THE LIBERATION OF RAQQA
The benighted Syrian city that has come to embody the evil of ISIL is finally, joyfully released from its brutal grip
It was the stronghold from where ISIL launched its lightning strike to capture Mosul and from where the group threatened to one day conquer Rome.
More than three and a half years after ISIL took control of the Syrian provincial capital, Raqqa was liberated from the group’s fighters in a dawn offensive yesterday, ending its claims to have recreated the caliphate.
Hours after the fall of the notorious Naim Square, where ISIL instituted a reign of terror though beheadings and crucifixions, the American-backed Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) took the hospital and sports stadium from the last of the group’s holdouts.
The considerable challenge of mopping up sympathisers and making the destroyed city safe from booby traps began before nightfall. “The military operations in Raqqa have ended,” said Talal Silo, an SDF spokesman.
“But now there is a search going on to get rid of sleeper cells, in addition to clearing the city of mines. The situation in Raqqa is under control.”
Raqqa had been encircled since June by the SDF and the advance, backed by the US-led coalition, had been painstakingly resisted by ISIL. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s six-year civil war, said that 80 per cent of the city had been destroyed in the fighting, and that more than 1,000 civilians had been killed since June, along with at least 2,000 combatants.
It reported that more than 150 civilians were killed by ISIL landmines in that time, planted while trying to flee the city.
The final stage of the siege took effect only in recent days as convoys were arranged to remove local ISIL fighters to other parts of Syria, leaving foreign fighters to be vanquished in a last stand.
Col Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the coalition, said most of the 2,500 fighters left in the city were killed, with about 400 surrendering or captured by the SDF.
The SDF is a force of 50,000, made up of battle-hardened Kurdish guerrillas and Arab tribal recruits drawn from across the agricultural regions of eastern Syria. Its yellow flag was finally hoisted to replace the black ISIL banners yesterday morning at the hospital and fluttered above walls that were riddled with bullet holes and blackened by fire.
Celebrations of the hard-won victory were broadcast from
Naim Square, closing a chapter when the traffic roundabout was known as the circle of hell.
Raqqa was the first place that gave the world a complete glimpse into the society that ISIL would create under its extremist vision. The images from the city include the pictures of hostages, including James Foley and aid worker Alan Henning, being beheaded by Mohammed Emwazi, the notorious Jihadi John.
Emwazi was killed in 2015 in a drone strike on another Raqqa main road – Clocktower Square.
As late as November 2011, president Bashar Al Assad visited Raqqa to shore up loyalty to the regime from the tribal elders and agricultural merchants who dominated the city on the banks of the Euphrates.
Rebels that swept into the city as regime troops abandoned positions a year later included the forerunner of ISIL, which established itself in the city.
It quickly drove out rival factions and stories of the unique nature of ISIL’s control were soon emerging from the city.
One audio diarist sent messages from the city that detailed the sudden introduction of everyday brutality. The shopkeeper’s assistant told how he witnessed a public execution.
“Fighting with the regime. The sentence is beheading. Working with the foreign media. The sentence is beheading,” he said, recounting the verdicts being handed down to prisoners.
“A man with a sword carried out the beheading.”
Moments later he had his own encounter with ISIL’s religious police. Fearing the worst, the diarist was instead given a corporal punishment. “Cursing out loud, forty lashes,” he recalled.
“I could see in his eyes he took pleasure from this.”
The accounts of the city’s residents were filtered through the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. Many of these activists were later killed.
“This was something new that we had never seen, this kind of violence,” said Hamza Abdel Al Hamza, who was a spokesman for the group.
“They started cutting heads off, crucifixions. They spread panic.
With its footprint reduced to pockets of territory near Deir Ezzor, ISIL has few claims to statehood, but the group has switched its tactics to inspiring attacks on the West and waging terror across Iraq and Syria.