A mother in Damascus shows a photo of her missing daughter, Kurdistan, on her phone in November. Photo: Screengrab/Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish woman from Afrin in northwest Syria says her daughter, named Kurdistan, was detained at a Syrian government checkpoint more than 12 years ago and is still missing.
Hanifa Khalil, now 60 and living in Damascus, told Rudaw that she chose her daughter’s name because of her admiration for Kurdistan Region leaders and the Kurdish struggle.
“I was 14 years old when I would hear about the war. We were far from it, from Kurdistan, and I would hear a lot about Masoud [Barzani] and the great father [Mullah Mustafa] Barzani, and his sons… that means Kurdistan. I named my daughter Kurdistan. My daughter also grew up very eager and said, 'You named me Kurdistan, I also want to wear Peshmerga clothes,'” Khalil said.
Mustafa Barzani launched the 1961 Aylul Revolution after failed talks with Baghdad, leading nearly a decade of fighting that ended in an unfulfilled 1970 autonomy deal. The revolt collapsed in 1975 when the Algiers Accord cut off Iranian support. Mustafa’s son Masoud Barzani later led the Peshmerga in the 1991 uprising that paved the way for the Kurdistan Region’s de facto autonomy, and served as its president for more than a decade.
Kurdistan was born in Damascus in 1988 and excelled in school, according to her mother, but faced obstacles because of her name. She was 24 years old when she was arrested at a government checkpoint in Damascus in 2012. The family has not heard from her since.
Khalil said they were told their daughter had been taken to the notorious Sednaya prison, but former detainees and rights advocates say the facility did not hold women.
“In Sednaya, there were no women because it was a prison that was just for men. The women were either held in the different intelligence services, aerial, military, or political branches of the state. They were also detained in Adra prison and some detention centers of the intelligence specific to women. But Sednaya prison did not have women,” said Diyab Sirayeh, director of the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison.
Sirayeh, who spent five years in Sednaya, said their data indicates that around 30,000 people passed through the prison between 2011 and 2021, with no more than 5,000 surviving. Between 800 and 1,000 of those detainees were Kurds.
At least 150,000 people are missing across Syria, according to the International Commission on Missing Persons.
Sednaya Prison, often described as a “human slaughterhouse,” was built in 1986 under then-President Hafez al-Assad and became one of the Syrian regime’s most feared detention sites, used for political prisoners, civilians, and anti-government fighters.
Following the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime last December, tens of thousands of people were freed from Sednaya and other facilities. The remains of thousands more who died under torture or execution have yet to be identified.
Vivian Fatah contributed to this report.
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