Monument to indifference
A year after being freed, Raqqa is in ruins, ignored by the US forces that destroyed it to oust Isis. Meanwhile, extremists are returning, says Richard Hall, writing from the city
In one terrible moment, Muhammad Ahmed Tadfi lost 10 members of his family when an airstrike destroyed their home in the west of Raqqa.
His mother, brother, sister-in-law and seven nieces and nephews were all killed as they sheltered in the basement in the final stages of the battle for the city, a little over a year ago. That they had survived the worst of the fighting made their deaths all the more senseless to him.
“The area was liberated. There was no Isis there,” he says, sitting in the restaurant where he now works. “They could have avoided this destruction.”
Tadfi is one of thousands across Raqqa who saw their lives devastated by the US-led coalition’s campaign to oust Isis from the capital of its so-called caliphate. Around 80 per cent of the city was destroyed and more than 1,400 civilians were killed in the battle, which saw the coalition use massive airpower to push out thousands of jihadist fighters.
But that death and destruction was only the beginning of Raqqa’s ordeal. One year on from its liberation, there is a sense among residents that the city has been forgotten by those who claimed to rescue it. The US, which carried out the vast majority of the bombing, has shown little interest in rebuilding the city. More than that, critics say it has been unwilling to properly account for the true civilian death toll, let alone consider reparations.
“Everyone in Raqqa is angry about the airstrikes,” says Tadfi. “And no one is expecting any compensation. Even if they do give us money, it will go through the authorities and will be taken by the time it gets to us.” He adds: “There is nothing to be optimistic about.”
This growing resentment overshadows the challenges ahead for the city. Residents are worried about what the neglect could mean for Raqqa’s future. For the first two years of Syria’s civil war, Raqqa was relatively quiet compared to the rest of the country. It wasn’t until 2013 that opposition rebels captured the city from government forces.
By then, Isis had begun its march across northern Syria. Raqqa became the first Syrian city to fall under its control in early 2014. It would be referred to from then on as the group’s de facto capital. Over the next three years, it was used as a base for operations and its senior leadership. It was transformed into a theatre for some of the group’s most gruesome crimes, and became the heart of its propaganda operation.
Isis ruled with an iron fist, enforcing its warped version of Islam on residents and killing or imprisoning all who opposed it. They displayed the bodies of its victims in Naim square, in the centre of the city.
“They killed you for any reason,” says one resident who did not wish to be named. “They came to us by force. Most people had no choice but to stay in their homes.”
By the time the US-led coalition turned its attention to Raqqa in late 2016, American military planners were issuing stark warnings that Isis was using it as a base to plan attacks on the west. US lieutenant general Stephen Townsend said there was “a sense of urgency” to attack Raqqa. The offensive started in November, beginning in the countryside in the north. By June of 2017, the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by US airpower, arrived on the edge of the city.
Civilians in Raqqa paid a heavy price for that urgency. The coalition fired more than 20,000 munitions into the city, from airstrikes to rockets and artillery shells. Airwars, an independent casualty monitor, says at
least 1,400 civilians were killed in this way. Local monitors estimate 2,000 were killed by all sides.
But the true cost of the battle is likely much higher – one rescue worker in the city told The Independent they had pulled more than 4,000 bodies from the rubble and from mass graves, and they are not yet done. In the year since the city’s liberation, insult has been piled on to injury for residents. Tadfi’s story is just one example. The battle had been raging for three months when a missile struck his home on 5 September 2017. He wasn’t there at the time.
“I hoped they were still alive, but the whole building was destroyed,” he says. “After the liberation I went to the civil council to ask for permission to go to the house, but they told me I would have to pay to get the bodies back.”
Eventually, he paid the fee. “I took them and buried them in a cemetery myself,” he says. His case is one of dozens investigated by Amnesty International over the summer. The tragedies were documented in a report released in June, which heavily criticised the coalition’s lack of interest in accounting for the civilian death toll.
The rights group said its investigation had revealed “prima facie evidence that several coalition attacks, which killed and injured civilians, violated international humanitarian law”.
The coalition has defended its conduct in Raqqa, arguing there was no other way to defeat such a ruthless enemy. Speaking to The Independent at the time of the report’s release, coalition spokesperson Colonel Sean Ryan said the fighting in Raqqa was “often house to house against an enemy with no regard for human life that used IEDs and booby traps every step of the way – and Raqqa citizens as human shields”.
