Can Lebanon’s new central bank governor break the cycle of economic crisis?

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Updated 31 March 2025
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Can Lebanon’s new central bank governor break the cycle of economic crisis?

  • Lebanon appointed Karim Souaid as its central bank governor after a two-year vacancy, which in itself was a breakthrough
  • The new Banque du Liban chief inherits a crumbling economy in a nation beset with political rivalries and blighted by conflict

LONDON: As Lebanon faces up to its broken finances, neglected infrastructure and postwar reconstruction, the appointment of Karim Souaid as the new central bank governor marks an important step toward economic recovery.

On March 27, after weeks of government wrangling, 17 of the cabinet’s 24 ministers voted to name asset manager Souaid as governor of Banque du Liban, the country’s National News Agency reported.

Souaid replaces interim governor Wassim Mansouri, who led the central bank after Riad Salameh’s controversial 30-year tenure ended in 2023 — almost a year before his arrest on embezzlement, money laundering and fraud charges tied to financial commissions.

The choice of candidate was critical for both domestic and international stakeholders, as the role is key to enacting the financial reforms required by donors, including the International Monetary Fund, in exchange for a bailout.

Souaid’s appointment comes with high expectations. His priorities include restarting talks with the IMF, negotiating sovereign debt restructuring and rebuilding foreign exchange reserves.

Nafez Zouk, a sovereign analyst at Aviva Investors, told Arab News that the new central bank chief “needs to be able to demonstrate some commitment to the IMF’s approach for restructuring the banking sector.”




Karim Souaid was appointed as the new central bank governor. (Supplied)

Souaid brings extensive experience in privatization, banking regulations and structuring large-scale economic transitions. He is also the founder and managing partner of the Bahrain-based private investment firm Growthgate Equity Partners.

However, his success as central bank chief will depend on international support, as Western nations and financial institutions have linked aid to sweeping economic reforms, including banking sector restructuring.

Last year, the EU pledged €1 billion ($1.08 billion) to help Lebanon curb refugee flows to Europe. Half was paid in August, while the rest is contingent on “some conditions,” EU Commissioner Dubravka Suica said during a February visit.

“The main precondition is the restructure of the banking sector ... and a good agreement with the International Monetary Fund,” she said after meeting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.

However, critics have raised concerns about Souaid’s ties to Lebanon’s financial elite and members of the entrenched ruling class, fearing that his policies might favor the banking sector over broader economic reform, local media reported.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has also expressed reservations about Souaid’s appointment, saying the central bank chief “must adhere, from today, to the financial policy of our reformist government… on negotiating a new program with the IMF, restructuring the banks and presenting a comprehensive plan” to preserve depositors’ rights.




An excavator removes wreckage at site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Tibnit. (AFP)

Before Souaid’s appointment, Aoun and Salam were unable to reach a consensus on a candidate, according to local media reports. The president therefore insisted on putting the matter to a Cabinet vote.

Echoing the prime minister’s apprehensions is Nasser Saidi, a former Lebanese economy minister and central bank vice governor, who raised concerns about the selection process for the new central bank chief, warning that powerful interest groups may have too much influence.

He told the Financial Times that the decision carried serious consequences for Lebanon’s economic future, saying that one of Souaid’s biggest challenges will be convincing the world to trust the nation’s banking system enough to risk investing in its recovery.

“The stakes are too high: You cannot have the same people responsible for the biggest crisis Lebanon has ever been through also trying to restructure the banking sector,” said Saidi, who served as first vice governor of the Banque du Liban for two consecutive terms.

“How are we going to convince the rest of the world that it can trust Lebanon’s banking system, and provide the country with the funding it needs to rebuild (after the war)?”




The World Bank ranks the economic collapse among the worst globally since the mid-19th century. (AFP/File)

Last month, the IMF welcomed Lebanon’s request for support in tackling its protracted economic crisis. In February, after meeting with the newly appointed finance minister, Yassine Jaber, the international lender showed openness to a new loan agreement.

