Militant Grip Transforms, Terrorizes Syrian City

Once a vibrant, religiously mixed community, Syria's eastern city of Raqqa is now a shell of its former self, terrorized by hard-line militants who have turned it into the nucleus of their vision for the Islamic caliphate they hope one day to establish in Syria and Iraq.

In rare interviews with The Associated Press, residents and activists in Raqqa describe a city where fear prevails. Music has been banned, Christians have to pay an Islamic tax for protection, people are executed in the main square and face-veiled women and pistol-wielding foreigners in Afghan-style outfits patrol the streets enforcing Shariah restrictions.

Raqqa, on the banks of the Euphrates River, is now the only city in Syria fully under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaida breakaway group that is considered the most ferocious of the militant factions that have latched onto the revolt against President Bashar Assad's rule. Black Islamic banners flutter on street corners and atop buildings – including churches – as the extremists put their strict Islamic stamp on the city.

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“Raqqa is the nucleus for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's nascent Islamic state,” said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Their laws govern virtually every aspect of public and private life.”

Al-Baghdadi, he said, has “delusions of grandeur and believes that he is the rightful new Caliph.”

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