Journalist Anhar Kochneva was abducted by the FSA (Free Syrian Army) in October and is still held by the criminals who threaten to execute her. In January the rebels told the hostage’s relatives that they were ready to cut the ransom from the originally demanded 50 million US$ to a mere 300,000 US$. The kidnappers also contacted Ukrainian journalists and expressed their indignation about the inactivity of the Ukrainian authorities in this matter, but the government in Kiev affirmed repeatedly that they were doing everything to free Kochneva.
Anhar’s ex-husband Dmitry Petrov, who communicates with the kidnappers via Skype told in January, that the kidnappers were dissatisfied with talks they had with representatives of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, and that they wanted Chechen President Ramzan Akhmatovich Kadyrov to be a mediator because he is a muslim and more trustworthy to them.
On February 21 Ukrainian Ambassador to Jordan Serhiy Pasko told journalists, that Kiev has sought assistance from the Jordanian government due to Jordan’s good relations with the FSA.
As it stands now, Anhar Kochneva is still at the mercy of the kidnappers and her life is still in the balance.
Anhar Kochneva was featured in these earlier posts:
In November the FSA kidnapped Shaha Ali Abdu (also known as Nujin Derik) the female leader of the Kurdish popular defense unit in Aleppo which was set up to protect the Kurdish districts Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsud. She was widely reported to have been executed by the FSA but reappeared after 10 days alive and reasonable well and was welcomed with tears and celebrations in the town of Afrin, north of Aleppo.
She was only able to survive because she convinced the terrorists that she supported their cause and that her Kurdish militia was ready to join the rebellion. Before her release she also had to record a video, where she offered support for the rebel cause. This video was posted on YouTube and broadcast by a Kurdish-language satellite television channel set up by Qatar.
The cases of Anhar Kochneva and Nujin Derik are by no means an exception, because the kidnapping of civilians and especially women by Islamist fighters has become commonplace. When in mid-February a bus on the way to Damascus was stopped and 42 Shiites from the villages Fouaa and Kfarya, mostly women and children, were abducted, members of the Popular Committees only could get them released by detaining 200 residents of nearby Sunni villages in retaliation.
In every war and in all societies under strain, women are the untold victims. Women are kidnapped, raped, and murdered, they disappear without a trace and their plight nevertheless is nothing more than a side note in the news.
A female physician in Damascus who is regularly treating rape victims, estimated that until now about 2,000 girls and women raped throughout Syria have come to Damascus seeking support. She mentioned a 7-year-old girl who died on the operating room table from the injuries sustained in a rape and she told, that many of the women and girls are pregnant and/or have tested HIV-positive, that many have lost their husbands or parents.
A report by the International Rescue Committee states that rape is a “significant and disturbing feature of the Syrian civil war,” and in three assessments of Syrian refugees living in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, the refugees identified rape and sexual violence as a primary reason their families fled the country.“Many women and girls relayed accounts of being attacked in public or in their homes, primarily by armed men,” the report states. “These rapes, sometimes by multiple perpetrators, often occur in front of family members.”
The Western funded NGOs and Western media try to spread the blame equally on the FSA terrorists and government forces, some US based NGOs and aid organizations even go so far to claim, that “government perpetrators have committed the majority of sexual violence in Syria.”
The investigative journalist Russ Baker published in July a piece on his website WhoWhatWhy with the title War, Syrian Style? Has Assad Ordered Mass Rapes? Baker concluded: “that well-intentioned women’s groups trying to document and prevent such abuses may be falling victim to a deliberate disinformation campaign intent on rallying public support for toppling Assad.”
Baker followed every possible lead to get in contact with witnesses but was not successful. All information turned out to be second- or third or fourth-hand hearsay or it was coming from unverified web postings (anonymous YouTube videos for instance). Some of the allegations had been emailed to women right groups from individuals claiming direct knowledge but they were never verified and the individuals didn’t respond to requests.
Syria and Algeria are the two Arab countries who defy the tide of islamization and remain secular, but the patriarchal traditions of the conservative Sunni population in Syria aggravate the plight of Syria’s women. Rape victims are stigmatized, abandoned, even murdered, to preserve the honor of the family. The recent reports about a father who killed his daughter to spare the family the shame of her rape is just one of many usually unnoticed incidents.
The Islamic fighters take what they need. A young man from a rebel controlled village complained to a British journalist, that young girls from his village have been pledged as brides to anyone who joins al-Nusra and he explained: “This is part of the employment benefits.” Families who are approached by al-Nusra suitors are seldom brave enough to reject the marriage offer.
In December a Syrian Army unit caught 20 Al-Nusra Front terrorists including their leader, the Saudi national Abu Ahmad Tamimi, in a night raid right as the group had a sex orgy in a hall in the town Idlib. The army unit managed to take several pictures of the porno scene for the records. The terrorist group included 15 foreigners (like commander Abu Ahmad Tamimi, a 40 year old Saudi citizen), and among the women were 20 Syrians, mostly wives of “holy fighters” and a Saudi lady pimp.
