Syrian Town Where the Islamic State Was Repelled Now Strives to Rebuild

KOBANI, Syria: From the door of her modest breeze-block home, Faiza Mohammed recalled what her neighborhood once was and mourned what it had become.

Her children's school has bullet holes in the walls and sandbags in the windows. The shops where she once bought groceries are mounds of rubble. The neighbors and relatives who used to live nearby and keep an eye on one another's children have left.

Other than the elderly couple next door, she said, everyone is gone. Her house and theirs are the only two left on the street, islands in a sea of destruction.

"We have people next door, so we are OK," said Mohammed, who was widowed before the Syrian civil war began. "But at night we lock the door and don't open for anyone, because there is fear in the world."

A fierce battle by Kurdish fighters to repel an invasion by the Islamic State last year rocketed Kobani, an obscure border town in northern Syria, into the world's consciousness.

But by the time the Kurds prevailed in January, backed by hundreds of U.S. airstrikes in what was lauded as a model of international cooperation, the town looked as though an earthquake had struck it. Refugees who came back had trouble even locating their homes.

Kobani, known in Arabic as Ain al-Arab, is trying now to overcome the deep scars of war and rebuild - and there are signs of life.

The challenges the town faces are huge, illustrating the huge toll of driving the Islamic State from urban areas, but also the costly burden of destruction that many Syrian cities will have to bear when the war ends.

Around town, the crash of tractors tearing down damaged buildings resounds through the streets. Fleets of trucks haul off loads of rubble to dump outside the city in ever-expanding fields of waste.

Shops selling cellphones, cigarettes and grilled chicken have reopened along a few commercial streets after installing new doors and glass. And thousands of displaced residents are returning each month, local officials say. Many have reclaimed their damaged homes, covering blown-out windows with plastic and plugging holes in walls with bricks to keep out the wind until real repairs can be made.

"The city has become relatively suitable to live in again," said Idris Nassan, the head of foreign affairs for the area's new autonomous administration.

When the battle ended, 80 per cent of buildings were damaged and the infrastructure had collapsed, he said. The town had long before cut any links with the central government in Damascus, so local leaders formed the Kobani Reconstruction Board with members from the Kurdish diaspora to solicit aid and oversee rebuilding.

Its first tasks were to restore water and sewage lines, reopen roads, dispose of unexploded ordnance and lay to rest the bodies of more than 100 people found in the rubble, Nassan said.

Also destroyed were the city's new hospital, most government offices, a number of schools and bakeries, and two large wedding halls.

Kobani sustained yet another blow in June, when Islamic State fighters dressed as anti-Assad rebels sneaked into town before dawn and went house to house, killing more than 250 people before Kurdish fighters killed them, according to Shervan Darwish, a military official here.

But the administration has kept on, working with international organizations to open clinics and regulating generators so residents can buy a few hours of electricity per day.

Its reconstruction efforts are restricted, however, by limited funds and the difficulty of obtaining building supplies.

Although the town is near the Turkish border, Turkey has kept its crossings closed to most cargo - a move widely seen as a strike against the area's Kurds.

Many of Kobani's schools are damaged, but a number of them reopened last month, their courtyards filling twice a day with children doing exercises and heading to class. The early grades now use new Kurdish textbooks instead of the Syrian government's Arabic curriculum. It is unclear how regularly the teachers will be paid.

"If there is a salary, of course no one would say no," said Shevin Mho, a teacher.

The sprawling martyrs' graveyard outside town bears testament to the high human toll of the fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Hundreds of graves fill the site, the headstones of unidentified bodies bearing only numbers.

On a rainy afternoon, a bereaved mother walked through the mud, screaming and yanking tufts of gray hair from her head while relatives tried to restrain her.

Nearby, Badea Ali placed blue and red plastic flowers on the grave of her brother, Anwar, a Kurdish policeman who had been killed in a bomb attack. Ali said she had left Kobani for Iraq early in the war, then fled to Europe by boat last year and ended up in Germany.

It had been painful to watch the battle for her hometown on the news in a strange country, but like many Kobani natives, the war had taught her to treasure the place, she said.

"I started loving Kobani more than before because now we know its worth," she said.

Her dream is to move back from Germany to open a hair salon, she said - but not yet. "The situation needs to settle down a bit," she said.

The scale of the town's loss haunts many residents.

Every morning, Muslim Mohammed, 56, returns to his damaged home and sits alone outside, drinking tea and thinking. The surrounding apartment buildings are all damaged and empty, now nesting grounds for birds.

"I don't like to see a lot of people," said Muslim Mohammed, a mechanic. "It is psychologically taxing."

He and his wife had fled to Turkey when the battle began, but three of his sons had joined the main Kurdish militia here.

Ali, 17, was killed in battle, and Mohammed, 29, was shot dead during the Islamic State's incursion in June, Muslim Mohammed said. So he sent Ahmed, 15, to Europe by raft, hoping that distance might keep him alive.

"Was I supposed to sacrifice all my sons?" Muslim Mohammed said.

Like many residents, he struggled to comprehend why the jihadis had poured so much into fighting for their town.

"They didn't leave us anything," he said. "Not our sons, our money, our homes."

Others, however, saw the victory as a large step toward empowerment for Syria's Kurdish minority after decades of governmental neglect. "It was worth it," said Sherin Ismael, a 26-year-old seamstress. "Now the world knows that there are Kurds."

Her family members, too, are the only residents left on their block, and her 2-year-old nephew, Osman, still cries at night, saying, "ISIS is coming."

Some of their neighbors recently came to inspect their house and see what it would take to move back in.

"Destruction comes quickly," Ismael said. "But building takes time."