Lebanon’s economy has been in a state of turmoil since it suffered a financial crash in late 2019, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut port blast of August 2020 and the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

The national currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value and food prices have soared almost tenfold since May 2019. Citizens have struggled to access their savings since banks imposed strict withdrawal limits, effectively trapping deposits.

Lebanon’s prolonged crisis, triggered by widespread corruption and excessive spending by the ruling elite, has driven the country from upper-middle-income to lower-middle-income status, with gross domestic product per capita falling 36.5 percent from 2019 to 2021.

The World Bank ranks the economic collapse among the worst globally since the mid-19th century.

The Israel-Hezbollah war, which began Oct. 8, 2023, and concluded with a fragile ceasefire in November 2024, is estimated to have caused $3.4 billion in damage to Lebanese infrastructure, with economic losses of up to $5.1 billion.

Combined, these figures total 40 percent of Lebanon’s GDP.

The IMF has outlined key conditions for government action. These include addressing weak governance and implementing a fiscal strategy that combines debt restructuring with reforms to restore credibility, predictability and transparency in the fiscal framework.

It has also urged Lebanon to pursue a comprehensive financial sector restructuring, acknowledge losses at private banks and the central bank, and protect smaller depositors. Additionally, it calls for the establishment of a credible monetary and exchange rate system.

Lebanese economist Saidi said that the IMF “quite correctly and wisely” demanded comprehensive economic reforms.

INNUMBERS

• 36.5% Lebanon’s GDP per capita contraction from 2019 to 2021.

• $8.5bn Economic and infrastructure cost of Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

In a March 14 interview with BBC’s “World Business Report,” he said that the government must address fiscal and debt sustainability, restructure public debt, and overhaul the banking and financial sector.

But hurdles remain. Saidi added that while Lebanon “has a government today that I think is willing to undertake reforms, that does not mean that parliament will go along.”

Lebanon also needs political and judicial reform, including an “independent judiciary,” he added.

Nevertheless, Saidi told the BBC that Lebanon, for the first time, has “a team that inspires confidence” and has formed a cabinet that secured parliament’s backing.




Protesters during a rally outside the Palace of Justice in Beirut. (AFP/File)

Despite this positive step, Lebanon must still address structural failures in its public institutions, rooted in decades of opacity, fragmented authority and weak accountability.

Zouk of Aviva Investors believes another big challenge to reforming the financial sector will be “the large resistance from banks and their shareholders.

“Without some degree of accountability and transparency, I struggle to see how the rest of the reform agenda can be implemented,” he said.

There are “several proposals being circulated that would run counter to the IMF and would far from restore credibility and trust to the Lebanese financial sector.”

Saidi highlighted the broader challenges Lebanon faces, cautioning that without financing for reconstruction, achieving socioeconomic and political stability will remain elusive.

“If you don’t have financing for reconstruction, you’re not going to have socioeconomic stability, let alone political stability,” he said.

“There has to be a willingness by all parties to go along with the reforms,” he added, highlighting that this is where external support is crucial, particularly from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France, Europe and the US.




Lebanon endured a 14-month Israel-Hezbollah conflict. (AFP/File)

Saidi said that support must go beyond helping bring the new government to power — it must include assistance, especially in terms of security.

In March, Reuters cited five sources saying the US was engaging with Lebanon’s new government on selecting the central bank governor to combat corruption and prevent the Iran-backed Hezbollah from exploiting the banking system for illicit financing.

A US official who met the candidates before Souaid’s appointment told the news agency that the US was making its guidance on candidates’ qualifications clear to the Lebanese government.

“The guidelines are: No Hezbollah and nobody who has been caught up in corruption. This is essential from an economic perspective,” the official said.

The move, according to Reuters, highlights the US administration’s continued focus on weakening Hezbollah. The group has seen its political and military clout diminished by Israel, which decimated its leadership, drained its finances and depleted its once formidable arsenal.

