Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detained at least 16 journalists in Raqqa on July 30.

Where the SDF forces have arrested media figures as part of a security campaign in Syrias northeastern province.

According to our reporter, the SDF arrested several journalists working in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and in its media outlets in Raqqa under the pretext of espionage, including Ruba Al-Ali, an employee at Hawar Agency, Ammar Al-Khalaf from the Euphrates Heritage Agency and formerly at Hawar, Ammar Haidar, who works at North Press and previously at Hawar, Khaled Al-Hassan in the education committee of the Raqqa Civil Council, and Batoul Al-Hassan in the youth media committee and the Better Tomorrow organization, in addition to Abdul Karim Al-Raheel, an employee of the Raqqa Civil Council.

The SDF kidnap the journalists from roads, markets, and public places, or they raid the headquarters of the media agencies and civil groups.

Reporters who reached the Syrian city of Raqqa in October 2017 found an apocalypse of dust, death, and rubble. NPR described it as a wasteland of war-warped buildings and shattered concrete. The New York Times called it a ghost city.

The United States had promised the most precise air war in history to destroy the Islamic State across its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. Yet by the end of the U.S.-led battle for Raqqa, the groups de facto capital, as many as 80 percent of the buildings were deemed uninhabitable. Several thousand civilians who had survived months of shelling and street fighting had nowhere to go for safe drinking water within the wreckage.

Researchers from RAND spent months analyzing the battle and asking what the United States could have done better to protect those civilians from the harms of war. They found that military leaders too often lacked a complete picture of conditions on the ground; too often waved off reports of civilian casualties; and too rarely learned any lessons from strikes gone wrong. Raqqa may have been a victory, but it was also a smoldering monument to how much more the military could do to protect civilians.

What Happened in Raqqa

The Department of Defense has exactly zero permanent staff who wake up every morning with the sole priority of preparing the military to reduce civilian harm in combat, said Michael McNerney, a senior international and defense researcher at RAND. Protecting civilians is important to everyone in the department, but its the top priority for no one.

The story of what happened in Raqqa is not the same as the story playing out now in Bucha and Mariupol, where Russian forces have deliberately targeted civilians. The United States emphasis on minimizing civilian harm was quite clear and strong up and down the chain of command, researchers found. But the way in which the U.S. military waged war in Raqqa too often undercut that commitment.

By the time U.S. forces and their allies encircled Raqqa in May 2017, their goal was no longer just to drive out the few thousand ISIS fighters holed up in the city. It was to annihilate them. American troops called the campaign Operation Eclipse. Their partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who would do the fighting on the ground, called it the Wrath of the Euphrates.

Kurdish-led forces in charge of jails in north-east Syria housing about 10,000 men with alleged links to Islamic State are releasing prisoners in exchange for money under a reconciliation scheme, according to interviews with two freed men and official documents.

Syrian men imprisoned without trial can pay an $8,000 (6,000) fine to be freed, a copy of the release form shows.

As part of the deal, the released prisoners sign a declaration promising not to rejoin any armed organisations and to leave the parts of north and east Syria under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

On their release, the two men the Guardian met both of whom had fought with IS until the groups so-called caliphate collapsed in March 2019 were reunited with their wives and children, who were also freed from al-Hawl detention camp under the deal.

The families then travelled to Idlib province, which is run by rival Islamists, and crossed the border to Turkey. Both men are now living, they believe, under the radar of the authorities in the country they have made their new home. One says that he never bought into the IS ideology, and the other that he was initially attracted to the religious component but did not realise the group would grow to be so violent.

It is not known how many men have been able to buy their freedom in this manner, but the two released men estimated at least 10 people they knew from their time in Hasekeh prison had left in the same way since the reconciliation scheme was implemented in 2019.

About 8,000 Syrian and Iraqi men accused of being IS members, and 2,000 more foreigners who have not been repatriated by their home countries, are held in three overcrowded SDF-administered prisons in north-east Syria.

The SDF has pushed its western partners to set up an internationally recognised court system to ease the pressure on its prisons and sometimes agrees reconciliation deals with tribal leaders who vouch that the prisoners are not extremists and will return to their families.

As much of the Western world focuses on the growing threat from the Islamic State groups affiliate in Afghanistan, new intelligence suggests that there is reason again to worry about the terror groups core in Syria and Iraq.

Down to an estimated 10,000 fighters, a small fraction of what it boasted at its peak, and working in small, clandestine cells across the two countries, the terror group, also known as IS or ISIS, has been trying to maintain what intelligence and military officials describe as a low-level insurgency, with varying degrees of success.

