Life Inside ISIS' Terror: What is it really like in Raqqa?

'I used to be able to teach students what I believed in. Now I am forced to teach them what I don't believe, what ISIS want me to.'

Since ISIS took the once-liberal city of Raqqa in 2013, the people have been forced to live under strict Sharia law.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - One Syrian woman called Asma told MailOnline, "I just couldn't bear it anymore. Before, I had a boyfriend. I went to the beach. I wore a bikini. Even in Syria, we wore short skirts and tank tops, and all of this was normal. Even my brothers didn't care - I had no trouble from anyone."

Asma is among the lucky who escaped Syria before being forced to submit to ISIS. Many women who once enjoyed spending time taking walks alone or with male friends must now dress in robes that literally cover everything but part of their shoes and their eyes. 

Men used to be able to work and visit one another, but under the watch of Islamic extremists, they have been micromanaged to the point where one teacher is no longer allowed to offer private lessons or teach anything outside ISIS-approved content.

Mohammed, who was too frightened to provide his last name, told activist group Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered (RBSS): "I'm afraid to lose my children, I am afraid that my wife will be flogged for not wearing the right clothes. Things have changed from bad to worse under ISIS - the cost of food, there is no fuel or firewood.

"Water is available but it must be boiled and cooled. There are fruit and vegetables and bread, but prices are very high. Electricity became scarce and we had to start buying it because the current only comes in some districts [of Raqqa]. 

"From 5am, I need to be at the mosque and I can't be absent. When I am there I watch the sky for aircrafts. Then I return to the house as quickly as possible to avoid arbitrary arrests. It's the same routine every day. 

"I used to be able to teach students what I believed in. Now I am forced to teach them what I don't believe, what ISIS want me to. They stopped me from giving private lessons which means I do not earn as much.

"It scares me in Raqqa that I can suddenly be arrested and never know the reason. I could be imprisoned and my family and wife will not know anything. But what scares me most is that ISIS is planting ideas in the minds of my children who I am forced to take to school."

RBSS activist Tim Ramadan explained to MailOnline what life was like in the conquered city of Raqqa. "When you walk through the city, you see people being decapitated, their wrists tied with rope and their hands cut off or being given lashes. We are stopped from leaving, forced to keep up the pretence that everything is normal here, when people are living in horror."

One Raqqa citizen, Waleed, told MailOnline: "Life here was difficult after the American airstrikes, but now we have a bigger problem because the Russians don't make a difference between civilian and military targets. The regime bombs us more than before and two weeks ago there was a massacre of civilians in Al Bab by Russian airstrikes. People here are terrified.

"They don't have any way to leave Raqqa because the [Syrian-Turkish] border is shit. If you need to leave you have to get permission from ISIS, which sometimes isn't that difficult to get, but now the Turkish border is closed so what's the point?"

According to RBSS, Raqqa's food and fuel prices began to sharply increase following the closed Turksih-Syrian border.

"Food is expensive now because we used to import it from Turkey but ISIS is trying to keep prices low and keep it under control," Waleed explained. "It is very dangerous to cross the border. ISIS are trying to not make the prices expensive because they don't want to make the people angry. The security situation is good, like before, but people are scared of the airstrikes.

The Islamic extremists have taken control of all the city's resources. They treat themselves and foreign members of their gang like kings and queens, while native Syrians are treated as second-class citizens.

An anti-ISIS campaigner, simply called Abu, told MailOnline: "Daesh [ISIS] has killed and displaced so many residents, stole their homes and taken their furniture."

Asma added, "The foreign women go to do whatever they wanted. They could go wherever they wanted. They were spoilt. Even the ones that were younger than us had more power."

Many fall victim to extremist cruelty, such as one girl who said she was arrested and beaten with a club for wearing the wrong kind of niqab. As further punishment, she was publicly given 50 lashes. In an even worse turn of events, many of the city's doctors have fled, leaving behind a city fraught with illness.

Abu told RBSS: "Many doctors have fled. There are some illnesses as a result of non-sterile water that people drink, such as diarrhoea [sic] and also stomach cramps. The health situation has worsened to the extreme."

The doctors fled as the result of the combination of ISIS militant attacks and US-led airstrikes.
Abu admitted locals feared Russia's airstrikes because they target "anyone," but they do not fear America and its partners' strikes as they are "aimed at the headquarters of Daesh only."

Abu continued, saying, "The children feel scared when they hear the sound of planes and explosions." He added that ISIS fighters fear bombing raids so terribly that they now live among civilians to use them as human shields.

One woman, who was too afraid to disclose her name, said: "This is the most dangerous city on earth and I'll tell you why - imagine yourself walking down the street while warplanes are bombing from above. Then a person is executed in front of you. You want to buy food for your family but you don't have enough money and your children cannot learn."

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