Firas Modad, a Middle East analyst and founder of Modad Geopolitics, told Arab News that he believes US approval was a prerequisite for selecting the next Banque du Liban governor.

“The next governor is irrelevant,” he said a few days before Souaid’s appointment. “He will need to be approved by the Americans, and the Lebanese system will not appoint someone that the Americans do not approve of.”




Washington is pushing Lebanon’s new government to disarm Hezbollah and address longstanding issues with Israel. (AFP/File)

Modad added that Lebanon faces a stark choice: “Normalization with Israel or civil war.” This decision will “determine whether there is a chance to rebuild the financial system and recover some money for the bondholders and smaller depositors.”

On March 22, the Israeli military mounted airstrikes on Lebanon amid renewed violence in Gaza and Yemen. A “second wave” targeted sites in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.

Israel claimed that the attacks targeted “Hezbollah command centers, infrastructure sites, terrorists, rocket launchers and a weapons storage facility.” It marked the deadliest escalation since the ceasefire in late November.

Washington is pushing Lebanon’s new government to disarm Hezbollah and address longstanding issues with Israel, including border demarcation and the release of Lebanese captives through enhanced diplomatic talks.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, has rejected calls to disarm as long as Israel continues to occupy Lebanese territory.

 


MSF slams Gaza aid scheme as ‘slaughter masquerading’ as aid

Updated 50 min 4 sec ago
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MSF slams Gaza aid scheme as ‘slaughter masquerading’ as aid

  • MSF says more than 500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip while seeking food in recent weeks
  • Charity says US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation forces Palestinians to choose between starvation or risk their lives for minimal supplies

GENEVA: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on Friday for a controversial Israel- and US-backed relief effort in Gaza to be halted, branding it “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which began operating last month, “is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies,” MSF said in a statement.
It said more than 500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip while seeking food in recent weeks.
Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of that the entire population of the occupied Palestinian territory is at risk of famine.
The United Nations says Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law.
The densely populated Gaza Strip has been largely flattened by Israeli bombing since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, using GHF — backed by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter — to run operations.
The latter have been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food.
There are also concerns about the neutrality of GHF, officially a private group with opaque funding.
The UN and major aid groups have refused to work with it, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals and that it violates basic humanitarian principles.
The Gaza health ministry says that since late May, nearly 550 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce food supplies.
“With over 500 people killed and nearly 4,000 wounded while seeking food, this scheme is slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid and must be immediately dismantled,” MSF said.
GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.
On Tuesday, the United Nations condemned what it said was Israel’s “weaponization of food” in Gaza and called it a war crime.
MSF said the way GHF distributes food aid supplies “forces thousands of Palestinians, who have been starved by an over 100 day-long Israeli siege, to walk long distances to reach the four distribution sites and fight for scraps of food supplies.”
“These sites hinder women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities from accessing aid, and people are killed and wounded in the chaotic process,” it said.
Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza, said the four sites were all under the full control of Israeli forces, surrounded by watch points and barbed wire.
“If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot,” he said in the statement.
“If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’ — they get shot.”
MSF said that its teams in Gaza were seeing patients every day who had been killed or wounded trying to get food at one of the sites.
It pointed to “a stark increase in the number of patients with gunshot wounds.”
MSF urged “the Israeli authorities and their allies to lift the siege on food, fuel, medical and humanitarian supplies and to revert to the pre-existing principled humanitarian system coordinated by the UN.”


