Legend has it that Jabr and Jabreen were two brothers from the tribe of Zabeed who lived near Tayma, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Jabr, the younger brother, had fathered many sons and thus claimed the right to chieftaincy over his elder brother Jabreen, who had only daughters. Lacking the male backing required to press his claim, Jabreen left for the Syrian desert and settled near Aleppo. There, the local tribal chief was enamored of Jabreen’s daughters and sought to take them all for himself. Seeing that her father was once again outmanned, one of Jabreen’s daughters cut off her braid and concealed it in the udder cover of the family’s she-camel before setting the animal loose. The camel returned, as expected, to Tayma. 

When Jabr spotted his brother’s camel and inspected her udder cover, he found his niece’s severed braid. He grasped the message at once, raised a force, and set out to rescue his brother and nieces. Jabr succeeded in liberating his nieces and in driving the aggressor northward as far as the Turkish border. The story leaves much unexplained. But that is irrelevant to our discussion, although the murky nature of the narrative somehow foreshadows similar events in post-Assad Syrian conflicts.

In tribal societies, the cutting of braids marks a woman’s desperate plea for help or most extreme expression of grief. This logic—where hair functions as an index of honor, a locus of defilement, and an instrument of mobilization—has not disappeared. Across much of the Arab world, facial hair has long served as a synecdoche for the self (although classical Arabic literature is also full of examples that mock bearded men as fools). A man’s bravery, honor, or moral standing is condensed into his moustache or beard. In Syria, it is often said that So-and-So dared oppose Hafez al-Assad when no other moustache could. In Saudi Arabia, inquiries about a man’s character are frequently reduced to a single question: What kind of beard is he? In other words, is he a righteous man or not?

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These expressions are not mere verbal ornaments. They encode a cultural system in which facial hair signifies masculinity, dignity, and social worth. Viewed through this lens, the cutting, shaving, or display of hair is never merely cosmetic. When performed by women, it communicates grief or desperation; when exacted by a victorious male enemy, it functions as humiliation. Such acts operate with an immediacy that speech cannot match. This system—now amplified by digital circulation—resurfaced with particular force in Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. This will be examined below through two illustrative incidents. 

In July 2025, this symbolic logic was sadly enacted in reality. Clashes erupted in Suwayda, where Druze residents attacked the Sunni minority first. Sunni tribal fighters mobilised, the army intervened, and atrocities by all parties followed.

Footage circulated showing security personnel dry-shaving the moustache of an elderly Druze man. The physical harm was negligible; the symbolic violence immense.

Footage circulated showing security personnel dry-shaving the moustache of an elderly Druze man. The physical harm was negligible; the symbolic violence immense.

In a culture where an elder’s moustache embodies dignity, the act was read as a sectarian insult. AI-generated images of plucked moustaches soon went viral, celebrated by some as war trophies. The public outrage—voiced by women in particular—betrayed the moral asymmetry of the social media trendsetters. This undeniably unchivalrous act was framed as a far more heinous crime than those committed by Druze militias, which had instigated the entire cycle of violence in the first place. This uncomfortable fact, however, was systematically excluded from discussions of the conflict. In some accounts, the act itself was ludicrously dubbed as a genocide.

In March 2025, the new Syrian government reached an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed predominantly Kurdish militia that had controlled territories east of the Euphrates since 2017. The SDF was to integrate into the Syrian army and relinquish territorial control by the end of 2025. Instead, the SDF continued to stall while provoking government forces, attempting to draw them into a military confrontation. Meanwhile, the militia continued to harbor Assad-era officers, dig tunnels beneath cities under its control, kidnap teenage girls and force them into military service, and jail or shoot dead anyone who dares criticize its criminal activities. 

The deadline was deliberately missed, and in January 2026 the SDF—then in control of three neighborhoods in Aleppo—began shelling other neighborhoods. The army swiftly responded, driving SDF forces eastward within days and reclaiming Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zor soon after. The SDF was soundly defeated and publicly humiliated. For all its tough rhetoric, it proved to be little more than a paper tiger.

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Amid the celebrations of the victors, an Arab man from the border town of Tal Abyad appeared in a video brandishing what he claimed was the braid of an SDF female fighter. The reaction, as expected, was explosive.

Once again, the moral asymmetry was too vociferous to ignore. Scores of young Kurdish women in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey posted videos of themselves proudly braiding their hair, in defiance of the insult and in solidarity with the victim.

Once again, the moral asymmetry was too vociferous to ignore. Scores of young Kurdish women in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey posted videos of themselves proudly braiding their hair, in defiance of the insult and in solidarity with the victim.

A file of young SDF female fighters also marched in lockstep, dressed in military fatigues, each braiding the hair of the one in front of her, their bodies swaying joyously and defiantly.

Again, in some accounts, the cutting of the braid was portrayed as an act of genocide—or at least as an expression of deep-seated misogyny. Even a respected Kurdish poet, Jameel Dari, jumped on the bandwagon and composed a poem in Arabic, attacking the Syrian government, and even calling for the annihilation of the “puppets” now in control of the country. 

Did it matter that the Tal Abyad man later retracted his earlier claim, saying he had been joking and that the braid was merely a false hair extension he had found in a restaurant? Even Der Speigel suggested the unlikelihood of the incident, given the fact that there was no SDF presence in Tal Abyad since 2019! But all of this was of no consequence: the symbolic damage had already been done, and the din of outrage continued to silence any counterdemands to examine the SDF militia’s criminal record. What mattered was the semiotic performance. It functioned as a timely weapon to deflect calls to examine the SDF’s track record of crimes, especially those committed against Arabs under its control or the documented massacres of detainees in its jails just before withdrawing in the face of the army’s swift advance.

In both incidents discussed above—the shaved moustache and the alleged severed braid—the acts were militarily insignificant. Yet they provoked disproportionate outrage, eclipsing far graver crimes.

In both incidents discussed above—the shaved moustache and the alleged severed braid—the acts were militarily insignificant. Yet they provoked disproportionate outrage, eclipsing far graver crimes.

As expected, hair became the preferred site of moral performance, its symbolic density rendering it more effective than the less photogenic victims of violence. Moreover, the undue outrage operated as a compensatory performance, masking political and military failure by inflating semiotic injury into existential threat. In societies that ritually assure their members, in typical macho style, that no “woman’s son” can touch a hair of theirs, the outrage becomes justifiable when a whole braid or a bushy moustache—not just a single hair—is forcibly (or even symbolically) cut or shaved. The putative inviolability of the group is suddenly exposed, and its ballsy narrative sorely punctured. This can be read as psychological leakage, betraying a desperate need for hairsplitting—pun intended—here and there.

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