But U.S. military and intelligence officials caution that the groups fortunes may be starting to change, which may allow it to retake territory in Syria and Iraq and its leaders to assert greater influence over affiliates and followers worldwide.

Poised to increase activity

In Syria, in particular, IS appears poised to increase activity after a period of recuperation and recovery, the Defense Intelligence Agency told the Defense Departments inspector general in its just-released quarterly report on U.S. operations in the region.

The DIA said IS activity began to pick up in September, with a growing number of attacks in Syrias central desert against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Other targets have included fuel infrastructure and supply routes, and even Iranian-backed militias, the DIA said.

U.S. military intelligence officials also said there was evidence IS relocated some fighters from the central desert to northeastern Syria, where local officials say the terror group is finding other ways to expand.

ISIS is not limited to a military presence only, Elham Ahmad, the executive president of the Syrian Democratic Council, told reporters last month during a visit to Washington.

ISs sway over people

Whats most important is the intellectual and ideological influence that ISIS has over the people, Ahmad said, warning that the terror group has established cells in key cities such as Raqqa and Deir el-Zour.

The reemergence of ISIS is pretty possible, warned Ghassan al-Youssef, co-president of the Deir el-Zour Civic Council. They are able to reorganize to raise funds to get stronger.

IS has found a fertile recruiting ground in displaced-persons camps such as al-Hol, home to almost 60,000 women and children, many connected to dead or captured IS fighters.

Despite efforts by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, U.S. military intelligence officials warn, IS retains the capability to radicalize, intimidate, recruit and conduct attacks.

U.S. Treasury Department officials further warn that the al-Hol camp remains a central hub for IS finances, receiving and distributing donations from the t...

Northern Syria is experiencing its most severe recorded wave of COVID-19 yet, with needs fast outpacing limited oxygen supplies and health facilities running out of testing kits. In the countrys northwest, the health system is already unable to cope, while in the northeast, the coronavirus is spreading at a worrying pace, said Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF).

In northwest Syria, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 almost doubled in September, reaching nearly 73,000, compared to the 39,000 cases recorded by the end of August.

The peak reached in this wave so far has been as high as 1,500 cases per day, while it never exceeded 600 cases per day during previous waves.

Only 16 out of 33 COVID-19 treatment centres in the region are currently functioning. An already limited health infrastructure, as well as supply issues resulting in inadequate screening, make it impossible to both assess the real extent of the spread of the virus and offer an adequate response.

Efforts to contain the virus are hindered by poor access to healthcare and the low immunisation rate in the northwest, a region of four million people, where only three per cent of people are fully vaccinated. The low rate is owing to both peoples hesitancy to receive the vaccine and a slow vaccine rollout.

Our teams are trying to scale up operations based on these increasing needs. In August, we reopened two COVID-19 isolation centres in Idlib governorate, and we are now in the process of expanding their capacity. We also renewed our support to two community treatment centres in Afrin and Al-Bab, and we continue to support a treatment centre for respiratory illnesses in Afrin. More than 13 per cent of the total confirmed cases are displaced people living in camps, where we run mobile clinics to conduct COVID-19 tests and distribute prevention kits.

We have also witnessed a worrying increase in the number of people with COVID-19 in northeast Syria over the past few weeks. In the last week of September, an average of 342 people tested positive each day; the highest daily number since the pandemic began.

While numbers had started to decrease in the first week of October, the only laboratory able to perform PCR tests to diagnose COVID-19 in the region is running short on materials. They face the possibility of halting all testing in the coming weeks if numbers do not continue to decline. The supply of oxygen is also under serious strain, with the COVID-19 treatment facility in Hassakeh forced to source oxygen cylinders from Qamishli, Raqqa and Tabqa in order to meet demand.

Even prior to the pandemic, the health system in northern Syria was already struggling and reliant on humanitarian aid to respond to medical needs. Now, healthcare facilities and humanitarian organisations alike are unable to cope with the extent of this new wave.

Today more than ever, efforts must be made to save these facilitie...

ISIS POISED FOR A RAMADAN SURGE IN SYRIA

Key Takeaway: ISIS has established a stable territorial base in the mountainous regions of the Central Syrian Desert and has begun to overtake pro-Assad regime forces in the area. ISIS is waging a coordinated campaign to draw pro-regime forces into an untenable security posture in defense of energy and oil assets threatened by ISIS. Assads Russian and Iranian backers have attempted to contain ISISs insurgency but are unwilling to commit force at the scale necessary to succeed. ISIS is already using its territorial base to destabilize other parts of Syria. ISIS could attempt to seize new territory or financial assets in central Syria during its Ramadan campaign beginning in April 2021.

