River of life no more | New Straits Times

By BEN HUBBARDAugust 11, 2018 @ 10:30am

ON the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, Kurdish militiamen aligned with United States
troops burrow into sandbagged positions and eye their foes across the water.

On the other side, Arab rebels backed by Turkey shoot at anyone who nears the river.

For millenniums, the Euphrates has given farmers in the village of Zour Maghar water to
irrigate fields of wheat, eggplant and sunflowers. Generations of families have sprawled on
its banks for picnics, the older children teaching the younger ones to swim.

But, after seven years of war, the river that has fed life in Syria’s parched east has become a
hostile front, separating warring sides as it travels north to south. Deprived of its water,
families have fled Zour Maghar, abandoning their mud-brick homes and leaving their fields
idle.

Syria’s war has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced millions and left entire cities
in smoking ruins. It has also ensnared the Euphrates, an arc of the Fertile Crescent that is
considered a cradle of civilisation.

On a recent trip along the river, we found a wasteland dotted with depopulated towns, gutted
factories and civilians struggling to get by.

We mostly stayed on the east bank, an area out of Damascus’ hands that is effectively
stateless and boxed in by hostile powers. The only way in was to cross the Tigris River from
Iraq in a shaky, seatless motorboat.

As the government of President Bashar al-Assad has focused its military power on defeating
rebels in the north and south, the river has emerged as the collision point for the great
powers and their local allies struggling for influence in the east.

On the eastern bank are mostly US-backed Kurdish-led militias. On the west, along the
northern part of the river, are Turkish-backed rebels. Farther south are Syrian forces
supported by Russia and Iran. The Islamic State still holds a pocket along the river near the
border with Iraq.

For now, the division is holding because none of the other powers wants to confront the US,
which has about 2,000 soldiers on the eastern side and whose fighter jets control the skies
there.

Most of the world has accepted that Assad will continue to rule Syria, but the standoff and
shattered landscape along the Euphrates raise questions about whether he can ever stitch the
whole country back together.

The immediate question is how long the US will stay. President Donald Trump has said he
wants to pull out the troops, who lead an international coalition against the Islamic State. If
he does, the US’ local allies fear the worst.

“The mere presence of the coalition in the region gives a message to the regime and to the
Turks not to interfere: ‘This is where you stop’,” said Muhammad Kheir Sheikho, a member
of the civil council in Manbij. “The withdrawal of the coalition forces, and at their head the
American forces, would cause complete chaos in the area.”

The American security umbrella has allowed Manbij to become a relatively stable island in a
war-torn country. It is a local economic hub, with a bustling market and about 200,000 new

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residents displaced from elsewhere.

But, Turkey sees Syria’s Kurdish militia as a terrorist threat on its border and has threatened
to attack it. The US worries that a Turkish attack on Manbij would siphon off the Kurdish
fighters from the battle against the IS in the south. Thus, the American patrols to keep the
Turks at bay.

On the flat roof of a cinder-block farmhouse converted into a military base west of town,
Kurdish militiamen pointed across a shallow valley at Turkish military positions and
acknowledged that the Turks could storm the area quickly if they wanted. But, they did not
because of the American military base nearby: a few trailers surrounded by armoured
vehicles, the stars and stripes flying overhead.

Most of the territory held by the US and its Kurdish allies was once ruled by the IS, and the
scars of the military campaign to defeat it run deep.

South of Manbij stands the Tabqa Dam, which the Soviets built in 1973, creating Syria’s
largest body of water, Lake Assad, and generating power for much of the country. IS ran the
dam for years but blew up its turbines when they retreated.

It is now back at work, sort of. Its 350 employees work in buildings shattered by coalition
air-strikes that blew holes in walls and shook tiles off the floors. Inside the hydroelectric
station, rows of charred circuit boxes set alight by the IS sit below ceilings stained black from
smoke.

But, three of the dam’s turbines were whirring as water rushed through below, and a man
with a blowtorch worked to repair a fourth. From eight damaged turbines, engineers had
salvaged enough parts to rebuild three of them.

On the rocky banks of the Euphrates in the former capital of the IS’ self-declared caliphate,
boatmen yell to coax passengers onto rickety metal barges. Once they are filled with
passengers, cars, motorcycles and trucks bearing everything from diapers to flatbread, the
motors roar and belch black smoke as the men pilot their charges across the pale green
water.

Raqqa was once a commercial centre for Syria’s breadbasket. Now, it is an orphaned city in
ruins.

The military campaign that drove out the IS in October left two-thirds of the city’s buildings
damaged or destroyed, local officials said. Entire city blocks were erased and apartment
buildings brought to the ground. Residents have returned to find walls and ceilings missing
from their homes. Some even struggle to find their homes.

But, the world powers who fought there, led by the US, are staying out of reconstruction, so
Raqqa’s residents are largely on their own.

All 32 bridges in the area were destroyed. The two major bridges spanning the Euphrates are
impassible, cutting the city in half. All that’s left are the barges to get the people across.

Since the battle ended, the US has put US$13.7 million (RM55.8 million) into Raqqa for
water, electricity, rubble removal and other projects, in addition to the US$54 million to
clear mines left by the IS, according to the State Department. -- NYT

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People using rowboats to cross from territory held by American-backed Kurdish militias to
the opposite bank of the Euphrates, where the Syrian government holds sway, near al-
Khasarat, Syria. The long conflict has left the Euphrates, for a millennia the cradle of Syria, a
string of abandoned farms and depopulated towns. NYT PIC