Post Tagged with: "Raqqa"

A photograph of the electricity repairs published by the Local Council in Raqqa. Photo credit: Raqqa Local Council's official website

A New Start Despite Difficulties for Raqqa’s Local Council

on January 31, 2014, 12:09 pm / in Transition

(Raqqa, Syria) – In late November dozens of volunteers wearing blue suits and white helmets roamed the streets of the city with cleaning supplies, distributing garbage bags in a scene that appeared strange after months of no sanitation services. They began volunteering with the Local Council of Raqqa City after it launched a clean-up campaign at the end of November, […]

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: Eight-year-old Satouf al-Hasan has never attended school because he has constantly been displaced since he was six years old. Photo: Damascus Bureau

Raqqa’s Displaced between Death by Shelling or Death by Cold

on January 23, 2014, 5:13 pm / in Transition

(Raqqa, Syria) - Um Mar’ey, a woman in her forties, stands amid scattered tents after washing her children’s clothes in water warmed by wood fire. “We don’t have any blankets or covers. God only knows how we get through our days,” she says as she dries her shivering hands with an old rag.

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ISIS announces the opening of a store called "The Protected Gem" that sells women's Islamic garb. Photo credit: Tahrir Souri page on Facebook.

Raqqa Subject to Imposed Islamisation

on January 23, 2014, 11:07 am / in Transition

(Raqqa, Syria) - New Islamist regulations in Raqqa are felt by students every day on a bus that transports them from Raqqa city to the private Ittihad University in the city’s suburbs. The male students sit in the front of the bus, while the girls sit in the back, because the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has prohibited […]

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Kidnapped photographer Abboud Haddad

Journalists Face ISIS Kidnap Threat

on January 6, 2014, 1:30 pm / in Transition

Just carrying a camera is dangerous in areas controlled by powerful militant group (Ghaziantep, Turkey) — Words of prayer and longing are posted on the Facebook page of Faten Ajjan, a Syrian dissident journalist. Her photographer son, Abboud Haddad, was kidnapped around six months ago by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He was seized in Atmah, in […]

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The site where a surface-to-surface missile landed in Raqqa on November 28. Credit: "Lens Young raqquai" page on Facebook.

Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: a Cold War in Raqqa

on December 18, 2013, 1:54 pm / in Transition

(Raqqa, Syria) - The Free Syrian Army (FSA) has been effectively driven out of Raqqa. Three Salafist groups now dominate the city: the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham, Al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In light of this new reality, these factions have come to include the greatest number of other battalions, including those that […]

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Activists in Raqqa under Daily Threat

Activists in Raqqa under Daily Threat

on December 6, 2013, 2:12 pm / in Transition

(Raqqa, Syria) - “Our families and people in Raqqa, please forgive us. We love nothing more than to enter a bit of joy and hope to your lives, our wish was that our final statement be in the time where the tyrant Bashar al Assad fell, but circumstances are stronger than we are. We ask god for the better of […]

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Young students on their way out of school in Raqqa. Photography by Abdel Karim Jaafar.

Back to School in Raqqa

on November 21, 2013, 10:30 am / in Transition

By Abdel Karim Jaafar (Raqqa, Syria) – Thirteen-year-old Mahmoud was excited to return to his eighth grade classes in September in the north eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, after more than six months of closure. “I was so happy to go back to my desk. I missed my classmates and I missed studying,” he said. Mahmoud resumed classes at the […]

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Suad holds up a placard that says "ISIS prisons= regime prisons." Photography by Zaina Erhaim.

Lone Protester Takes Stand on Raqqa Abductions

on October 17, 2013, 10:37 am / in Through My Eyes

By Zaina Erhaim* (Raqqa, Syria) - Suad stands alone for hours outside the headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group in the city of Raqqa in northern Syria, holding up a sign bearing the brightly-coloured inscription, “No to kidnapping, no to detention, no to theft in the name of religion.”

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Sculptures by Fatima Ibrahim. Photography by Lava Selo.

A Syrian Story from Raqqa Narrated by Fatima Ibrahim’s Clay Sculptures

on September 17, 2013, 10:33 am / in Culture & Media

By Lava Selo (Raqqa, Syria) - Some days life seems normal in the city of Raqqa. The markets stay open until the late hours of the evening, people visit cafes and public parks, and playground toys are erected for children in public spaces where families sit on the grass. However, shelling or clashes could begin at any minute. The city […]

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A Normal Working Day in a Syrian Field Hospital: Deciding Who Receives Oxygen and Who Dies

A Normal Working Day in a Syrian Field Hospital: Deciding Who Receives Oxygen and Who Dies

on September 3, 2013, 1:00 pm / in Society

Abdul Karim Jaafar (Raqqa, Syria) - Marwan is a 30-year-old volunteer doctor in a field hospital in the city of Raqqa in northeast Syria. He asked his real name not be used due to the danger the disclosure could pose to him and his family. On most days he wakes up to the sound of explosions then quickly heads to […]

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