Interview: Thousands of minority girls abducted in Syria for ransom, trafficking – and slavery

Thousands of girls have been kidnapped and possibly already sold into slavery or trafficked since the takeover in Syria by the new government led by Abu Mohammad al Jolani (Ahmed al Sharaa), according to the head of an organization that defends persecuted minorities around the world.

“In total, of all the minority girls that are being kidnapped from the Alawites, Druze and Christians – we are looking at more than 7,000,” said Rev. Majed El Shafie, founder of One Free World International (OFWI), citing his organization’s research. “We see a lot of kidnapping of little girls as young as 14 and 12.”

“This is a repeat of ISIS in Iraq. The difference here is, now they’ve become a government,” El Shafie noted. “They are not outlaw groups that the whole world is fighting no, they became a government in Syria and the president is Ahmed Al Sharaa, and he himself owned two sex slaves from the Yazidi community” (which is not conclusively documented, but two former slaves claimed so in a video for The US Sun).

In the latest assault on a minority community in Syria, United Nations experts reported the abductions of “at least 105 Druze women and girls by armed groups affiliated with the Syrian interim authorities, with 80 still missing. Some women who were released cannot return home due to safety fears. In at least three cases, Druze women were allegedly raped before being executed. Seven hundred and sixty-three persons, including women, remain missing.”

El Shafie believes the numbers are higher than that.

“More than 500 girls – Christian girls – were kidnapped and used as sex slaves in Suweida,” he said.

“From the Alawites, the numbers go as high as 40,000” who have been killed, kidnapped or are missing since Dec. 8, according to OFWI’s investigations, El Shafie said.

During former Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s regime, between 2011 and 2024, more than 100,000 people in Syria are estimated to have disappeared, according to Amnesty International. But since the new regime took over, reports have emerged of an unprecedented number of disappearances of children and women, vanishing many times without a trace and sometimes with pictures for ransom.

Some are being taken as wives, others as sex slaves and others sold. Some are abused and then returned. Some men are also kidnapped.

Syrian researcher Sami Kayal described the phenomena as “cultural genocide.”

“Abductions, forced marriages and changes of religion, as well as the compulsion to deny what has happened, are not just criminal acts, but systematic instruments for destroying the social structure of the Alawite community," he said. 

The prevalent threat of kidnapping has severely impacted women’s quality of life and perpetuated a fear of going out alone. Families are often afraid to speak out. Because of societal stigmas, survivors are often reluctant to share their stories or to reveal whether or not they’ve been subjected to sexual abuse.

This is eerily reminiscent of the treatment of Iraq’s Yazidis by ISIS, when thousands of Yazidi women were subjected to sexual slavery, sex trafficking and torture.

In its report, "Syria's New Chapter – A Perilous Dawn for Minorities Under Al-Sharaa’s Rule," OFWI explain that kidnappings for ransom, rape and sex slavery continue to target Alawites and Christians.

“This is not just human trafficking. This is something much worse,” El Shafie emphasized during the wide-ranging interview. “This is sex slavery. This is a catastrophe. The sad reality is – I don’t see many people even knowing about it. And I see even fewer people doing anything about it.” 

OFWI actively tries to rescue these women. Though he declined to elaborate due to the secrecy of such operations, El Shafie said his organization has rescued a small number of women so far and hopes to “be able to save hundreds” in the future.

“We rescued more than 600 Yazidi girls from ISIS hands. We literally bought them …(to) free them,” he said.

Some of these girls have been found in countries as far away as Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. One was rescued by the IDF in Gaza during the war.

Earlier this year, OFWI tried to warn the U.S. State Department beforehand about this summer’s massacres by the Druze and Christians by government forces. El Shafie said OFWI saw it “coming 100 miles away.”

“We tried to warn the world. I think our organization was the first to warn the State Department,” he said.

Though the attacks in southern Syria have dropped from the headlines, “I can ensure you that the massacre is still going on,” he said.

On top of domestic threats, Turkey, Russia, Iran and Israel all have interests in the stability and strategic significance of the country.

“Syria will be the major international danger, and it’s coming very soon. It will not take a long time,” El Shafie predicted.“I will not be surprised to see Syria become a second Taliban in Afghanistan or Boko Haram.”

“I can assure you that this will be the next danger for Jordan. This would be the next danger for Israel. This would be the next danger in the whole region.”

The U.S. and other nations in the West lifted sanctions on Syria in an attempt to normalize the leader and the country. El Shafie said that lifting sanctions without conditions is unacceptable.

“Ahmad Al Sharaa is nothing but a criminal terrorist, and there is American blood on his hands – and a lot of innocent blood too,” El Shafie continued. “His group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, is just a different form of ISIS. He was ISIS. He was Al-Qaeda. Some of his forces today in Syria are still wearing the ISIS flag.”

Meanwhile, global protests and media attention are selectively focused on Israel and its war in Gaza, he noted.

“We have to understand when the massacre happened in Suweida in Syria, there was no one outside on the streets demonstrating. No one,” he said. “When Iran killed their own people, because the woman show a little bit of hair under her hijab, nobody was in the street demonstrating. When Assad was killing his own people, nobody was demonstrating. When Ahmad Al Shara was killing minorities, nobody was demonstrating. When China took the Muslim Uyghurs put them in a concentration camp, nobody was demonstrating.”

El Shafie formed OFWI after his own experience as a Muslim convert to Christianity in his native Egypt. He was arrested, tortured and sentenced to die when he was 20 years old before escaping Egypt by stealing a jet ski and crossing the border to Israel. After two years in detention in Israel, El Shafie moved to Canada as a political refugee.

“That’s why I started One Free World International – to fight for people that used to be in the same place like myself,” he said.

He also warns the West that persecution is coming.

“Our world is divided to two zones: a conflict zone and a comfort zone,” he said. “When you are in a comfort zone, like America, Canada, Europe, you will see an interview, you will be touched for a day, two, a week, and after that, you forget. And you care more now about your credit card and your bank and what’s happened to the car and what’s happened to the kids in the university,” he said.

The cancer of political correctness in Western society is responsible for cultural decline and moral confusion – and for a lack of urgency in helping persecuted people groups, El Shafie said.

He urges people to pray for persecuted minorities, raise awareness of their plight in the media and to contact their politicians.

“You lost your right to complain if you don’t act once you know the truth,” he said. “You have two options: You become part of the problem or the heart of the solution.”

To follow El Shafie and the work of OFWI, visit the website and subscribe to the organization’s newsletter.

This article originally appeared on ALL ARAB NEWS and is reposted with permission.