It was a March afternoon near the end of Ramadan when Mina and her sister left their home to buy groceries for iftar from a nearby shop on the Syrian coast.
They never made it to the store. What should have been a short walk turned into weeks of excruciating anxiety for their family as they wondered where their girls were.
Throughout their ordeal, the parents received no news of their daughters - one of whom is a minor - except for a brief voice message that the girls had sent to their mother, Abeer: "We’re all OK. We’ll be back soon," they said.
The only available surveillance footage showed the siblings walking down the road as an unmarked white van passed by. The video cut off before their paths crossed.
The family's nightmare ended only recently when the girls were returned to their mother, wrapped in niqabs.
The girls said they were abducted by four armed men in civilian clothes who got out of the white van, blindfolded them and held them in an underground site, about three hours from their home, for more than two months.
The captors did not demand a ransom. The family said intermediaries helped to negotiate the daughters' release.
Disturbing pattern
The sisters are among a growing number of Alawite women who have gone missing since the fall of former president Bashar Al Assad in December.
Mr Al Assad is a member of the minority sect. With him gone, Alawites are at risk of acts of revenge and political marginalisation. Their vulnerable position in the new Syria seems to have turned them into easy prey for criminal gangs.
Over the past two months, The National has spoken to a dozen families of missing Alawite women and girls, from teenagers to those in their late 30s.
Most disappeared between February and June, in the coastal region known as the Alawite heartland, as well as in the province of Hama, and even in the capital, Damascus.
Interviews with families and human rights and advocacy groups point to a troubling pattern of disappearances and kidnappings of Alawite women, often orchestrated by what appear to be criminal networks, frequently involving ransom demands, motivated by financial gain and, in some cases, sectarian retribution.
Activists based in the US, Europe and Australia told The National that dozens of women have vanished since February, prompting concerns of a pattern of abductions.
The fear, they say, is palpable.
“Women are afraid to go to school, to university, to the market, even to do simple things like step outside the house,” said one activist.
Another said: “It is deeply affecting women’s ability to live their lives or practise their rights."
Although the new Islamist-led authorities in Syria have called for inclusivity, revenge attacks against Alawites have continued, as anger against Syria’s former dictator is directed at the minority sect.
In March, hundreds of unarmed Alawites were killed, mainly along the coast, by unregulated factions and armed men exploiting the chaos caused by a pro-Assad insurgency to carry out mass reprisals against civilians.
Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara has pledged to hold those responsible accountable. But authorities have struggled to contain rising sectarian tensions.
Abeer believes her daughters’ abductors were driven by revenge.
“It’s sectarian,” she told The National. “And they want to get to us through our girls.”
The kidnappers asked the girls about their sectarian affiliation, they told her. “They replied that they were Alawite,” Abeer said.
The men then reportedly forced the sisters into the vehicle, insulted them and blamed them for the March pro-Assad ambush.
“What do they have to do, my girls, with loyalist remnants?” lamented the mother.
There is no confirmed information about the identity of the men.
The country's General Security Service reportedly told the family that the girls’ abduction was part of a broader kidnapping network they have been trying to dismantle.
The UN's Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said it had documented the abduction of at least six Alawite women by unknown people across several Syrian governorates.
“The whereabouts of at least two remain unknown,” Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the commission’s chairman.
The commission, which is investigating violence in Syria’s coastal regions, told The National that investigations into more than a dozen cases are continuing and that they can only comment when the findings are made public.
It also quoted credible reports of more abductions. Mr Pinheiro said interim authorities had opened investigations into some of the cases.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria was established in 2011 to investigate human rights violations after the outbreak of the civil war.
Ransoms, threats and abuse
Despite everything they went through, Abeer and her daughters are among the lucky ones.
In most cases reviewed by The National, captors demanded exorbitant ransoms that many families could not afford, while other victims have reportedly shown signs of abuse. One woman was released after weeks of captivity and threats to her family, her head shaved and her body covered in cuts.
Others have disappeared without a trace.
Within the Alawite community, many believe women are being trafficked and forcibly married off in Idlib, a northern region controlled by the Sunni Islamist groups that led the offensive to topple the Assad regime.
In one case, a young woman from the coastal city of Tartus who was able to return described being tortured and pressured to marry a fighter, referred to as an “emir”, according to another Syrian activist based in the US, who has been documenting the cases. She was reportedly taken to an area in Idlib.
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“The abductions began before the massacres in March along the Syrian coast, I would say some time in February,” the activist said.
“But many of those who return are too afraid to speak,” the activist added. “Their families have been threatened. They change their stories, saying they were never abducted at all.”
It remains unclear who is behind these kidnappings and how organised the captors are. The National could not independently verify the entirety of the families' accounts.
But the prevailing chaos, fuelled by the presence of extremist factions operating outside government control despite promises to integrate them into a new national army, and widespread arms proliferation, has created a dangerous mix.
Syria's Ministry of Interior has not answered The National's questions on the issue.
‘Get the money fast’
In several cases, captors were after extravagant amounts of money.
For Faten, it was $25,000. The young woman disappeared on what she thought was another ordinary trip to the city. But her parents grew concerned only when their calls went unanswered and her phone was completely cut off.
Hours later, they received a chilling call. “He said; ‘I’m calling to tell you Faten is not coming back. Don’t look for her. Forget about her’,” one of her relatives recalled.
A few days later, the captor called again, asking for money.
“They started with $50,000, then lowered it to $25,000,” the relative added. “They kept repeating, ‘Get the money fast if you want her alive.’”
The family filed a missing-person report with General Security and continued the search on their own, posting appeals on Facebook and asking anyone in the city if they had seen the young woman.
Not long after, they received a call from Faten.
