The Battle for Raqqa Our World

Now on BBC News, it's Our World.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, Islamic State

is making a final stand.

Fighting them, a fragile coalition...

GUNSHOTS.

..of powers, great and small.

Of Arabs and Kurds.

Of men and women.

The enemy they face has weaponised fear.

But this is more than the final showdown with Isis in its capital.

It's also a battle for a Kurdish state in northern Syria.

There's something bigger than me.

It's for people here, the women here and women in the Middle East,

and maybe potentially the world.

It's a fight for territory, both physical and ideological.

This story begins not in Raqqa, but in Kobane.

What remains of this largely Kurdish city stands as a monument

to a brutal turning point in the war against Islamic State.

It was here that IS reached its high water mark.

Its territory extending as far as the Turkish border.

It was here it met its first significant defeat.

The cemetery in Kobane testifies to just how high

a price Kurdish fighters, men and women, have already paid

in their war against IS.

For the Kurds, this is part of a wider battle, for a long-held

dream of self-determination.

Commander Sonxuin is part of that battle.

Her nom de guerre means Red Blood.

Today, Sonxuin commands around 1000 fighters on the Raqqa front line.

Periods of intense fighting punctuate the mundane

routines of war.

Together, these men and women make up the Syrian

Democratic Forces, or SDF.

An alliance that includes Arabs, but is led by the Kurds.

We're heading towards the centre of Raqqa.

Islamic State fighters are holed up in the Old City, just a few

hundred metres away.

Everyone is on edge.

A sound overhead signals the presence of an attack drone.

What's happening is we've just driven down these

narrow side streets.

Suddenly there's gunfire overhead, everyone's

looking up in the sky, searching for these IS drones.

This is urban warfare.

There are no real front lines.

The Kurdish-led SDF are not on their own in this fight.

The Americans have quietly built up a presence on the ground

here in northern Syria, providing weapons,

training and firepower.

With US help they've chased Islamic State out of traditionally

Kurdish areas and beyond.

Expanding their control across the Euphrates and into mainly

Arab territory to the West.

This is Manbij.

The Syrian Democratic Forces took the city last August,

after two and a half years under IS rule.

This building was their courthouse.

Here, Islamic State would sit in judgment over people they deemed

to have broken their laws.

Punishment would be meted out in the car park opposite.

A local shopkeeper witnessed many of the gruesome executions.

Even though IS is gone from here, he asked us not

to reveal his identity, for fear of reprisals.

Down in the basement, their brutal legacy lingers, like a ghost.

In this dungeon, IS tortured its prisoners.

A policeman showed us the cell where his uncle was kept.

Barely big enough to contain a man.

Tiny air holes to keep him alive.

When they let him out, after four days, they had

to amputate his leg.

In a vast graveyard in the centre of Manbij, IS fighters have smashed

every single headstone.

And even though Islamic State has been chased out of this town,

that doesn't mean its ideology has gone with it.

In Manbij, a multiethnic military and civil council has brought life

and stability back to this mainly Arab city, under the auspices

of the Kurdish led SDF.

The SDF and their American allies see Manbij as a template for Raqqa,

once IS is driven out, but in the context of Syria's

ongoing civil war it is at best a temporary arrangement.

From Kobane to Manbij, and now to Raqqa, it

has been a long road to the capital of the caliphate.

Commander Sonxuin and her unit are on the Western front.

It's a tight squeeze in a home-made armoured truck with a couple

of her fighters, driving towards the centre of Raqqa.

Islamic State are supposed to be surrounded inside the Old City,

but IS have dug tunnels.

And frequently, they pop up where you don't expect them.

GUNSHOTS.

These fighters, they are coming up against IS snipers in all these

streets around here.

Other than that, they've got drones, they've got suicide bombers.

This is going to be a very hard fight into the centre of Raqqa.

Back at base, Sonxuin and her fellow commanders are having

a strategy meeting.

As the fight enters the narrow streets of the city,

they are constantly having to adjust their tactics.