ISIS has begun to overtake pro-regime forces in the Central Syrian Desert. ISIS controls several small swaths of territory from which it is conducting a coordinated campaign across multiple zones of the Central Syrian Desert (CSD). The Central Syrian Desert encompasses rough terrain studded with oil and gas assets and crisscrossed by ground lines of communication (GLOCs) that connect regime-held population centers. ISISs strongholds are located in mountainous terrain overlooking those GLOCs and the deserts few population centers, indicated in figure 1. ISIS has successfully defended these strongholds when pressured, demonstrating sustainable control of rural terrain. In one instance, Russian-backed Syrian Arab Army 5th Corps units, likely with elite Tiger Forces support, attempted to clear an ISIS control zone northeast of Rahjan, Hama Province, on December 13, 2020. ISIS ambushed the clearing unit and forced it to retreat, preventing the unit from recovering its wounded until the arrival of air support hours later.

• $1.2 trillion: economic cost of 10 years of war, according to the World Vision charity.
  
• 98%: devaluation of the Syrian pound to the $ on the black market over the past decade.
  
• 33 times higher: food prices across the country, compared to the 5 years pre-war average, UN.
  
• 12.4 million people inside Syria are struggling to find enough food each day, the World Food Programme says.
  
• More than 60 percent of children in Syria are facing hunger, British charity Save the Children says.
  
• Two million: Syrians estimated to live in extreme poverty, the UN says.
  
• Over 2.4 million children inside of Syria are out of school, UNICEF says.
  
• 70 percent of healthcare workers have fled the conflict, while only 58 percent of hospitals are fully functional, the UN says.
  
• Two out of three families report that they cannot meet their basic needs.
  
• More than half a million children under five in Syria suffer from stunting as a result of chronic malnutrition, according to the UN.
  
• Since 2011, nearly 12,000 children were verified as killed or injured in Syria, thats 1 child every 8 hours over the past 10 years As we all know, these are children that the UN was able to verify as having been killed or injured.
  
• According to verified data, between 2011 and 2020, more than 5,700 children some as young as seven years old were recruited into the fighting. In the same period (2011-2020) more than 1,300 education and medical facilities have come under attack, including the people working there.
  
• Nearly five million children were born inside Syria over the past ten years, with an additional one million children being born outside as refugees in Syrias neighboring country, and these are millions of children who know nothing but death and displacement and destruction.
  
• Education now is facing one of the largest crises in recent history, some 3.5 million children out of school, including 40 per cent of those are girls.
  
• Child life expectancy in Syria has dropped by a shocking 13 years.
  
• By 2017 in three Syrian cities alone, over 12 million housing units were damaged and more than 400000 were destroyed. This extensive damage is largely due to heavy use of explosive weapons, particularly in urban settings, resulting in high contamination with explosive remnants of war.
  
• PHR has documented the killing of 923 health workers in Syria since 2011 and systematic detention and torture of health workers who had provided aid to protesters.
  
• Coverage for required child immunisations has dropp...

It has been two years since Jaber, who works in a car repair shop, was stuck in Raqqa city, unable to leave it at all. He fears the conscription checkpoints spreading across his citys suburbs.

Jaber Muhammad, 28 years old and resident of the al-Deriyeh neighborhood on the western outskirts of Raqqa city, fends for a family of five.

It is a life-threatening nightmare, Jaber called the conscription drives led by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). He relives this nightmare every time the SDF forcibly enlists people in Raqqa.

On 26 January, the nightmare started to haunt Jaber all over again. The Defense Office of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria dispatched a circular calling all persons eligible for the so-called duty of self-defense to legalize their status and obtain mandatory service booklet.

The circular, published on official websites of the Autonomous Administration, set up a deadline for the concerned people; residents in the Autonomous Administration-run areas are to meet these prerequisites over 30 days; those outside the Administrations areas are to join the SDF ranks over 90 days.

Jaber would not show up at the relevant department as long as he is capable of dodging the recruitment checkpoints, he said. Several of Jabers relatives and friends have abandoned Raqqa headed to Turkey, not in search of better job opportunities, but mostly escaping the SDF-mandated conscription.

Scanty wages
Bassel al-Jasim, 25 years old, fled a military training camp by the 17th Division, dedicated to conscripts in the areas north of Raqqa.

Jasim escaped because his family duties make it difficult for him to enroll with any military party, he told Enab Baladi, particularly because the 35,000 Syrian Pounds the conscripts are paid as a salary do not cover any of the familys needs.

