US hopes for a quick Syria exit run into a minefield in Raqqa
The Donald Trump administration faces significant hurdles getting the centerpiece of its reconstruction efforts back on track.
Nine months after US troops helped liberate the Islamic State’s former capital of Raqqa, the city's lethal mound of unexploded ordnance is challenging the Donald Trump administration’s hopes for a quick exit out of Syria.
The State Department has trumpeted the Raqqa effort as an opportunity to empower local partners to begin conducting a yearslong cleanup on their own. But as Trump publicly seeks to draw down the 2,000 US troops in the war-torn country, some demining experts worry the rehabilitation effort won’t be able to get Syrian trainees up to speed to clean up the booby traps, car bombs and mines left behind by the retreating jihadis.
Officially liberated last September by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Raqqa is home to a small contingent of advisers hired by the California-based company Tetra Tech. The firm has begun training locals to remove explosives, but some doubt how much those experts are doing to fix the rubble-laden city.
“There’s a question of how much clearance they’re doing, or whether they’re hanging out and doing some mentoring,” said Brian Castner, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International who served three tours as an Air Force ordnance disposal officer in Iraq. “Raqqa is the wrong place to be learning. That’s not a learning environment, that’s an operating at the top of your game environment.”
