JULY / AUGUST 2019 | MOTHER JONES 49to attend a large public prayer. In March
2013, jihadist groups including Jabhat al-
Nusra joined forces with Free Syrian Army
factions and pushed government officials
and security forces out of Raqqa, making
it the first provincial capital to be “liber-
ated.” Anti-Assad activists flocked to the
city and used it as a base. “Life was coming
back to the city,” Mezar Matar, a secular
opposition activist, tells me. “Unlike other
areas, there was electricity and water.
There were restaurants and cafés.”
The secular activists and the jihadists
left each other alone at first, but eventu-
ally Nusra tried to take control. The activ-
ists protested Nusra’s public executions of
suspected “Alawite officers” and the kid-
napping of opposition members. It was
the first time secular activists found them-
selves living under Islamist rule, but it was
nothing like what would come under isis.
“Nusra didn’t try to repress the protests,”
Matar says. “They let us march.”
isis split from Nusra in April 2013.
For a while, different groups controlled
different parts of Raqqa, but in January
2014, isis fighters completely took over
the city. That June, the Islamic State de-
clared the creation of its caliphate, with
Raqqa as the capital.
Syrian, Russian, and American jets
bombed Raqqa throughout most of
isis’s reign. But the real battle for the city
began on June 6, 2017, when the US-led
coalition launched its largest assault
ever. Over the next four months, there
were more than 4,000 air and artillery
strikes on the city, 95 percent of them
conducted by American forces. US Ma-
rines launched 30,000 artillery rounds
into the city, more than any Marine bat-
talion had fired since the Vietnam War,
according to a Pentagon official. (The
barrage was so intense that the barrels
of two howitzers melted.)
The pulverization of Raqqa came
after an aggressive escalation of the US
war in Syria under President Donald
Trump. After he took office, the military
shifted to what then–Defense Secretary
James Mattis called “annihilation tac-
tics” in its ongoing fight against isis.
“I totally changed the rules of engage-
ment,” Trump boasted in October 2017.
During his first year in office, the coali-
tion launched nearly 40,000 munitions
from aircraft in Iraq and Syria, almost 10
times the amount fired by US forces in
Afghanis tan that year. The number of
coalition air and artillery strikes in Syria
increased 161 percent compared to 2016,
and the number of civilian deaths qua-
drupled, according to the watchdog group
Airwars. The coalition admits to having
unintentionally killed 1,291 civilians in
Iraq and Syria between August 2014 and
March 2019; Airwars counted between
2,700 and 4,300 confirmed or reported
civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes
in Syria in 2017 alone. (Overall, the coa-
lition is estimated to have killed at least
7,800 civilians. In comparison, Airwars
estimates that Russian forces have killed
at least 3,300 civilians since 2015.)
The unprecedented death toll “sug-
gested in part that policies aimed at pro-
tecting civilians had been scaled back
under the new administration,” wrote
Alex Hopkins, an Airwars analyst. The
co alition admits to having killed 180 civ-
ilians in the battle of Raqqa in 2017. A
recent investigation by Amnesty Inter-
national and Airwars puts the number
at more than 1,600; local first respond-
ers estimate it to be even higher. The sdf,
meanwhile, lost about 650 fighters in the
battle. “We had to get [isis] out of Raqqa,”
says Brett McGurk, the presidential envoy
to the anti-isis coalition at the time. “We
did it without costing any American lives.
It all kind of went according to plan.”
I came to Raqqa to see the aftermath of
the most intense US assault in Syria and
the human cost of our war against isis.at an intersection on the edge of town,
I meet a man I’ll call Wael, whom I’ve
hired to help me get around the city. In a
crisp suit, tie, and clean leather shoes, he
stands out against the dusty landscape.
We get in his truck and he puts Celine
Dion on the stereo.
Wael is a religious man, more so than
most Syrians. When isis first took over
the city, he would challenge its members
on their interpretation of Islam. In par-
ticular, Wael took issue with the fact that
isis didn’t source its jurisprudence from
the Quran or the sayings of the Prophet
Muhammad, but from Ibn Taymiyyah,a controversial 13th-century scholar
who had justified jihad against other
Muslims. At one point, an isis sheikh in-
vited Wael to have a private debate about
their differing readings of Islamic law. “I
wasn’t worried because I had Shariah ev-
idence for my arguments,” Wael tells me.
Their discussion was amicable, but a
few days later, Wael was arrested. The
sheikh had secretly recorded their con-
versation and used it as evidence of Wael’s
apostasy. isis police took him to prison,
where they tortured him and told him
they were going to kill him. “They thought
I was Satan trying to lead them astray,” he
says. Wael told them he had been naive
and vowed to follow their guidance. They
let him go, but he soon got in trouble
while doing research at an internet café
on a Saudi scholar who opposed suicide
bombings. isis’s religious police, the hasba,
searched his tablet, threw him into a van,
blindfolded him, and took him to prison.
He was soon released.
The repression became more severe
over time. All men were required to pray
at a mosque rather than at home. “You
didn’t know if you were late for prayer
if they would send the hasba after you,”
Wael recalls. A friend of his was appre-
hended for trimming his beard too short;
another did time for selling cigarettes.“You don’t take
pictures of my
motorcade,” the
special forces
operative tells me.“I said that I want to kill
in the name of God,
that I would blow
myself up for them.”