TEL ABYAD, Syria — The woman took her sons and paid a smuggler’s exorbitant fee to escape her impossible trap in Raqqa: stuck between the ISIS militants she hates and the pounding of international airstrikes.
On Thursday night, the family arrived in the safest city outside Raqqa, Tel Abyad, where she believed the ethnic Kurdish forces who run it would help her. She had agonized over leaving for months. For Raqqa residents like her, it’s far from easy to leave — despite the “misery” of living in the city, as the woman described it, fear of the militants and economic desperation often keep them there.
“People in Raqqa are against their ideology,” she said, wearing a black shawl and heavy coat, and too afraid of reprisals to give her name. “But where will they go? It’s a miserable life, but people feel they don’t have another choice.”