'9 Days in Raqqa' is devastating and inspiring!

How to survive after 80% of your city is destroyed? This is the story of Leila Mustapha and her city, finding their feet after ISIS and the Syrian War.

"What matters most is that we're free from the ISIS nightmare. We remember things we went through and the constant fear we lived in.

Children who lost their innocence and started playing with guns instead of toys. Children who watched their mothers being killed. Sons who caused their fathers' deaths. Fathers who killed their sons. Fathers who saw their sons being killed.

The crimes committed were horrendous. We will always remember the tears of our fathers and mothers, and the children who were robbed of an education and a childhood. We will always remember our martyred comrades, and how we witnessed their deaths.

They will always be in our hearts."

Those are the words of Leila Mustapha, a 30-year-old Kurdish woman, an engineer on the city council of Raqqa. She's co-Mayor with an Arab. Their deputies represent Turks, Christians and Circassians. It's a union in utter contrast to their previous ISIS overlords who used heads of the innocent as ornaments on the fence posts of the town's main traffic circle.

Marine de Tilley, a French journalist and author, is in Raqqa to interview Leila. She only has 9 days. She describes the scene:

"Raqqa is now on its knees, forgotten by journalists, forgotten by international aid. 80% of the city is destroyed. A U.S. military official even said that more artillery shells were launched in Raqqa than anywhere since the Vietnam War. All of the city's walls bear the scars of total war, brutal and cruel."

No electricity, no running water, no landmarks, nothing to treat human shit. Just 8000 landmines, rubble and dirt roads. And covert ISIS cells.

Defiance and survival as families walk on the street below cement pillars torn by missiles. An open shop in the only room surviving a 5-storey mess of a building above it.

Leila relates a crying women talking to the media once the city had been liberated in 2017. "Where were you," she said. "Are the people of Raqqa so worthless that you left us in the hands of ISIS all those years?"

A female military commander says that "No society can build a revolution on one sex alone."

So here's Leila, being brave. She's exhausted, a person in desperately need of sleep as much as a hug. She’s the only woman in a Council of 130. One of her deputies, a friend, is assassinated. She's doing the best she can. She’s an inspiration.

"It is our duty to leave something beautiful for future generations," says Leila. "Thankfully, we've made progress, and we want to do more... However, our people deserve more."

They do!

• You can ask for a screening of ‘9 Days in Raqqa’ from Taskovski Films. Watch on Apple TV, Or bookmark this page as a reminder to view when it shows on your streaming service.

• For French readers, the book by Leila Mustafa and Marine de Tilley is ‘La Femme, La Vie, La Liberté’ (‘Women, Life, Freedom’).