What is in Store for Women in the New Syria?

 The new rebel coalition, HTS, after taking over the control of Syria and ousting the dictator, Bashar al-Assad, has claimed that women’s rights will be protected in the country. The HTS and its leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani are true followers of Sharia law. How will they reconcile women’s rights and a conventional interpretation of Sharia law? Will the HTS include women in the new government?

People responded to the journalists’ questions expressing hope that the new regime would not oppress women, they would let the girls study and not meddle with what women want to wear. Many women expressed fear about how things would unfold. Women activists have demanded that women get due representation and a significant role in nation-building. 

Syria can surprise you with its great cultural diversity and the different ways women live, presenting a wide spectrum of lifestyles from ultra-orthodox to ultra-modern. Very few people remember that Syria had an all-women private militia that fought ISIS and advocated women’s liberation. In her pathbreaking journalistic work, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon wrote about these “daughters of Kobani” (Lemmon, 2021) The Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) had women commanders and soldiers who fought on an equal footing with men against ISIS. Lemmon met these soldiers and commanders in Raqqa. The battle was raging between SDF and ISIS as the SDF fought to take back Damascus, the Syrian capital, from the Islamic State terrorists. 

Most of the women fighters were from the Kurdish town, Kobani, and among the women soldiers, there were snipers and other well-trained special force members. The year Lemmon met these women was 2014. The Kurds, spread across Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, have always aspired for a homeland, a Kurdish state. Kurdish rights were sidelined and Kurds were pushed to the political margins in all these four countries. Even after the HTS has taken over Syria, legitimate fears about the future of Kurds and their human rights are in the air amidst the celebrations of freedom. 

The Turkish Kurdish Party (PKK) and its Marxist-Leninist leader Abdullah Ocalan, had called for the formation of an independent Kurdistan. Without subscribing to any of Ocalan’s political or ideological positions, Syria had given him asylum just out of spite for its enemy, Turkey. Ocalan was also allowed to work for and organise PKK In Syria. Under Turkey’s pressure, Syria later cancelled his asylum and he was arrested and imprisoned for life by Turkey. However, his work in Syria built the foundation of a Kurdish political and military movement. He was a strong proponent of women’s rights, which created gender rights consciousness in an entire generation of Kurdish women. The women soldiers of Kobani belonged to this creed. Many of these women grew up playing soccer, debating women’s rights, working for students’ unions, and believing in education and empowerment.

Syria also witnessed the brutal enslavement of hundreds of women, especially the Kurdish Yazidi women, by the Islamic State. When ISIS was defeated and the regions under its control liberated, these women were also freed. Many of these women had voluntarily married ISIS men as they believed in radical Islamic views when they were teenagers and young women only to regret it later owing to the cruel treatment they met with from the ISIS men. 

Syrian women are known to be active in politics and social life. Some scholars believe they inherited this spirit of freedom as early as the Mesopotamian civilisation. The upper class and educated women have always stood for gender equality and women’s rights. The Syrian Lebanese Women’s Movement is a strong women’s rights movement that attracts thousands of women in Syria to work with them. 

The 2022 data from the World Bank reveals that 46.8% of Syrian girls complete lower secondary school whereas only 39.8% of boys pass the same level of education. About 75% of women are literate. Women hold 12% of seats in the Syrian Parliament but workforce participation is only 14.1%. A host of women artists including musicians and   

Honour killings, child marriage, forced marriage, and domestic violence rates are high in Syria. Like any other Middle Eastern country, women in Syria have seen moderate regimes giving way to autocratic ones, stealing whatever freedom they experienced. Only time will tell whether HTS will give back women's dignity and freedom of choice.