Syria: The Women Behind the Revolution

The mainstream media is neglecting its responsibility to report on the realities of the Syrian Civil War, and is apparently content with focusing its coverage on the war’s impact on America’s geopolitical interests. However, there remains much to uncover about the impacts of the war on the Syrian people. Since the start of the conflict in 2011, multiple participants have been accused of human rights violations.  Conditions have only deteriorated further through the years.  Atrocities committed against Syrian women have been widely documented, including arbitrary arrests, executions, sexual violence, abduction, forced disappearances, and the use of torture by Syrian authorities, pro-governmental militias, and rebel factions.

To combat the war they have been caught up in, many women are working behind the scenes to end the war.  Social media has provided the ammunition essential to peaceful protest in the post-Arab Spring Levant. Suhair Atassi, a political activist, runs the Jamal Atassi Forum Facebook group. This forum calls for political reform in Syria, making a case for civil rights and an end to the suspension of constitutional rights in place since 1963. Another activist, Razan Zaitouneh, launched a website that serves as a database for crimes committed by the Syrian army and police forces. The government’s persecution of Zaitouneh drove her into hiding, yet she has remained active through her website. In 2011, Zaitouneh was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought for her human rights work.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) conducted a review of the Syrian conflict’s effects on women in July of 2014, an important installment in a series of international efforts to intervene in a humanitarian, rather than political, manner in the Syrian Civil War. Liesl Gerntholtz, director of women’s rights at Human Rights watch, stated that “Women have not been spared any aspect of the brutality of the Syrian conflict, but they are not merely passive victims…women are taking on increasing responsibilities – whether by choice or due to circumstance – and they should not have to pay with intimidation, arrest, abuse, or even torture.”  Fighting back against not only the government, but also an encroaching Islamic State (IS) and various other radical Islamic factions, Syrian women face an uphill battle. In areas where the IS has gained control, women have had to bear a multitude of restrictions on clothing and behavior.  These areas used to be secular countries. Women face the monstrosities of sexual assault, shaming, and oppression daily in these vast swaths of territory occupied by the Islamic State.  All in all, an entire generation is being denied an education.

Women’s roles as revolutionaries throughout the Syrian Civil War have been evolving also due to the regime’s systematic raids and arrests that usually target peaceful male insurgents, or “rebels”. Women have had to take on another role, one that often embraces the stereotype of the “weaker” sex. Female activists smuggle medicine and food, and many serve as first-aid workers in obliterated neighborhoods. Playing the helpless, innocent, female has become a virtue these situations. Some, such as Zaitouneh, are political revolutionaries, often underground or in hiding, reporting on the crimes of the war while struggling to make their voices heard.

The rampant oppression women face in Syria is only one of many problems facing the country today. The refugee crisis, the use of chemical weapons, the human rights violations, and the increasing power of the IS and similar radicals further weaken what is left of this broken country. While many women are at the forefront of the Syrian feminist movement, there is still a long road ahead.

Sources:

Syria: War’s Toll on Women. (2014, July 2). Retrieved September 28, 2015.

The Women in the Middle of the War. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2015.

Seeing the women in revolutionary Syria. (n.d.). Retrieved September 28, 2015.