As the SDF push forward, Raqqa seems deserted.

But the empty streets are deceptive.

There are still people here and they are desperate

to get out.

As we drive towards the centre, carts appear flying white flags.

There are still tens of thousands of people in Raqqa,

trapped between the coalition air strikes on one side

and Islamic State on the other,

who've been killing anyone who tries to flee.

The problem for the SDF coalition is this -

they don't know whether some of those fleeing could,

in fact, be IS supporters themselves.

After screening, many of them end up at this camp.

All have lived under the harsh regime of Islamic State -

not all against their will.

Noor left Raqqa for Lebanon two years ago to join her

husband, a jihadi.

As the wife of a foreign fighter, Noor was in a relatively privileged

position.

There were many women, especially Yazidis, whose fates

were much darker - women captured and sold

between the fighters as sex slaves.

She saw all this.

Those women are still there, in Raqqa, prisoners

of the caliphate.

Syria has been at war for more than six years now -

longer than the whole of World War II.

The fight against Islamic State is but one facet of an ongoing

conflict that is drawing in the world's big powers.

From a hilltop overlooking the Manbij countryside,

a local Kurdish commander showed me the point at which all these

competing forces come face to face.

OK, well, it's a pretty complicated picture,

but basically it boils down to this - from the west,

all the way up to the north, up to the Euphrates River over

there, is controlled by the Americans.

From that same west point all the way to the south

is controlled by the Syrian regime.

That describes the sort of D shape.

In the middle of that is the pocket of the Manbij Military Council,

which is an Arab-Kurdish coalition, but is basically controlled

by the Kurds.

But in between all of that, there's a Russian base just over

there, an American base just 4km along from that,

and surrounding all of it are FSA forces -

Free Syrian Army - that are basically sponsored

by the Turks.

For now, the battle against Islamic State provides

a kind of common purpose.

But once IS is gone, the potential for conflict

between these big powers is very real.

The Kurds' position is extremely fragile.

Their fighters belonged to a branch of the PKK,

considered a terrorist organisation by both Turkey

and the United States.

For now, the Syrian Kurds have the backing of the Americans

but Turkey, a NATO ally, carries out sporadic attacks

against them - that's because their fight

against the Islamic State is really about creating their own state.

On the Raqqa front lines, Sonxuin's fighters are so close,

they can hear IS in the building across the street.

For the Kurds, this is more than a war.

It's a revolution.

And it's attracting its share of idealistic outsiders.

There's just a million ways to die here.

It's not just on the front.

There's no front line.

It's a huge space of war, that is like, even though it seems

peaceful here, anything can happen.

Kimmie Taylor is a former maths student.

She is originally from Blackburn in the north of England.

She left behind a life of activism at home to come to Syria to fight

Islamic State.

What are the biggest worries, the biggest threats?

On the moving front, where we are moving to take more

space, it's snipers.

And mines everywhere - there's mines everywhere

and snipers everywhere.

Are you scared?

Uh, no.

There is something bigger than me.

It's for people here.

It's for women here and for women all in the Middle East,

and even maybe potentially the world.

In a conservative society, this feminist revolution faces

internal opposition, too,

but this is a movement that tolerates little dissent.

Political opponents have been jailed.

Thousands of young people have fled conscription.

But for Sonxuin, a true believer,

the fight against IS is but one battle in a longer war

to convert her own people to the cause.

Sonxuin's fighters face Islamic State at perhaps its most

dangerous - wounded, cornered, and with nothing left to lose.

This is, of course, a battle for territory.

They're fighting to take the capital of the caliphate.

Oh, there's something happening here.

Everyone's just springing into action.

They think they've got some ISIS snipers in the buildings around.

We've

We've got

We've got one,

We've got one, yes?

We've got one, yes? Yes.

Let's go.

What's going on?

They are moving here.

The fall of the Islamic State is within sight.

The question is, can this Kurdish revolution survive in the face

of Syria's still unfinished war?