Israeli strike kills 18 Palestinians in central Gaza

Updated 55 min 16 sec ago
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Israeli strike kills 18 Palestinians in central Gaza

  • Victims were among a crowd of people getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit in Deir Al-Balah
  • The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: An Israeli strike hit a street in central Gaza on Thursday where witnesses said a crowd of people was getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys. Hospital officials said 18 people were killed.
The strike was the latest violence surrounding the distribution of food to Gaza’s population, which has been thrown into turmoil over the past month. After blocking all food for 2 1/2 months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.
Efforts by the United Nations to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.
The strike in the central town of Deir Al-Balah on Thursday appeared to target members of Sahm, a security unit tasked with stopping looters and cracking down on merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices. The unit is part of Gaza’s Hamas-led Interior Ministry, but includes members of other factions.
Witnesses said the Sahm unit was distributing bags of flour and other goods confiscated from looters and corrupt merchants, drawing a crowd when the strike hit.
Video of the aftermath showed bodies, several torn, of multiple young men in the street with blood splattering on the pavement and walls of buildings. The dead included a child and at least seven Sahm members, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where casualties were taken.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has accused the militant Hamas group of stealing aid and using it to prop up its rule in the enclave. Israeli forces have repeatedly struck Gaza’s police, considering them a branch of Hamas.
An association of Gaza’s influential clans and tribes said Wednesday they have started an independent effort to guard aid convoys to prevent looting. The National Gathering of Palestinian Clans and Tribes said it helped escort a rare shipment of flour that entered northern Gaza that evening.
It was unclear, however, if the association had coordinated with the UN or Israeli authorities. The World Food Program did not immediately respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.
“We will no longer allow thieves to steal from the convoys for the merchants and force us to buy them for high prices,” Abu Ahmad Al-Gharbawi, a figure involved in the tribal effort, told the AP.
Accusations from Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz in a joint statement Wednesday accused Hamas of stealing aid that is entering northern Gaza, and called on the Israeli military to plan to prevent it.
The National Gathering slammed the statement, saying the accusation of theft was aimed at justifying the Israeli military’s “aggressive practices.” It said aid was “fully secured” by the tribes, which it said were committed to delivering the supplies to the population.
The move by tribes to protect aid convoys brings yet another player in an aid situation that has become fragmented, confused and violent, even as Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians struggle to feed their families.
Throughout the more than 20-month-old war, the UN led the massive aid operation by humanitarian groups providing food, shelter, medicine and other goods to Palestinians despite the fighting. UN and other aid groups say that when significant amounts of supplies are allowed into Gaza, looting and theft dwindles.
Israel, however, seeks to replace the UN-led system, saying Hamas has been siphoning off large amounts of supplies from it, a claim the UN and other aid groups deny.
Israel has backed an American private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has started distributing food boxes at four locations, mainly in the far south of Gaza for the past month.
Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the hubs, moving through Israeli military zones where witnesses say Israeli troops regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.
Health officials say hundreds of people have been killed and wounded. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots.
A trickle of aid
Israel has continued to allow a smaller number of aid trucks into Gaza for UN distribution. The World Health Organization said on Thursday it had been able to deliver its first medical shipment into Gaza since March 2, with nine trucks bringing blood, plasma and other supplies to Nasser Hospital, the biggest hospital still functioning in southern Gaza.
In Gaza City, large crowds gathered Thursday at an aid distribution point to receive bags of flour from the convoy that arrived the previous evening, according to photos taken by a cameraman collaborating with the AP.
Hiba Khalil, a mother of seven, said she can’t afford looted aid that is sold in markets for astronomical prices and was relieved to get flour for the first time in months.
“We’ve waited for months without having flour or eating much and our children would always cry,” she said.
Another woman, Umm Alaa Mekdad, said she hoped more convoys would make it through after struggling to deal with looters.
“The gangs used to take our shares and the shares of our children who slept hungry and thirsty,” she said.
Separately, Israeli strikes overnight and early Thursday killed at least 28 people across the Gaza Strip, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. More than 20 dead arrived at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, while the bodies of eight others were taken to Nasser Hospital in the south.


