标签： Asia

In the months after Syria’s transitional government ousted former President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, a bombshell new investigation by *The New York Times* has confirmed that authorities in Damascus are drastically underreporting widespread kidnapping, violent assault, and sexual abuse targeting women and girls from Assad’s native Alawite community.

Since taking power, the administration led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa has publicly acknowledged only one confirmed case of an Alawite woman being abducted. But the Times’ on-the-ground investigation, which relied on anonymous victim testimony to protect survivors from further harm, has verified at least 13 separate kidnappings of Alawite women and girls. Of those confirmed cases, five survivors reported being gang-raped during their captivity, and two of those victims returned to their families after being released with unplanned pregnancies resulting from the abuse.

The Times’ findings reinforce earlier independent documentation of the crisis. Human rights watchdog Amnesty International warned in July 2025 that it had corroborated credible reports of at least 36 comparable kidnappings, while the Syrian Feminist Lobby has recorded 80 Alawite women and girls as missing since the start of 2025.

Survivors and observers have offered differing accounts of the motive behind the attacks. Multiple kidnapped women told investigators they experienced explicitly sectarian abuse, with their captors framing the attacks as revenge for the Alawite community’s historical alignment with the Assad regime. Other analysts have characterized many of the incidents as criminal enterprises driven by ransom demands. In one documented case, a family paid kidnappers $17,000 to secure their relative’s release, only for the abductors to keep the money and refuse to free her. Another 24-year-old survivor described being held for three weeks in a squalid, unkempt room, where she was repeatedly raped, beaten, had her head and eyebrows shaved as a humiliation, and cut multiple times with razor blades. She was ultimately freed only after her parents paid a large ransom.

Tensions between Syria’s new ruling leadership and the Alawite community have remained at a fever pitch ever since Assad’s ouster and subsequent exile to Moscow. Just last year, small-scale armed attacks on transitional government security forces by suspected Assad loyalists in the coastal Alawite stronghold of Latakia escalated into large-scale brutal sectarian violence. A separate investigation by Reuters later traced the bulk of the resulting civilian deaths back to Damascus-based security officials, with at least 1,500 Alawite civilians killed in the crackdown.

When contacted by *The New York Times* for comment on its latest findings, Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al-Din Baba claimed the government could not respond to the investigation unless the outlet turned over the full names of all interviewed victims. The newspaper declined this request, having granted formal anonymity to all survivors to protect them from retaliation. Baba reaffirmed the government’s stance, standing by an official November 2025 inquiry that examined 42 reported kidnappings and concluded only one of the cases was “authentic.”

The roots of Syria’s ongoing sectarian tension stretch back to the start of the country’s 13-year civil conflict, which began in 2011 when Assad regime forces opened fire on peaceful pro-democracy protestors. The war ultimately left hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead and millions more displaced internally across the country and as refugees abroad. While a portion of the Alawite community initially backed the pro-democracy movement, widespread government persecution of dissent and growing fears over sectarian extremist groups within the opposition pushed most Alawites to align with Assad over the course of the war.

Following Assad’s overthrow, Alawite community leaders have repeatedly called for international protection from targeted sectarian revenge attacks. The issue flared into public view this week during al-Sharaa’s official visit to London, where he was met by large protests organized by Alawite and Alevi (a related sect primarily found among Turkey’s Kurdish and Turkish communities) activists. Protesters accused al-Sharaa’s transitional government of enabling what they describe as systematic violence amounting to genocide against Alawite civilians.

Maher Hamadouch, director of the UK-based Alawite advocacy group Syrian Coastal Society, argued that hosting al-Sharaa in the United Kingdom sends a dangerous message to the international community that accountability for human rights abuses can be ignored. “At a time when Syrians continue to endure displacement, insecurity, and marginalisation, allowing such a figure to enter the UK risks sending the wrong message: that accountability can be overlooked, and that those associated with violence can be normalised on the international stage,” Hamadouch said. His organization has called on the UK government to refuse to grant any public platform or political legitimacy to individuals linked to extremist activity or human rights violations. Hamadouch, who has previously defended Assad’s decades-long rule over Syria, added that al-Sharaa’s public record is “inseparable from violence, sectarianism and the repression of civilian populations in Syria.”

