Analysis: The Arab Spring gave women an opportunity to break through the cycle of oppression and fight for their rights. The failure of their protest symbolizes the failure of the entire Syrian revolution.
Veiled women arrived at a roadblock in northern Syria. Fighters from the Daash organization (the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria) did not perform a physical security check on them because of the religious ban against it. Several minutes later, al-Qaeda members were surprised when the women opened fire at them.
The unit in charge of the roadblocks is called the al-Khansa Battalion. The name of the battalion was not selected incidentally. Al-Khansa was a Muslim poet and pious from the era of Prophet Muhammad (the seventh century), who composed elegies for jihad fighters and lost four sons in the war against the Persians. When her sons died she refrained from crying, announcing: "I am proud of their death as martyrs. If only I would join them in Heave
But in reality, Syria's women are not proud heroines gladly sacrificing the fruit of their womb for the Muslim nation, but a victim of ongoing abuse, imprisonment, torture, rape and brutal murder. How difficult is the present situation for Syria's women?
Exploited in the army, oppressed at home
The Arab Spring, which erupted in Syria in March 2011, gave women an opportunity to break through the cycle of oppression and fight for their rights in society. During Hafez Assad's years in power, female army soldiers were seen on Syrian television standing in groups of three, holding snakes in their hands and biting them fearlessly. This ridiculous show of courage concealed the truth about the real status of the Syrian woman, her exploitation in the army and her oppression within the family.
The issue of the woman's role in the Syrian revolution has hardly been researched. Prof. Fruma Zachs of the Department of Middle Eastern History at Haifa University delivered a fascinating speech on the subject at the Van Leer Institute.
According to Prof. Zachs, under the Assad family regime there has been a certain increase in the status of women, which is reflected in the relatively high number of female parliament members (about 12%) and in the fact that half of the students in the early 2000s were women. The rise in their status has to do with the regime's secular socialist ideology. Bouthaina Shaaban, President Bashar Assad's media advisor, is a clear example of the woman's ability to move up in the ruling Baath party.
Prof. Zachs explains that the Syrian women underwent three stages during the Syrian revolution: In the beginning of the revolution, when the protest was quiet, there was an outstanding number of women in the demonstrations. Some wore veils in the colors of Syria's flag in protest of the regime's attempt to ban the veil. That way they also remained anonymous and protected themselves from the Mukhābarāt intelligence service.
But at the second stage, when the protest turned violent, the women were subject to arrests, torture and murder. In the third stage, as the civil war developed, the women stayed away from the streets, and female leaders among the rebels continued their protest from home through propaganda and by posting videos on YouTube.
According to Zachs, the women's protest was patriotic in its nature and shared by members of all factions, including women from the Alawi religious group. They called for a just and democratic regime in Syria which would honor human rights in general and women's rights in particular.
In the women's propaganda, the president's wife, Asma Assad, is presented as a war criminal just like her husband, as she fully backs his actions and bears responsibility for the killing of some 130,000 citizens just like him.
Sexual abuse after being recruited to Jihad
The recruitment system of Syria's jihad organizations includes both men and women. An anonymous fatwa on "Jihad al-Nikah" was distributed in 2012 – a religious ruling calling on Muslim women to go to Syria to encourage the jihad fighters in their war against the "heretics." The surprising response to this propaganda was particularly notable in Tunisia, to the point that it required the authorities to intervene in order to stop the phenomenon. Women were brainwashed to believe that they must sexually please the jihadists for the sake of the Muslim nation.
In practice, these women were sexually abused, or in the better case scenario, married jihad organizations' activists. These women are called "muhajirat" (immigrants in the name of religion), and today they are being recruited to the war mainly as roadblock guards.
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