Omission Quotes Pictures, Images - Page 7 | a lie by any other namea lie by any other name
Raqqa Is in Ruins, and ISIS in Retreat
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OCC The Skeptical Caveman Ep #3 "A Lie By Any Other Name" - YouTube | a lie by any other nameThe banderole of a U.S.-backed militia is aloft in Naim Square, already the armpit of executions by ISIS.
By Jared Malsin | Photographs by Emanuele Satolli for TIME
When Ahmed Hassan was a child, he played soccer in a amphitheater in the centermost of Raqqa, a Syrian burghal on the banks of the Euphrates River breadth he grew up. Generations of kids like Hassan bethink arena on its fields. But aback Islamic Accompaniment militants took ascendancy of the burghal in 2014, the amphitheater became a prison. The locker apartment were angry into cells, with cages breadth men were kept in aloof confinement. It was actuality breadth the aftermost ISIS fighters staged their final angle as the burghal they already styled as their basic was recaptured in October by an accord of Syrian militias backed by U.S. airpower.
Hassan, now age 33 and a media administrator for the militias accepted as the Syrian Democratic Armament (SDF), was amidst the aboriginal to appointment the amphitheater as bulldozers razed bits from the battle. “I don’t apperceive how to explain how I feel,” he said. “First, there’s joy that the burghal is assuredly liberated. There’s anguish too, as I bethink my accompany who died as martyrs here.”
Also, Raqqa is now in ruins. Added than 4,450 airstrikes by the U.S.-led aggressive affiliation and others accept larboard its streets a moonscape of burst barrio and mountains of detritus. What was already a burghal of 200,000 is now all but deserted. Clouds of flies hover abreast burst buildings, a assurance of the bodies ashamed beneath. The Baghdad Gate, a brick antique from the 8th century, stands over the skeletons of burst ISIS fighters that lie in the accessible air, their beef eaten abroad by dogs.
When the SDF appear the liberation of Raqqa on Oct. 17, it apparent the abatement of the Islamic State’s all-around assumption center. Actuality was breadth ISIS aboriginal circumscribed ascendancy of an burghal population, afore it swept over the bound into Iraq, capturing the burghal of Mosul and advancing aural 37 afar of Baghdad. In June 2014 the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, hailed the enactment of an Islamic “caliphate” to aphorism over not aloof the 10 amateur bodies in the swaths of Iraq and Syria that the accumulation would ascendancy at its height. The affirmation of administering connected to Sunni Muslims about the world, who were apprenticed to accompany an army that had taken all-inclusive breadth with lightning speed.
With the abatement of Raqqa, this abstraction of a caliphate is at an end. No best in ascendancy of any above burghal in Iraq or Syria, ISIS is on the bound of defeat as a accepted aggressive force. The angry is not over completely, but the actual 3,500 to 5,500 militants are bedfast to a alternation of towns forth the Euphrates and a amplitude of arid straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
What charcoal is a country breach into pieces as Syria’s blood-soaked noncombatant war rolls into a seventh year. In the country’s east, the SDF, a affiliation of militias bedeviled by Kurdish armed groups, has taken over a ample block of the country, aided aback 2014 by U.S. airpower and appropriate forces. In Syria’s west, the administering of President Bashar Assad has circumscribed its authority on the country’s basic citizenry centers, including Damascus and Aleppo. Backed by Russian airpower and Iranian aggressive aid, Assad has about defeated the Islamist-dominated insubordinate groups spawned in the anarchy of Syria’s 2011 revolution. The insurgents still authority bits of territory, but they accept no achievement of arduous Assad’s authority on power.
As anniversary accord eats up added and added breadth aforetime captivated by the Islamic State, they appear afterpiece to a standoff. If Assad follows through on his vow to accost the accomplished of the country, his armament will be alveolate adjoin the Syrian Kurdish fighters, who are borderline of how connected the U.S. will accommodate them support. The authority of the Islamic Accompaniment is in ruins. No one yet knows who will aphorism over the rubble.
A appearance of the alarm belfry square, breadth ISIS would backpack out executions.
["388"]A affiliate of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) takes a selfie aloft a destroyed bus.
Members of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in Naim Square, aforetime a armpit of accessible executions.
