NADA Coalition condemns massacres in Sweida, calls for international action

The Regional Democratic Women's Alliance in the Middle East and North Africa (NADA) issued a statement today regarding the recent bloody attacks in Sweida and the accompanying sectarian incitement campaigns against the Syrian people.

Its text reads:

"From the heart of the pain that the people of our region have been experiencing for more than a decade, the Nada Alliance is following with deep concern and anger the dangerous escalation of sectarian bloodshed in Syria, rapidly expanding into an open civil war waged by authoritarian political jihadist mechanisms and with regional and international support. The price is being paid by innocent lives, especially women, children, and the elderly.

In recent days, the city of Sweida has witnessed one of the most horrific waves of systematic genocide targeting the Druze community, resulting in hundreds of casualties, both dead and wounded. This was accompanied by the launch of campaigns of incitement and excommunication against the Kurdish community as well, preceded by horrific massacres committed on the Syrian coast against members of the Alawite community. Recently, we witnessed the bombing of Mar Elias Church, one of the oldest symbols of the Christian presence in the country, in a terrorist act aimed at terrorizing Christians and completing the cycle of systematic targeting of all religious and ethnic components in Syria. These systematic crimes are not merely random acts of violence; they are a direct result of the escalation of sectarian and inflammatory rhetoric. and jihadism, and exploiting the post-war chaos to reengineer Syrian society on the basis of exclusion and revenge.

The Syrian war has produced a complex model of alliance between the nation-state and the forces of authoritarian political Islam. This has led to the creation of an environment conducive to the recycling of ISIS and its affiliates with new names and forms within the spaces of chaos and collapse, under the guise of revenge, religion, and national sovereignty. The real goal, however, is to undermine any democratic and liberating project and turn societies into hostages to the power of arms and murderous ideology.

What we are witnessing in Syria is inseparable from the broader regional context, where the Middle East and Africa are witnessing a dangerous escalation in patterns of organized violence and the spread of hybrid jihadist groups that use religious and sectarian rhetoric to impose destructive authoritarian agendas. From Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen to the countries of the African Sahel, these groups are expanding on the ruins of failed states, turning women's bodies into battlefields and their communities into fuel for the extremist machine.

It has become clear that ISIS has reshaped itself with tools. New, exploiting fragility, targeting civilian spaces, and re-establishing the patriarchal model of slavery in its most horrific forms, from gang rape and sexual slavery to the destruction of education and health, and the erosion of women's public life.

In the face of this catastrophic reality, we in the Nada Alliance affirm that the battle is not only to stop the massacres, but also to defend the existence, dignity, and democratic future of women and the peoples of this region. The jihadist and sectarian war is not merely a local threat; we see this crisis-ridden landscape as a direct threat to women, to human security, and to the entire democratic project in the Middle East and Africa. The more chaos expands and jihadist movements escalate, the more women's civilian presence declines, and the logic of captivity, domination, exclusion, and fascist masculinity, which thrives on violence and war, becomes more entrenched.

Indeed, what we in the Nada Alliance fear is that Syria will once again become a focal point for re-exporting the jihadist model to the region and the continent, in the absence of any international deterrent and the complicity of regional parties with the dominant global powers seeking to undermine it. To redraw political maps through proxy wars and fuel sectarian and religious conflict.

In this context, we affirm that building societies and resolving national issues cannot be achieved by relying on external powers, but rather through national dialogue and the creation of inclusive democratic spaces without exclusion. The future of nations is built on the foundations of peaceful coexistence, the enrichment of diversity, and the rejection of hate speech and violence.

Any reliance on external regimes to resolve internal issues is a losing bet. These forces do not bring peace; rather, they deepen divisions and reproduce tyranny in new garb. True change begins from within, through collective awareness and a political will that believes in partnership, pluralism, and justice.

We, in the Nada Alliance, as a transnational, international, democratic women's alliance, issue an urgent appeal to all democratic forces in the region and the world from women's, human rights, and humanitarian organizations to international solidarity movements, the international community and its agencies, and the free media to assume their moral and humanitarian responsibility regarding the horrific humanitarian disasters taking place in Syria and the region.

We call for an explicit condemnation. We are clearly denouncing the sectarian massacres and genocide taking place in Syria, and we call for urgent and effective intervention to halt the killing machine and bloody escalation that threatens to push the country into the abyss of a comprehensive civil war. We also call for serious pressure on regimes that use political Islam and sectarianism as tools to tighten control and suppress people's aspirations for freedom and justice.

In this context, we emphasize the need to provide full protection and support to Syrian women and all communities threatened with extermination and marginalization. We call for confronting the spread of armed jihadism in Africa and the Middle East as a global threat to peace, human security, and social justice.

We deeply believe that there is no freedom without women, no justice under sectarianism, and no peace under the enslavement of women. True liberation begins when women are actively involved in making crucial decisions and are restored to their leadership role in shaping the future.

ANHA