Free but in ruins, uphill struggle to rebuild Raqqa
BEIRUT: The Islamic State group’s former Syrian stronghold Raqqa has been captured, but it lies ruined, littered with explosives, and lacking electricity or running water for residents desperate to return. Aid groups and the United Nations say clearing and rebuilding what was once the jihadist group’s de facto Syrian capital will be a massive, expensive effort, and it could be months before life resumes. Four months of fierce fighting including heavy US-led coalition air strikes has collapsed multi-storey buildings and left others torn apart by heavy artillery and gunfire. The United Nations estimated in September that up to 80 percent of the city could be uninhabitable, and Raqqa’s basic infrastructure is now virtually non-existent.
“In the previous months, local sources reported... a severe shortage of food, medicine, electricity, safe drinking water and basic commodities,” said Linda Tom, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “The presence of water-borne diseases and of unburied corpses were also reported, posing
a grave public health risk,” she said. Running water has been out for months, and just a few water boreholes remained in use before the last phase of the battle for the city. There is no electricity supply at all, with the grid damaged by fighting and the generators that had provided two hours of power a day out of fuel.
There are also no functioning medical facilities in the city, and schools have long since closed, non-governmental organizations say. “Substantial investment will be required to reconstruct the city’s destroyed homes, health facilities and schools, and to remove unexploded mines, before people can safely go home,” said aid group Save the Children. “The military offensive in Raqqa may be coming to an end, but the humanitarian crisis is greater than ever,” the group’s Syria director Sonia Khush said in a statement.
‘It’ll take some time’
Before Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011, some 220,000 people lived in Raqqa, a population that swelled in the early years of the war as people displaced from elsewhere settled there.But the city has been gradually emptied of its population, with some fleeing during IS rule and others escaping as the attacking Syrian Democratic Forces battled to capture the city. Around 270,000 people have been displaced by the fight for Raqqa, but they will be unable to return until the city is cleared of explosives, which IS has regularly laid across territory under its control.