Syria Shuts Women Out of Military Colleges and Paints Headscarves Into Schoolbooks

Syrian schoolchildren returned to class this fall with textbooks in which women’s uncovered hair had been erased or painted over with headscarves. After journalists flagged the edits, the Education Ministry said it had acted to remove imagery associated with the deposed regime of Bashar al-Assad and to reflect the country’s traditional religious and social values.The textbook fight is the newest front in a wider struggle over women’s place in post-Assad Syria.On September 30, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research barred women from studies in three fields at the newly founded National University of Defense Sciences: law; economics and management; and social sciences. At a second new school, the Syrian University for Security Sciences, women may apply only to the field of cybersecurity.The rules arrived barely five weeks after Washington rescinded Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism on August 24. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also delisted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa that toppled Assad in December 2024.So is Damascus quietly redrawing women’s place in its new state, or simply formalizing unwritten rules that already existed?“These moves could hamper women’s participation in the upper levels of the military and security services,” a deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, Adam Coogle, tells The New York Sun.Who Gets Shut Out, and WhereAt the defense university, which requires a military service commitment, only men may enter its land, naval and air force colleges or its College of Humanities and Administrative Sciences. The one division open to women, the Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology, carries no service obligation.At the security university, the College of Security Sciences and its technical institute admit only men, and graduates owe the Internal Security Forces as much as 20 years of service. Men-only rules also apply to state oil and gas institutes at Rmeilan, Homs, Deir el-Zour and Baniyas; a railways institute at Aleppo; and radio and television directing at an Idlib media institute.Women, however, can still study law and economics at Damascus University and elsewhere, and a separate Women’s Police Institute graduated its first class in September at a ceremony attended by the first lady, Latifa al-Droubi.Still, those openings did little to quiet critics.Human Rights Watch had urged the ministry to open the defense and security programs to women on equal terms before applications closed on October 19.“The admissions rules are strictly for two new universities; one aimed at training the officer corps of the military and the other the officer corps of the internal security forces. Syrian public universities continue to admit women to all programs,” Mr. Coogle says. “More than anything, these rules are a concerning sign that Syria’s transitional authorities may not see a strong role for women in the upper levels of the military and security agencies.”Others argue that the ministry merely put on paper what was already true.“The army, the military, all of it, is entirely male. No women enter those universities to begin with,” a Syrian-American economist and former adviser to the Assad government who later defected, Ayman Abdel Nour, tells the Sun. “So it was foolish of them to state it in writing, because there was no need.”Women have served in Syria’s forces, if only at the margins. Hafez al-Assad opened military colleges to female volunteers in 1981, and a separate Women’s Military College followed. Still, women made up barely 1 percent of the army, held no combat roles before 2011 and reached the rank of major general only twice. During the civil war, Bashar al-Assad’s forces recruited thousands of women into militia units such as the “Lionesses of National Defense,” according to a study by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.Not everyone accepts that nothing has changed.A Ministry of Transport announcement in October 2024 had set aside 30 of the Aleppo railway institute’s 100 seats for general secondary graduates for women, but women were barred from the institute in September. Similarly, this year’s admissions data show that openings for women in tracks leading to lucrative jobs in the oil and gas industry have vanished, according to a legal review by the Syrian Network for Human Rights.The review notes that the cybersecurity programs still open to women lead to high-ranking security posts, undercutting the argument that only men are qualified for security work.“The persistence of a restriction for years does not establish its legitimacy, nor does military or security affiliation, in itself, constitute a sufficient justification for excluding women from a particular program,” reads the review, which the founder and executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Fadel Abdulghany, shares with the Sun.That leaves a mixed picture. Officials say some rules carried over when the new universities absorbed Assad-era colleges. Yet, the railway institute was closed to women only in the first admissions round after Assad fell. Human Rights Watch says barring women from the defense and security universities is new.Some observers insist that the new leadership’s talk about women has shifted, too.Promises Made in DamascusLess than two weeks after Assad fell, Mr. al-Sharaa, a former al Qaida commander once known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, told the BBC that Syria would not become another Afghanistan. The education minister at the time, Nazir al-Qadri, a former Muslim Brotherhood member who had spent a decade in Assad’s prisons, said the right to education was not limited to one gender.Other signals pointed elsewhere.That December, the government spokesman, Obaida Arnaout,suggested women might be unsuited to some political roles. Only 22 women sit in the People’s Assembly today. In January, the governor of Latakia barred female public employees from wearing “excessive”makeup.In August, the authorities refused to let the all-female Women’s Protection Units, whose fighters had battled ISIS from Kobani to Raqqa alongside American-backed forces, join the national army alongside Kurdish male fighters.Comparisons to the Taliban, which bars Afghan women from universities altogether, draw pushback even from critics of Damascus.“This is vastly overstated, but the comparison should be to Syria’s international human rights obligations rather than Afghanistan,” Mr. Coogle says.A scholar of issues concerning women and security draws the line in a similar place.“There are no restrictions on women studying at public universities in Syria to my knowledge, and this new move appears to have to do with the regime’s unwillingness to integrate women into Syria’s armed forces,” a distinguished professor who directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security at Texas A&M University’s Bush School, Valerie Hudson, tells the Sun.“Even so, Syria definitely merits special scrutiny because of the regime’s overall history and expressed attitudes towards women’s rights, which have not been expansive.”Others see the comparison with Afghanistan as a warning about direction rather than scale.“The important question is not whether Damascus has already reached the Taliban’s level of restrictions, but whether the government believes that women are equal citizens entitled to the same opportunities and rights as men,” a former Syrian official who fled the Assad regime and spoke on background tells the Sun.What Washington Can Still DoSyria’s removal from the terror list followed last December’s repeal of the Caesar Act sanctions, which had called for a review of Syria’s conduct every 180 days over four years. Women’s rights were not a named criterion, yet the reviews gave lawmakers a regular opening.“Washington and Syria’s other international partners should press Syria to end all discrimination against women and comply with its human rights obligations as it charts a new future,” Mr. Coogle argues.The former official says that the diplomatic thaw should open that door.“Washington should not confuse diplomatic moderation with ideological moderation. Removing terrorist designations and normalizing relations should create opportunities for serious discussions about Syria’s domestic political direction, not eliminate those discussions,” the former official says.Simply asking Damascus to explain the rules would send a message, according to Mr. Abdel Nour. “At least they will know the U.S. is interested in this matter,” he says.The former official warns that the cost of sidelining women will compound.“If women are excluded today from military and security education, they will have fewer opportunities tomorrow to become senior officers, security officials, or decision-makers within those institutions,” the insider says. “The military victory determined who governs Damascus. It did not give the winners the right to decide how every Syrian must live, believe, or participate in society.”

Syria Shuts Women Out of Military Colleges and Paints Headscarves Into Schoolbooks

Syria Shuts Women Out of Military Colleges and Paints Headscarves Into Schoolbooks

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