Deep in the village of Ittefaq, on the eastern outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, the mud-caked rubble of a collapsed wall still holds the traces of a recently shattered life. Piles of salvaged blankets, dented cooking utensils and scattered personal belongings sit alongside broken bricks, a quiet marker of the tragedy that unfolded late Friday, when a 5.8 magnitude earthquake ripped through northern Afghanistan.

For Mohibullah Niazi, the neighbor who led early rescue efforts, the sounds of that disaster will linger. For three full minutes after the wall collapsed onto the refugee family camped next to his property, Niazi told reporters Saturday, he could hear the trapped family screaming for help. By the time a larger group of rescuers could clear the heavy mud and rock, the screams fell silent.

Eight members of the family, all Afghan refugees who had just returned to their home country 15 days earlier after being pushed out of neighboring Iran, were killed. The only survivor is 3-year-old Aarash, who was pulled from the rubble with a severe head injury and airlifted to a hospital in central Kabul for emergency care.

This small, already vulnerable family was among millions of Afghans forced to return to their unstable homeland in 2023, after neighboring Iran and Pakistan launched harsh crackdowns on undocumented foreign residents, most of whom are Afghan refugees who fled years of conflict and economic collapse. Najibullah, the 50-year-old head of the killed family, had nowhere else to go after crossing back into Afghanistan: the family set up a makeshift tent on empty low-lying land adjacent to Niazi’s home, because he could not afford permanent shelter. Just 30 minutes before the earthquake struck, Niazi said he offered the family space in his guest room to escape cold, heavy rains that had soaked the region for days. They declined his invitation.

Days of heavy rainfall had already softened the sodden earth holding the adjacent retaining wall in place, local residents explained. When the earthquake hit, the wall crumbled directly onto the family’s tent, trapping everyone inside before they could escape. Niazi and a handful of nearby neighbors immediately began digging by hand and with small spades, but the weight of the rock and mud was too much for their small group. “We tried our best,” Niazi recounted Saturday, standing at the disaster site. “But for two or three people, this was impossible work.”

Local authorities were alerted quickly, and Taliban-led rescue teams and ambulances arrived within an hour to continue recovery efforts. By Saturday morning, all eight bodies had been recovered, and the injured toddler had been transported for care. On Saturday, Health Ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman confirmed the boy remained hospitalized for his head injury, saying medical teams were monitoring his condition closely.

In the wake of the quake, official death toll numbers have seen a small discrepancy: Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat released an updated count Saturday putting the total national death toll at 12, with four additional people injured across the affected regions. Fitrat added that five full homes had been completely destroyed, and another 33 suffered major damage, impacting 40 families across six provinces: Kabul, Panjshir, Logar, Nangarhar, Laghman, and Nuristan. The Afghanistan Disaster Management Authority has meanwhile put the total death toll at nine, and officials have not yet explained the gap between the two counts.

Friday’s earthquake originated in the seismically active Hindu Kush mountain range, roughly 150 kilometers east of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, and 290 kilometers northeast of Kabul, according to data from both the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center and the U.S. Geological Survey. Afghanistan sits on one of the world’s most active tectonic fault zones, and major earthquakes have killed thousands of Afghans in just the last two years, as poorly constructed, informal housing across much of the country leaves communities extremely vulnerable to seismic activity.

Just last August 2023, a 6.0 magnitude quake struck a remote mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 2,200 people. In October that same year, a 6.3 magnitude quake and subsequent powerful aftershocks hit western Afghanistan, leaving thousands dead. Two months later, a 6.3 magnitude quake hit Samangan province in the north, killing 27 people, injuring more than 950, and damaging iconic cultural sites including the historic Blue Mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif.

After a month of open conflict between Iran and a US-Israeli coalition, the regional crisis shows no sign of de-escalation, with attacks expanding from military targets to critical civilian infrastructure amid stark new threats from Washington.