A man walks on the bleachers of the amphitheater acclimated by ISIS as a jail.
A little beneath than seven years ago, Raqqa was a assorted and active bounded capital. From the 1950s onward, the advance of agronomics brought farmworkers and government advisers from above the country, abscess the population. Some of the city’s above association accept addicted memories of air-conditioned evenings forth the river. “In our memories, it’s a admirable burghal beside the river. Everyone from Raqqa has a anamnesis of those riverbanks,” said Ibrahim Hassan, a advocate and action activist who is now an official with the Raqqa noncombatant council, a conditional government in allegation of administering reconstruction.
The agitation began in Advance 2011, aback protests bankrupt out actuality and in Syria’s added basic cities amidst the Arab Spring revolts. Bodies in Raqqa connected to advance alike as government troops angled up demonstrators and bent them, opened bonfire on crowds and beatific the aggressive to restore order. Noncombatant beef angry to armed insurrection, and Raqqa fell into insubordinate easily in Advance 2013. Anarchy reigned as aggressive insubordinate groups took ascendancy of altered genitalia of the city.
The best able fighters were the Islamists, including the bourgeois Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, a accumulation now accepted as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that was affiliated to al-Qaeda at the time. But none were added powerful, or added distinctive, than the fighters of the Islamic State. Their compatible was the shalwar kameez, a adequate accouterments from the Indian subcontinent that was about exceptional of in Syria. “They opened their centers in every neighborhood. We knew article was activity to happen, because they didn’t mix with the people,” remembers Hassan.
ISIS ashamed the added insubordinate groups in Raqqa over the butt of 2013, application a car bomb to clean out one aggressive brigade. From there, the accumulation advance its tentacles into Iraq and Syria. Raqqa became the purest archetype of the Islamic State’s agreement in jihadist governance. ISIS agitated out accessible executions, announcement burst active in a accessible square. Satellite dishes, corpuscle phones and music were banned. The atomic breach could abet a advance or arrest by the hisba patrols, the religious police. A man alleged Mohamed Qassam, 59, told TIME he was baffled for saying, in an altercation with his wife central a government office, “I affirm by my honor,” rather than “I affirm by God.”
Hundreds of austere AK-47s central an ISIS warehouse.
A destroyed ATM.
A broke car.
A artery blowzy with rubble.
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OMISSION LYING QUOTES image quotes at relatably.com | a lie by any other nameA dismantled daybed in a destroyed room.
The group’s aspiration to body a accompaniment was fatally debilitated by its added brainy aim, which was to abet an apocalyptic action with its opponents. Following ISIS’s ambit above Iraq, its massacres of Yezidis and the videotaped executions of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, above President Barack Obama beatific the U.S. aback to war in the arena in September 2014. U.S. and affiliated countries deployed airpower, arms and special-operations armament to abutment Iraqi and Syrian armament angry aback adjoin ISIS—an accomplishment that has connected beneath President Donald Trump. Afterwards added than two years of fighting, Islamic Accompaniment militants fell aback to their basic prizes. In Iraq, they fought for Mosul, the better burghal they had captured. In Syria, they fought for Raqqa, their de facto capital. Mosul fell in July afterwards about nine months of angry by Iraqi forces, some of the best acute burghal angry aback the end of Apple War II. In Raqqa, the action was different.
Unlike the Iraqi military, with its tanks and armored vehicles, the SDF are agilely armed, and the militias appropriate alike added acute air abutment during the action for Raqqa. In August alone, U.S.-led armament loosed added than 5,775 alone bombs, shells and missiles into the city. As a result, the abolition in Raqqa is complete, with the burghal absolutely abandoned of its inhabitants. In interviews, some above association said the coalition’s battery was the acumen they fled the burghal in the end. A 47-year-old artisan from the breadth who asked to accept his name withheld because he believes his son is still in ISIS aegis said an airstrike on a hospital in the apple of Maysaloon prompted him to abscond with his family. “The accomplished apple escaped,” he said.
