The capital of al-Hasakah Governorate is also al-Hasakah. The north-western Syrian city is surrounded by small underdeveloped villages. Nashweh is one of those villages, situated on the bank of Euphrates, where Zahra al-Azzo was born in 1990.
In her publication ‘Excellent Daughters’, journalist Katherine Zoepf mentioned that Zahra belonged to an upper-middle-class family, as they had a number of Arabian horses. However, the pre-Civil War political tension hit the family hard and Zahra’s brothers started selling vegetables and cigarettes to run the family. Her father became addicted to alcohol and also got involved in a relationship with another woman. Zahra came to know about the secret of his father’s life from Tayseer Muhanna, a friend of his father. Tayseer told Zahra that he would reveal her father’s secret and kill both of them, if she refused to spend a day with him. The (then) 15-year-old girl – who wanted to save her father – accepted Tayseer’s proposal. However, the ‘uncle’ took her to Damascus and raped repeatedly.

‘Ghasalat al arr’ is a common phrase in Syria……it means ‘washing away the shame’. Like other Asian countries, honour killing is very popular in the war ravaged West Asian nation. And more interestingly, the Syrian law honoured the “crime of honour”. Under the Syrian law, an honour killing was not murder and the man – who would commit the same – was not a murderer. Mentioning the killing and even the name of the victim usually became taboo.
The concerned authorities in Damascus had constructed some ‘Bab Musallas’ (or prisons for women), where women were jailed for being raped! Bab Musalla was a prison or a holding facility for girls, like Zahra, who were at risk of being murdered by their families. However, there was little to protect the young women once they left, explained Zoepf. Zahra, too, spent few months in a Bab Musalla after that incident. Soon after Zahra was kidnapped and raped by her ‘family friend’ Tayseer, the family reported the incident to the police. Three days later, the kidnapper was arrested and Zahra was freed. While Tayseer was sent into jail, Zahra was brought to the Bab Musalla, where she remained for 10 months until her family had her released after arranging that she marry her sympathetic cousin, Fawaz. One month later (on January 21, 2007), Zahra’s brother Fayez paid the young couple a visit. On the third morning of his stay at their place, he stabbed his sister five times in the head and back while she was asleep. Zahra died from her wounds at the hospital the following morning. Later, Fayez confessed to the police that he had killed his sister in order to remove the dishonour she had brought on the family by losing her virginity out of wedlock.

Katherine Zoepf

Although villagers in Nashweh refused to recognise Zahra after her death, each and every ‘conscious’ citizen of Damascus still remembers the details of her life, despite the fact that 300-400 Syrian girls become the victims of honour killing every year. Zahra’s murder shocked even the ‘conservative’ Syrians (perhaps) because of her ‘innocent’ image. The Syrian Parliament held debates on honour killing, and experts, Islamic scholars and majority of the parliamentarians agreed to change the age-old traditional law. However, Zahra’s husband played the most important role, as he filed a lawsuit against his brother-in-law while going against the ‘tradition’.
During the initial phase of the Civil War, Zahra was the name of a storm that encouraged Syrians to dream of a new society. At that time, the Syrians were not familiar with the word ‘NGO’. Although some NGOs were active in the country, their activities were under strict surveillance. Things changed only after the death of Zahra, as few people with similar mentality created an organisation to protect women’s rights in a country, where there was hardly any ‘freedom of speech’ for women. So, Zahra means ‘a war’ not only in Syria, but in the entire region. The organisation managed to convince the Syrian Parliament to amend the Article 548 (modified in the Legislative Decree No. 85 on September 28, 1953) of the Syrian Penal Code no. 148 of 1949 in 2009 and to declare ‘honour killing’ a crime. The organisation actually honoured the Syrian women by sensitising the people and the government about violence against women.

Before the jihadis took control of Syria, thousands of Zahras had the dream of a society that was safer for them.

Boundless Ocean of Politics on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boundlessoceanofpolitics/

Boundless Ocean of Politics on Google Plus:
https://plus.google.com/+KoushikDasboundless

Boundless Ocean of Politics on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/kousdas?s=09

Boundless Ocean of Politics on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundless-ocean-of-politics

Contact us: kousdas@gmail.com

Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das