Neither the checkpoints strict measures nor the SDFs recruitment campaigns managed to change Bassels mind, who does not fear the consequences of evading the self-defense draft. At worst, he will be caught and forced into serving within the SDF ranks, spending most of the services time at training camps or guarding SDF-affiliated facilities.

For his part, Khalid al-Hussain, 27 years old, was forced to leave his teaching job at the elementary schools in the Tawi village, the eastern countryside of Raqqa, after the Education Committee of the Raqqa Local Council made it mandatory for its workers to perform the duty of self-defense.

Today, Khalid works on the villages farms and rarely leaves it, unless it is an emergency, because he is concerned about being pressed into joining the SDF.

For Khalid, there are no reasons anymore for recruiting people, particularly since the Autonomous Administration is currently in control of wide areas in Syria, with thousands of volunteer recruits fighting for it.

Conscription...

Although the US-led international coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) a Kurdish-Arab alliance from the area declared victory over the Islamic State when they took control of its last strongholds in al-Baghouz in March 2019, the global joy over eliminating the terrorist organization has not reached the people of Raqqa, the former capital of the caliphate, where IS seems to still wield significant influence.

Many of the citys people are still living in fear of the militants. Even if they cannot control the area as they once did, many IS cells are terrorizing civilians with bombings in residential areas, assassinations and threats despite the thousands of SDF soldiers in the area.

Hassan Abdullah (a pseudonym), a car dealer and a father of three in Raqqa who preferred not to reveal his real identity for fear of retaliation by IS or arrest by the SDF, lives in a rented house after the international coalition raids destroyed his familys home during the battle to expel IS from Raqqa.

Abdullah told Al-Monitor that residents are even more afraid of IS than before. IS still exists, he said. In September 2020, I got a phone call from a private number. The first thing I heard was: We are the Islamic State, and we know that you make a lot of money from the car trade, and you have to pay zakat to us, or we are going to kill you, referring to a traditional Islamic charitable donation.

During its rule, IS would take money from civilians in the name of zakat. But according to locals, it was just a way to collect taxes from the community IS controlled.

Abdullah said the call felt like his worst nightmare. I did not believe it at first, but after three days they contacted me via WhatsApp, and they sent me photos of the entrance to my house and from inside my shop. They even sent me a photo of one of my children! At that point, I could not ignore the matter. I spoke to some friends, but was shocked to find out that three out of five of them had also paid money under threats, but they did not dare tell anyone for fear of assassination by IS or arrest by the SDF on charges of financing terrorism.

Al-Monitor tried to contact SDF officials for comment, but to no avail.

There was no other option for Abdullah but to pay IS, which is known for assassinating prominent figures in Raqqa in broad daylight.

Following IS instructions, Hassan took $5,000 to the meeting site, where he found two masked IS members on a motorcycle on the road between Jazrat al-Buhumaid and Abu Khashab, an area in the western countryside of Deir Ez-Zor. He delivered the bag of money at gunpoint.

Mohab al-Nasser, a human rights activist and researcher from Raqqa, explained that between 2014 and 2017, many people joined IS for the monthly salary but did not fight. However, today, those who have remained with IS are true believers in the terrorist or...

Source : thearabweekly.com

If the children are added to about 400 adults including militants detained in particular in the Syrian city of Hasaka there are in total about 1,000 Europeans detained in the Iraqi-Syrian region.

LONDON Since before the fall in March 2019 of the Islamic State (ISIS) groups self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria, Kurdish forces have managed several camps in Syrias northeast, housing thousands of civilians who fled the fighting.

The largest is Al-Hol, which also houses the wives of foreign Islamic State (ISIS) fighters and their children.

The Kurds, backed heavily by a US-led coalition in the fight against ISIS, have repeatedly demanded that countries of origin repatriate foreign fighters and their families.

But many nations have been slow to oblige, other than to bring back orphans.

Two Belgian researchers confirmed in a study published Wednesday that more than 600 children of European militants, nearly a third of them French, are currently being held in two Kurdish-controlled camps in northeastern Syria, denouncing the inaction of their countries.

Touma Renard and Rick Colsaet, experts on militant affairs at the Egmont Institute in Brussels, said in their study that between 610 and 680 children from European Union citizens are currently detained with their mothers in the Rouge and Al Hol camps in northeastern Syria.

If these children are added to about 400 adults including militants detained in particular in the Syrian city of Hasaka there are in total about 1,000 Europeans detained in the Iraqi-Syrian region, according to the study, which was based on official data, expert estimates, and statistics from field NGOs.