More than a year since the defeat of Islamic State in Raqqa, many of the city s school buildings are lying in rubble and playgrounds are dotted with wrecked cars. In the Syrian city of Raqqa, children wear hats, scarves and coats to guard against the winter cold as they struggle to catch up on years of lost learning in a classroom with no doors or glazed windows. More than a year since the United States and its allies defeated Daesh at Raqqa, many of the city’s schools still look like battlefields with buildings left lying in rubble and playgrounds dotted with wrecked cars. “When the crisis started, we stopped studying, the schools closed. Now we’ve come back to study and we need help. Fix the windows, doors, we’re dying of cold,” said 12-year-old Abdullah Al-Hilal at Uqba bin Nafie school.
Islamic State, which turned Raqqa into the Syrian headquarters of its self-declared “caliphate,” kept schools shut as it tried to impose its ultra-radical vision of Islam through its own education system. Since Islamic State’s defeat there in October 2017, 44 schools have reopened with 45,000 children enrolled, said Ali Al-Shannan, the head of the education council set up by civilian authorities in Raqqa. The children have lost out on five years of schooling. “Very basic” aid had allowed for some renovation work, covering only 10 percent of needs, Shannan told Reuters. The schools generally “have no doors, no windows, in addition to the sanitation systems that are in a deplorable state,” he said. At Uqba bin Nafie school, one classroom looks out onto a wrecked building, its floors collapsed on top of each other and a car flipped on its side nearby. In the yard, children stand around large pools of dirty water while others eat snacks by the crumpled wreckage of another vehicle.
Political Affairs 