A City Reduced to Rubble: The Cost of Victory in Raqqa

The urban warfare by its very nature is destructive, but the city of Raqqa was liberated from Islamic State at a much higher cost. The offensive that began on June 4 under the Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Interest Resolve (CJTF-OIR) witnessed local Kurdish forces and Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) encircling the city of Raqqa with support from US forces.

ISIL overran Raqqa in 2014, turning it into the de-facto capital of its self-declared "caliphate".

After intense fighting for fourth months, the de facto Islamic State (IS/ISIS) forces in the area were annihilated as was the city. A majority of the damage has come from the US-led coalition airstrikes that relentlessly bombarded the city. Earlier, observers noted that the extensive cost to innocent lives was due to the accelerated pace of the operation.

Drone footage of the destruction of Raqqa

In August, the US-led coalition launched a strike that killed 42 civilians, including 19 children and 12 women. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) in response said, "The Coalition takes all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and assesses all credible allegations of possible civilian casualties. Coalition forces work diligently and deliberately to be precise in our airstrikes.”

Many experts and journalists working on conflicts and international law have questioned the ‘western hypocrisy’. The bombing of Aleppo hits the international headlines but an entire city [Raqqa] being ‘wiped off from the face of the earth' finds no mention.

Various international laws and instruments prohibit belligerents from attacking civilian objects and infrastructure in a war. Article 52(1) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of Geneva Convention provides: “Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack.”

According to Andrew Illingworth, editor of an Editor for Al-Masdar News “the West’s double standard on the morality behind bombing population centres in order to defeat terrorist forces (i.e. – when Assad does it it is bad, when the Coalition does it it is necessary) has been revealed once again for all the world to see and the unfortunate victims have been the city and people of Raqqa.

Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Talal Silo called on the international community to support rebuilding efforts in a victory ceremony, which will take billions of dollars and many years to fully restore.

Russia has compared the destruction of Raqqa with the bombing of German’s Dresden in 1945 during World War II. Major-General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry, said in a statement that around 2,00,000 people had lived in Raqqa before the conflict in Syria, but that not more than 45,000 people remained.

Dresden, a city having no military significance was decimated in Allied bombing raids just before the end of the war, killing anywhere from 18,000 to 25,000 people.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick.