“WAR OF ANNIHILATION”
DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International
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Children scavenging for scrap metal in the rubble of destroyed buildings in Raqqa, where many of the buildings were mined by IS and
where children and adults are frequently killed and injured by mines. © Amnesty International
Daily labourers and scavengers are sometimes referred to as “unofficial de-miners” because they risk their
lives working in the rubble of bombed-out buildings which may be mined. A local businessman told Amnesty
International:
People need to get back to whatever is left of their homes and businesses but nobody is clearing
the mines. If you have money you can hire labourers and if there are mines they are the ones who
get killed. Everybody knows about the danger from the mines but people need to work. People
have lost everything and they will do any job to feed their children. Unfortunately, this is life in
Raqqa today. I was able to rent a bulldozer to clear the rubble from the half of my house which was
destroyed. But it is expensive and most people cannot afford it.
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Raqqa Civil Council (RCC) is the body tasked with co-ordinating the administration of the city and
surrounding areas, which are outside Syrian government control. RCC officials told Amnesty International
that they lack the funds necessary to address even the destroyed city’s most basic needs. Laila Mustafa, the
co-chair of the RCC told the organisation:
Residents come to us every day asking us to recover the bodies of their relatives trapped in the
rubble of destroyed buildings but we only have very few bulldozers and mostly not of the right kind,
so we cannot satisfy most of these requests. We need equipment for lifting large quantity of heavy
rubble full of mines and we just don’t have it.
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http://www.msf.org/en/article/syria-33-blast-victims-treated-msf-raqqa-first-week-2018 and “Syria: Patient numbers double in northeast as
more people return home to landmines”, MSF, 3 April 2018, available at http://www.msf.org/en/article/syria-patient-numbers-double-
northeast-more-people-return-home-landmines
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Interview, with Abu Ali, Raqqa, 16 February 2018.
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Interview with Laila Mustafa, Ain Issa, 6 February 2018.
“WAR OF ANNIHILATION”
DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International
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Men wait by the side of the road for casual labour in Raqqa. Many end up clearing partially destroyed or damaged buildings, a very risky
endeavour as many building were mined by IS and civilians are frequently killed and injured by mines.
© Amnesty International
Statements made by US representatives have not always been promising. In April 2018 the US State
Department’s Jerry Guilbert said, in response to a journalist’s question: “… we never went into this from the
beginning with the view that the international community was going to clear Raqqa or clear Syria. Ultimately,
this has to be viewed as a Syrian problem that is in need of a Syrian solution.”
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Jerry Guilbert is Chief of
Programs for the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the
US Department of State.
Another leading RCC member told The Wall Street Journal in March 2018 that the USA had done
“practically nothing” to repair Raqqa since the end of the military operation. Funds were slow to arrive and
when they did, the projects proposed by USAID, the US Agency for International Development, such as
repainting curbs, were out of step with local needs.
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Amnesty International delegates also witnessed
similarly superfluous, out of sync internationally funded activities in Raqqa, including smartly uniformed
traffic police directing non-existent traffic at semi-deserted intersections and labourers sweeping dust into
neat piles from streets flanked by mountains of uncleared rubble. Residents’ complaints about the failure of
these projects to meet their needs seem well founded.
POST-BATTLE LOOTING
Immediately after the battle the SDF emptied Raqqa of its remaining residents. With no one around to
protect it, property was looted on a large scale. “What was not destroyed during the war was looted after
liberation,” Hassan, a household goods trader, told Amnesty International. He said that his house and
adjacent shop and storeroom were cleaned out completely after he left Raqqa.
Daesh stole plenty from us earlier on, but during the battle they had other priorities. I left Raqqa a
few days before the end of the battle and at that time there is no way that Daesh would have been
able to take away such material – dozens of fridges, freezers, washing machines etc. I tried coming
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“Briefing on U.S. demining efforts around the world”, 4 April 2018, available at https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/04/280216.htm
139
“How American neglect imperils the victory over ISIS”, The Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2018, available at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/syria/raqqa-residents-abandoned-and-forgotten/?utm_term=.511861fb4cbc