In post-Assad Syria's chaos, Alawite women face sexual violence

LATAKIA, Syria (AP) — The woman, a member of Syria 's Alawite religious minority, was walking home on a sunny July day in her town on the Mediterranean coast when three gunmen stopped her and pulled her into their van. It was the start of a week of torment.

They drove her to a town in northern Syria three hours away, where they locked her in a room in an abandoned building. Over the coming days she was raped twice, she told The Associated Press.

“You Alawite women were born to be our sabaya,” she said one of the rapists told her, using an Arabic term common among Sunni Muslim extremists for women taken in war as sex slaves. The woman, in her mid-30s, gave her account on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago, dozens of women from the Alawite religious sect — to which Assad belonged — have been subjected to kidnappings and sexual assault, according to rights groups. In many cases, the attacks appear to be by Sunni extremists and jihadis motivated by sectarian hate.

That has raised suspicions some are allies or former allies of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist insurgent force that overthrew Assad and was led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, now Syria’s interim president. Foreign jihadi fighters and Syrian extremists fought alongside HTS during Syria’s yearslong civil war.

Rights groups say the attacks on Alawite women appear to be the acts of individuals, not systematic. But rights workers and victims say Syria's new authorities are not doing enough to stop the attacks. In response to public outcry, the government set up a committee to look into reported kidnappings but said it largely found the reports false.

Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said the kidnappings “cannot be denied.”

The problem, she said, “cannot be pushed away because it’s disturbing or because it’s undermining the message and the image of authorities."

Syria's Interior Ministry spokesman did not respond to repeated questions on the assaults.

The AP interviewed two rape victims and one kidnapping victim, in addition to family members of four others subjected to assaults that in three cases included rape. All spoke on condition they remain anonymous, fearing reprisals. One said she feared authorities would not protect her and later asked the AP not to cite her account.

All women and relatives interviewed by the AP said they informed security forces about what happened to them and authorities took their testimonies. It was not clear if the authorities followed up further or if any arrests were made.

Amnesty International said earlier this year it had received credible reports of at least 36 Alawite women and girls abducted between February and July. The kidnappings took place in the heartland of the Alawite population, in coastal Latakia and Tartous provinces and neighboring Homs and Hama.

Although on a much smaller scale, the attacks recall dark memories of the Islamic State group’s enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women for rape a decade ago in Iraq. Some Sunni extremists consider Alawites heretics and believe it is religiously permitted to take their women as sex slaves. Others have targeted Alawites in revenge for atrocities against Sunnis during the 54-year rule of the Assad family, when there were widespread reports of sexual violence against women in detention centers.

The attacks against women have intensified since March, when clashes between Assad supporters and security forces spiraled into sectarian atrocities in which hundreds of civilians were killed, mostly Alawites at the hands of pro-government fighters.

The Interior Ministry committee investigated 42 cases of alleged kidnappings, but only found one to be a real abduction, ministry spokesman Nour al-Din al-Baba said in mid-November. The committee found that the rest were false claims or instances where a woman ran off with a romantic partner or fled domestic abuse, or cases of blackmail or prostitution, he said, without providing evidence.

The ministry report "has nothing to do with reality,” says Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.

The woman snatched in the van said her three abductors were Syrians wearing black uniforms, though she couldn’t see distinctive insignia on them. During the drive, they passed several checkpoints but were waved through without being stopped or searched, she said.

Dozens of armed men were in the building where she was held, she said. "I felt like it’s done, I will be dead. I did not expect to return at all,” she said.

On the third day, a masked man raped her. Later, a man the gunmen called Abu Mohammed came and ordered them to release her, saying her kidnapping was getting too much attention on social media. The next day, she was raped again by a masked man, though she could not tell if it was the same man.

After a week in captivity, the gunmen dropped her off in a village in Hama province. A woman found her and took her into her home, where she called a relative.

After returning home, she went to a gynecologist and discovered she was pregnant. She managed to get an abortion, although abortion is illegal in Syria.

Her husband at first accepted what happened to her, but within days he suddenly changed his mind and decided to divorce her and married another woman. “He was not a man up to the responsibility,” she said.

