Updates on Ongoing Raqqa Disaster

[Anthea]

What is happening in Raqqa is the slaughter of many innocent people

What has happened in Fallujah is the slaughter of many innocent people

What has happened in Mosul is the slaughter of many innocent people

The solution to the Islamic State is NOT the slaughter of yet more innocent people

The coalition - and the entire world - should be disgusted and ashamed at what is taking place

When the dust settles who will be the losers:

The Yazidis, who have experienced wholesale slaughter

The Sunnis, who have been victimised ever since the demise of Saddam Hussein

The THOUSANDS of innocent victims of the fighting who have lost homes, families and friends, people whose entire ways of life has been forever shattered

ISIS are responsible for much of the slaughter but the coalition is responsible for just as much slaughter and the entire world is responsible for turning their back of the situation when it first became clear what was happening

Nobody closed the borders and prevented ISIS oil/arms trade - without an outside supply of weapons ISIS could not have survived more than a few months

[Anthea]

Recently I have not posted much information on Raqqa due to my utter disgust at the senseless slaughter from ALL sections fighting there

YPG commander calls for international support to rebuild Raqqa

A commander for the YPG/YPJ called on international powers to join the efforts to rebuild Raqqa after the elimination of ISIS threat.

YPG/YPJ commander Newroz Ehmed said that Syrian Democratic Forces achieved victory in Raqqa but talked about tough tasks ahead, pointing out the need to clear the city of mines and sleeper cells of ISIS.

“After the city is secured we need to start rebuilding efforts immediately” Ehmed said.

Newroz Ehmed is a member of the YPG/YPJ Military Council and one of the commanders of the Raqqa operation. She is now on the front lines in the Operation Cizire Storm against ISIS in Deir ez-Zor. Ehmed spoke to ANF about the Raqqa liberation campaign, the current situation and plans for the city.

WE NEED SUPPORT TO CLEAR THE MINES IN THE CITY

Raqqa has been liberated by Syrian Democratic Forces. At this moment can we say that Raqqa is secure?

The most challenging part of the operation was to eliminate ISIS in Raqqa and liberate the city. We achieved this after a very intense fighting and we paid the price for it. However, the city was destroyed because of the intensity of the fighting. The people of Raqqa had to leave their homes and their land and became refugees.

The task to rebuild the city is a tough one. It’s not only because of the level of destruction. There are thousands of mines in the city. Some of the mines have been cleared but ISIS set booby traps in various location and they are hard to find. Every day there occur mine explosions in the city, causing casualties.

We need the support of international organizations to clear all the mines in the city. Therefore we need to keep the city under control and prevent civilian casualties.

Of course, we need to consider the presence of ISIS’ sleeping cells. It’s important for us to keep the region under control with utmost attention for another while. We can’t say “we liberated the city, everything is over, the city is secure”. We need to take defensive measures in the city for a significant period of time.

THE REGIME IS A THREAT TO ALL NORTHERN SYRIA

The Baath (Assad) regime is claiming sovereignty in the region? Is there a Baath threat over Raqqa?

I can’t say that there exists such a specific threat for Raqqa. There is a distance in the form of border between us and the regime. There is no reason for them (the regime) to target here (Raqqa).

But we can talk about a general Baath threat for Northern Syria. Because the regime doesn’t recognise the democratic federal system that we have built, which all people will be a part of with their rights. This situation includes the danger of a war in general. The regime claims to have a right over all regions and all of the resources. This is not acceptable to us. We have been fighting to live freely under a democratic regime and for our rights. We will continue to fight for these. We didn’t suffer all those losses for nothing. We cannot accept the regime like this. Sometimes clashes occur or tensions arise because of the sovereigntist and monist attitudes of the regime. The regime should change to a democratic one so that we can live freely and peacefully.

WE SAVED THE WORLD FROM ISIS THREAT

What is needed for the rebuilding of Raqqa?

Of course, to rebuild the city we need finances and resources. We think that we will need the support of international powers and relief organizations. Because Raqqa in important for the whole world. Now during the process of rebuilding the city we need the same level of support that we received from the international coalition during the liberation campaign.

