Tussle for power along the Euphrates
On the eastern bank are mostly US-backed Kurdish-led militias. On the west, along the northern part of the river, are Turkish-backed rebels. Farther south are regime forces supported by Russia and Iran. Daesh still holds a pocket along the river near the
■ ■ TURKEY That has left only the barges to get people across.
Since the battle ended, the United States has put $13.7 million into Raqqa for water, electricity, rubble removal and other projects, in addition to $54 million to clear mines left by Daesh, according to the State Department.
But it is not rebuilding the city, which Ahmad Ebrahim, the city’s co-mayor, estimated would cost $5 billion.
Farther south, the road along the Euphrates is strewn with the remnants of an economy blown back decades by the war: a gutted sugar factory, an idled cotton mill, a train station littered with cars blown off their tracks.
The Syrian regime controls Deir Al Zor, the largest Syrian city on the Euphrates, but the bridge that connects it to its eastern suburbs across the river is destroyed.
The Kurds, their Arab allies and the United States hold the eastern side, with bases in the oil and gas fields to keep the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies from retaking them.
In some places, opposing bases face each other across the water, so close that soldiers can see each other’s flags and watch each other smoking cigarettes.
“It’s like an international border,” said a woman on the Deir Al Zor civil council after stepping off a metal canoe that carried her from the regime side.
In February, a column of tanks carrying about 500 proregime forces, including Russian mercenaries, crossed the river in what appeared to be a push to seize an oil field. The United States repelled the raid, killing 200 to 300 of them.
Since then, all sides have largely accepted the river as the dividing line, an understanding likely to hold until the Americans leave.