Lebanon says 1 dead, 20 wounded in Israeli strikes in south

Updated 7 min 18 sec ago
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Lebanon says 1 dead, 20 wounded in Israeli strikes in south

  • “The Israel enemy strike on an apartment in Nabatiyeh led to a preliminary toll of one woman killed” and 13 other people wounded, the ministry said
  • An Israeli drone targeted the apartment

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said a woman was killed and 20 other people were wounded in Israeli strikes Friday in the country’s south, as Israel’s military said some raids targeted Hezbollah sites.

Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon, particularly in the south, since a November 27 ceasefire meant to end over a year of hostilities, including two months of all-out war that left Hezbollah severely weakened.

“The Israel enemy strike on an apartment in Nabatiyeh led to a preliminary toll of one woman killed” and 13 other people wounded, the ministry said in an updated statement carried by the official National News Agency.

The NNA said an Israeli drone targeted the apartment.

The agency earlier reported “a wave of successive heavy strikes” in several other areas in the Nabatiyeh region that the health ministry said wounded seven people.

An Israeli army statement said fighter jets struck a site that Hezbollah used “to manage its fire and defense array in the area of the Beaufort Ridge,” near Nabatiyeh and the Israel border.

It said the site was “part of a significant underground project that was completely taken out of use” by the raids.

The military said it “identified rehabilitation attempts made by Hezbollah beforehand and struck terror infrastructure sites in the area,” calling the actions “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in a statement condemned the strikes and said Israel continued “to disregard regional and international resolutions and calls to stop the violence and escalation in the region,” urging “effective action from the international community.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in a statement called the strikes “a blatant violation of national sovereignty and the cessation of hostilities arrangements” and a threat to stability.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.

Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country but has kept them in five locations in south Lebanon that it deems strategic.

In a letter to the United Nations requesting a one-year renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon which expires in August, the foreign ministry demanded “Israel’s withdrawal from all Lebanese territory it occupies and a stop to its ongoing violations.”

On Thursday, Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed two people, with the Israeli military saying it targeted Hezbollah operatives.


Israeli court rejects Netanyahu’s call to postpone graft trial hearings

Updated 27 June 2025
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Israeli court rejects Netanyahu’s call to postpone graft trial hearings

JERUSALEM: An Israeli court on Friday rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to postpone giving testimony in his corruption trial, after US President Donald Trump said the case should be canceled.

Netanyahu’s lawyer on Thursday asked the court to excuse the leader from hearings over the next two weeks, saying he needed to concentrate on “security issues” after Israel’s 12-day war with Iran.

The Jerusalem district court said in a judgment published online that “in its current form (his request) does not provide a basis or detailed justification for the cancelation of the hearings.”

Trump on Wednesday described the case against Netanyahu as a “witch hunt,” saying the trial “should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero.”

Netanyahu has thanked Trump for his support in Israel’s brief war against Iran, which ended with a ceasefire on June 24.

Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and his supporters have described the long-running trial as politically motivated.

In a first case, he and his wife, Sara, are accused of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods such as cigars, jewelry and champagne from billionaires in exchange for political favors.

In two other cases, Netanyahu is accused of attempting to negotiate more favorable coverage from two Israeli media outlets.

During his current term since late 2022, Netanyahu’s government has proposed a series of far-reaching judicial reforms that critics say were designed to weaken the courts.

Netanyahu has requested multiple postponements in the trial since it began in May 2020, citing the war in Gaza which started in 2023, later fighting in Lebanon and this month the conflict with Iran.


‘She’s not coming back’: Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria

Updated 27 June 2025
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‘She’s not coming back’: Alawite women snatched from streets of Syria

  • Since March, social media has seen a steady stream of messages and video clips posted by families of missing Alawite women appealing for information about them, with new cases cropping up almost daily

DAMASCUS: “Don’t wait for her,” the WhatsApp caller told the family of Abeer Suleiman on May 21, hours after she vanished from the streets of the Syrian town of Safita. “She’s not coming back.”

Suleiman’s kidnapper and another man who identified himself as an intermediary said in subsequent calls and messages that the 29-year-old woman would be killed or trafficked into slavery unless her relatives paid them a ransom of $15,000.

