Mother Jones – July-August 2019

52 MOTHER JONES |^ JULY / AUGUST 2019

BEHIND THE LINES

became completely brainwashed, and

came out extremists.”

We enter a room filled with cagelike

cells, like the ones Samantha described.

This is where people accused of collabo-

rating with the coalition were held, Zayn

says. He points to a pile of rubble next

to a huge hole in the wall. “That was my

cell,” he says. For two weeks, his captors

didn’t speak to him. Masked men would

come, open the little window on the cell

door, order the prisoners to face the wall,

and leave food on the floor. Other times,

they would come and take one of his

cellmates. “We wouldn’t know if he was

coming back, getting out, returning to

his family, or going to die.”

Zayn had been careful about what he

said to his cellmates; isis sometimes sent

in spies disguised as prisoners. Eventu-

ally, the guards started to take him, blind-

folded, for interrogation by a Tunisian

whose voice sounded like a boy’s.

Zayn notices a handcuff hanging

from a barred door and puts it around

his scarred wrist. His captors would cuff

him from behind, he says, then string

him up by the wrists until his arms con-

torted backward and his toes were barely

on the ground. “They might leave you for

a half hour; they might leave you for two

days,” he says. “Even if a person didn’t do

anything, he will talk. He will admit to

doing something he didn’t do so they let

him down.”^ He walks around the room.

“There were people who lost their minds

completely,” he says.

“I asked to join them so they would let

me out of prison. I said that I want to kill

in the name of God, that I would blow

myself up for them.” Eventually, isis let

him go. “For the two years after I got

out of prison, I cut off all relations with

the world. I would go from my house

to work, saying hello to people along

the way and that’s it. I didn’t even talk

to my relatives.”

We go outside and sit on the bleach-

ers. “I used to come and watch games

here,” Zayn says. “Those were my best

days.” Across the soccer pitch is some

graffiti in Turkish, presumably scrawled

after the ypg’s Kurdish fighters took over.

“The forces of freedom are in Raqqa,”

it says. “Now it’s Turkey’s turn. We will

crush Turkey’s fascism.” In English, the

words “Rebel County Drunk Punx” are

painted on a wall.

A lone man jogs around the track cir-

cling the field. There is a deep thud from

an explosion in the distance, but no one

reacts. Zayn reminds me not to use his

name or show his face in any of the video I

shot. “I’m not joking,” he says. “They aren’t

here now, but there might be others later

who take their place. I’m still afraid of

them. There are things I cannot forget.”

on another day, Wael and I walk

through a former isis building we’ve been

told is clear of mines. Papers are scat-

tered across the floor, including statio-

nery with the heading “The Islamic State

of Iraq and Syria Center for Education.”

Some documents look like relicensing

exams for teachers. Questions include

“Who is the caliph of the Muslims?” An-

other document asks:

What is the punishment for the follow-

ing cases?

n Those who leave the caliphate for the

lands of the infidels

n Those who say Shariah is righteous but

not suitable for the modern age

n Those who wear the clothing of infidels

n Those who say that Bashar [al-Assad]

is a good person, but the problem is

those he is surrounded by

The written answers to another exam

state that theft should be punished by

cutting off a hand, sex out of wedlock is

punishable by whipping, and adultery is

punishable by stoning to death.

When isis took over Raqqa in 2014, it

closed the schools immediately, saying

they were tools of indoctrination for the

regime. Before the civil war, education

emphasized obedience to authority and

the state. Militarism was embedded in

the curriculum, and children received

basic combat training. Students who

disagreed with teachers were beaten or

whipped on their feet. Children memo-

rized speeches by the president and gave

Roman salutes while pledging loyalty to

him. They were taught that Syria was an

Arab nation, Israel was its enemy, and

the Kurds were not part of the picture.

Under isis, most children stayed home

or worked to support their families. Kids

caught studying biology were whipped

for learning “polytheist science,” then

forced to take Shariah courses. Boys were

conscripted and sent to training camps as

“lion cubs of the caliphate,” where they

learned how to use weapons.

Wael and I visit a school that reopened

a few months earlier. A couple hundred

children shout over each other as they

leave class. The jacket of one girl’s school-

book displays a cartoon warning about

the dangers of unexploded ordnance.

The administrators have tried as much as

possible to return things to normal. The

hallways have been pockmarked by bul-

lets and shrapnel, but one wall has been

painted with a hot air balloon, trees, and

large abcs. Children’s drawings hang on

another wall. “We told them to draw what

was on their mind,” one of the teachers

tells me. One drawing shows a teddy bear

under a bright sun. Another is of girls in

pink dresses lying in the grass. Then there

is a group of stick people squirting blood,

missing limbs and heads, and simulta-

neously being shot by isis fighters and

bombed by a plane. There are drawings

of heads hanging from trees and posts.

There are jets blowing up homes and gar-

dens and ambulances.

Nearby, a young man in a hard hat

and a blue jumpsuit looks out over the

school’s courtyard. “The first thing [that

coalition jets] targeted were the ambu-

lances, fire trucks, and first responders,”

he tells me. “They hit the public services

institutions, water pumps, and electric-

ity stations. Then they bombed and be-

sieged the city for six months.” Near the

basketball court, there is a pile of charred

and rusted ambulances. The man in the

hard hat—I’ll call him Hamed—was a

first responder during isis’s reign. When

buildings were struck by coalition jets,

he and his team would race to rescue

people trapped in the rubble. At the

end of the day, Hamed says, they would

“We heard people

screaming there for

four days after. There

was nothing we could

do to get them out.”