of a civilian and the attempted kidnapping of a child. Investigators claimed that the gang has been involved in multiple murders, kidnappings, extortion and robbery cases along the coast and was also engaged in the March 6 insurgency. On October 21, the Latakia ISC announced another arrest of a criminal gang in the city attempting to conduct a kidnapping. That same day, the Homs ISC announced the arrest of a criminal gang who had conducted kidnappings in the Homs countryside disguised as security members, going so far as to describe a specific kidnapping for ransom they had recently committed.
Kidnappings by ex-regime security forces had grown so bad in the coast in recent weeks that the Latakia ISC commander issued a statement on this issue on October 25, saying in part:
“Investigations confirmed the continued attempts of some groups linked to remnants of the former regime to destabilize the province’s security and stability by carrying out terrorist acts targeting vital and government sites, committing systematic murder and kidnapping, and spreading rumors and inciting sedition.”
Security forces have also recently announced the liberation of some kidnapped people. On, October 22, the Talkalakh ISC announced it had intercepted kidnappers near the Lebanese border and freed a Christian family who was kidnapped earlier that day. Similarly, on October 14, a woman kidnapped in Latakia was found near the Lebanese border by ISC units. According to her video testimony, she had been placed in a van containing other kidnapped women and was being driven into Lebanon when a General Security patrol approached them, causing the driver to abandon the vehicle and flee.
The recent spate of kidnapped victims being taken towards Lebanon suggests a renewed role of Alawi criminal networks in kidnappings. However, the prominent case of a young Alawi boy taken outside his school on October 8 shows that Sunni criminal networks are also at work. According to the child’s uncle, he was eventually contacted by the men who took him and was able to recover the child in Idlib on November 1.
Other kidnappings last month are documented, but their motives and the details vague and unclear, resulting in widespread dismissal by Damascus’ supporters. On October 14, a woman who disappeared from Latakia’s Datour neighborhood several days earlier was found on the side of the road in Hama’s al-Ghab countryside, unconscious and severely beaten. Her sister lived nearby, posing the question as to whether her kidnappers knew her and her family.
Still other cases of documented kidnappings frequently result in executions a few days later. These types of kidnappings may be revenge motivated, or the victims’ families could not pay the ransoms. Such kidnappings are not sect-specific, however, and have impacted Sunnis and Christians across the country as well.
Absence of Dialogue
Kidnappings are not a new issue in Syria. During the war, regime militias and warlords ran extensive kidnapping and extortion networks across the coast that targeted both Sunni and Alawi civilians. Syrian opposition factions also participated in kidnappings and ransom demands throughout the war, especially those later affiliated with the Syrian National Army in northern Aleppo. Syria’s economic crisis combined with the massive proliferation of firearms and nascent state security forces means kidnappings will continue to plague to country for a long time.
The MoI investigation is likely accurate, about those 42 specific cases. Yet the clearly intended implication that there are almost no real kidnappings in the coast does not reflect the reality as reported by the local Internal Security Command over the past month. The MoI investigation should be seen as a testament to the scale of fake and misleading reports on kidnappings, but it is not an accurate representation of the scale of real kidnappings occurring in the coast or in Syria more broadly.
At the same time, many new Alawi rights organizations and activists have amplified every online rumor of violations against their community, rather than working to document and investigate accusations in a credible manner. The framing of kidnappings as an issue that only impacts Alawi woman, and the amplification of claims that are later disproven, has ruined the credibility of many of these organizations. The overlap between many of the online “activists” with former Assad apologists and Assad regime-linked propaganda networks has only further undermined any broader domestic support for this issue.
Syrians and the international community must de-politicize the topic of kidnappings (and insecurity more broadly). The Syrian government should stand above the media landscape that has garnered a chokehold over the country. Rather than trying to counter every fake online claim, security officials should pursue genuine, on the ground engagement with minority communities to earn their trust and thereby reduce the power online propaganda has over these populations. Taking seriously the real kidnapping cases, rather than instinctually dismissing questions about the topic as misled, would go a long way towards proving the fabricated stories wrong.