“I am not in Syria,” Suleiman herself told her family in a call on May 29 from the same phone number used by her captor, which had an Iraqi country code. “All the accents around me are strange.”

Reuters reviewed the call, which the family recorded, along with about a dozen calls and messages sent by the abductor and intermediary, who had a Syrian phone number.

Suleiman is among at least 33 women and girls from Syria’s Alawite sect — aged between 16 and 39 — who have been abducted or gone missing this year in the turmoil following the fall of Bashar Assad, according to the families of all them.

The overthrow of the widely feared president in December after 14 years of civil war unleashed a furious backlash against the Muslim minority community to which he belongs, with armed factions affiliated to the current government turning on Alawite civilians in their coastal heartlands in March, killing hundreds of people.

Since March, social media has seen a steady stream of messages and video clips posted by families of missing Alawite women appealing for information about them, with new cases cropping up almost daily, according to a

Reuters review which found no online accounts of women from other sects vanishing.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria told Reuters it is investigating the disappearances and alleged abductions of Alawite women following a spike in reports this year.

The commission, set up in 2011 to probe rights violations after the civil war broke out, will report to the UN Human Rights Council once the investigations are concluded, a spokesperson said.

Suleiman’s family borrowed from friends and neighbors to scrape together her $15,000 ransom, which they transferred to three money-transfer accounts in the Turkish city of Izmir on May 27 and 28 in 30 transfers ranging from $300 to $700, a close relative told Reuters, sharing the transaction receipts.

Once all money was delivered as instructed, the abductor and intermediary ceased all contact, with their phones turned off, the relative said. Suleiman’s family still have no idea what’s become of her.

Detailed interviews with the families of 16 of the missing women and girls found that seven of them are believed to have been kidnapped, with their relatives receiving demands for ransoms ranging from $1,500 to $100,000.

Three of the abductees — including Suleiman — sent their families text or voice messages saying they’d been taken out of the country.

There has been no word on the fate of the other nine. Eight of the 16 missing Alawites are under the age of 18, their families said.

Reuters reviewed about 20 text messages, calls and videos from the abductees and their alleged captors, as well as receipts of some ransom transfers, though it was unable to verify all parts of the families’ accounts or determine who might have targeted the women or their motives.

All 33 women disappeared in the governorates of Tartous, Latakia and Hama, which have large Alawite populations. Nearly half have since returned home, though all of the women and their families declined to comment about the circumstances, with most citing security fears.

Most of the families interviewed by Reuters said they felt police didn’t take their cases seriously when they reported their loved ones missing or abducted, and that authorities failed to investigate thoroughly.

The Syrian government didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.

Ahmed Mohammed Khair, a media officer for the governor of Tartous, dismissed any suggestion that Alawites were being targeted and said most cases of missing women were down to family disputes or personal reasons rather than abductions, without presenting evidence to support this.

“Women are either forced into marrying someone they won’t want to marry so they run away or sometimes they want to draw attention by disappearing,” he added and warned that “unverified allegations” could create panic and discord and destabilize security.

A media officer for Latakia governorate echoed Khair’s comments, saying that in many cases, women elope with their lovers and families fabricate abduction stories to avoid the social stigma.

The media officer of Hama governorate declined to comment.

A member of a fact-finding committee set up by new Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa to investigate the mass killings of Alawites in coastal areas in March, declined to comment on the cases of missing women.

Al-Sharaa denounced the sectarian bloodshed as a threat to his mission to unite the ravaged nation and has promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated to the government if necessary.

Grabbed on her way to school
Syrian rights advocate Yamen Hussein, who has been tracking the disappearances of women this year, said most had taken place in the wake of the March violence. As far as he knew, only Alawites had been targeted and the perpetrators’ identities and motives remain unknown, he said.

He described a widespread feeling of fear among Alawites, who adhere to an offshoot of Shiite Islam and account for about a tenth of Syria’s predominantly Sunni population.