Now living with her young son, she said she wanted to leave Syria.

“I live in constant fear,” she said.

Another woman said two of her female relatives, one of them a teenager, were taken by foreign fighters from a street in March. According to the relative’s account, the two were held in the basement of a house several hours away. There, the teenager was raped by the same man for 10 days until he left. The other woman was raped by another person for about two months, after which they were set free.

Another victim, who was 19, said she was taken in early July by three masked foreign fighters – an Iraqi and two non-Arabs.

“You Alawites are filthy infidels,” one of the men told her. When she tried to argue and begged for her life, he hit her head against the windshield until she bled.

She was locked in a basement of the Iraqi's home. He threatened to kill her if she didn't let him touch her. When she started screaming, he left, fearing neighbors would hear, she said.

She said she tried to kill herself by breaking a glass and cutting her vein, but the cut was not deep enough.

The next day, the Iraqi told her that his “emir,” a term used by jihadis to refer to their leader, had decided to set her free “on the condition that you learn about Islam.” The next morning, he put her in the car with his wife and children. On the way, he told her not to tell people she had been kidnapped but to say she’d left home of her own will to learn about Islam. They stopped and he bought her sweets from a store, then dropped her off at a taxi station in Idlib city, she said.

Not long after returning home, a state investigator came to her family home and questioned her about what happened. She identified the Iraqi through security footage from the sweets shop. But it is not known if he was arrested, and officials did not comment when asked.

Fearing reprisals, the family fled Syria.

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Ghaith Alsayed in Damascus, Syria contributed to this report.

FILE- Syrian security forces inspect vehicles at a checkpoint, following a recent wave of violence between Syrian security forces and gunmen loyal to former President Bashar Assad, as well as subsequent sectarian attacks, in Latakia, in Syria's coastal region, March 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed, File)

FILE - Syrian Alawite families who fled the clashes in Syria carry their luggage as they cross a river marking the border between Syria and northern Lebanon near the village of Heker al-Daher in Akkar province, Lebanon, March 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

FILE - Children on the top of an ousted Syrian government forces tank that was left on a street in an Alawite neighbourhood, in Homs, Syria, Dec. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)

FILE - Members of the Alawite minority gather outside the Russian air base in Hmeimim, near Latakia in Syria's coastal region, March 11, 2025, as they seek refuge there after recent violence and retaliatory killings in the area. (AP Photo/Omar Albam, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not long after President Donald Trump took office in January, staff at CentroNía bilingual preschool began rehearsing what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials came to the door. As ICE became a regular presence in their historically Latino neighborhood this summer, teachers stopped taking children to nearby parks, libraries and playgrounds that had once been considered an extension of the classroom.

And in October, the school scrapped its beloved Hispanic Heritage Month parade, when immigrant parents typically dressed their children in costumes and soccer jerseys from their home countries. ICE had begun stopping staff members, all of whom have legal status, and school officials worried about drawing more unwelcome attention.

All of this transpired before ICE officials arrested a teacher inside a Spanish immersion preschool in Chicago in October. The event left immigrants who work in child care, along with the families who rely on them, feeling frightened and vulnerable.

Trump’s push for the largest mass deportation in history has had an outsized impact on the child care field, which is heavily reliant on immigrants and already strained by a worker shortage. Immigrant child care workers and preschool teachers, the majority of whom are working and living in the U.S. legally, say they are wracked by anxiety over possible encounters with ICE officials. Some have left the field, and others have been forced out by changes to immigration policy.

At CentroNía, CEO Myrna Peralta said all staff must have legal status and work authorization. But ICE's presence and the fear it generates have changed how the school operates.

“That really dominates all of our decision making,” Peralta said.

Instead of taking children on walks through the neighborhood, staff members push children on strollers around the hallways. And staff converted a classroom into a miniature library when the school scrapped a partnership with a local library.

Schools and child care centers were once off limits to ICE officials, in part to keep children out of harm’s way. But those rules were scrapped not long after Trump's inauguration. Instead, ICE officials are urged to exercise “common sense.”

