The Geography of Captivity: The Syrian Thermidor Re-engineers Society

The Body as a Political Arena

The female body is not a neutral private space; it is always a subject of political organization and a struggle for hegemony. As any political regime redraws its power boundaries, women find themselves in the midst of a battle they did not choose. To understand the current Syrian context, we borrow the concept of “Thermidor”—that stage where the revolution is aborted in its infancy and power is redistributed in favor of new conservative alliances, while maintaining a thin veneer of liberationist rhetoric.

Thermidor consolidates itself by reproducing old grievances and employing the female body as a symbol of “collective honor” and a political bargaining chip. What is happening in Syria today demands this analytical framework. Power is not exercised through overt violence alone, but through a system of discursive, institutional, and legal practices that reproduce gender hierarchy in ways presented as “natural” or “religiously legitimate.”

The Geography of Abduction: From Crime to Strategy Classifying the abduction of women as mere “security chaos” is a politically convenient error; it absolves the authority of responsibility. However, patterns of geographical and sectarian targeting, the frequency of incidents, and the absence of prosecution indicate a systematic design. Geography reveals a telling pattern: women in the Coast and Homs were targeted first as representatives of communities that lost the political bet, then the circle expanded to Damascus and Aleppo. This gradual expansion is well-known in authoritarian regimes: starting with marginalized groups to test reactions, then extending after silence establishes a state of impunity.

This violence is class-oriented: women abducted or repressed in the public sphere often belong to the poor and marginalized classes. Thermidor here works to reproduce “female unemployment” to force women back into absolute economic dependency on men, allowing the authority to lead society as an impoverished and submissive “herd.”

The “House of Sisters”: The Gulag as a Tool for Social Engineering The emergence of facilities like the “House of Sisters” is a key indicator of social re-engineering. These disciplinary institutions operate through the forced “normalization” of identity. The structural function is to strip women of support networks and re-insert them into a system of absolute subordination. This is the “total institution”—spaces that reshape the self through total control. These patterns, seen under ISIS, confirm that Thermidor steals all civil and liberationist gains.

The Public Sphere and the Redistribution of Unemployment When the street becomes a “risk zone,” we face a systematic redistribution of the public sphere. The authority generates a climate of terror that makes “voluntary withdrawal” seem like a rational choice. This empties institutions of women’s presence, creating a “reserve army” of men loyal to the authority and turning the family into a unit of economic submission to the male fighter, reinforcing both capitalism and the patriarchal society.

The Judiciary as a Machine of Hegemony Judicial rulings reveal the true logic of power. When rape victims are prosecuted for “moral crimes” instead of the perpetrators, it is not a flaw in justice but a reveal of its true nature. The “Sharia Court” practices sectarian classification rather than applying faith. This “legislative terror” ensures silence, which is then used as evidence of the absence of crime.

The Syrian Thermidor and Structural Continuity Comparing the Assad and Jolani eras reveals a common pattern: both manage society through “sexual fear.” While the Assad regime “nationalized” sexual violence (a monopoly of intelligence services), the Thermidorean HTS authority “privatizes” it, granting individual fighters the right to own public space and abduct women, creating a “capitalism of violence” involving the “human dust”—the social bottom loyal to the new authority. This continuity refutes claims of a “qualitative transition.” The indicator is practice: who has the right to punish? Who enjoys immunity? How is the woman’s body treated?

Conclusion Reclaiming the public space is a central political battle. We must break narratives that normalize sexual violence and rename it: a political crime. We must build cross-sectarian solidarities. To those who think silence protects their homes: you live an illusion. The battle today is to reclaim the “public sphere.” Either we smash the walls of the “House of Sisters” by “building independent popular and feminist resistance committees” to confront the Thermidorean authority through organized protest, or we all wait for our turn in the “great detention camp” being built upon the ruins of our dreams of freedom.

Editorial Board of Frontline