'Free Women of the Levant’: Jihadists' families rally against al-Sharaa’s crackdown in Syria

On December 14, dozens of protesters—mostly women and children—gathered in Aleppo in northern Syria to demand the release of their relatives from the prisons of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Yet the detainees are not pro-democracy activists or journalists imprisoned by the Islamist group: they are hardline jihadist fighters who rejected HTS’s increasingly pragmatic approach since the group began distancing itself from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group.

This shift began after the group’s founding in 2017 under Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. The detainees call themselves “The Real Mujahideen.”

Among the demonstrators were women dressed in black burqas with leaflets in hand, chanting slogans and demanding the release of their relatives while carrying their photos. They refer to themselves as the “Free Women of the Levant.” The protest marks the first anti-HTS demonstration since the group seized control of Damascus and toppled the Bashar al-Assad regime.

These women make no effort to hide their disdain for Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new leader of Syria and HTS, expressing their grievances in the leaflets they distribute.

One such leaflet reads: “Our revolution will continue until the secular dictatorship is eliminated. They want to change the faces but keep the same rules.” The statement implies that al-Sharaa has simply become a secular leader, a figure no different from former president Bashar al-Assad.

Another leaflet declares: “... When the [secular] regime fell, they told the revolutionaries, they want a secular dictatorship to continue their villainy again.’”