Kidnapping targeting girls increases in Syria's 27-month conflict

Kidnapping touches a primal fear in all Syrian families especially after reports claiming that some 1,000 girls have been kidnapped nationwide, forcing families to keep their daughters indoors or to take loath precautions. At the beginning of the 27-month crisis, Syrians concerned about their male children as many cases of kidnapping for ransom, robberies and even for revenge, were registered. But since more than a year ago, kidnapping targeting females has been on the rise and local media recorded more than 1,000 women were kidnapped. "Some 1,000 women have been kidnapped in Syria and 37,000 women have been raped in the countryside of the capital Damascus alone," Qassem Suleiman, the secretary of the reconciliation committee in the Ministry of National Reconciliation, told al-Watan newspaper. He said most of the cases were reported in al-Mleha, and Shebaa towns in the countryside of Damascus, as well as in the Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh, with some other cases in al-Yarmouk refugee camp and al-Moadhamiya. "I used to accompany my 14-year-old daughter to her school and return to take her back home," said Nahed, 45, a mother of three. She recalled that one of her nieces was kidnapped in al-Midan neighborhood in Damascus five months ago, adding that the 13-year- old girl was kidnapped by gunmen as she was on her way back from school to her house. "She had been held there for 24 hours and her family managed to pay them 600,000 Syrian pounds to get her back," she recounted. Worse even, in other cases, girls were kidnapped, especially those aging between 18-20 in rural areas, by abductors cared more for sex rather than money. "Once a foreign fighter enters the house, the house with everything inside will be his own property, and this is what happened when gunmen entered people's homes and raped the mother, the daughter and the sister in front of their parents," Suleiman said. The officials and many citizens blamed foreign Islamists and extremists, who fight alongside rebels to topple the Syrian government, for such cases and said they apply their own doctrine and their own interpretation of Islam.