Raqqa was the base of hundreds of foreign jihadists from all around the world. Under the lead of our forces, that threat has been eliminated. We saved the world from this threat. Therefore we now hope that the world will provide help for the rebuilding of the city.

THE AUTHORITY WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO THE CIVIL COUNCIL

What do you foresee for the future of Raqqa. Do you have a plan?

We withdrew some of our forces from Raqqa but our units remain in the city for security. We are transferring the authority to the Civil Council of Raqqa step by step.

The Civil Council is not only a formality like some say. The city is not under Kurdish rule. There are representatives in accordance with the proportions of Raqqa’s population. It includes representatives of all the tribes that suffered under ISIS rule.

The Civil Council will organize the return of the people to the city. And whenever they need assistance we as SDF are ready to answer them.

[Anthea]

Nobody will tell us how many innocent people were slaughtered in Raqqa

Nobody will tell us how many were killed by the coalition

Nobody will tell us how many were killed by ISIS

Nobody will tell us how many killed were considered as 'Collateral Damage'

Nobody will tell us how many were killed by 'Friendly Fire'
(If somebody shoots another person it is NOT an act of friendship)

All we know for certain is that there were many thousands of

LIBERATED CORPSES

[Anthea]

Rebuilding 'Hell Square' in Syria’s Raqqa

“I went to all of the executions,” said Abd Hassan Shaban, a 50-year-old father of seven, a week after fleeing the final battles in Raqqa, Syria. “I had relatives in prison. I wanted to see who they were killing.”

People were beheaded, shot, or bludgeoned to death in Raqqa, Shaban added, and Islamic State militants hanged their bodies, or just their heads, on the fence in the center of town. Na'eem Square, or Heaven Square, soon became nicknamed Hell Square.

“It’s better to know if they are dead than wonder,” Shaban added.

In mid-October, IS was driven out of Raqqa as the remaining families fled the battle. Making the city once again livable, according to officials, is now an overwhelming task complicated by a political deadlock. Rebuilding lives after mass trauma, they add, may be close to impossible.

Accused of aiding the enemy

“I once asked a Daesh fighter why they left the bodies in the square,” Shaban continued, using an Arabic acronym for IS. “He told me, ‘So the people will learn to behave.’”

Near the corpses and sometimes directly on them, IS fighters wrote a description of the "crime" that led to the victim’s execution. Most people were killed after being accused of assisting any of the various militaries fighting IS, including the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led umbrella group backed by the United States and the official Syrian Arab Army, backed by Iran and Russia.

“My nephew was 14 years old when Daesh caught him with a photo of a destroyed house,” said Um Ali, Shaban’s wife. “They said he was giving information to the coalition forces, but he really just wanted to show the family who owned the house.”

Before rebuilding

Aside from the countless lives lost and ruined, Raqqa is devastated and dangerous, according to officials. It will take months or even years to make the city habitable again, said Ibrahim al-Hasa, who heads the rebuilding committee for the Raqqa Civil Council, a governing body backed by the SDF.

“There are still bodies under the rubble,” he said in his office in Ain Issa, where Raqqa authorities have set up offices about 70 kilometers outside the city. “The electricity network is totally destroyed. The water systems, sewers and schools are all badly damaged.”

Before rebuilding can even begin, added Mustafa Bali, a spokesperson for the SDF, which now controls the city, all urban areas and much of the countryside need to cleared of bombs planted by IS.

“Our technical units specialized in de-mining are working and they are preparing some parts of the city for civilians to return,” he said. “But it will take some time.”

‘Dark times’

As Syrian, Iraqi and international forces close in on recapturing all IS-held areas in both countries, de-mining and rebuilding are only the beginning of recovery, Bali added.

“On an ideological level it will take years,” he said. “We need to rebuild a new generation without the dark ideas that were planted in these dark times.”