On Friday, cross-border exchanges of fire continued between Iran, Israel and the United States, just days after the war entered its sixth week. Warnings of incoming missile strikes were activated across Israel, Bahrain and Kuwait, even as US and Israeli officials have repeatedly claimed Iran’s core military capabilities have nearly been eliminated. Local Iranian witnesses also confirmed fresh airstrikes hit areas within and around Tehran and the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

US President Donald Trump has ramped up aggressive rhetoric in recent days as diplomatic negotiations with Iran have stalled with little to no progress. “The US military hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” Trump posted on social media late Thursday. “Bridges next, then electric power plants.”

Alongside the statement, Trump shared footage of a US airstrike on Tehran’s under-construction B1 bridge, a critical planned arterial traffic route that was scheduled to open to the public later this year. Iran’s state media reported the attack left eight civilians dead and another 95 injured.

But Iranian officials have refused to back down, even in the face of threats to civilian infrastructure. “Striking civilian structures, including unfinished bridges, will not compel Iranians to surrender,” Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said in response to the attack.

Iran’s armed forces have vowed to retaliate with even greater force, promising future attacks will be “more crushing, broader and more devastating”. Iran’s Fars news agency later published a list of potential target bridges across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan — all nations that host US military facilities on their territory.

In a separate development, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, citing the Revolutionary Guards navy command, reported that Iranian forces targeted US tech giant Oracle’s data center in Dubai on Thursday. The Dubai Media Office quickly dismissed the claim as unfounded “fake news”. The Revolutionary Guards have previously warned that major US technology firms would be added to the target list if tensions with Washington escalate, noting more than a dozen US companies are considered valid potential targets.

The conflict has also drawn in other regional actors, with Yemen’s Houthi militia announcing Thursday it had launched its fourth attack on Israel, firing a barrage of ballistic missiles toward targets in Tel Aviv, expanding its direct involvement in the escalating regional conflict.

The war began on February 28, when US and Israeli forces launched a preemptive large-scale attack on Iran. Tehran responded with its own strikes against Israel and Gulf states hosting US military installations. Joint US-Israeli airstrikes across Iran and separate Israeli attacks in Lebanon have so far killed thousands of people and displaced millions across the Middle East.

Beyond the immediate human cost, the conflict has severely disrupted global commerce, with the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for global energy trade — effectively closed to commercial shipping. This disruption has sent shockwaves through global financial markets, leaving investors scrambling to assess the long-term risks of the prolonged crisis.

“The key question in all investors’ minds is, ‘When is this going to be over?’” said Russel Chesler, head of investments and capital markets at VanEck Australia.

International efforts to resolve the closure of the strait have so far failed to yield concrete results. The United Kingdom chaired a virtual meeting of roughly 40 nations on Thursday to discuss pathways to restore freedom of navigation through the waterway, but the meeting concluded without any binding or specific agreements.

Trump struck a defiant tone on Friday, claiming the US could reopen the strait unilaterally with a small amount of additional time. “With a little more time, we can easily open the Hormuz Strait, take the oil, and make a fortune,” he wrote on social media.

Iran has put forward an alternative framework for controlling access to the strait, announcing it is drafting a new transit protocol with neighboring Oman that would require all commercial ships to obtain official permits and licenses before passing through the waterway.

Bahrain has submitted a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize the use of military force to guarantee free transit through the strait. The US-backed proposal has deepened divisions among Security Council members, forcing a delay to the scheduled vote on the measure.

The UAE’s Minister of State Khalifa Shaheen Al Marar said in an interview Thursday that his country is prepared to contribute to international efforts to secure maritime routes through the strait amid ongoing tensions.

However, French President Emmanuel Macron pushed back against the idea that military force could successfully reopen the strait, calling the expectation unrealistic. A large-scale military operation “would take an infinite amount of time and would expose anyone passing through the strait to coastal threats from Revolutionary Guards”, Macron noted. He added that the reopening of the strait “can only be done in coordination with Iran” through negotiations that would follow a ceasefire agreement.