Completely unsolicited, people up and down the streets of Raqqa every day are venting their anger
He added: “Liberating the citizens of Raqqa was the goal and the other choice would be to let Isis continue to murder, torture, rape and pillage the citizens of Raqqa, and that is simply unacceptable.”
But Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty, who led the investigation, says the US showed a disregard for civilians during the campaign and criticised its current attitude.
She says: “Not every strike that leads to the death of civilians is unlawful, the key is establishing precisely that point. In order to do that, there needs to be a thorough investigation of every case, which is what the
coalition should be doing, and they are not.”
After spending months in the city for her research, Rovera says the level of mistrust between residents and the US-backed administration running the city is sinking every day. The Raqqa Civil Council, the body that now runs the province, was set up by the US-backed SDF following the defeat of Isis. It is tasked with running a city filled with residents who hold it at least partly responsible for the destruction that surrounds them.
“Completely unsolicited, people up and down the streets of Raqqa every day are venting their anger. And I sense a real difference between my visit earlier this year and today. People had a bit more hope that those who destroyed their homes and businesses and killed their families were going to come and look at what they had done, and help,” she says.
Raqqa is in need of significant international support to recover. But while the SDF was given everything it needed for the military campaign to capture the city, it has largely been abandoned to take care of reconstruction.
Even as the battle for the city was raging, the US was warning that it would not commit to long-term reconstruction efforts. In August 2017, the coalition’s special envoy Brett McGurk said: “Don’t look to the United States to fit the bill for long-term reconstruction. This is an international problem.” In August this year, the US announced that it would be halting a $230m (£180m) payment set aside for stabilisation projects in Syria. The money was originally meant for the recovery of areas liberated from Isis by the coalition, but Washington now insists that future funds from the US are dependent on a political transition in Damascus.
In the meantime, Raqqa’s ruins stand as a monument to indifference. Bodies still lie beneath the rubble. Empty shells of buildings loom over every neighbourhood. The power grid has not yet been repaired, so most rely on generators for electricity. And the security situation is more precarious now than it was a year ago, as Isis sleeper cells are beginning to return to the city. Residents complain of crime and corruption and they are being left to simmer in their anger.
“The timespan that it took for people to move from being somewhat hopeful to being completely alienated and angry and disappointed, it has happened very quickly here,” says Rovera. “The disconnect between the residents and those who govern them and those who carried out the military operation is enormous. The council is being set up to fail.”
Analysts, meanwhile, are warning that the potential fallout could undo everything the coalition hoped to
achieve in its defeat of Isis.
There is no stability here, it’s a miserable situation for everyone. The coalition bombed everything, but they didn’t have much choice
“The lack of reparations for deaths caused by airstrikes, in tandem with the policy of disassociation from Raqqa’s reconstruction is going to ensure that the city turns into a magnet for resentment, extremism, and radicalisation for the next 10 years,” says Colin Clarke, senior research fellow at the Soufan Centre and author of an upcoming book After the Caliphate.
“The global community spends billions of dollars on counter-terrorism in ‘failed states and ungoverned spaces’ but when presented with the opportunity to rebuild what was the central node of the caliphate, Raqqa, there is little interest. It’s a missed opportunity that will come back to haunt the west, as well as some powers in the region.”
It is already haunting residents here. Abu Muhammad, an official with Raqqa civil council’s reconstruction committee who is using an alias because he fears being targeted by Isis, is better placed than most to see what lies ahead.
He has lived in Raqqa all his life, apart from the months he left during the coalition offensive against Isis. He was a teacher before the war, but when Isis took over the city he became a taxi driver. He now works in the department of the civil council responsible for getting the city back up and running.
“There is no stability here, it’s a miserable situation for everyone. The coalition bombed everything, but they didn’t have much choice,” he tells The Independent.
Like most Raqqa residents, he is able to list the city’s ills on request. He talks about the price of cement and the number of jobless, the decimation of its infrastructure, the anger and the hopelessness. But his main concern is how the next generation will fare in this ruined city.
“I have three kids in school. The school has no windows, no bathroom, it was destroyed by the bombs,” he says. “We have 17-year-old kids who don’t read or write. If we don’t fix this quickly, we will have a new Isis.