REPORT: Liberation brings life back to throat of once IS-controlled Raqqa

Though Ayn Issa is tiny and passing through it is swift, this town has born the special significance in the campaign of liberating Raqqa from the hands of terrorists. Just a swift passing glance at Ayn Issa is enough to bare the fact that life is returning to this town sitting along the only route leading up to Raqqa.

Though Ayn Issa was recaptured over two years ago, post-conflict reconstruction has been slow. Now the one and only gas station in town has long queues outside of it all the time. It sells diesel at 50 Syrian pounds per liter.

There are a few black market gas stations like this makeshift roadside hut with plastic containers serving as metered pumps.

Here the quoted price for the day is 185 Syrian pounds per liter of diesel. That still sounded reasonable for when IS reigned this town, diesel sold for 300 Syrian pounds per liter back then. Most passing drivers had to make do with this higher black market price, because they could not afford the waiting time outside the official gas station.

Water resources are abundant around Raqqa including outside Ayn Issa where a great number of canals and pools attract local kids for summer dips in cooling waters.

Ten-year-old Achmad recalled such refreshing dips were out of the question two years ago when IS were around. The terrorists cut off the water from irrigating farmlands in the area and further downstream.

“There was no water here. Water was cut off,” said Achmad.
With water resources reappearing, so have returned the Bedouin herds people along with their herds of sheep.

Bedouin tents are pitched up by the pastures where the sheep have been grazing the summer greens.

For Bedouin herdsman Ibrahim, nomadic grazing was forbidden by the IS terrorists. And he was losing his animals to the terrorists on the excuse of making charities.

Ibrahim originally had 150 heads of sheep and now he only has two left after the IS loot and natural loss to the exodus from Raqqa.

‘Sheep have been lost. Nothing left. (They) looted the sheep, saying we should do charities,” said the the Bedouin herdsman.

“I told them I had done charities. But they said only they could do charities.”

Conflict-displaced people are returning to their homelands with whatever leftovers like Ibrahim's two sheep.

Despite slow post-conflict reconstruction, local residents feel content with the relatively quiet and safe lives they have now.

Though there are no water or electricity supplies some 10 kilometers away from Raqqa, Ibrahim would describe where he is now as much better than the shabby refugee center in Raqqa.

 

REUTERS