Some of the female participants confessed during interrogations that they were forced by blackmailing and by financial pressure to join the orgy while others wanted to “serve the revolution” and were hoping to enter heaven for that service “from its widest gates.”
It is indeed astonishing what religious indoctrination can achieve!
As stated already before, rape and sexual violence are a primary reason for families to flee the country, and 74 percent of the refugees in camps across the border are women and children. But they are also not safe there because male predators from the Gulf monarchies are coming in droves to seek out their victims.
The deputy chairman of the Turkish opposition Republican People’s Party, Faruq Logoglu told just a few days ago that female Syrian refugees in Turkish camps are being sold to rich sheikhs in Arab countries. The Turkish newspaper Aiydynlik had reported the same already in January.
Agencies have sprung up in Jordan and in other Arab countries as far away as Libya, to match men with female refugees. Men offer a price for the girl which they choose from photographs, then the agency sends a woman employee into the camp to meet with the family of the girl and negotiate about the price.
In Jordan’s refugee camps there is also a thriving sex trade, where agents sell Syrian refugees to Gulf customers.
French aid workers at Jordan’s Zataari camp told journalists, that they frequently receive requests by Arab men, mainly from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, to be given access to the camp so that they could find a “nice young bride.” One aid worker also told of a woman in the camp who regularly offers girls to the camp’s security guards. The normal cost for one hour with a Syrian girl is 50 JD, but if she only recently lost her virginity then one has to pay 100 JD”
Most of the sex trade though is done not in such an overt manner, but under the guise of marriage, and the “dowry,” which in Muslim society is traditionally paid by the groom as a guarantee of the bride’s financial security is nothing more than a payment for sex.
The man usually pays rent for a home outside the camp and tells the woman that he intends to support her. After having sex and getting tired of the woman he divorces her and leaves, taking all documents with him. The telephone number that he told her usually turns out to be fake.
Such Mut’ah or “pleasure marriages,” are preached by Sheik Mohammed al-Arifi, a Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia, who has also issued a special religious decree that permits Islamic militants in Syria to engage in short-term marriages with Syrian women. Sheikh al-Arifi said that such marriages are needed to satisfy the fighters sexual desires and boost their determination to kill Syrians. According to the Sheikh these marriages, defined as “intercourse marriages,” can be with Syrian females as young as 14 years of age. He also promised paradise for any girl who marries a militant.
According to Jordan’s marriage registration office, during the first half of the last year 189 official marriages and 270 unofficial marriages with Syrian girls have been registered. A number of 114 non-Jordanian nationals have married Syrian girls during the period.
UN officials and aid agencies now estimate that at least 500 under age Syrians have been married in 2012.
Syrian society is diverse and while women and girls from traditional Islamic families are usually obedient and helpless against predators, other women are emancipated and ready to defend themselves.
Many women have joined the Kurdish YPG militias in the northern province of Aleppo and 150 Kurdish women from the city of Afrin, which in late 2012 was the scene of heavy fighting between Kurds and Islamic terrorists after the abduction of the already mentioned Nujin Derik, have set up a female-only battalion, named Martyr Rokan Battalion. The Kurdish militias are trained and equipped by the government.
The government is arming and training women to fight against Islamic terrorists also in other parts of Syria and has established an all-female force, named the “Lionesses for National Defense,” as part of an effort to supplement the army with a National Defense Force militia consisting of civilian volunteers.
A video posted on Russia Today’s Arabic channel from the city of Homs showed a unit of women in combat fatigues marching around a training ground carrying assault riffles and performing military drills. The trainer explained that the women are trained to use assault weapons, heavy machine guns, and grenades, and that they are taught to storm and control checkpoints. One of the women told the journalists: “I’m an civil employee, but I think it’s good to learn how to carry weapons and protect my country.”
The women have already been deployed in various cities, and though their duties seem confined to checkpoint control, the possibility of rebel attacks against government checkpoints effectively puts them on the front line. A video posted on YouTube shows female soldiers at a checkpoint in Homs, and opposition activists in the city confirmed that they are seen guarding endangered neighborhoods, focusing their attention on women wearing headscarves.
When reports about the Lionesses emerged, the FSA propagandists instantly invented a story, that there are multiple FSA soldiers who are women, some of whom returned to Syria from abroad to fight. “The soldiers are part of an FSA battalion of women, and a Palestinian-Syrian woman has been found to be an excellent sniper among them.”
The propaganda of anti-Syria organizations, especially the UK based SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) is often clownish and outright absurd, but that is no hinderance for Western media to disperse it to their readers (which are obviously regarded to be idiots). The news of female FSA fighters accordingly made also the round in the Western press, illustrated very inappropriately by pictures from female PKK-fighters, Kurdish women from the Martyr Rokan Battalion, and Lionesses.
Who cares, pictures or videos of Syrian female Islamic fighters (with headscarves?) are just not available, and they will be rare also in the foreseeable future, because until now nobody has seen a single female FSA fighter in action.
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