FSA took full control the city of Raqqa in early 2013 announcing the first liberation of a city center since the beginning of the Syrian revolution.
Raqqa city, which located north-east of Syria, was completely ignored for decades from the Syrian regime and ignored and marginalized from the Syrian opposition forces too, after the liberation, so sons of Raqqa, who participated its liberation, carried the responsibility and started attempts to manage their city.
Young people of Raqqa city started a campaign to clean the streets of the city and the places that were bombed by the warplanes of Assad regime, the young people showed awareness and great responsibility towards the city, the city began to flourish slowly, and then the youth civil groups has been formed in many various hues, their number reached 33 youth groups, they were competing with each other to contribute the prosperity of the city, including pool ” free youth of Raqqa” and “our right” movement and pool “grandchildren of alrasheed ” and many other civic gatherings, even womanly gatherings of the women of Raqqa city.
Young people of Raqqa soon started forming a lot of initiatives, like the campaign of “our flag” which was aiming to deploy banners all over the city carrying the flag of Syrian Revolution and some inspiring words for young people to go ahead in the sake of revolution, and also the campaign of “our streets are breathing freedom”, where they started painting the walls of the city with the colors of the flag of revolution, and the campaign of “our loaf of bread”, where the young men started to distribute bread to poor and needy people, and the campaign of “free men behind bars” where young men carried out a demonstration to free the detainees in the regime prisons, and many campaigns for the rehabilitation of schools which bombed and ruined and looted its contents, they started cleaning the schools and arranging the books and put it in a safe places and clean up hospitals of the city.
Young men and inhabitants from Raqqa city carried out psychological support campaigns for the children who have suffered the horrors of the bombing and the war, trying to get them out of the manifestations of the war, and “for you” which was a womanly campaign for doing some craftworks and put it in the gallery for sell, and the proceeds of these works were for the children of martyrs.
Raqqa city lived a period of Revolutionary prosperity and provided a wonderful model of revolutionary cultural manifestations which reflects the image of the future of Syria, the people of Raqqa lived this dream until the bats of ISIS came to rob their dreams and their future, kidnapping and killing, prosecuting and death threats against the media activists, and bombing the places of youth gatherings and fight FSA was not everything done by the organization, but ISIS also fought all the existing revolutionary factions until they dominated the whole city in early 2014, all activists and a lot of people began escaping and leaving the city, and ISIS has closed all youth gatherings in Raqqa which were ignored by the whole world.
ISIS began obliteration the features of the revolution, and they painted all walls which was painting with the flag of revolution into the black color, and destroyed the dream of the people of Raqqa which they lived for a year, and after that, ISIS began field executions and indiscriminate arrest and prosecuting women by the battalion of al Khansa and prosecuting people by the patrols of “Hesba” and to impose taxes on the people of the city, and the degradation of medical condition and the situation of infrastructure like electricity and water, imposing its own laws and every violator to these laws faces either the death penalty or prison. .
Today, the people of Raqqa became strangers in their city, and they are standing on the thresholds of their occupied city in waiting for something in a someday, hoping that the situation will change and they will live the dream again.
And the story will be continued…