Tricia McLaughlin, spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, defended ICE officials' decision to enter the Chicago preschool. She said the teacher, who had a work permit and was later released, was a passenger in a car that was being pursued by ICE officials. She got out of the car and ran into the preschool, McLaughlin said, emphasizing the teacher was “arrested in the vestibule, not in the school.” The man who had been driving went inside the preschool, where officials arrested him.

About one-fifth of America’s child care workers were born outside the United States and one-fifth are Latino. The proportion of immigrants in some places, particularly large cities, is much higher: In the District of Columbia, California and New York, around 40% of the child care workforce is foreign-born, according to UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.

Immigrants in the field tend to be better educated than those born in the United States. Those from Latin America help satisfy the growing demand for Spanish-language preschools, such as CentroNía, where some parents enroll their kids to give them a head start learning another language.

The American Immigration Council estimated in 2021 that more than three-quarters of immigrants working in early care and education were living and working in the U.S. legally. Preschools like CentroNía conduct rigorous background checks, including verifying employees have work authorization.

Beyond the deportation efforts, the Trump administration in recent months has stripped legal status from hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Many of them had fled violence, poverty or natural disasters in their homes and received Temporary Protected Status, which allowed them to live and work legally in the U.S. But Trump ended those programs, forcing many out of their jobs — and the country. Just last month, 300,000 immigrants from Venezuela lost their protected status.

CentroNía lost two employees when they lost their TPS, Peralta said, and a Nicaraguan immigrant working as a teacher left on his own. Tierra Encantada, which runs Spanish immersion preschools in several states, had a dozen teachers leave when they lost their TPS.

At CentroNía, one staff member was detained by ICE while walking down the street and held for several hours, all the while unable to contact colleagues to let them know where she was. She was released that evening, said the school's site director, Joangelee Hernández-Figueroa.

Another staff member, teacher Edelmira Kitchen, said she was pulled over by ICE on her way to work in September. Officials demanded she get out of her car so they could question her. Kitchen, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, said she refused and they eventually let her go.

“I felt violated of my rights," Kitchen said.

Hernández-Figueroa said ICE's heightened presence during the federal intervention in the city has taken a toll on employees' mental health. Some have gone to the hospital with panic attacks in the middle of the school day.

When the city sent mental health consultants to the school earlier this year as part of a partnership with the Department of Behavioral Health, school leadership had them work with teachers rather than students, worried their anguish would spill over to the classroom.

“If the teachers aren't good,” Hernández-Figueroa said, “the kids won't be good either.”

It's not just adults who are feeling more anxious. At a Guidepost Montessori School in Portland, Oregon, teachers observed preschoolers change in the weeks after an ICE arrest near the school in July. After pulling over a father who was driving his child to the school, officials encountered him in the school parking lot and tried to arrest him. In the ensuing commotion, the school went into lockdown: Children were pulled off the playground, and teachers played loud music and had children sing along to drown out the yelling.

Amy Lomanto, who heads the school, said teachers noticed more outbursts among students, and more students retreating to what the school calls “the regulation station,” an area in the main office with fidget toys kids can use to calm themselves.

She said what unfolded at her school underscored that even wealthy communities, like the one the school serves, are not immune from exposure to these kinds of events.

“With the current situation, more and more of us are likely to experience this kind of trauma,” she said. “That level of fear now is permeating a lot more throughout our society.”

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Celenia Romero reads to her Prek-5 students as they play in the library at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Edelmira Kitchen, a teaching artist at CentroNia, poses for a portrait in a classroom at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Celenia Romero reads to her Prek-5 students in the library at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Edelmira Kitchen, a teaching artist at CentroNia, poses for a portrait in a classroom at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Celenia Romero reads to her Prek-5 students in the library at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Belkis Mendez, builds with a Prek-5 student during playtime in their classroom at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Flor Perez encourages her class of 2-year-olds in a walk around the school in lieu of outdoor walks around the neighborhood during school time at CentroNia in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Families leave CentroNia at the end of the school day in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)