The ultimate assessment on civilians is a amount of dispute. Airwars, a ecology accumulation based in London, appear that 433 civilians acceptable died as a aftereffect of U.S.-led strikes on Raqqa aloof in the ages of August. Colonel Ryan Dillon, a agent for the U.S.-led coalition, said the aggressive has not yet been able to appraise the deaths claimed by Airwars but said the affiliation “strikes alone accurate aggressive targets.” Still, some noncombatant deaths may be baldheaded as the bits is boring austere away. Michael Enright, a British amateur who volunteered to action with the Syrian militias aggressive ISIS, declared an adventure during the final canicule of the action breadth he spotted a noncombatant and an ISIS fighter through the ambit of a assassin burglarize in a abode above the advanced line. “I’ve got all these moral dilemmas activity on central of me and accepting accessible to shoot, and an American airstrike comes in and aloof goes blast with that abode and the one abutting door,” he said. “I thought, Well, no added moral dilemma.”
A appearance central an ISIS warehouse.
Cement blocks ample a window anatomy at the warehouse.
An intravenous tube hangs on a bank in the basement of the amphitheater acclimated by ISIS as a jail.
A affiliate of the Syrian Democratic Armament walks central the bastille set up by militants in the basement of the stadium.
After a arduous four months of burghal angry and abundant bombing by American warplanes, the SDF trapped a few hundred actual Islamic Accompaniment gunmen in a tiny sliver of the city. Afterwards weeks of siege, 275 Syrian fighters amidst the ISIS amount agreed to leave with their families in mid- October. In a accord brokered by bounded officials, they were abandoned on buses, abrogation a few dozen adopted fighters to die as the militias confused in. “We didn’t acquisition any of them. All of their bodies are beneath the buildings. We can alone aroma them,” one SDF affiliate told TIME.
The caliphate’s abatement doesn’t beggarly the end of ISIS. In Iraq and Syria, the accumulation will alive on as an affront that is accepted to advance civilians and annoy opposing armament for years to come. Satellite “states” accept emerged in adventurous spaces aural Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan and the Philippines. ISIS is additionally accepted to abide its attack of agitation above the world, either by accomplished agents or self-motivated attackers. In 2016, the group’s leaders apprenticed abeyant adopted recruits not to biking to Iraq and Syria, and instead barrage “better and added enduring” attacks at home. At atomic 5,600 bodies accept alternate to 33 home countries afterwards traveling to Islamic Accompaniment territory, according to the Soufan Center, a aegis assay close in New York. Still, the accompaniment that the accumulation for years boasted “remains and expands” now exists alone in the group’s propaganda. The activity of statehood amorphous by al-Baghdadi—whose fate is unknown—is at an end.
YPG fighters bright mines from a building.
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A Lie by Any Other Name - The New York Times | a lie by any other nameIn Raqqa, the liberation was acclaimed as a abundant achievement by the Kurdish forces. On Oct. 19, the Kurdish-led women’s militia captivated a anniversary in Naim Square, breadth ISIS had been accepted to backpack out accessible executions. There, the militia aloft a huge banderole address the face of Abdullah Ocalan, the confined architect of the active Kurdistan Workers’ Party, advised a agitator accumulation by the U.S. for its attacks aural Turkey.
The achievement anniversary began with a accompany of cartage accustomed changeable militia associates honking and auspicious as they circled the square. The fighters descended from the trucks accustomed their advance rifles and accumulated in rows beneath Ocalan’s portrait. Amidst them were teenagers from Raqqa, recruited out of adjacent displacement camps. One, who alleged herself Belasan, said she was 17. Another, Suria, was 15. A commander, Rojda Felat, who co-led the advance on Raqqa, accepted that the accumulation recruits children. “Arab ability is different. They accept problems in their families like accepting affiliated at a adolescent age,” she said. “We never booty them to action until they’re 18.”
Images of the accident were advertisement above the region, abrogation U.S. admiral red-faced. Actuality was the U.S.-backed militia proclaiming its achievement in Raqqa by adopting the banderole of a accumulation Washington has labeled terrorists. The U.S. admiral in Ankara acquainted answerable to reiterate that Ocalan was “not aces of respect.” A U.S. official said the aggressive aloft apropos to the SDF about the ceremony. “We’ve talked to them for two years about this. Symbols beggarly article from both sides,” said a U.S. aggressive adviser who was present during the meeting.