“It was her, terrified, shaking, crying. She didn’t know where she was but that she wasn't in Syria. She couldn’t identify the dialect, it wasn’t Arabic. She was surrounded by strangers. She kept telling us not to do anything, obviously she was under pressure,” Faten's relative said.
The family suspects the captors are not Arab, but possibly Turkmen, Uighur or Chechen. In a very short clip mistakenly sent to the relative, the men could be heard speaking a language that The National was not able to identify.
The relatives believe that Faten’s abduction is part of a worrying pattern of mysterious disappearances within their community. “We see missing reports every day, and it’s always our women. Why?”
The family scraped together the sum for the captors, but the young woman has yet to return.
“Now, I’ve paid the money, and I’m just waiting – either they’ll let her go and forbid her from saying a word about what happened, or she’ll come back dead, or she’ll disappear forever,” the relative said.
'We, the poor, are paying the price'
Many families said General Security is not doing enough to help them find the missing women, either because it lacks resources, such as the ability to track phone numbers, or because newly appointed staff are inexperienced after the fall of the regime.
Others suspect that the security force lacks the will.
Families have complained that cases of missing women have been handled with indifference or a lack of urgency. In several instances, they say, officials were quick to dismiss the possibility of criminal motives and instead focused on the assumption that the women had left voluntarily.
In April, UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen raised concerns at the Security Council over reports of women and girls being abducted, urging Syrian authorities to launch thorough investigations and “take measures to reassure the impacted communities on this".
But activists said the Syrian authorities have made no serious effort to find those women, prompting some families to take matters into their own hands.
In at least two instances, families paid ransoms to the kidnappers without notifying General Security.
“I was afraid they’d ruin everything,” said the relative of one missing woman.
Many families see this as part of a wider pattern of bias against Alawites. Although the Assad dynasty relied on the community to fill the ranks of its security forces and military, many Alawites say they were also marginalised and oppressed under his authoritarian rule.
“We’re seen as if, under the old regime, we lived in luxury. But it’s all an illusion,” said Hayan, whose wife, Lana, was kidnapped in the middle of the night in their home. They live in a remote village in the countryside, barely able to make ends meet.
“The top officers who took everything have already left,” added one of Lana's relatives. “It’s the poor, the ones who couldn’t leave, who stayed behind. And now they’re paying the price, just because Assad was Alawite.”
For weeks, Hayan received no news of his wife. Then one day, he said, the captors called, demanding that he divorce her immediately. “They threatened to harm me if I refused,” he said. “She was also on the phone, all she wanted to know was if our child was safe. She said I should do what they say, so she doesn't get hurt”.
But Hayan refused. He later shared the kidnapper’s phone number with General Security, although he holds little hope it will help. “I’m not optimistic this will lead anywhere,” he said.
Lingering taboos
There are many unanswered questions around these disappearance cases. Families are often afraid to speak out, fearing repercussions for their missing daughters or wives.
Such was the case for Rana’s relatives. The young woman from the countryside was released after her family paid a ransom. She had been drugged and held for several days in an undisclosed location.
One of her relatives said he preferred not to share more details and ended the interview.
“Honestly, I’m still afraid to say anything,” he said.
In a conservative society where stigma lingers, women survivors are often reluctant to share their stories or to reveal whether or not they’ve been subjected to sexual abuse.
“Most families, when they know we are investigating, talk to us, but they won’t speak publicly because of the shame and also because the kidnappers threaten them,” the US-based activist told The National.
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“Many of these women have been raped, abused and tortured and fear being rejected by their community if they speak out because of what they have been through,” the activist added.
Alawites frequently fear reprisals or systematic persecution, drawing grim parallels to the treatment of Iraq’s Yazidis by ISIS a decade ago. During the extremist group’s brutal reign, thousands of Yazidi women were subjected to sexual slavery, sex trafficking and torture.
The issue has also deepened tension between Alawites and Sunnis, with many Alawites viewing Sunnis from northern Syria as more conservative and with suspicion, especially as Sunnis are taking a leading role in the country’s post-Assad government.
“They are not used to seeing girls walking like this on the street and not completely covered,” a relative of a kidnapped girl said.
Lama, whose daughter is missing, said she began receiving hateful phone calls from scammers after posting photos of the girl on social media. “One of them told me he would strip her and show me pictures of her body – that they would do to her what happened on the coast – calling Alawites ‘pigs’,” she said.
'They’re trying to make up stories'
The high-profile media coverage of a few cases involving missing girls who returned claiming they had eloped to marry their lovers has only added to the sensitivity of the issue.
One case sparked national controversy.
In May, weeks after she went missing, Mira, a young Alawite woman, reappeared wearing a blue jilbab and standing beside a young man. She told local media that there had been “no kidnapping” but she had run away to marry a Sunni man.
This has led some to dismiss the issue of disappearances entirely as frivolous, while others have denounced forced marriage and human trafficking. “Then they create stories claiming the girls ran off with men. But why has this never happened before?” asked a relative of a missing woman.
For most of the families interviewed, Mira’s case has deepened fears that their voices will go unheard, or drowned out by sectarian hate speech.
“God willing, things will turn out OK, and if my child comes back, they’ll try to write a whole scenario around my kids the way they did with Mira – to deny the kidnapping and so that everyone stays quiet,” a mother whose daughter went missing said.
Meanwhile, women and their relatives live in constant fear.
“There’s an Arabic saying that says: 'He who burns his tongue from the soup will blow on yoghurt',” said Jaafar, whose sister has been missing for months.
“That's us now, we don’t know what’s safe any more. Even inside our homes, we’re afraid. We’re suspicious of everything.”
Jaafar has not heard a word from her sister since she disappeared.
To protect their identities, names in this article have been changed, and specific locations withheld.
