The Women in the Middle of the War
Stop by a women’s shelter in Syria today, and the inhabitants will tell you just how bleak the future looks. After more than four years of civil war, the pervasive sexual assault that has become a blight on the country, regardless of allegiance, shows no sign of abating. As violence increases, more women are growing convinced that the end of the war is more significant than who emerges as the winner. The protracted conflict is leaving women to bear the brunt of the war, and they are reaching their breaking point. At the end of the day, a woman who runs such a shelter near Damascus told me, the politics of those who torment and rape these Syrian women doesn’t matter — for most victims, the line between opposition or the regime is blurred, if they can tell the political identity of the perpetrator at all.
Women have been targeted by both sides. Recent reports by Human Rights Watch, among other groups, have documented instances of severe beatings of women in areas where regime forces conduct house raids. As regime soldiers carry out door-to-door searches and arrests in cities like Daraa, and other areas controlled by government forces, they often detain and abuse the women of these homes to terrorize their neighborhoods into submission. In areas where rebels exercise greater control, well-coordinated extremist organizations like the Islamic State (also called ISIS and ISIL), have imposed a host of restrictions on the dress and behavior of the women in the region. Last year, the United Nations reported that many of these women, including the ones who’re displaced into such strongholds, are subjected to rape and other forms of abuse.
Source: foreignpolicy.com