Some women and girls in Tartous, Latakia and Hama are staying away from school or college because they fear being targeted, Hussein said.

“For sure, we have a real issue here where Alawite women are being targeted with abductions,” he added. “Targeting women of the defeated party is a humiliation tactic that was used in the past by the Assad regime.”

Thousands of Alawites have been forced from their homes in Damascus, while many have been dismissed from their jobs and faced harassment at checkpoints from Sunni fighters affiliated to the government.

The interviews with families of missing women showed that most of them vanished in broad daylight, while running errands or traveling on public transport.
Zeinab Ghadir is among the youngest.

The 17-year-old was abducted on her way to school in the Latakia town of Al-Hanadi on February 27, according to a family member who said her suspected kidnapper contacted them by text message to warn them not to post images of the girl online.

“I don’t want to see a single picture or, I swear to God, I will send you her blood,” the man said in a text message sent from the girl’s phone on the same day she disappeared.

The teenage girl made a brief phone call home, saying she didn’t know where she had been taken and that she had stomach pain, before the line cut out, her relative said. The family has no idea what has happened to her.

Khozama Nayef was snatched on March 18 in rural Hama by a group of five men who drugged her to knock her out for a few hours while they spirited her away, a close relative told Reuters, citing the mother-of-five’s own testimony when she was returned.

The 35-year-old spent 15 days in captivity while her abductors negotiated with the family who eventually paid $1,500 dollars to secure her release, according to the family member who said when she returned home she had a mental breakdown.

Days after Nayef was taken, 29-year-old Doaa Abbas was seized on her doorstep by a group of attackers who dragged her into a car waiting outside and sped off, according to a family member who witnessed the abduction in the Hama town of Salhab.

The relative, who didn’t see how many men took Abbas or whether they were armed, said he tried to follow on his motorbike but lost sight of the car.

Three Alawites reported missing by their families on social media this year, who are not included in the 33 cases identified by Reuters, have since resurfaced and publicly denied they were abducted.

One of them, a 16-year-old girl from Latakia, released a video online saying she ran away of her own accord to marry a Sunni man. Her family contradicted her story though, telling Reuters that she had been abducted and forced to marry the man, and that security authorities had ordered her to say she had gone willingly to protect her kidnappers.

Reuters was unable to verify either account. A Syrian government spokesperson and Latakian authorities didn’t respond to queries about it.

The two other Alawites who resurfaced, a 23-year-old woman and a girl of 12, told Arabic TV channels that they had traveled of their own volition to the cities of Aleppo and Damascus, respectively, though the former said she ended up being beaten up by a man in an apartment before escaping.

Dark memories of Daesh
Syria’s Alawites dominated the country’s political and military elite for decades under the Assad dynasty. Bashar Assad’s sudden exit in December saw the ascendancy of a new government led by HTS, a Sunni group that emerged from an organization once affiliated to Al-Qaeda.

The new government is striving to integrate dozens of former rebel factions, including some foreign fighters, into its security forces to fill a vacuum left after the collapse of Assad’s defense apparatus.

Several of the families of misrsing women said they and many others in their community dreaded a nightmare scenario where Alawites suffered similar fates to those inflicted on the Yazidi religious minority by Daesh about a decade ago.

Daesh forced thousands of Yazidi women into sexual slavery during a reign of terror that saw its commanders claim a caliphate encompassing large parts of Iraq and Syria, according to the UN

A host of dire scenarios are torturing the minds of the family of Nagham Shadi, an Alawite woman who vanished this month, her father told Reuters.

The 23-year-old left their house in the village of al Bayadiyah in Hama on June 2 to buy milk and never came back, Shadi Aisha said, describing an agonizing wait for any word about the fate of his daughter.

Aisha said his family had been forced from their previous home in a nearby village on March 7 during the anti-Alawite violence.

“What do we do? We leave it to God.”