When families arrive at camps outside of battle zones, the emotional damage caused by years of violence and months of all-out war is obvious, added Sherin Musa, the co-director of the Ain Issa camp, where tens of thousands of displaced people languish, waiting for a chance to go home.

“You can see the impact of war on the children’s behavior,” she said. “Some behave violently. Some refuse to speak. Some are constantly afraid.”

Hurdles

Efforts to rebuild Raqqa city and the lives ruined as it was destroyed are also complicated by politics.

Damascus views Raqqa as “occupied” by U.S.-backed forces. Last week, a top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Akbar Velayati, said Syrian federal forces plan to reclaim the city.

SDF leaders call the city “liberated,” saying they will allow the people in Raqqa and other areas the SDF captured from IS decide if they are part of the semi-autonomous Kurdish northeast of Syria.

The SDF, however, has also said it will not leave areas it now controls, despite having no former claims to places like Raqqa and Deir el-Zour, two major cities governed by Damascus before IS.

“When we fight and die for a place, we don’t abandon it later,” said SDF spokesperson Leelwa Abdullah.

Starting with ‘small things’

Getting international aid into Raqqa is also difficult and time-consuming, according to al-Hasa, of the Raqqa Civil Council.

The SDF is led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a military group viewed as terrorists by neighboring Turkey.

A considerable amount of the aid needed to clear mines, rubble and rebuild the city has been pledged to Raqqa authorities from 13 different countries as well as aid organizations, he said, but very little has made it into Syria.

Rebuilding lives, he added, is already part of their plans.

“We can change small things about the city,” al-Hasa said. “For example, we can change the shape of the square where so many crimes were committed. We will remove the fences where the heads were hung.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/syria-raqqa-h ... 02735.html

[Anthea]

Focus turns to rebuilding Raqqa

The US-led global anti-ISIS coalition has made rebuilding Raqqa a priority, holding the inaugural meeting of the Donor Consortium for early recovery in Syria during a small group meeting in Jordan on Wednesday.

“The Coalition’s most committed nations came together to focus on how to address the most critical essential service requirements within Raqqa City,” according to a readout from the meeting.

The consortium will attract funding for reconstruction projects identified and prioritized by the local population, Brett McGurk, US special presidential envoy to the coalition, stated in July.

Once home to some 220,000 people, Raqqa now lies largely in ruins after months of an aggressive military campaign to oust ISIS from its self-declared capital.

People eager to return to the city are living in tents, waiting to go home and begin rebuilding. When the city was first declared liberated and residents returned for the first time in months, they were shocked by the scale of the destruction.

“I wasn’t expecting the destruction to be this bad. It’s unreal – there are no buildings left, no infrastructure, no signs of life whatsoever,” Raqqa native Fadila Hamad al-Khalil told AFP on returning to the city.

Local aid workers noted a lack of international support for clearing and reconstruction efforts. “I am not getting the impression that there is a concerted effort to holistically reconstruct the city,” a humanitarian worker told Time magazine anonymously. “Part of it has been the lack of clarity around the role of the US government. You break it, you buy it.”

An estimated 1,800 civilians were killed during the battle for Raqqa, according to Airwars and the conflict monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that over 80 percent of the city has been damaged or destroyed.

Organizations leading the de-mining process estimate they will need six months to remove some 8,000 explosives, the media activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently reported.

Finding and removing bodies under the rubble, clearing explosives, restoring water and electricity services, and rebuilding homes, hospitals, and schools is the monumental task now facing the Raqqa Civil Council – a local body formed to administrate the city post-ISIS. It was set up by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the coalition-backed, Kurdish-led, multi-ethnic armed force that ousted ISIS from the city.

In the Mashlab neighbourhood in eastern Raqqa, one of the least damaged areas, the SDF said life is beginning to return. Mounds of rubble and garbage were being trucked out and locals joined in the cleanup efforts. An internal security force has been tasked with managing the security of the neighbourhood, the SDF stated on Tuesday.

The SDF declared Raqqa liberated on October 20, but the fight may not be over. Damascus has said that it will bring all Syrian lands back under its control.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/16112017