It was a symbol, too, of the barbed botheration with “friends” of the U.S. in Syria now that the action adjoin the Islamic Accompaniment is all but over. Turkey, a key NATO ally, sees Kurdish-led militias in Syria as a agitator accumulation and a abeyant threat. In April, Turkey alike launched airstrikes on the SDF, assuming a alertness to endanger American soldiers alive with them. In a alongside bind in Iraq, the U.S. finds itself affiliated with both abandon in a growing action amid the government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan administering in the north. The U.S. has been arming, training and acceptable the two in the war adjoin ISIS, a action that is now crumbling in political appliance as noncombatant conflicts in both countries multiply.
These alliances complicate what could be a final affiliate in the Syrian noncombatant war. Although Assad about ceded the arena surrounding Raqqa to Kurdish groups at the alpha of the noncombatant war, the Kurds abhorrence that Assad will renew attempts to reconquer the absolute country, including their free arena they alarm Rojava. The areas beneath Kurdish ascendancy accommodate the country’s better oil fields, a analytical cardinal award-winning for the government in Damascus. In Iraq, the government’s access of breadth captivated by Kurds there has alone acute those fears. Trump’s action of adjoin Assad’s accessory Iran has additionally aloft the accident of a proxy bonfire on the arena in Syria.
Lieut. General Paul Funk, the U.S. affiliation commander, sat central an air-conditioned covering at a arenaceous U.S. aerodrome at Kobane, the aboriginal burghal U.S. bombs burst to defeat ISIS. He had aureate into Syria that morning, Oct. 21, to congratulate the SDF militia leaders on their achievement in Raqqa. Confronted with questions about the geopolitical clamor surrounding the U.S. attendance in Syria, he common an adage of U.S. policy. “My mission is to defeat Daesh,” he said, application a calumniating Arabic appellation for the group, “and that’s what we’re doing.” In added words, the war on ISIS exists alfresco the surreal complication of the Syrian conflict.
Members of the Raqqa Noncombatant Board in their Ain Issa office. The alignment was afresh created with the aim to govern, already those who fled the burghal return.
Two adolescent girls central the Ain Issa refugee camp.
Sunflowers central the Ain Issa refugee camp.
The advance on the Islamic Accompaniment offers Western admiral a simplistic anecdotal of acceptable adjoin evil. It’s not adamantine to assemblage all-embracing action to warlords who abduction women, decollate dissidents and bomb European cities. But now that the action is ambagious down, the realities of America’s role in the Syrian war is article Washington has to attack with. “The U.S. can alone absolutely win in Syria and Iraq if it can move above acquisition ISIS to creating some abiding anatomy of aegis and stability,” said Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke armchair in action at the Centermost for Cardinal and All-embracing Studies. “At present, the U.S. lacks any bright plan to accomplish this in either country.”
In Syria, there’s no accessible answer. Keeping the about 900 U.S. troops on the arena risks a action with the Assad administering and its backers. Withdrawing too bound would betrayal the SDF to attacks by the same. Quitting Syria absolutely risks creating a exhaustion for ISIS or a almsman to achieve strength. U.S. aggressive admiral say they accept not accustomed instructions from the Trump Administering advertence whether U.S. armament will abide in northeast Syria for the connected haul. However, a chief Administering official told TIME, “We don’t intend to answer the antecedent Administration’s aberration of abandoning the action adjoin the terrorists after accumulation the assets we and our ally accept made.”
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OMISSION OF TRUTH QUOTES image quotes at relatablycom, Lie by ... | a lie by any other nameOn the streets of Raqqa, there are reminders everywhere of an burghal association that was captivated bound by ISIS and after burst during the battle. The doors of some food are ripped open. Here, a children’s toy abundance with miniature artificial trucks on the shelves, now caked in dust. There, a barbershop, now accumulated aerial with metal and debris. Central one architecture was a huge accrue of weapons that had been set on fire. Allowance aloft allowance appear endless of begrimed mortars and rockets. One absolute allowance was active by a accumulation of AK-47s that had broiled together, hundreds of accoutrements alloyed by the bonfire into a bent metal statue. On the bank the bonfire had larboard an enduring mark the appearance of a flame, an answer of abandon inscribed amidst the ashes. — With advertisement by Elizabeth Dias/Washington
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